Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Temperature is a function of the speed of the individual particles in the gas. If the ones at the surface of a gas bubble can't move faster than a fixed speed away from its center, there is a temperature they can't be hotter than either.

Well OK, I guess a violation in invariance of natural law to rotation is another option. Like I said, physics is deeply interconnected.

The force suppressing the speed of expansion just bounces the surface back into the interior of the sphere as it exceeds the maximum allowable speed.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The force suppressing the speed of expansion just bounces the surface back into the interior of the sphere as it exceeds the maximum allowable speed.

So, basically, it's magic, like Rustic's 'no artificial electrical fields, but natural ones are OK' effect?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

So, basically, it's magic, like Rustic's 'no artificial electrical fields, but natural ones are OK' effect?

And every other weird parallel. It's the defining trait of "weird".

[Flyndaran]

Most but not every weird parallel.
Absurdly low probability realities count as weird like the Dinosaur one. They don't technically break physics other than "crystal technology" whatever the heck that's supposed to mean.

Really weird but theoretically possible could be an Earth based TL 9 Martian colony composed of citizens genetically altered to handle Earth that just happen to look almost identical to humans.

[AlexanderHowl]

Any timeline could be weird if it developed incredibly divergent technology, even with anything supernatural (or any superscience). A TL (0+10) world whose technology is comprised of organics, ceramics, and lithic tools would be weird by Homeline standards, though their technology would be no less natural than Homeline's technology. Imagine biological spacecraft that use superconducting ceramics for fusion engines that cross interplanetary space.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Any timeline could be weird if it developed incredibly divergent technology, even with anything supernatural (or any superscience).

If the technology is merely massively divergent but would work fine on Homeline even though mechanics from there would regard its innards with bafflement, then the parallel isn't weird. It is weird when you have something like "The world is inhabited by intelligent dinosaurs using "acoustic rifles" and "liquidic computers" but all of the national boundaries and ideologies are the same and every dinosaur corresponds to a human from the time period on Homeline" but there that's because the degree of parallelism is impossible in combination with such radical differences without some force making it correspond.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I don't think stars actually suffer that much. The current state of the sun is not one of explosion, merely of steady heat counteracting gravity. .

Problem is Sol is a third generation star... If stars don't explode you don't have any elements other then Hydrogen, Helium, Carbon, Oxygen, and Iron. Life as we understand it has elements outside those five.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by maximara

Problem is Sol is a third generation star... If stars don't explode you don't have any elements other then Hydrogen, Helium, Carbon, Oxygen, and Iron. Life as we understand it has elements outside those five.

If stars don't eventually explode even those elements don't get scattered across the galaxy.

[(E)]

Nazca (?)
This group of worlds have all been visited by aliens in the distant past.

Nazca - 1
The front lines, roughly equivalent to 1916 homeline, WW1 is in full swing. The point of difference is that humanity was recruited several millennia before as a warrior race for a very advanced alien species. The aliens lost their war, humanity was knocked back into the stone age but quickly recovered due to leftover and recovered tech. Boltaction railguns, mustard nano gas, emplaced continuous fire lasers in place of machine guns. TL 6/12. No computers. Midway between the two main interworld factions.

Nazca -2
This world is remarkably similar to a modern urban fantasy setting. Vampires, mages and other supernatural entities are all running around. However "suffiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

[Flyndaran]

What do those parallels have to do with the Nazca lines?

Though now I want one weird parallel in the skerry where the geoglyphs appear to be of modern cars with an unofficial designation as Nazca-r. Extra weird because no matter how hard researchers look, there are no signs of alien or cross-time travel. Natives just consider it one of those odd coincidences that only conspiracy nuts care about.