Why didn't people study Calamity?

[kroen]

Calamity appeared in the sky 2 years before people started to become Epics. Why then didn't scientists study Calamity? why not send a drone to take a closer look? I assume Calamity's appearance was a huge news article, but I can't imagine what did they say. "Yesterday a strange red light appeared in the sky. No one knows what it is and there are no plans to find out. In other news..." 

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles]

I think there's a WoB saying this will be explained in the final book.

[Guest]

Depending on if Calamity is inside or outside the atmosphere, it could be very tough to get to.

That said, I definitely agree that it's weird that no one said "Hmmm, that weird thing in the sky is causing problems. How about we crash the ISS into it and see if that does anything?"

[kroen]

Hard? really? we landed a robot on mars, I'm sure we could send a tiny probe to examine Calamity.

[Guest]

I didn't say impossible, my point was that if it's outside the atmosphere "sending a drone" wouldn't be an option as drones have to stay within the atmosphere. So it would require a space launch or a redirection an existing Satellite, both of which are expensive and would take time to calculate/build.

[Blaze1616]

We landed a robot on Mars after fully understanding the physics of the situation. Calamity suddenly appeared in the sky...but I don't recall mentions of tidal shifts. If there were no tidal shifts, what is Calamity's actual mass? There would be a very large period of observation before any sort of probe or some such were rocketed off to find out what in Calamity Calamity is. My example of not knowing Calamity's mass introduced a slew of problems for astro-scientists to work out.

 

Now, as for why 3 years later nothing was done, a plausible explanation is that, with no serious detrimental effects of Calamity's presence, there was no rush to discover what was going on. 

[kroen]

Sorry, I meant probe, not drone.

[Voidus]

I think the more concerning point is that no one just looked up with a telescope and said
"Hey does anyone else see some angry dude with wings glowing in the sky? What's up with that?"

[RandomRevival]

I think the more concerning point is that no one just looked up with a telescope and said

"Hey does anyone else see some angry dude with wings glowing in the sky? What's up with that?"

Yeah, its surprising an Old Lady with cancer saw him/her/whatever/ first.

[Edgedancer]

Yeah, its surprising an Old Lady with cancer saw him/her/whatever/ first.

Unless Calamity is the one that contacted Regalia. As far as we know hiding himself with some kind of illusions also wouldn't be a problem for him, if he has even a fraction of the powers he can give away.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Edgedancer

[Blackhoof]

Firefight spoilers:

I find it likely only Epics can see Calamity properly through a telescope, like Regalia, Prof and the gang did. Or perhaps it revealed itself to them in particular.

[ccstat]

I suspect that there was no lack of effort to study Calamity. The question is why they didn't discover more than they did, or alternatively what happened to their conclusions that prevented researchers from disseminating their results

I assume that Calamity could actively dupe measurements being made or avoid contact with any probes that approached. It is also possible that the first Epics arose among those who tried to study the phenomenon (think of Prof and Regalia's team), with the result that people who knew details of the research were either indisposed to share the information or dead.

Edited July 7, 2015 by ccstat

[Sand Master]

After just having finished rereading Firefight, I noticed that Regalia says that they actually did look at Calamity through a telescope quite often in the beginning, but that it's very difficult to make out what they're seeing because he (and yes, she said "he" and called him an Epic) glowed so brightly. So that, coupled with the previous theory that he might be outside the atmosphere and therefore unreachable by drones, would give people a pretty hard time studying him. I still want to know where he came from. Obviously that will be explained in Calamity, but I'm still wracking my brain trying to think of what it could be.

[Kobold King]

After just having finished rereading Firefight, I noticed that Regalia says that they actually did look at Calamity through a telescope quite often in the beginning, but that it's very difficult to make out what they're seeing because he (and yes, she said "he" and called him an Epic) glowed so brightly. So that, coupled with the previous theory that he might be outside the atmosphere and therefore unreachable by drones, would give people a pretty hard time studying him. I still want to know where he came from. Obviously that will be explained in Calamity, but I'm still wracking my brain trying to think of what it could be.

 

As I pointed out in my "Calamitygazing" topic, this doesn't really explain it. After all, Calamity seems to be orders of magnitude less bright than the sun, and amateur astronomers can still make out solar details like sunspots with commercially available telescopes.

 

Even with Calamity being a much smaller target, one would think NASA had the resources to magnify his image and find out there was a winged fiery archangel just above Sputnik.

[Blackhoof]

^exactly. Unless something supernatural is going on, they should be able to see him relatively clearly. Therefore, something supernatural must be going on.

 

 

Is there a word for that logic, by the way? like the logic i just used to support my opinion that Calamity "cloaked" his details in some way? lik "without X, Y would have happened, and since Y did not happen, therefore X is true".

[Blaze1616]

Is there a word for that logic, by the way? like the logic i just used to support my opinion that Calamity "cloaked" his details in some way? lik "without X, Y would have happened, and since Y did not happen, therefore X is true".

