I came across a thread somewhere back in the fall, discussing the size of the world where One Piece takes place. The model someone posted listed the diameter of the planet at over 61,000 km. That's 10,000 km larger than Uranus, half the size of Saturn, 5x bigger than Earth. A quick Google search revealed arguments that it's actually around 35,000 km, or maybe over 420,000 km (3 times the size of Jupiter.)
To be clear, I have no idea what any of these measurements are based on. Presumably any mentions of height or depth in the manga or anime. Almost certainly extrapolating from maps we see of specific places, combined with references to distances or travel times. Maybe some data books? Probably also based on how long it takes the Straw Hats to get from one end of the first half of the Grand Line to the other, which would be half the circumference of the planet, plus average sailing speeds for the different ships they used.
Not sure how you incorporate the time they were drifting through the air with a giant octopus for a balloon, or the Thousand Sunny being able to rocket through the sky, but I'm sure those folks manage.
Back to the original point. There's also the above still of the Library on Ohara. Some people take this as a model of their world, meaning it's orbited by several moon. So the notion floated in the thread was, this is the Doylist explanation for how ridiculously strong everyone is, since even the "weak" characters survive falls or being thrown through walls that would kill any of us. The planet is huge, the gravity is higher, so these folks are all really strong from moving under heavy gravity. Kind of like early Superman (before it became the yellow solar radiation powering him), or Charlie-27 from the OG Guardians of the Galaxy.
It doesn't really work, since those characters demonstrate their strength and resilience in places they move to with weaker gravity. All the One Piece characters are on their birth planet all the time, minus the crazy guy that flew his giant airship to the Moon because he thought it was the proper place for a god like himself. And he says he's traveling to the moon, singular, and no one asks him to specify which moon, implying there's only one. There's also never a sign of multiple moons in the sky during any night scenes, which wouldn't be difficult to do if that was actually a feature of the planetary system Trigun, for example, made sure to show more than one moon, because that was part of the setting.
It's more likely the image is the current conception of the entire solar system, and those poor suckers are still trapped in a geocentric view of the universe. It would at least fit with their society, where you have a bunch of "nobles" living in a city atop a mountain, proclaiming they control everything and everyone else is theirs to kill or enslave as they wish. Of course they'd insist the entire universe revolves around them.
I wonder how that impacts navigation in a world so dependent on traveling at sea. You rarely see anyone sail at night, for example, or reference using the stars, even before the main characters got to the Grand Line, where the special compass always points to another island. But the observed difference in the movements of the stars when assuming they orbit your world, doesn't seem like enough to impact navigation, based on a brief look online.
Back to the gravity. What I'm thinking, the peculiar physics and resilience seen in One Piece aren't a result of their growing up on a huge world with gravity several times stronger than Earth's. Rather, while their world may be much larger, its gravity is actually weaker, due to a low density. My example was going to be Saturn, because I remembered my old astronomy books stating its gravity was only 93% that of Earth's, since it was less dense than water. The old, "It would float in water, if you could find a tub to hold it" bit. They appear to have gained new data, and its gravity is actually 107% Earth's.
Still, the basic idea holds. The world is largely covered by water, which is theoretically only as dense as. . .water. The islands scattered about vary in size, but most seem like they could be crossed on foot within a week, if not less. I don't think there are many the size of Cuba, let alone Greenland or Australia. There's one continent, actually a mountain range that encircles the globe (albeit broken up occasionally by water.) It rises from the sea floor, which is known to be 10,000 meters deep, and extends to at least cloud level.
I can't find anything more concrete on the height of the Red Line, though there are cities on clouds 10,000 meters up, and we don't hear about those colliding with the Red Line, so it may not reach that high. Even capped at less than 20,000 meters in total height, it's well above Mauna Kea, which is 10,200 meters from the sea floor to peak. Lower gravity would allow for taller mountains, like Olympus Mons on Mars, which is 24,000 meters high.
Given the lack of larger landmasses on the planet, and the amount of surface area covered by water, I don't know that there's much tectonic activity. Certainly not many active volcanoes. No evidence of recent plate tectonics, which might suggest a cooling core and mantle. Which would likely mean little to no magnetic field. You could probably handwave in something about cosmic radiation and Devil Fruits if you wanted, but I'm thinking in terms of what this means for the internal composition of the planet.
Earth's high density is the result of its iron-nickel core. Same for Mercury. One Piece's Earth might lack those elements, or lack them in great amount, or they're diffuse throughout the interior. Occasionally there's enough activity to push some through the crust and you get an island. If there's no spinning core to create a magnetic field, all you have are each islands personal magnetic field. Why this only happens on the Grand Line and not any of the Blues, I don't know, but I might as well guess while we're here.
The Grand Line is banded by two stretches of water with no winds or currents, which suggests some sort of weird thing. Maybe there was one major event that created the Red Line (some sort of internal contraction that crumpled the crust in the middle?) and broke up existing current and wind patterns, creating a stretch of geologic time with limited activity, forming the islands in the Grand Line. The disruption of global currents created new ones in each of the "Blues", and that created deposition zones where material collected and over a very long time, built islands out of sedimentary rock, rather than igneous. Different composition, no magnetic field.
End result, the characters run faster, jumper higher, fall from great heights, and its easy because the gravity is low. If the planet does lack in heavier metals, you could explain how easily characters are knocked through or destroy buildings as the available stone being less sturdy and metal being somewhat scarce. Lower gravity would likely mean lighter, more fragile bones, since supporting the body would be easier, too. But we do see characters (especially Usopp) wrapped up in bandages or body casts frequently, without suffering any long-term damage. So the bones are light and break easy, but possibly that makes them easy to put back together.
No comments:
Post a Comment