Entree for Silmarillion Writer’s Guild – Silmarillion 40th
Melkor, Ungoliant, and the darkening of Valinor.
Tag: the two trees
Nerds, help me out here:
I am not a science person, but my understanding is that sunsets are caused by Rayleigh scattering as light passes through a relatively larger amount of air molecules when it is low in the sky and the light travels perpendicular to the earth’s surface; the light then bounces off the clouds and reflects fancy colors into our eyes all pretty-like.
So, if you had your primary light source actually affixed to the surface of the earth, with light emanating radially from a central point (say, two massively radioactive glowing trees):
A) Would you see sunsets the farther away from the trees you got, with clear light and blue skies the closer you got?
B) Would you see sunsets only at a certain elevation, and from a distance?
C) Would there be insufficient air molecules to scatter the light?
D) Would you have to be like, WAY far away to see sunsets? Like on another continent? (Assuming the earth isn’t curved.)
E) I guess shadows would always point the same direction and it would vary depending on where you were relative to the trees?
F) HOW DO YOU GET A LIGHT SOURCE BRIGHT ENOUGH TO ILLUMINATE A WHOLE LANDMASS WITHOUT BLINDING ANYONE THAT LOOKED AT IT?
G) …Okay, would only Manwë and Varda ever get to see Sunsets from their stratospheric perch on Taniquietl?
H) The trees would have to rotate somehow. I mean. They just would have to. Otherwise you’d have one always casting a shadow on a certain part of Aman. And everywhere else that had something blocking the path of the light, for that matter. Some bits of vegetation would get all the sunlight forever and then it’d be like WELCOME TO THE DEADZONE as soon as you hit tree shadow.
I) Would the lighting situation improve if Varda put like a big ol’ mirror in the sky to reflect the light back down?J) Should I give up trying to make actual giant glowing trees work as a viable world building element and stick to a magical/metaphysical/non-literal explanation? orz ;; trees tho
reblogging here because i’m extremely curious about the answer
I’m no expert on anything but re: H) I think the constant-tree-shadow area wouldn’t exactly be a dead zone for plants, but rather no-direct-sunshine loving plants would thrive there? If we’re going by the thought that Aman is the only continent getting Tree light and is supposed to be the “blessed realm”, we’re also supposing the Powers That Be make it so to the best of their ability, ergo Yavanna would make sure the constant-shadow piece of land would be able to nurture plants that require different light. Also, the part that doesn’t get light from Laurelin WILL get light from Telperion during its shine time. and vice versa. So it could work that way? Again, not an expert. At all
So then, let my try:
A)Yes, pretty much. The color distribution as you said is caused by the amount of air the light passed through, so closer to the trees they would act more like a regular light source. The only other effect that comes to my mind is that the ground would be super bright as well since it’s really close to the light source.
B)Depends. Is your world flat or a sphere? If it is flat and the trees are the highest things around you would of course see them from anywhere, barring stuff like clouds getting in the way.
C)Not sure if I understand. It depends on from where you’re looking, but if it’s far enough, the light will travel through pretty much the same amount of atmosphere a sunset would. Look at pictures of nulcear explosions like Castle Bravo for examples of terrestial lightsources with lots of scattering. It’s hard to gauge what the original color was but on most pictures it looks very similar to a sunset from just a few dozen kilometers away.
D) Ah, here we go. No, I wouldn’t say so. Light from a regular sunset only travels trough a few hundred kilometers of air, not quite continent range.
E) Sure, just like with every point light source.
F) Eh… By it not being a point source but a distributed that illuminates the whole thing from a wide area. For magic trees, that might mean have a gigantic treetop that fills the sky. But then the whole train of thought above derails since the light doesn’t come from a single place anymore.
G) Thinking about a relatively small lightsource again, I’d say no. Not sure about the precise position of them but if they are high enough, the light would travel through relatively little air on the way to them. You’d have better sunsets on the ground.
H)Mmmm. So you say the trees are pretty much giant flashlights/lighthouses that always point in a certain direction? The vegetation bit interesting and there are some thoughts like that regarding life on tidally locked planets, where the sun doesn’t ever move either, but you are right. You don’t have a day and night cycle. But you don’t solve that problem just by rotating them. The Trees would have to actually move around the world – much like the sun does. (Or, alternatively, be so gigantic that the light still comes from above)
I) Now that is a very good idea to save this world. Indeed, that would ensure a much better distribution of the light, and you’d have intersting double light effects in visual range of the trees.
Reblogging for further excellent input! Thank you, especially for answer G, which I still wasn’t sure about, as well as C and D.
I absolutely hadn’t thought about the connection to nuclear blasts, I’ll have to hunt some down for reference! 😀
Nerds, help me out here:
I am not a science person, but my understanding is that sunsets are caused by Rayleigh scattering as light passes through a relatively larger amount of air molecules when it is low in the sky and the light travels perpendicular to the earth’s surface; the light then bounces off the clouds and reflects fancy colors into our eyes all pretty-like.
