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https://theconversation.com/do-middle-earth-and-westeros-make-sense-climate-scientists-modelled-them-to-find-out-277232>
"When English author J.R.R. Tolkien crafted his fantasy world Middle-earth, he
argued storytellers are essentially “sub-creators” – they build fictional
realms with internally consistent laws.
For a world to be truly immersive and believable, readers apply what is known
as the “principle of minimal departure”. This assumes anything not explicitly
magical, such as a planet’s weather or gravity, must adhere to the laws of the
real world.
In this spirit of rigorous worldbuilding, we just published a new study where
we merged the disparate disciplines of literary worldbuilding and climate
modelling.
We used complex computer programs – the same ones used to forecast Earth’s
future warming scenarios – to simulate the climates of famous fantasy settings
such as Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the continents of Westeros in the
Game of
Thrones, and the far-future Earth in
The Wheel of Time series. We also built
a model for a fictional world developed by one of us.
It’s a seemingly whimsical exercise, but it serves serious purposes.
For starters, it provides new details on fictional worlds beyond what the
author shared, “filling the gaps” with science.
More importantly, it offers a new way for us to communicate the fundamental
physics of climate science to a broad, general audience. And exploring climate
model behaviour under fantastical settings helps our understanding of model
physics."
Via Joyce Donahue, who wrote "Ah, worldbuilding. One of my favorite things
about good books!"
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
