Sundering and specific character questions. [Spoilers]

[Iscah]

Of course, I can't help but think of our own moon's incidental function... it soaks up many many meteors, asteroids, and other celestial bodies that would otherwise touch down on Earth. Both small and large. Hence why it's covered in craters.

Yes and no. While it certainly has taken hits from meteors that otherwise might have hit Earth, the reason for the buildup of craters is that there is no weather or tectonic processes renewing the surface to erase them. The Moon's lack of atmosphere would also presumably mean no slowing effect or "burning up" of the descending meteor, so it gets hit harder and by bigger rocks.

It's only going to shield a very small fraction of the Earth at any one time – think about its size relative to the whole sky! – and I'm not sure exactly how much influence its gravity has but it's most likely just going to bend trajectories a bit, not "suck things in" and pull them off course.

[Theozilla]

If there was a pre-existing moon/celestial satellite prior to the Sundering/Zodiark’s banishment to the heavens, and it was more akin to Zodiark was sealed inside/fused with the moon, maybe that’s what gave the Ascians the idea to give the Allagans the idea to put Primal Bahamut into Dalamud?

I believe I found the interview MikkoAkure may have been referring to?
https://gamerescape.com/2018/12/01/f...with-koji-fox/

And Koji only says that the Sundering/“splitting” was focused on the planet Hydaelyn. He actually says how far the split extends is something that he still needs to confirm with Oda-san. So it seems like it wasn’t fully confirmed then.

So perhaps maybe the Sundering only sundered the souls the Planet/Source, but the other planets instead essentially got “copied” into the dimensions of the 13 shards, but they aren’t “diminished” soul-wise like the Hydaelyn shard planet inhabitants. So there could be a Migardsormr in the universe of the First, who is also unsundered, but just never came to the First?

[Vyrerus]

Yes and no. While it certainly has taken hits from meteors that otherwise might have hit Earth, the reason for the buildup of craters is that there is no weather or tectonic processes renewing the surface to erase them. The Moon's lack of atmosphere would also presumably mean no slowing effect or "burning up" of the descending meteor, so it gets hit harder and by bigger rocks.

It's only going to shield a very small fraction of the Earth at any one time – think about its size relative to the whole sky! – and I'm not sure exactly how much influence its gravity has but it's most likely just going to bend trajectories a bit, not "suck things in" and pull them off course.

I mean, there are also lunar meteorites from collisions with the right side of the moon. The low gravity and no atmosphere cause them to fall to earth, where they are only preserved in deserts, mostly the Sahara and Antarctica.

It does shield the Earth though, at least partially, and that is the direct reason for why it has craters. No meteorites hitting it = no craters. It's not just because its surface doesn't wear down, much. That's why we can still observe them, though.

In a magical world with a magical moon with a magical atmosphere created by magical people with magical creations being magical all the time, I'm sure they could magically have it perform better shielding than our mundane moon.

Anyway, it's something that's very fun to think about, especially when theories like this exist. Lunar Cataclysm

[Iscah]

If So perhaps maybe the Sundering only sundered the souls the Planet/Source, but the other planets instead essentially got “copied” into the dimensions of the 13 shards, but they aren’t “diminished” soul-wise like the Hydaelyn shard planet inhabitants. So there could be a Migardsormr in the universe of the First, who is also unsundered, but just never came to the First?

If the Sundering is localised then I don't think there is a "universe of the First". There is a single wider universe but one small patch of it is containing multiple simultaneous realities, each one thinner than the normal density of reality.

The best way I can think of picturing it is to imagine the universe as a stack of paper sheets, mostly glued together but there's one patch that has come unglued so the sheets aren't attached to each other.

Most of the block has a single surface and thick layer underneath, but this section has many thin layers with separate surfaces. It's not clear whether you could access any of the additional surfaces from the surrounding universe or only the uppermost layer (the Source), which looks no different to the surrounding "whole" space.

This analogy represents the universe as 2D while the effect of the Sundering creates a more 3D structure, so to translate that to the real 3D universe then Hydaelyn is some kind of 4D hypersphere thing with only one section of it (the Source) visible from and existing in the outside universe. (I'm not going to pretend I fully grasp how 4D works but I think "seeing a 3D cross-section in 3D space" is the end result, like a sphere intersecting a 2D plane would appear as a circle.)

So yeah, I think it's likely that you can only access the Source from outside the planet, but once you're on the planet it's possible to mess with dimensions and access a different layer of the split world.


