Bizarre World Names

[HiverLord]

In the Black Hills of South Dakota (USA), there is a geological feature called (hopefully not censored for this...) "Pecker Rock".

For obvious reasons, it doesn't receive much (ok, *any*) advertising, other than a few local billboards, sales of t-shirts, and word of mouth.

I've actually seen it, and it closely resembles the real thing...

 

[abomination]

In the Black Hills of South Dakota (USA), there is a geological feature called (hopefully not censored for this...) "Pecker Rock".

For obvious reasons, it doesn't receive much (ok, *any*) advertising, other than a few local billboards, sales of t-shirts, and word of mouth.

I've actually seen it, and it closely resembles the real thing...

You've made my night. I've just googled it and it really does.:rofl:

 

[Meteoric Assault]

Planet bob....

 

[Meteoric Assault]

You've made my night. I've just googled it and it really does.:rofl:

The one from arkansas outshines the SD phalas.

 

[Vargas]

I'm not going to blink twice at any of those except maybe 'Iiiiii'

I think it was named by someone who stutters in Vilani . . .

 

[Peter Newman]

I remember a mountain in Niven's universe called Mount Lookithat. Was that on We Made it? I wonder??

Mount Lookitthat is on Plateau. The rest of the planets air is too thick to breathe but the southern-california sized plateau is high enough that the air is breathable there. [Atmosphere Type D in Traveller terms.]

We Made It doesn't have any famous mountains, probably because the 1,500 mph winds in certain seasons of the year would cause high erosion rates. [The planet has a 90 degree axial tilt.] We Made It has its name because the slowboat (STL) colonists had to _land_ when the winds were that high. There's a reason the natives are called 'Crashlanders'....

ObTrav - Plateau makes the case that the limited habitable area of the planet was a strong factor in its dictatorial government. In (almost all versions of) Traveller a planets physical characteristics have no effect on its government type and law level.

 

[Blue Ghost]

In the Black Hills of South Dakota (USA), there is a geological feature called (hopefully not censored for this...) "Pecker Rock".

For obvious reasons, it doesn't receive much (ok, *any*) advertising, other than a few local billboards, sales of t-shirts, and word of mouth.

I've actually seen it, and it closely resembles the real thing...

I must remind myself to turn on parental controls when searching images on such matters. o:

 

[Murphy]

Pixie, of course!

 

[cajon5]

Well, just in my state there is a town called Boring, and a place called Stinking Water Pass.

 

[DangerousThing]

In the silly state of Pennsylvania, US, there is a town called "Blue Balls" strangely situated near another town named "Intercourse."

i'm mapping MTU, which has a Phoenix Empire. I used a set of town names from PA and i randomly draw from them to name the planets, sometimes renaming parts of the name usually by dropping "town" or "ville", or changing this to 'mont" or "view" or somesuch.

 

[VonPickles]

Well here in Perth Western Australia we have a suburb called Innaloo, and then a bit further south another suburb called cockburn, that allways makes my inner school boy snigger!!!

 

[LazarusMP]

And then there's this old story...

In the mid-1500's the European explorer arrives in the new world and while conversing with the natives asks with a broad gesture "What do you call this place?" or somesuch. The native, a little puzzled, replies "Kanata." which in his language means "The village". The explorer then proclaims "We shall call this land Canada!" and so it was...

 

[Frankymole]

I remember a mountain in Niven's universe called Mount Lookithat. Was that on We Made it? I wonder??

Isn't it popularly supposed that the animal name "Kangaroo" is a word in an aboriginal Australian dialect meaning "I don't know" (the reponse of a native to an explorer's question "what do you call that animal?")...

 

[HiverLord]

Isn't it popularly supposed that the animal name "Kangaroo" is a word in an aboriginal Australian dialect meaning "I don't know" (the reponse of a native to an explorer's question "what do you call that animal?")...

I've read somewhere (sorry, don't recall where) that this is a true story. But I can't verify it myself.

 

[BlackBat242]

I remember a mountain in Niven's universe called Mount Lookithat. Was that on We Made it? I wonder??

Mount Lookitthat is on Plateau. The rest of the planets air is too thick to breathe but the southern-california sized plateau is high enough that the air is breathable there. [Atmosphere Type D in Traveller terms.]

We Made It doesn't have any famous mountains, probably because the 1,500 mph winds in certain seasons of the year would cause high erosion rates. [The planet has a 90 degree axial tilt.] We Made It has its name because the slowboat (STL) colonists had to _land_ when the winds were that high. There's a reason the natives are called 'Crashlanders'....

ObTrav - Plateau makes the case that the limited habitable area of the planet was a strong factor in its dictatorial government. In (almost all versions of) Traveller a planets physical characteristics have no effect on its government type and law level.

Of course, the question arises "Can there really be a mountain that high?".

Here is one answer:

http://nelc.dreamwidth.org/tag/mt+lookithat

In Larry Niven's Known Space books, the planet Plateau is about 80% the size of Earth, and is dominated by a thick, opaque, unbreathable atmosphere. Except that it is breathable at an altitude of 40 miles. Conveniently (or otherwise) there is a mountain that rises to this height, with a plateau about "half the size of California", known as Mt Lookithat. This plateau has been colonised.

Now, the meme has been going about the internet that a mountain that high is flat out impossible. I looked into it and found this article, How high can a mountain be? (J. Astrophys. Astr. (1981) 2, 165–169):

In a homogeneous rock stable mountains cannot rise much further than h1 = Y/ρg above the level of the surrounding plains. Gently sloping ‘hills’ of crustal rock, ‘floating’ in more or less isostatic conditions on denser material, may be able to rise to greater heights of the order of h2 = (h1 b)0.5 where b is the base of the ‘ hill ’.

(Where Y is Young's Modulus for the material, ρ is the density and g is the local gravity.)

For granite on Earth, Y is 1·5 × 106 kg m–2, and ρ is 2·65 × 103kgm–3, and you get h1 equal to 2250m. Assuming a uniform slope and homogenous material and a base of around 1000km across, then h2 comes to roughly 45km. Note that the Himalayan plateau is roughly 1000km across, and reaches roughly four times h1 (Everest is 8.8km).

Plugging in the numbers for Plateau, we get h1 = 2780 km and h2 = 53 km (or 33 miles).

So, theoretically, it is not outside the bounds of possibility for Mt Lookithat to be not far off the stated height. Things that can be done to increase the theoretical height (and 4h) might include using a lighter, stronger material than Earth-normal granite, giving the mountain a wider base, having it 'float' on a denser material than on Earth, and having an unusually uniform structure. Note that Mauna Kea actually rises higher than Everest when measured from the ocean floor (10.2km), and has a base of around 150–200km across.

Mt Lookithat is meant to be unusual, and you have to play with the numbers and the assumptions to make it so, but I don't think that we know enough about xeno-geology to state definitively that it's flat out impossible.

A more serious question to me has always been, just what makes the oxygen that the colonists breathe?


Current Music: Ain't No Mountain High Enough—Diana Ross & The Supremes

:rofl:

 

[sayatmenace]

I've read somewhere (sorry, don't recall where) that this is a true story. But I can't verify it myself.

It is not. It is a borrowing from Guugu Yimidhirr, from Cape York.

For an interesting read, try "Language Contact in Early Colonial New South Wales" by Jakelin Troy, in Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia, ed. Michael Walsh & Colin Yallop. Plenty of meat for Traveller gaming!