http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/gamecube/file/920431/34355 The Urbz Melee walkthrough
http://www.advancewarsnet.com/designmaps/editor.php http://uk.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/ghostbusters08/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-39972998&pid=944011 Ghostbuster character customization
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButThouMust http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallARabbitASmeerp http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrystalDragonJesus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tautological_place_names http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouFailAstronomyForever((Pirates of the Caribbean, I think; justified by my fan theory that the Caribbean is another world))
((Dead Or Alive Xtreme))
((Harvest Moon; but didn't I say that DOAX and Harvest Moon are in the same world? How did that work?))
Some confusion came about when, in Star Trek XI, people apparently traveled back in time by flying through a black hole. Repeat after me: Black. Holes. Don't. Go. Anywhere. They're small, very dense objects in space with an extremely powerful gravitational field, not some sort of actual hole you can fly through. Also they do not look like a big black lightning storm. (The only actual black hole in the movie (the one where Vulcan used to be) is just an appropriate big blank black area of space. It's not made very clear in the film itself, but the lightning-storm-time-travel thing is not meant to be a black hole, just some invented Negative Space Wedgie that resembles a black in appearance and exists while the Applied Phlebotinum is at work.
However, since Spock Prime also refers to a 'supernova' (see also Diabolus Ex Vacuus) threatening to destroy the galaxy, the movie found a way to properly fail astronomy forever.
Especially as this supernova was apparently going at warp speed, apparently.
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Actually, gravity is nothing more than the bending of space-time, since an object as dense as a blackhole could theoretically bend space-time enough to make a hole in it, numerous cosmologists and astrophysicists have theorized that blackholes may also be wormholes, so the trope does not apply.
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Robin Hood contained a full solar eclipse in the first episode of its third series. No problem, save that it was at a full moon, clearly stated. Hmmm... ((I like few things more than simultaneous Full-Moons-And-Solar-Eclipses. Except that it usually means that everyone is dying.))
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In The Sims 2, stargazing sims can discover new constellations and get paid for it. Since constellations are basically the astronomical equivalent of seeing pictures in the clouds, this makes absolutely no sense.
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One bizarre misunderstanding of astronomy, perpetuated for decades by science teachers and science fiction alike, is the Big Crunch. Hypothetically, if the universe has too much mass, then eventually it'll collapse in on itself in a fiery cataclysm. But ever since this was predicted, scientists have always found way too little mass for that to happen. The numbers have always pointed toward the stars dying out and the universe lasting forever as a cold void. The discovery of "dark energy" a few years ago settled it once and for all: not only is the cosmic expansion not slowing down, it's speeding up. But science textbooks will nonetheless spend whole chapters describing the Big Crunch, usually with just a footnote to say "but scientists don't think this will happen". Everything from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy to Marvel Comics to Star Trek claims it as the eventual fate of the universe. It's such a part of our culture that the name of the most likely fate of the universe, the "heat death", is virtually unknown next to the "Big Crunch". And yet no Big Bang model since the theory was invented has ever predicted that it'll really happen. The only explanation for it all is that the Big Crunch is just so much cooler than the heat death that, true or not, it's more famous. ((This is inaccurate: the Big Crunch is NOT cooler than heat death--and I'm not making a pun. Heat death is ominous and dramatic (if you understand what it is); the Big Crunch is doofy on a level only comparable to a swarm of one million massive, winged, armored horses flying over Los Angeles County faster than the speed of sound and surviving a nuclear explosion.))
That may be because most science textbooks in schools care be several years out of date, due to the time spent writing them. And that's assuming your textbook is new.
And, of course, people are most comfortable with cycles. (Another idea attached to the Big Crunch is a Big Bang immediately following it, creating a new universe.) That things will just...end is probably less palatable to some.
Of course, dark energy and dark matter have not actually been discovered. They don't qualify as discovered until somebody can actually show they exist. They are, at present, still entirely hypothetical.
Not really... the way galaxies are constructed makes it evident there's more mass there than we can see. The theories about dark matter aren't about whether it exists; more like what exactly it's made of.
Aye. Back in the day, lad, we called it the Ether, and that's how light worked. It was waves in the ether. It fixed a whole load of problems. Then someone went and proved it didn't exist. And now, we're putting it back. That's the way of things.
