#heliopause

[vertumnas-finest]

What happened to the Convergent Domain?

The story of I Was A Teenage Exocolonist isn’t super straightforward so I wanted to explain what happened to the Convergent Domain for fun. Those who have played a lot (or just explored a lot) may already know all of this but I’m gonna tell the story and speak on what I think the messages behind it are anyway.

- First off, the Convergent Domain was an alien civilization that used to live on the planet now known as Vertumna IV around 20,000 years ago.

- They lived an extremely long time ago but were extremely advanced and likely covered most of the planet, especially the region now known as the Wresting Ridges.

- Their civilization had been around for a long time and was in the late stages of its resource extraction from the planet before its extinction. This is to say, they had developed Vertumna IV extensively, blotting out large swaths of natural areas and destroying many species and much of the planet’s nature.

- This is what the strange rainbow, oil-slick obsidian material that covers the Wresting Ridges is from: it is inorganic, Convergent Domain-made technology/architecture/building material like concrete and asphalt (or more aptly, plastic) are for us.

- It is very likely (though not absolutely certain) that the Convergent Domain lived mostly or even entirely underground. This would explain why there are no ruins found on the surface of the planet.

- The Convergent Domain had and used an extensive amount of power. The entirety of the Wresting Ridges is suspected to be an old Convergent Domain power grid with the vines seen covering the area seeming like ancient power lines while certain semi-organic photosynthesizing crystals acted as solar panels.

- These crystals dot the landscape and fill the lattice of ravines so thoroughly that they look like glowing rivers shining up from the cracks in the ground.

- Sol can break a small one of these crystals while investigating it with Dys and the rock will violently explode, sending Sol flying backwards and injuring them.

- Utopia says that through how the sediment of the walls of ravines are broken up, the Wresting Ridges must have been flat without naturally forming ravines before something happened to create them.

- Additionally, these strange broken layers of sediment can be found all across the planet, not just in the Ridges.

- Utopia says that there must have been a ton of “earthquake” activity to create the landscape that exists today. And she says that they can date the ‘quakes’ to around the same time that many of the ruins found in the Ridges (pyramids and such) were created.

- The expeditions team hasn’t been able to find any ruins more recent than those, implying that the Convergent Domain must have ended around the same time as the quakes.

- The Convergent Domain also created the Gardeners, seemingly shortly before their extinction level event.

- The Gardeners were a very advanced and mostly organic and sentient AI created as a practical cleanup crew to restore the planet to its former natural and balanced state after the wreckage caused by the overconsumption, overindustrialization, and overdevelopment of the planet.

- Although Gardeners have very sufficiently restored the planet to almost as good as new, and they can become any creature, fluidly integrated into the natural planet and its workings, they think very rigidly about their mission and aim to eradicate any change to the planet that would disrupt the balance that has been achieved.

- Not only humans—when they arrive—are the targets of the Gardeners ‘pest extermination.’ The Gardeners have thoroughly suppressed different invasive Vertumnan species that became problematic for the balance of the planet in the past.

- Sym suggests their rigid thinking, which disallows them from seeing humanity as any different than a common weed, is due to how long the Overseer (the main leader/core of the system) has been alive and stuck on their mission. Sym suggests that because they have been around for so long, doing the same things for so long, they think “like a tree”, stuck in their ways.

- Of course, a certain kid too curious for their own good might change that.

- We don’t really know anything about the culture of the Convergent Domain, other than that towards the end they had regrets about what they had done to the planet and tried to fix it despite knowing they wouldn’t be around to see the restoration.

- Additionally they may have worshiped the wormhole, though that is just speculation based on the carvings in certain ruins like long-collapsed obelisks. 

- As for their extinction…

- Based on the damage to the planet, all Sol has learned about and from The Array, and the reaction that a single small crystal had to being broken (the violent explosion) it seems as if an error in The Array overloaded the solar crystals powering it. This basically caused the equivalent to an extinction level nuclear explosion, an explosion so powerful that it killed most or all of the Convergent Domain immediately and obliterated the surface of the planet.

