After seeing off the guests of the Chamber of Commerce, the Tower of the Great Sage returned to its usual calm. After leaving a bunch of trivial matters to his two apprentices, Lin had extra time to think about astronomy.
Astrology is also a long-established knowledge in the lost world. But the main purpose of this knowledge here is to solve the problem of the two satellites in the sky.
When the earth has only one moon, the earth's tides and weather will be affected by the only satellite.
The world of Lost World has two satellites, causing more complex changes in the weather system. Weather is related to agriculture and food, so a specialized profession has naturally emerged to predict the weather. This profession is astrologer, one of the branches of magician.
The knowledge that magicians need to learn also includes astronomy combined with mysticism. Predicting the weather can only be regarded as entertainment in leisure time. But for conscientious rulers, the weather is crucial to the harvest of food in the territory, so naturally they cannot take it lightly.
Gradually, some magic apprentices with poor talents and insufficient resources gave up their accumulation of magic power, which was equivalent to giving up their improvement in magic. They turned to serve the lords everywhere. Because astrology and weather prediction focus on knowledge. The name astrologer became independent from magicians, and was despised by magicians...
There is no way, there is no astrologer who cannot move forward on the path of magic, so he retreats to the next best thing and turns to begging for food from the nobles. Therefore, the two professions use contempt and jealousy as their main emotions, and they are not friendly to each other.
But Lin's point is that astrologers still have some accumulated achievements in astronomy. It was like what he was looking at now, the star map he had spent a lot of money to buy. The astrologers in the Mysterious World have not yet started to think as wildly as the scholars in ancient Greece on Earth. They picked out some stars from the entire starry sky and made them into constellations, accompanied by a touching and pathos story. .
The entire star map only has 417 stars marked. The main thing is the orbits and changes of the two satellites, which span the entire star map. This number is far inferior to that in ancient times when the number of stars in both Eastern and Western astronomy was over a thousand.
Looking at this star chart, Lin felt a little helpless. The circle of astrologers was more closed than that of magicians. Perhaps due to the influence of low self-esteem, astrologers are more self-conscious about the knowledge they have developed and are rarely willing to share it with others.
The map Lin bought was an amateur version compiled by a magician. It had more stars than the standard version of the star map provided by the association. But Lin was still disappointed.
On the nights a few days ago, the main job was to fill in the blanks of my own star map, a flat version. The most difficult point is to first determine a North Star and use it as a benchmark to draw an accurate star map.
Because of the mysterious world, most people who study astronomy focus on the two satellites. In addition, the gods really exist. There is a saying that exploring the stars is spying on the kingdom of gods, which will offend the gods. Therefore, most people are very secretive about this aspect of research, so they have to do a lot of the work themselves.
Thinking about my workload, which has to go all the way from the era of Greek philosophers to the era when the general theory of relativity was established, this part of the technology tree that needs to be illuminated makes my scalp numb just thinking about it.
Now that there were nearly two thousand stars on Tripwood's version of the star map, Lin began to think about another thing, which method to use to measure distances.
The most primitive parallax method requires measurements in two places, so I basically gave up on it first. As for the radar method that uses sonar principles, looking at the pure sky without industrial pollution outside, I simply gave up the idea of clicking on the radar technology tree.
What is more feasible are the many methods derived from the annual parallax method and the red shift phenomenon. However, the accuracy of these methods relies heavily on the accuracy of observation. Just trying to find a way to measure one second of angle (1/3600 of one degree of angle) would kill many brain cells with the existing equipment and the available magical knowledge.
Also, in order to use the annual parallax method, it is necessary to re-measure the astronomical unit of the Midland version. That is the average distance from Midi to the Sun. At the same time, Midi's star radius, revolution and rotation period, and even the time unit must be accurately measured or defined again.
Thinking of this, Lin had to think about the star map on the wall of the restaurant. It is one of the few things in the Tower of the Great Sage that has been handed down since the beginning of its construction, and it clearly shows the star system where Midi Star is located. This also confirms that people in the lost world have abandoned the geocentric theory and entered the heliocentric theory that is closer to reality.
In that star system star map, although the distances between the planets are not correct, and concentric circles with equal distances are generally used as orbits, the orbital periods of the six planets are very accurate.
Apart from anything else, just because the star map has been running for thousands of years, the current star map positions of the six planets are almost the same as Lin's actual observations. This shows how amazing the astronomical achievements of thousands of years ago were. Then there is the lack of progress for thousands of years... It is similar to the problem of a country that claims to have a five-thousand-year-old civilization.
Lin also wanted to study the operating principle of that star map. However, the results of the actual investigation only confirmed that the magical principles behind the star map are so complex that they cannot be understood in a moment.
In addition, most of the energy channels end at this star map, which makes Lin dare not rashly change or stop the energy supply here. Except when the magic tower was rebuilt, when the situation was unclear, there was a blackout in the entire tower, and unexpectedly found that the star map could continue to operate, obtaining energy supply from unknown sources.