So, if you had your primary light source actually affixed to the surface of the earth, with light emanating radially from a central point (say, two massively radioactive glowing trees):
A) Would you see sunsets the farther away from the trees you got, with clear light and blue skies the closer you got?
B) Would you see sunsets only at a certain elevation, and from a distance?
C) Would there be insufficient air molecules to scatter the light?
D) Would you have to be like, WAY far away to see sunsets? Like on another continent? (Assuming the earth isn’t curved.)
E) I guess shadows would always point the same direction and it would vary depending on where you were relative to the trees?
F) HOW DO YOU GET A LIGHT SOURCE BRIGHT ENOUGH TO ILLUMINATE A WHOLE LANDMASS WITHOUT BLINDING ANYONE THAT LOOKED AT IT?
G) …Okay, would only Manwë and Varda ever get to see Sunsets from their stratospheric perch on Taniquietl?
H) The trees would have to rotate somehow. I mean. They just would have to. Otherwise you’d have one always casting a shadow on a certain part of Aman. And everywhere else that had something blocking the path of the light, for that matter. Some bits of vegetation would get all the sunlight forever and then it’d be like WELCOME TO THE DEADZONE as soon as you hit tree shadow.
I) Would the lighting situation improve if Varda put like a big ol’ mirror in the sky to reflect the light back down?J) Should I give up trying to make actual giant glowing trees work as a viable world building element and stick to a magical/metaphysical/non-literal explanation? orz ;; trees tho
reblogging here because i’m extremely curious about the answer
Looking through my astro notes, I think the answers are (in order):
Yes, yes, no, yes, yes, you don’t, unknown, if you want even distribution of light they would have to move a lot, yes but that just makes the mirror basically the sun, and probably but who is going to stop you?
I hope this helps is some tiny way.
Oh man, I got THE COOLEST input on this question! 😀
(Also thank you to those of you chipping in from outside the fandom! If you’re confused about what’s going on, I’m basically wrestling with some of Tolkien’s more whimsical ideas and trying to ground them loosely in physics– which he’d absolutely hate me doing, btw.)
So far the ideas that I ended up liking the best were the ones that provided a concrete, unique imagery that I can work with for my art and writing.
These posts and comments in particular were the ones that I think will influence my design the most, but I am SO THRILLED to see more people adding ideas! ❤
The solution I think works best for my purposes is that the trees disperse light not only from their leaves, but also as a kind of luminous pollen. If the trees themselves are not the primary source of light, but the waves of pollen they create, then that relieves some of the burden of them looking like massive radioactive lightbulbs, AND I think I can do away with having them rotate. (Mind you, slowly rotating tress might be cool… I just don’t know how to draw that effectively.)
The pollen drifts across the landmass and fades as the tree it came from goes dormant. The particles would probably be as light or lighter than air, and have unusual properties that allow them to change states like water. When they fall to earth, they are taken in with the groundwater and travel to the aquifers that are Varda’s Wells, which also collect the “dew” from the trees.
The atmosphere of Aman would be heavy, luminous, misty, and prismatic, with enough fine particulates in the air and reflective clouds above that there would be plenty of light refraction going around creating pretty colors and effects.
The trees themselves will have fractal branches, and they are massive.
I was having trouble picturing the scale of them in relation to Valinor, so I went ahead and squeezed out a model from angry polygons:
Here is Aman, with the two trees in the center. Kinda, sorta, ish.
I’ve put the Gardens of Lorien in between the trees becauseI thought that would be a suitable place for them, what with the mingling of the light etc etc. (I basically ignored Tolkien’s notes on where the various homes of the Valar are located and just plunked them wherever they looked natural).
Alqualondë is sticking off the end there on the peninsula. Up the road is Tirion, with Valmar next door. The hexagonal fortress thingy off to the left is Formenos.
The Woods of Oromë are on the far side (blocked by mountains in this screenshot) and would probably receive slightly less light, but there are possibly other light sources there, such as bioluminescent plants and lamps shiny Ainur prancing about. The large squarish thing is Aulë’s forge, which sticks right into the mountains. The spiral canyon is Mandos. The big phallic mountain sticking way above everything else is, of course, Taniquetil.
Here’s Tirion, and in the background, Valmar, at the foot of Taniquetil. (The weird floaty mickymouse things are clouds. THEY’RE CLOUDS TRUST ME)
The Wells of Varda are represented by the circles on the ground– they are fed by aquifers that collect the fallen tree-light particles and draw them back to the pools.…..Please forgive my pathetically sculpted mushroomoids, I did my best.
(For scale, here is our lord and savior, default-human Stan Lee, who oversees all my creations in Sketchup.)
Thank you, Stan Lee. A star shines on the hour of our meeting.
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