- But the Gardeners seem to suggest that some of the Convergent Domain survived and left the planet to explore the stars for a new home (much like another species we know), leaving the Gardeners behind to restore Vertumna IV.

- There is also evidence to suggest that there was radioactive fallout from this event, or perhaps something the Convergent Domain did before its extinction caused a lot of radiation on the planet as it’s unclear if/how that would come from the solar crystal power grid overload.

The Convergent Domain is a direct parallel to humanity. Both civilizations were like locust swarms to their planets, leaving them barren of resources, polluting them with an inorganic mess that can never fully degrade, and fleeing to the stars as they went extinct.

The Vertumna Group, the Earthen Heliosphere and the Convergent Domain and their Gardners each represent a different way that dying civilizations who have already made too many mistakes to undo can choose to proceed in.

In the case of the Heliosphere, the dying civilization can dig it heels and bury its head in the sand. They can try to maintain the rule of law that their societies created. They can ostracize and attack anyone who tries to plead for some sort of change to save the lives of everyone. They can belligerently continue to pillage their planet’s dwindling resources and destroy its other species.

In the case of the Gardners/the Convergent Domain, the dying civilization can do what’s right despite knowing they will not live to see the fruits of their selfless labor. They can set the events in motion for their planet to heal and they can accept their fate, going extinct but allowing their planet and other species and ecosystems on it to live on into the future.

And in the case of the Vertumna Group, the civilization can try their best to save their planet, and can refuse to give up even if they fail. They can try, fight tooth and nail, to begin again. To survive and to fix the past mistakes that led to the mass extinction of their ancestors.

The Vertumna Group is certainly not perfect. Even before the Heliopause arrived the Vertumna colony was clear cutting forests around their new settlement. They were farming animals in order to eat and planting alien plants with less than acceptable regard to how this would affect the native wildlife. But at the same time, these were survival tactics. Much of what they did had to be done because of tragedies outside of their control and the scar left on the planet of Vertumna IV by the Convergent Domain in the form of the Gardeners.

The Vertumna Group planned for the longterm to create a society on this new planet where renewable resources powered their lives and all humans were equal and worked together for the common good of both their own species and the planet they live lived on. They chose farming over hunting, planting over pillaging, and planned to learn to live with the land after their tools and machines broke down.

That’s all! This is just stuff that I’ve picked up from playing the game over and over and over again. Let me know if I missed anything! I’ll put the soap box away now. I just love the story of this game and I think the parallels of the Convergent Domain to the humans and the messages taught by their stories are very cool.



[thetendertongue]

heliopause — the boundary/outer border of the heliosphere; the edge of our solar system; where the sun’s influence finally gives way to interstellar space

[zespaceblog]

Interstellar Space and the Sun

In 1977, the Voyager probes sped out from Earth in different directions, but both have since left the solar system, and entered interstellar space, pushing through a region known as the Heliopause, a bow shock caused by our own sun's emissions hitting upon the interstellar medium, and creating a bubble around our Sun that protects us from much of the charged particles that zip around our galaxy (known as the heliosphere).

Voyagers arrived at this point around 122 AU, but despite this there is still conjecture to what shape this heliosphere takes.

The most common assertion is that it's a tear shaped sphere, although some theories predict a two tailed object.

Interstellar space isn't so good for humans, in that there is no shielding from charged particles that zip about and destroy cells, but no two areas of interstellar space are the same, and our Sun is about to leave the one it's sat in for millions of years, and enter a new one.

In 2,000 years from now, our Sun will enter the G-cloud, and astronomers believe it's not too unlike the local interstellar cloud, but what they don't know is, what happens as it passes between the two.

These bubbles in space have been carved out from ancient supernova, that have both salted the environment with a rich array of elements, but more so, the shock wave pushes back others, leaving these bubbles of different density and make up.