All these wonderful features made Lin decide to retain this star map and maintain its original appearance for future research and comparison. Of course, subsequent transformations of the magic tower will also bypass the energy supply of the star map to maintain the continuity of its operation.
Incidentally, the phenomenon of six stars in a row will occur within the next two years. That is, six planets are connected in a line. This kind of situation always served as some kind of astronomical warning in the ancient times of the earth; in modern times, it has also become the subject of novels.
However, when he was on Earth, Lin only encountered the Seven Stars Link once in 2000 AD. I don’t know if the changes in Taiwan’s political scene are an impact. Other than that, nothing much happened. The main reason is that the planetary orbits are not on the same plane, but are slightly angularly deviated. It is impossible to completely connect them in a straight line in three-dimensional space.
Next comes the calculation part. A lot of effort was put into building an alien version of the computer just to simplify the calculation process. Think about it, before NASA introduced IBM computers, it had a whole team of computing staff. The mathematical talents in the Lost World can be described in two simple words: none. What can we expect in a world where multiplication does not even exist?
It is actually not complicated to use a computer to do calculations, but the difficulty lies in the accuracy of floating point numbers. The most primitive computers had decimal point errors that were lost to hand calculations. This is limited by factors such as data structure and numerical normalization.
The program improvement in this area is to use array processing. Before time travel, various programming languages had already had quite mature developments and paradigms, but those were all based on binary...
In the world of Mystery, the octal computer based on the eight magical powers must have corresponding conversions for the relevant theories. This kills someone's brain cells again.
In short, ever since he settled down in the Tower of the Great Sage and began to officially explore the starry sky and find his way home, someone has been constantly experiencing collapse and recovery. And this is one of the reasons why so many materials are purchased from the Chamber of Commerce.
Except I have some ideas in my mind that I want to try. When a person collapses, he goes into the forge and knocks, which seems to help him regain his soul. Moreover, the finished product can more or less make up for the frustration in astronomical exploration.
And on a certain afternoon of collapse, simple tapping was no longer enough to restore the head that had turned to paste. When Lin saw the strange eyes of the two girls seeing the walking dead, he seemed to be floating into the warehouse on the first floor.
His godless eyes searched for materials that could touch his nerves, and the stones piled in the corner were high-grade stones used to build the walls of the magic tower. Lin originally had the idea of repairing the Tower of the Great Sage completely, but he had to maintain consistency to maintain the overall energy balance.
Unfortunately, the Tower of the Great Sage has been built for thousands of years. Although the technology is backward, the materials are top-notch. This kind of stone, called blue scroll stone, is not only rare, but all the known veins have been mined. In other words, if you have money, there is nowhere to buy it.
The stones brought here are the only ones in stock of the Xijia District branch, and are provided to some wealthy magicians as important parts for making stone golems. And with this weight, it can't even stand up a wall.
When the Chamber of Commerce steward came to visit a while ago, Lin did mention this issue. As a result, the other party came up with a bad idea - how about demolishing other people's towers?
…
After the two faced each other in silence, the matter was never mentioned again.
Now looking at this pile of stones that are neither high nor low enough, an idea arises spontaneously.
Without greeting anyone else, Lin was shirtless and carried the stones up to the open platform on the second floor by himself using only the power technique. A major feature of this stone, which is the basic material of the magic tower, is its high density. It is heavier than a piece of iron in the same volume. So even though Lin used the assistance of the giant force technique for himself and moved all the stones to the second floor, he was still sweating all over.
Since this kind of stone is rare and precious, no unnecessary cuts were made for the convenience of transportation. Instead, it maintains its original shape, with a rounded and irregular appearance, with traces of water erosion. This reminded Lin of another thing that the Lost World lacked on Earth - an open-air hot spring pool.
No hot spring water?
It doesn't matter, rely on magic to connect to other dimensions. Magma can be removed, not to mention hot water with a bit of sulfur content. This project has been done once before when planning the tap water and sewage system of the entire tower. This time I will do it again, starting from the water elemental plane. Although it may be easier to find hot spring water that meets the standards from the abyss.
However, considering the characteristics of that place, it is unknown whether there will be any adverse effects from soaking in it every day. Moreover, if such a hole is opened, it is also unknown whether local residents will follow the hole and touch it. As for things that are uncertain, don't gamble on luck. This is the experience after watching countless movies on Earth.
What does the law say? 'Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong'.
Lin didn't want to have his asshole fucked by a little devil in the middle of a hot spring bath.
As for the overall plan. Even though Lin himself has never soaked in a few hot springs, he has seen many photos of open-air hot springs, and even a mystery film made in an open-air hot spring. So after paving the stone slabs and setting up the stones to create height differences, and connecting to the elemental plane that was suspected to be hot spring water, I got some plants outside the tower and arranged them. After working hard all afternoon, although it is not as good as the famous soups in my memory, it is still pretty good.