...but then, why would Omega have the ability to traverse it if it's a localised phenomenon unknown to Omega's creators?

[Iscah]

It does shield the Earth though, at least partially, and that is the direct reason for why it has craters. No meteorites hitting it = no craters

That's not because it's "shielding the Earth" though; it's because both Earth and Moon are both objects in space that can potentially get hit by space rocks coming in from any direction. One wears all its scars forever on a rocky surface, the other hides them and wears them down or swallows them in the ocean without a mark to be seen.

Things might be aimed at the Earth but hit the Moon first. But just as possible they might come from the opposite direction and hit the larger Earth first.

Additionally, despite the "lunar cataclysm" description of the Late Heavy Bombardment theory you linked, as far as I can tell the only reason it's called "lunar" is because that's where the (debated) evidence for it is found. The article talks about it bombarding all four terrestrial planets and has a whole section on how Earth would have been impacted by it, with no mention of the idea of the Moon shielding it from anything.

Again, look at the size of the Moon in the night sky. That is how much of the Earth's surface it can shield at any given point, and the other half of the globe is completely unprotected.

[MikkoAkure]

Oh that’s interesting to hear, does anyone have a think to said interview out of curiosity/ for posterity’s sake?

https://gamerescape.com/2018/12/01/f...with-koji-fox/
He seems a little vague about it at first and says that he has to check with Oda, but this is what we have now. Funny enough, it came out right after this thread originally died.

To add onto what Vyrerus said, he does mention the fact the Dragonstar is very, very far away from all this.

We’re not talking splits there. In a far away place, you have Midgardsormr…and in a faraway place there’s Omega and its creators

snip.

I think we’ve gone way off topic but more meteors hit Earth than the moon because the Earth is much bigger.

Other than the fact that the moon has no weathering, it has more craters because most things that hit Earth burn up in the atmosphere. If you’ve seen a scale diagram of our specific system, the moon is so far away from the Earth, it’s less like we’re holding a shield and more that we have a large ball on the end of a very long rope that we’re swinging around. Jupiter has done much more to protect the Earth than the moon has.

The biggest role the moon has though is that it creates the tides, without which we would never have had life.

[Vyrerus]

Atmosphere

Actually, the Moon let the Earth form an atmosphere to begin with. They shared their magnetospheres(the moon used to have one) for about 600 million years after the Moon formed. This let it deflect solar wind quite readily, as it was only 80,000 miles away from Earth back then (theoretically). In this way, it has given us our greatest boon, but it will also one day cause our rotation to slow to the point that our days match its revolutions, and so our days will be 648 hours long. Obviously that's some billions away, but... it'll get us before the Sun does.

completely unprotected.

By that logic, look up at the Sun in the day time sky. That's how much of the Earth it can protect >:B

A lot more goes into meteor impacts than you think. The Moon doesn't merely act as a physical shield, though I love to think of it as one, since it has many scars. When a meteor is drawn into the ecliptic, it is pulled by the Sun's gravity foremost, but it's affected by the Earth's and the Moon's as well. This can pull the meteor to them, but it may also unsteady its orbit and accelerate it towards the sun or away from Earth. But as a show, I think it's currently calculated that for every 43.3 meteoroid tons hit Earth, 1.4 hit the Moon. It is small, but not as small as you think.

[Iscah]

But as a show, I think it's currently calculated that for every 43.3 meteoroid tons hit Earth, 1.4 hit the Moon. It is small, but not as small as you think.

And what about that fact demonstrates the Moon is a "shield" that prevents Earth from getting hit by meteors? It's getting hit by 31 times as much space rock as the thing you want to call its shield.

If anything, and assuming I'm doing my maths right, Earth gets more meteors by weight for the same surface area.

The Moon's radius is about a quarter of Earth's. Surface area is 4(pi)r^2, the comparative bit that matters is r^2, simple maths of r=1 vs r=4 would mean Earth has 16 times as much surface area and yet it is hit by 31 times as much space rock.

That seems odd, so perhaps there are other factors that contribute to the Earth collecting more.

Still, if I've calculated that right, it indicates that the Moon gets less impacts than I would have thought.

[Theozilla]

If the Sundering is localised then I don't think there is a "universe of the First". There is a single wider universe but one small patch of it is containing multiple simultaneous realities, each one thinner than the normal density of reality.