A more dense area may push back on the Heliosphere, pushing it back towards the planets and exposing Earth to far more of those dangerous charged particles causing a higher rate of mutation here on Earth, less density will have the opposite effect, pushing the bubble further out and making the further out planets less exposed as they are today.

One interesting consequence of this is realizing that Earth's history as seen countless different bubbles and different sizes of the heliosphere, millions of years where more radiation caused more mutations, and then periods of more stability as we are in now.

JWST shows these bubbles up beautifully in M74

Nothing stays the same forever, it only feels that way because human existence is so fleeting, but our planet has many stories to tell, and many yet to tell ahead of it.

Source:

We're hurtling into a new region of interstellar space. What now?

As we speed towards a mysterious new bubble of interstellar space, new insights are revealing its exotic chemistry, strange waves and vast b

[va1iant-viridity]

Hello people of the Internet. I have come forward to ask anyone from the I Was A Teenage Exocolonist community (or is it fandom?) if they have any headcanons about the Heliopause?

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel we barely know what it was like growing up on the ship and the culture it had besides "space child soldiers" and having a military mindset overall.

I'm excited to what everybody's input would be, have a good day 😊.

[malsperanza]

Souvenir of the Future

Long long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I had a part-time college job at a small branch of NASA in NYC. I was the night librarian. (Astronomers are night owls.) Night librarian at NASA sounds like a dream job, and it sort of was. (Astronomers are dreamers.)

Voyager I and II had just launched, and all the staff were in a state of thrilled intoxication. NASA printed this little booklet to explain what the project was about. I took it home because look how poetic the language is:

Out There The solar system as a whole is moving through galactic space. After all their planetary encounters both Voyager spacecraft will continue to recede from the Sun in the general direction of that motion. At some time they will cross the heliopause - the boundary between the Sun's magnetic and plasma domain and the general stellar wind. Since the location of the heliopause is unknown, the Voyagers may carry out that valedictory flourish of observations before communication at last ceases. (p. 14)

No one then ever imagined that these little Wall-es with the computing capacity of a firefly would still be transmitting data 45 years later. Today, the location of the heliopause has been identified, thanks to Voyager. The NASA website tells us that Voyager I "will reach in the inner edge of the Oort Cloud in 300 years." https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

You can download and read the booklet here: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19770022102/downloads/19770022102.pdf

[yrhq-sketch]

magnolia

[madxmellon]

I know this isn’t fan art, but here’s a lithography print I did of Gene Cernan (last man on the moon) from last school year.  I have a pretty big passion for space, and have always felt that Cernan- who fought to not be on the last man on the moon, and died in 2017 still waiting- suffered an injustice.  

The poem is by Heather Christle in her book Heliopause, and the quote at the bottom is from Cernan himself to his granddaughter.  

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

The heliosphere is the bubble-like region of space dominated by the Sun, which extends far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Plasma "blown" out from the Sun, known as the solar wind, creates and maintains this bubble against the outside pressure of the interstellar medium, the hydrogen and helium gas that permeates the Milky Way Galaxy. The solar wind flows outward from the Sun until encountering the termination shock, where motion slows abruptly. The Voyager spacecraft have explored the outer reaches of the heliosphere, passing through the shock and entering the heliosheath, a transitional region which is in turn bounded by the outermost edge of the heliosphere, called the heliopause. The shape of the heliosphere is controlled by the interstellar medium through which it is traveling, as well as the Sun and is not perfectly spherical. The limited data available and unexplored nature of these structures have resulted in many theories. The word "heliosphere" is said to have been coined by Alexander J. Dessler, who is credited with first use of the word in the scientific literature.

On September 12, 2013, NASA announced that Voyager 1 left the heliopause on August 25, 2012, when it measured a sudden increase in plasma density of about forty times. Because the heliopause marks one boundary between the Sun's solar wind and the rest of the galaxy, a spacecraft such as Voyager 1 which has departed the heliosphere, can be said to have reached interstellar space. source