Nicholas Palazzo
Well-Known Member
Right.
The Lamps
- Thread starter Haakon
- Start date
Yes it is Maths, Nicholas. It is a plural noun.
The hosts did not even talk about degrees of elevation. If the lamps are too low it will look like it is always late afternoon or early morning.
I've been doing some MATHS and even at a moderate distance of 500km and an elevation of 5 degrees they will need to be about 44kms high, almost in geosynchronous orbit.
So I scaled everything down heaps like the hosts wanted and allowed them to be very close to Almaren. As you said Nicholas, they were higher than any mountains existing today so I think we can push them up to 10km in altitude. Given an elevation of 15 deg that means they are only 37km away from Almaren and if you push that down to only 10 deg that extends it to a whopping 57kms. I think the lamps should also appear to be the same size as the sun and moon which is half a degree of arc which means that each globe is about 500m in diameter. That makes rather large globes for not very far away.
The hosts did not even talk about degrees of elevation. If the lamps are too low it will look like it is always late afternoon or early morning.
I've been doing some MATHS and even at a moderate distance of 500km and an elevation of 5 degrees they will need to be about 44kms high, almost in geosynchronous orbit.
So I scaled everything down heaps like the hosts wanted and allowed them to be very close to Almaren. As you said Nicholas, they were higher than any mountains existing today so I think we can push them up to 10km in altitude. Given an elevation of 15 deg that means they are only 37km away from Almaren and if you push that down to only 10 deg that extends it to a whopping 57kms. I think the lamps should also appear to be the same size as the sun and moon which is half a degree of arc which means that each globe is about 500m in diameter. That makes rather large globes for not very far away.
I also like the shape of Kilimanjaro for the base and if we are talking about lamps that are 10km high they need a very wide base. Some sort of wide tower erected on top of a flat topped mountain. As Corey said we have to avoid it looking like the Washington monument or Peter Jackson's Barad Dur.
YES
NO
YES
NO
Or they undermine the front of the support ..... and they roll downhill like flaming ten pin bowling.
Nicholas Palazzo
Well-Known Member
We did kind of deal with how to make the towers _not_ have to be wide mountains in the script discussion.
And then how the destruction actually takes place. Ok, I can't find the exact video, but we talked about the proto-Balrogs using their fire to soften the support structure so that it comes down.
I'm actually really upset to have missed this last session. We were car-shopping and that took precedence, but .... ugh.
And then how the destruction actually takes place. Ok, I can't find the exact video, but we talked about the proto-Balrogs using their fire to soften the support structure so that it comes down.
I'm actually really upset to have missed this last session. We were car-shopping and that took precedence, but .... ugh.
Yes, it was clear that the hosts are envisioning something that deviates quite significantly from the texts, so....
They suggested towers several hundred feet tall rather close to Almaren, which would light Almaren, but *not* the rest of Middle Earth, and that when the Lamps fell, it would wreck Almaren, but not be a seismic event.
This is, quite frankly, *wimpy* in scale. They're thinking of a skyscraper, not a mountain.
For anyone who is not familiar with the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, it is an obelisk on a flat open field:
So, the 'to be avoided' takeaway here is to incorporate the towers of the Lamps into the landscape much better - giving them mountainous stone bases seems necessary.
Edit: Oh, sorry, in case it wasn't clear - this was specifically given as an example of 'what not to do' - this is not meant as a suggestion!
They suggested towers several hundred feet tall rather close to Almaren, which would light Almaren, but *not* the rest of Middle Earth, and that when the Lamps fell, it would wreck Almaren, but not be a seismic event.
This is, quite frankly, *wimpy* in scale. They're thinking of a skyscraper, not a mountain.
For anyone who is not familiar with the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, it is an obelisk on a flat open field:
So, the 'to be avoided' takeaway here is to incorporate the towers of the Lamps into the landscape much better - giving them mountainous stone bases seems necessary.
Edit: Oh, sorry, in case it wasn't clear - this was specifically given as an example of 'what not to do' - this is not meant as a suggestion!
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The idea that the fall of the Lamps should destroy Almaren but not cause a seismic event.... it can be tricky to set up the right circumstances to achieve that. Dr Olsen said though that he wanted the focus to be on destruction by fire. That should be easy to do.