The best way I can think of picturing it is to imagine the universe as a stack of paper sheets, mostly glued together but there's one patch that has come unglued so the sheets aren't attached to each other.

Most of the block has a single surface and thick layer underneath, but this section has many thin layers with separate surfaces. It's not clear whether you could access any of the additional surfaces from the surrounding universe or only the uppermost layer (the Source), which looks no different to the surrounding "whole" space.

This analogy represents the universe as 2D while the effect of the Sundering creates a more 3D structure, so to translate that to the real 3D universe then Hydaelyn is some kind of 4D hypersphere thing with only one section of it (the Source) visible from and existing in the outside universe. (I'm not going to pretend I fully grasp how 4D works but I think "seeing a 3D cross-section in 3D space" is the end result, like a sphere intersecting a 2D plane would appear as a circle.)

So yeah, I think it's likely that you can only access the Source from outside the planet, but once you're on the planet it's possible to mess with dimensions and access a different layer of the split world.


...but then, why would Omega have the ability to traverse it if it's a localised phenomenon unknown to Omega's creators?

So in your proposed model, how would things such as meteorites and asteroids work with the Source and Shards then? Would that mean the shards never have had any meteorites hit their planets then?

And if anyone on the shards were to develop hypothetical means of space travel, how would they be able to interact with things in outer-space?

https://gamerescape.com/2018/12/01/f...with-koji-fox/
He seems a little vague about it at first and says that he has to check with Oda, but this is what we have now. Funny enough, it came out right after this thread originally died.

To add onto what Vyrerus said, he does mention the fact the Dragonstar is very, very far away from all this.

Yeah I actually found that interview earlier and posted it lasted night.

And while he said the split/sundering "is focused mainly on Hydaelyn, the planet, being split." He did leave the subject of whether/how other planets in the cosmos were or were not affected by the Sundering, as something that needed further confirmation. And since ShadowBringers and its patches didn't really touch on other planets, I feel like like the official status of how the sundering/split affecting other planets/greater universe, is still officially unconfirmed/defined.

[Vyrerus]

And what about that fact demonstrates the Moon is a "shield" that prevents Earth from getting hit by meteors? It's getting hit by 31 times as much space rock as the thing you want to call its shield.

If anything, and assuming I'm doing my maths right, Earth gets more meteors by weight for the same surface area.

The Moon's radius is about a quarter of Earth's. Surface area is 4(pi)r^2, the comparative bit that matters is r^2, simple maths of r=1 vs r=4 would mean Earth has 16 times as much surface area and yet it is hit by 31 times as much space rock.

That seems odd, so perhaps there are other factors that contribute to the Earth collecting more.

Still, if I've calculated that right, it indicates that the Moon gets less impacts than I would have thought.

You're going by raw size still, and that's not the whole equation. Everything with regards to a cosmic scale and space scale has to be looked at over eons and eons. Even small things change a lot on such a vast scale.

Do a thought experiment for me. Imagine there was no Theia or other speculated moon formation for Earth. 1.4 tons per year for 4.2 billion years is an added 5.88 billion tons of meteroids that would have other wise hit the Earth. We'd have no atmosphere and no life to record such things, either, since there'd be no barrier magnetosphere for 600 million years to let the main planet form its atmosphere. No oceans, no grass, nothing but another Mars.

As far as why the Earth gets so much more meteoroid tonnage... it's because they count all meteoroids, even those considered to be dust(meteoroids that are basically less than a millimeter in size, this makes raw surface area more important). It's all done with equations and theory, as is everything we're talking about, with regards to this, so it's actually unprovable but is the most likely reality. No scientists nor scientific coalition has observed enough impacts to even actually give us concrete data. It's incredibly interesting because they always have to do stuff like compare crater age on the moon to like kimberlite volcano pipes vs. soil erosion rates and stuff to provide evidence that the Moon and Earth's impact rates line up.

And in recent years they're(NASA) finding that the moon gets impacted more and more than they ever thought or calculated, so I'll stick by what I said. It'll likely change again in a few years, and then again a few years after that. If it pleases Judge Moonsong though, we can call the Ancients' Moon a meteor auspice or meteor monitor. A monument to power over something the Ancients feared, mayhaps. /shrug It's not like Final Fantasy is above using farfetch'd science fiction explanations in their plot either, considering in FFIV the Blue Planet is supposed to be our Earth, and the Lunarian's Planet was the 5th planet and blew up turning into the asteroid belt (which is a "debunked" theory going around for decades now).