While the existence of dark energy is still somewhat nebulous (if you'll pardon the pun), the existence of dark matter is beyond question. We know from the motions of stars around the center of the galaxy, and from the motion of galaxies within superclusters, that there is much more gravitational mass out there than can be accounted for by visible matter. What the nature of this dark matter is, though, we're still pretty clueless about, but it gives us a golden opportunity to see fistfights between MACHOs and WIMPs.
The Big Rip, an even less known idea than Heat Death, is way cooler than the Big Crunch and involves the universe expanding until massive quantum tears appear in the fabric of the universe and destroy us.
While the idea of literal Big Crunch is highly improbable, most astronomers are beginning to find it increasingly unlikely that the Big Bang would have been the actual, unique beginning of the universe (rather than just a massive cataclysm), or that absolutely nothing like it would take place after the heat death. The problem is that no-one is entirely sure what the new calculations mean, meaning that there are several possible interpretations for what really happened, or is going to happen, and it's going to take awhile before any consensus, let alone certainity is acheived. Still, cyclical universe in one form or another is again on the way of becoming the dominating model, though in a manner more complex than the Big Crunch predeccessor.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasisSo, you have a Heroic Fantasy with a long history, in order to account for the fact that the Sealed Evil In A Can has been forgotten. So, you fast forward about five thousand years (or merely place the Sealed Evil's Back Story that far back), and reveal a world... exactly like the one you started in! Same technological level, same form of government, same culture - you wouldn't even need to dress differently to fit in.
Medieval Stasis is a situation in which, as far as the technological, cultural, and socio-political level are concerned, thousands of years (and sometimes even tens of thousands) pass as if they were minutes. This is despite the fact that the Middle Ages lasted a mere thousand years, during which time everything in Europe changed drastically. Heck, the "castles and knights" period of Medieval Europe didn't even make it to five hundred years, and compare these◊ three castles to get some idea of how much things changed even then.
Furthermore, there have been no wars - between countries or civil wars - no redrawing of any national boundries, no demographic changes (both population increase and epidemic driven population loss have, historically, caused major changes), no changes in dynasty, no new organizations of political or social significiance (such as guilds), and no fashion changes, either in art or clothing. If the landscape changes at all, even in the course of 100,000 years, it won't be due to geological processes, but due to magic. Otherwise, expect the landmarks and geography to remain identical across the eons.
Sometimes in fact, it seems that things were better in the past, and things are slowly in a vague decline.
Sometimes justified by long-lived inhabitants, being a Scavenger World, having The Powers That Be artificially retard humanity's development, or other barriers to significant technological advancement. If some people do manage to create a Hidden Elf Village with advanced tech, it's Decade Dissonance.
The availability of magic, be it of the controllable kind or otherwise, can have a huge effect - consider the influence reliable healing magic would have on the the development of medicine. Then again, past magic might have been responsible for the current situation in the first place. It also raises questions as to why if wizards are so good they are content to let non-magic-using feudal rulers run things (unless the wizards actually do run things.)
There is a partially true Enlightenment idea that the Middle Ages were a "dark age," in which the brilliance of the Romans declined. However, technology ramped up again in the Late Middle Ages which saw the invention of the crank, windmills, and three-crop rotation: the medieval world changed considerably. The idea of a medieval decline is a trope in itself, which has been around since the Renaissance.
Some object to the idea that advanced technology is inevitable at a certain point. The history of cultures besides Western Europe shows that it is not. Greece and Rome both seemed to be at the point of being able to move into the technology of the Industrial Revolution but they never did. There are many other examples, like China, where cultures could have made the leap but never did, for various reasons. (Largely because they already had everything they needed. They were the wealthiest country on Earth and everyone else came to them. To a large extent, Europe's industrialization was largely about improving its ability to travel to, and compete with, China.) Usually, the reason was social (why scramble to invent labor-saving machinery when slaves are cheap?) or technical (you can't build steam engines if you haven't figured out how to make precision machined metal parts, even if your civilization is otherwise very advanced). ((Civilization Revolution))
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Star Wars, wherein, according to the Expanded Universe, the Galactic Republic has been socially and technologically stagnant for at least five thousand years (out of twenty-five thousand years of its history).
Possibly justified. It's quite plausible that the Star Wars galaxy has "maxed out" its technological development. This galaxy had a starfaring civilization for thirty thousand years; sooner or later they were bound to run out of new laws of physics to uncover. Likewise, the social stagnation of the Galactic Republic was imposed by the Jedi Order- the Sith were responsible for most efforts to overthrow the Republic, which brought the Jedi in on the Republic's side. So the Republic itself was never under much pressure to reshape itself, because the Jedi would support it against any truly menacing outside threat.