The fire could actually spread far and wide, the effects would still be less severe than those of the War. So we could still make the destruction of the Lamps a really serious event.
The fire could actually spread far and wide, the effects would still be less severe than those of the War. So we could still make the destruction of the Lamps a really serious event.
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Nicholas Palazzo
Well-Known Member
It just makes the Lamps seem so ... myopic. It could be worse though ....
Well I personelly think that they should be huge. They don't have to be several thousand miles high, but skyscraper high seems too small. And having them being erected just next to Almaren and making the destruction and falling and spreading of fire a local event - well I think it tells a different story than any one of the versions I've read. But I'm not the most learned Tolkien scholar...and I guess it might work...It's just... It's got to be something to mean something, and the smaller the effect, the less interesting it will be. As long as it is on a significantly smaller scale than the breaking of the land because of the War, I think there's no reason to hold back. I mean, just because the later destruction is HUGE, this destruction does not have to be small.
It's true that I personally would prefer a space elevator to a lighthouse.
I mean, it can be shorter than an actual space elevator, and they wouldn't have access to modern composite materials, of course. I don't want them to be so big that they would break the land, but I would love to see a more massive scale than the hosts have envisioned...so to my mind, the challenge is to make them less hokey than they are worried about
I mean, it can be shorter than an actual space elevator, and they wouldn't have access to modern composite materials, of course. I don't want them to be so big that they would break the land, but I would love to see a more massive scale than the hosts have envisioned...so to my mind, the challenge is to make them less hokey than they are worried about
Nicholas Palazzo
Well-Known Member
The Case for Larger Lamps
Ok, so I just finished listening to the podcast I missed on the 25th, and while the hosts made some very fair arguments for miniaturizing the Lamps, I simply cannot let it go without codifying my arguments against their position. In the vain hope that they will read this post and say, "You know what, Nick is totally right and we were so wrong." Or not ... Let me see how cogently I can do this.
Style
The primary argument for the miniaturization of the Lamps is how they will look on screen. The word "phallic" was used a couple of times in the description of a tremendous tower reaching skyward, clearly showing a fairly negative view of such things. Unfortunately, our world of Middle Earth is full of towers of varying heights and descriptions, so this really isn't something that can be avoided. As far as the structure of the towers themselves, I see something more akin to the Eiffel Tower than Washington Monument. The base would be a particularly tall mountain, perhaps 5 miles in height, with the pillar coming up from the center. It should be narrow enough to not necessarily dominate the skyscape, especially as it nears it's pinnacle. At a significant distance, say, from Almaren, the atmosphere itself would obscure the base and the pillar itself would look something like the moon does when you see it in the daylight.
I've used Ringworld as an example before, and while I feel that the image above shows the 'Great Arch' as being far more dominant in the sky that the Lamps should be, it isn't terribly far off. I think that if we do it right, the lamps will look magnificent.
Logistics
Ok, so let's look at the "why" behind the Lamps. Yes, we want light for Almaren for aesthetics reasons, but we also want to help photosynthesis along. Remember that before the Lamps, our trees are not very ... treeish. The lamps accelerate plant growth over all of Middle-Earth. The Lamps we have that are just local to Almaren absolutely will not do this. That means that there will be no forests until the sun rises. If we are ok with having the forests grow without a source of bright light, then this eliminates this problem, but that presents it's own set of difficulties. As to the logistics of building the Lamps themselves, given time, I am fairly confident that those of us involved in this project could construct Lamps that were only several hundred feet high, even without any prior experience. The Lighthouse of Alexandria was only 450 ft. high, and yet I feel that with an unlimited (even by death) amount of time, we could manage it.
By the way, it only had a visible range of 20-30 miles. Curvature of the Earth is a limiting factor there, though so, take that for what it is worth.
There is, of course, the argument that if the lamps are too far away, how could their ruin reach Almaren, but I think there are a few solutions there. The structure of the landscape could guide the fiery liquid to the doorsteps of the Valar, for one. Another, is that the material within the Lamps themselves could be under great pressure. When the crystal that contains it is broken, it could expand to a far greater volume. Not that this has to be demonstrated on screen, but, for reference purposes ...
