Mercury is orbiting partially inside the Sun, and Jupiter is nearly as wide as the Sun when it should be 1/10 as much, so the planet nodes should be scaled down 10x relative to the Sun.

Also, I did a top-down pixel measurement, where I could see the distance to Tau Ceti as well as the orbit of Neptune. The radius of Neptune's orbit was 32px, while the distance to Tau Ceti was 1152px, for a ratio of 36, when in reality, Tau Ceti is 11.9 ly away, while Neptune has an orbit radius of 30 AU, which means Tau Ceti is around 25,000 Neptune orbits away, so the planet orbit scale is too big (or distance to other stars too small) by a factor of ~694 (25000/36)

Edit: Since this was top-down, the vertical displacement didn't factor into the distance, which also contributed to Tau Ceti appearing too close on screen, so the error is slightly better than that, maybe a factor of 600.

Edit 2: Tau Ceti is rendered at 3.652 pc × 3 world units/pc = 10.956 world units

Neptune’s orbit radius is rendered as 30.05 AU × 0.0065 world units/AU = 0.195325 world units

The rendered ratio is 10.956 / 0.195325 = 56.09 Neptune-orbit radii

The real ratio should be 25,067.5 Neptune-orbit radii

The scale error = 25,067.5 / 56.09 = 446.9×

Even sci-fi writers that try to get this right have a hard time wrapping their heads around it.

"It's called space for a reason."

When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That is close.

I doubt my opinion will be well-received by all, but I hope that creators like the author of the Bobiverse will be able to, affordably and within their own capabilities, create new forms of content, such as AI-generated long-form content, like entire TV seasons, as the technology matures. That series is fantastic.

Pulsars also have a rotational period that provides a reference point for interpreting arithmetic notation.

Didn’t know he was a programmer!

> I guess it looks like it's down since it's a slice but the effect is an inward sphere?

Yes, gravity is a vector field: every point in space near a heavy body has a vector pointed at the center of the body with a magnitude of the field strength. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_field

Whenever someone uses fabric sheet analogy, they need to shout that the X-Y of the sheet is a 2 dimensional analog of X-Y-Z space, and the Z direction of the sheet is the field magnitude, with the slope indicating direction.

All models are wrong, but some are useful (for understanding).

Just a question - why do you classify Long Way with PHM - because there are aliens working with humans? I don’t see any other similarities. The technology IIRC (haven’t read in years) in the Becky Chambers book is closer to Star Trek than reality, and there’s not that much of an overarching plot - which is not to say a book cannot be good without one but it’s a big difference.

it's like an inverse gas bubble underwater, or a liquid blob in gas in microgravity, but without phase border.

see, it's not that easy to explain or visualise.

In the vein of popcorn scifi, expeditionary force books are fun.

True less technical and space themed so maybe not fitting just a fun easy read

Oh yeah another series would be Nick Webb Constitution (Legacy Fleet), I think I got farther into that series but didn't finish it unlike Bobiverse, maybe I did finish this trilogy, I haven't read books in a while honestly. That was a good series though I remember the depiction of the space battles.

Trying to be better at being in the moment vs. watching youtube/scrolling a website at the same time kind of thing

Added to my kindle list, funny I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow as I heard it in a song, I did not get far, on the topic of reading, it is related to rockets but yeah

Other thing is I believe they say gravity is strongest at the center of the sphere/core but I would think the mass is split evenly away from the core eg. maybe 2/3 radius from the center where it's equal mass on each side. But probably doesn't make sense wouldn't be a ball.

It has been a little while since I read the book, but I think you have the cause of the curve wrong. These things are moving at such a high percentage of the speed of light that there isn't much visible curve from the movement of the planet. The curve is instead caused by them leaving the star at the pole (which leads to a different nitpick of the visualization since the curve isn't shaped to represent that). It's theorized that the Astrophage do this to make is easier to find their way as exiting the plane of the solar system reduces the chances of there being any occultation blocking their view of their destination.

Yeah I watched this video recently about slingshotting I can see how it works but yeah https://youtu.be/-CqBP-CtM0c?si=BdCiZwWgpAp07mgs&t=15

It's not like there is a "down" it's just you're looking at it from a top view?

oooph, been a while and I don't remember any of those details. Good excuse for me to re-read it!

Since the strength is represented by the slope of the sheet (not the depth), it should still line up. Underneath the ball at the very center the sheet will be level, to match as you say, that the field strength is 0 there. The exact shape will probably be wrong though since it's mostly determined by the shape of the bottom of the object.

There is no down, yes. There is no looking at it from a top view either, since there is no bottom. 3d models like this video are helpful, but one must keep in mind that they are but a slice.

It’s a description of a common Hollywood trope (or used to be), like the ‘magical negro’ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro].

Hard not to see once you know about them, and they are indeed common.

But what should replace it? Good Nuanced writing? Good luck with that!