That doesn't explain the lack of technologies that are consistent with what Star Wars has already shown, or what we know to be possible. There's no superhuman AI or self-replicating machinery, despite the fact that there are droids everywhere; no apparent use of genetic modification, and with the exception of the death stars, no evidence of megascale or planetary engineering. There must be some pretty serious social or legal taboos floating around.
This is not entirely true. In the expanded universe it is revealed that the entire star system of Corellia was manufactured, as with the Centerpoint Station they could literally move and destroy entire star systems, stars included. Despite the fact that it still stands, this is an example of lost technology.
Corellia was built some unknown time in the past, not during the Old Republic era (hells, it was around to develop the hyperdrive (the Duros did as well, independently, as did a few others).
The earliest comics do show that space wasn't nearly as well explored five thousand years before the movies, and there's a throwaway line somewhere in Tales of the Jedi (circa 4000 years before the movies) about hyperspace craft having to use jump beacons to navigate instead of their own ships' computers.
Also, blasters appear to have been given a major upgrade from KOTOR, genetic engineering occasionally shows up despite taboos, superhuman AI are and have been standard for ships (Millenium Falcon's droid brains), and megascale/planetary engineering is in fact common since KOTOR 2 and before.
On the other hand, one wonders why the KOTOR-era personal shields were never used later. Seems like there are a number of instances they'd be really useful, no?
The explanation given in universe is that blaster technology evolves faster than shield technology, to the point where a personal shield that can maybe protect against a couple of hits would be far too expensive for practical use, other than to protect against assassination attempts on particularly high-ranking politicians.
That doesn't make any sense, though, because blaster technology was stronger in Kot OR era, and has been on the decline ever since. More likely, shield technology was lost along with other handy things like vibro blades.
It's strongly implied that so many people are using vibroblades and swords because of all the personal shields kicking around, in which case inventing a blaster that can punch through personal shields would make swords obsolete again. Kot OR blasters are very weak in-game, though this is mostly a game mechanic. Note that the only ranged weapons that do damage comparable to a lightsaber are high-end upgraded weapons that cost thousands of credits! For a given damage output, the melee weapons are consistently cheaper and available sooner. By contrast, by the time the movies roll around, you've got smugglers carrying blaster pistols powerful enough to blow chunks out of walls like a grenade launcher.
Lightsabers used to have external power supplies attached to the wielder's belt.
That was way way before even the formation of the Republic. As in, more than 5,000 years ago, and more than 25,000 years ago for that matter.
Ummm no, It was 9000 years ago.
Technology does seem to be moving forward; the A-wing, AT-ST, and AT-AT, for instance, were canonically invented between the films. Not to mention that the plot of the very first film was entirely driven by a new invention.
There is a big disconnect in viewed technological advancement. I would bet on HK-47 against any droid in the Skywalkers' day save Grevious despite the 5 millennia between them. However, in less than half a decade, the rebels and imperials created starfighters superior in every way to those at the start of the civil war (Z-95s and Y-wings versus standard TI Es lead to X/A/B-Wings versus interceptors and even TIE defenders (the Infinity+1 sword of the video games. You are supposed to take out star destroyers alone in those things).
Part of this may be the difference between science and engineering: over long periods of peace, people may stop producing expensive, highly specialized weapons like starfighters and battle droids; their production may even be outlawed. Over very long periods of peace, the plans for such weapons can become lost, or changes in technical standards may make it impossible to find the specific parts used in the old plans, even though the new standards aren't objectively better than the old ones. So eventually you reach a point where the weapons are much weaker than the available science allows. If a war breaks out, everyone starts trying to design better weapons again, and after a few decades weapons may be much more powerful than they were at the end of the war.
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The Star Trek novel Here There Be Dragons features a medieval culture which has been transported off Earth and apparently remained the same for 900 years. The stagnation is explained by the low population and isolation of the cities (because of the titular dragons), and it's demonstrated that the culture hasn't completely stagnated, as apparently they've managed to invent a better suspension system for their horse-drawn carts. At this rate they'll invent steam power around the time their sun burns out.
A similar concept is used in an episode of Star Trek Enterprise, only with an Old West town with a period drift of about 300 years or so. They were kidnapped for slave labor but rebelled, destroying the alien ship which brought them. Similar to the above example, these people were stuck on a desert planet with the towns separated by a fair distance. Their stagnation is partially justified through paranoia; they're unwilling to let the descendents of the original aliens know that they were once a spacefaring race that enslaved the humans, even though said aliens are forced to live in the remains of the very ship the humans destroyed. One of the characters even lampshades the lack of progress.