Thematic
This is, in my thinking, the greatest argument for the lamps being much larger. The Lamps are one of the great creations in the history of Middle-Earth. They rank along with the Silmarils and the Trees as irreplicable works. That to me indicates a level of superhuman craft. Surely, they must be something far greater than what mere man can accomplish. Anything less, and it hardly feels like something the Valar would celebrate. Their destruction makes this even more difficult. The Valar, the shapers of the world, have their most prized accomplishment destroyed by a couple of fireballs placed a few hundred feet above them? I would expect the Valar to be undone by nothing short of a cataclysmic event.
The other thematic element, I have mentioned previously. I am OK with a certain amount of fallibility amongst the Valar, but the level of provinciality required for them to only light up Almaren seems ... a bit too much.
I do hope that this will encourage our fearless leaders to reconsider this matter, but if not, I will happily go back and change some of the story ideas we have incorporated into our outlines to accommodate this alteration.
Ok, so I just finished listening to the podcast I missed on the 25th, and while the hosts made some very fair arguments for miniaturizing the Lamps, I simply cannot let it go without codifying my arguments against their position. In the vain hope that they will read this post and say, "You know what, Nick is totally right and we were so wrong." Or not ... Let me see how cogently I can do this.
Style
The primary argument for the miniaturization of the Lamps is how they will look on screen. The word "phallic" was used a couple of times in the description of a tremendous tower reaching skyward, clearly showing a fairly negative view of such things. Unfortunately, our world of Middle Earth is full of towers of varying heights and descriptions, so this really isn't something that can be avoided. As far as the structure of the towers themselves, I see something more akin to the Eiffel Tower than Washington Monument. The base would be a particularly tall mountain, perhaps 5 miles in height, with the pillar coming up from the center. It should be narrow enough to not necessarily dominate the skyscape, especially as it nears it's pinnacle. At a significant distance, say, from Almaren, the atmosphere itself would obscure the base and the pillar itself would look something like the moon does when you see it in the daylight.
I've used Ringworld as an example before, and while I feel that the image above shows the 'Great Arch' as being far more dominant in the sky that the Lamps should be, it isn't terribly far off. I think that if we do it right, the lamps will look magnificent.
Logistics
Ok, so let's look at the "why" behind the Lamps. Yes, we want light for Almaren for aesthetics reasons, but we also want to help photosynthesis along. Remember that before the Lamps, our trees are not very ... treeish. The lamps accelerate plant growth over all of Middle-Earth. The Lamps we have that are just local to Almaren absolutely will not do this. That means that there will be no forests until the sun rises. If we are ok with having the forests grow without a source of bright light, then this eliminates this problem, but that presents it's own set of difficulties. As to the logistics of building the Lamps themselves, given time, I am fairly confident that those of us involved in this project could construct Lamps that were only several hundred feet high, even without any prior experience. The Lighthouse of Alexandria was only 450 ft. high, and yet I feel that with an unlimited (even by death) amount of time, we could manage it.
By the way, it only had a visible range of 20-30 miles. Curvature of the Earth is a limiting factor there, though so, take that for what it is worth.
There is, of course, the argument that if the lamps are too far away, how could their ruin reach Almaren, but I think there are a few solutions there. The structure of the landscape could guide the fiery liquid to the doorsteps of the Valar, for one. Another, is that the material within the Lamps themselves could be under great pressure. When the crystal that contains it is broken, it could expand to a far greater volume. Not that this has to be demonstrated on screen, but, for reference purposes ...
Thematic
This is, in my thinking, the greatest argument for the lamps being much larger. The Lamps are one of the great creations in the history of Middle-Earth. They rank along with the Silmarils and the Trees as irreplicable works. That to me indicates a level of superhuman craft. Surely, they must be something far greater than what mere man can accomplish. Anything less, and it hardly feels like something the Valar would celebrate. Their destruction makes this even more difficult. The Valar, the shapers of the world, have their most prized accomplishment destroyed by a couple of fireballs placed a few hundred feet above them? I would expect the Valar to be undone by nothing short of a cataclysmic event.
The other thematic element, I have mentioned previously. I am OK with a certain amount of fallibility amongst the Valar, but the level of provinciality required for them to only light up Almaren seems ... a bit too much.