 

There is a term, though I don't know what it is. However, in an actual debate of rigor, you'd also have the burden of proof that Y could not happen so long that X is true. If you can't prove that, your argument would be moot, technically.

[Vaidd]

^exactly. Unless something supernatural is going on, they should be able to see him relatively clearly. Therefore, something supernatural must be going on.

 

Is there a word for that logic, by the way? like the logic i just used to support my opinion that Calamity "cloaked" his details in some way? lik "without X, Y would have happened, and since Y did not happen, therefore X is true".

 

This follows the pattern of modus tollens:

 

Premise: If A is true, then B is true.

Premise: B is not true.

Conclusion: A is not true.

 

You used the negation (that, is you said "not X" or "X is false") in place of A, but it's still a valid way of forming an argument.  Of course, as Blaze noted, the challenge comes from rigorously proving the premises.

[Blackhoof]

I shall do so then!

Contention A: Calamity is visible through telescope without supernatural intervention

Point 1A: Regalia clearly stated that he is visible in a telescope, and that her and others viewed him.

Point 2A: in context, she has no reason to lie about being able to see him.

Point 3A: calamity is less bright thsn the sun and much closer, and given that even normal telescopes can make out high details on the sun, it is logical that any amateur astronomer who looked could see him.

Conclusion A: Calamity could have been seen in that year before Epics rose, and could be seen even after.

Contention B: Calamity cloaked or hid himself in some fashion from mundane observers, and may still be doing so.

Point 1B: given that Contention A is likely true, and that there is no apparent reason for people not to have looked, Calamity's nature as a winged humanoid would have been easy to ascertain. Almost certainly it would have been discovered.

Point 2B: There is little evidence that Calamity's nature was known or wide-spread. If, pre-Collapse, any amateur astronomer could plaster his pictures all over the net, most who remembers that year should know about it.

Point 3B: David didn't know about Calamity's nature, despite being an avid researcher of Epics and related facts.

Conclusion B: Calamity's nature was not well-known.

Conclusion AB: Calamity hid himself from the general public in some fashion, and may still be hiding himself.

[Ari]

^exactly. Unless something supernatural is going on, they should be able to see him relatively clearly. Therefore, something supernatural must be going on.

 

 

Is there a word for that logic, by the way? like the logic i just used to support my opinion that Calamity "cloaked" his details in some way? lik "without X, Y would have happened, and since Y did not happen, therefore X is true".

 

I think the term you're looking for Modus Tollens, which allows you to deny the "then" part of an if-then statement to also deny the "if" part, you're just mixing things up a little by expressing one of the parts positively, and then negating the other half that's expressed negatively.

 

What you want is essentially "If calamity were a natural phenomenon with no ability to hide itself, (X) then its nature could be determined by telescope observation. (Y) Because its nature could not be determined by telescope observation, (not Y) calamity must be a supernatural phenomenon hiding itself from natural observation. (not X)

 

You then need to back up the following two statements to establish not X: that X being true means Y must be true, and that Y isn't true. That allows you to make a deductive conclusion that X can't be true.

 

Keep in mind that theories like this are usually inductive if the answer isn't either obvious or intended to be discovered during the book. (ie. they rely on characters telling the truth, depend on your interpretation of dialogue, and rarely have conclusive direct evidence, and often we don't have reliable characters, or sometimes not even reliable narrators!) So what you're usually doing is making an inductive conclusion that X is likely not true, or that X isn't true if character C was telling the truth when they gave us some information, or if we interpret dialogue a certain way. Most of the theory debate on 17th shard revolves around how to correctly interpret what's going on in the books and whether certain characters are giving reliable information.

 

But yeah, it seems pretty intuitive that something was making it hard to make normal telescope observations about Calamity. The question is whether that was deliberate, or just part of Calamity's nature.

[Thermophile]

Even if they couldn't observe Calamity directly to see he's an epic, I still see no reason the government wouldn't fire a nuke at calamity. Why haven't we heard about that?

[natc]

Pretty sure firing nukes into the upper atmosphere will just spread radiation globally.

[Thermophile]

I feel like they had bigger problems than radiation at the time.

[Edgedancer]

Pretty sure firing nukes into the upper atmosphere will just spread radiation globally.

Don't forget the EMP.

[natc]

I feel like they had bigger problems than radiation at the time.

The existence of epics wasn't apparently known for a year, so it's really just this weird glowing thing in the sky floating ominously.

When the epics came in droves the world then went to hell real fast.

[Thermophile]

Yeah, but the government was still fighting against the epics for an unspecified amount of time. People of that day obviously assosiate Calamity with Epics, so somebody must have thought 'if we blew Calamity out of the sky, maybe the Epics would go away?'

 

Maybe not, and perhaps it was an utter failure, but I find it unlikely that nobody even thought of trying to destroy Calamity.