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An important plot point in Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos is the fact that the Hegemony of Man is culturally and technologically stagnant, albeit with AI-given toys, while the Ouster "barbarians" have continued to progress.
Justified in David Weber's novel, Off Armageddon Reef. The last human colony has been in Medieval Stasis for eight hundred years, thanks to a religion designed to prevent the re-emergence of technology (not to mention an orbital kinetics weapon platform programmed to smack any location with evidence of advanced tech like electrical power), so the colony isn't found and destroyed by aliens. However, cracks have begun to emerge - water power and gunpowder have been invented.
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Somewhat subtle in Orson Scott Card's Ender books. Enders Game is set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, and the next book, which takes place 3000 years later, is also Twenty Minutes Into The Future, more or less. Not only have technology, politics and linguistics seen few apparent changes, but also social, cultural, and religious attitudes, which this editor found rather incongruous, given the amount of change in all those fields during a comparable span of Earth history.
Most colonies were settled by ships moving at near-lightspeed, thus the passengers were effectively in Suspended Animation for centuries since leaving Earth. ((IMG BANK: Space Aztecs, Egyptians, Romans, Japanese, Atlanteans, et cetera, in sleeper ships, "blooming" whenever they land on habitable planets (which are numerous), centuries and millennia apart))
In the Sumerian King List, the reigns of the kings add up to well over 200,000 years of history. Especially strange considering that our species has existed for only around half that time.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SchizoTech http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SwordOfPlotAdvancement http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotCouponWhenever somebody tells you about "the five ancient talismans" or "the nine legendary crystals" or whatever, you can be quite confident that Saving the World will require you to go out and find every last one of them.
-#40, The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Cliches ("Zelda's Axiom")
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Adventure of Link: The Six Crystals, or rather the six statues to put the crystals in (you have the crystals at the outset).
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GravitySucksIn Star Wars, the Star Destroyers fall (into a planet, moon or even Death Star) immediately after being severely hit. Fridge Logic hits when you realise this doesn't happen to the Death Star at Endor.
Very clear example of this in Revenge of the Sith. The Separatist flagship gets shot once too often and promptly plunges straight down. The massive (and totally unexplained and unjustifiable) deceleration that would have been needed to allow this would probably have flattened everyone on board the ship. The lack of appreciation for gravity is shown earlier when all the ships in both fleets are shown to be the same way up and aligned horizontally, despite the fact that this is totally unnecessary in free fall.
Alignment is justified by the fact that the Separatist ships are aligned in order to start a ground war. As all starship landing gear and fighter bays are on the bottom, they are top-up compared to the ground. The defense ships just took off, and thus are rightside-up for the same reason. The downing of the flagship can be by either the damage being inflicted by a ship above them (pushing them down with every shot), or that they were holding steady relative to the planet instead of being in orbit. Close-range battles under a planetary shield do have a nasty habit of making navigational best practices impractical.
It's more likely, though, that George Lucas is unaware of the existence of the third dimension.
Alternatively, one of the last shots hit a power coupling or damaged the anti-gravity projector, and thus the ship was incapable of maintaining altitude.
It's particularly jarring when you consider that (in some shots, at least- particularly the wonderful shot through the gunports of the Trade Federation ship) the two fleets are not aligned with "down" being towards the planet's surface, but so that "down" is parallel to the planet's axis of rotation, which means the sudden fall of the Separatist flagship, with its' spectacular 90-degree turn "down" would mean it is falling at a tangent to the planet's surface, not straight towards it (as it is in the very next shot)
((These tropers talk a lot about a scene that takes place in the immediate wake of the CIS's "surprise attack" on Coruscant. I want to know how a bumbling invasion of hundreds of city-sized spaceships can surprise everyone on a high-tech ecumenopolis that's also the headquarters of an order of psychic knights. The invasion STARTS with Yoda popping out of a trance and opening his window to see thousands of vulturedroids whizzing by. In real life, we're aware of asteroids that might collide with our planet DECADES FROM NOW. We don't have artificial intelligence, human clones, swords made of lasers, or faster-than-light travel, and our cities (while big) don't even cover the whole ground where they are (which isn't even everywhere), but at least we know WHAT'S IN THE SKY.))