I do hope that this will encourage our fearless leaders to reconsider this matter, but if not, I will happily go back and change some of the story ideas we have incorporated into our outlines to accommodate this alteration.
Nicholas Palazzo
Well-Known Member
Tweet #SavetheLamps
For a truly phallic Washington Monument, may I present the one in Baltimore City?
I don't think the issue is that obelisks are viewed as phallic, so much as that they are clearly 'unnatural' being square sided and having no base to make them look like they grew out of the ground. I mean, pillars are pillars...there's only so much you can do there.
There's an obelisk (the real Egyptian type, not the copycat version in DC ) in St. Peter's Square in Rome:
Corey Olsen also took the time to show the maps from HoME IV, showing the two lakes left behind in the wreckage of the Lamps (and thus the locations of the pillars, which at that time were still ice pillars). I know we don't want melting ice pillars, but I think that those locations are more appropriate than '15 miles north and south of Almaren,' too.
I don't think the issue is that obelisks are viewed as phallic, so much as that they are clearly 'unnatural' being square sided and having no base to make them look like they grew out of the ground. I mean, pillars are pillars...there's only so much you can do there.
There's an obelisk (the real Egyptian type, not the copycat version in DC
) in St. Peter's Square in Rome:
Corey Olsen also took the time to show the maps from HoME IV, showing the two lakes left behind in the wreckage of the Lamps (and thus the locations of the pillars, which at that time were still ice pillars). I know we don't want melting ice pillars, but I think that those locations are more appropriate than '15 miles north and south of Almaren,' too.
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I realize you were trying to respond to what the execs said here, but I really disagree with this idea. We can have a mountain as a base, but we need a tower on top of it - there's a reason lighthouses are taller than they are wide!
Some basic info on why taller lighthouses can be seen from further away: http://pajack.com/stories/pitts/viewdistance.html
Let's put Almaren in the Mediterranean, just because. Perhaps somewhere in the triangle between Malta, Crete and Benghazi:
If the northern Lamp is 1500 miles (2400 km) away, it will be in Krakow. The southern Lamp would then be in Ndjamena, Chad. Perhaps one Lamp is taller than the other? Melkor trying to outshine (ha, ha) Aulë? At any rate, if we want the Lamp to be at the 15° level above the horizon from Almaren (and that does seem rather the minimum), then each Lamp would have to be about 400 miles (645 km) tall. If it's only 5° (perpetual sunrise/sunset?), then it would 'only' be 130 miles (210 km) high. City lights at night and low buildings obscure anything 10° or lower on the horizon, in my experience (so that I could never see the north star in Addis Ababa, for example), so if it's lower than that, Almaren would be lighting itself despite the impressive Lamps.
A 400 mile tall anything would look quite odd, but I think if we use a tall mountain as the base and then stretch it out of sight with bright dazzling light at the top....this could be workable. Maybe?
We can, of course, move the Lamps closer. Let's say the northern Lamp is in Sarajevo, Bosnia instead. Now, we are a 'mere' 700 miles (1125 km) away, and a 190 mile (300 km) tall tower will be at the 15° mark. (The Southern Lamp is now on the Libya/Chad border, somewhere in the Sahara.) Again, if we move the Northern Lamp to Bari, Italy, we are now at 475 miles (765 km), and our tower need only be 130 miles (205 km) tall. (Southern Lamp would be at Maradah, Libya.)
If the tower is only 400 ft tall (from sea level), it will need to be a mere 1500 ft away (not even a mile) to be at the 15° above the horizon mark. If it is one mile tall, it can be just under 4 miles away. Granted, at these distances, height above the horizon might be less of an issue; there would be less to obscure the view, less in the way. But I still think we're better off putting soaring pillars on top of tall mountains.
Math behind my discussion - this is a 15° right triangle:
The left side shows the height of the tower. The base shows the distance from the tower to Almaren. The angle (15°) shows the apparent angle on the horizon an observer in Almaren would see the top of the tower at [remember, this world is flat...and I'm ignoring refraction].
The tangent of 15° is .268. So, to find the necessary height, I multiply the distance from the tower by the tangent of 15°, and remember to keep the units. [Tangent = opposite over adjacent sides, for those who remember having to memorize 'soh-cah-toa' to do trig.]