this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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Cosmic Horror

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A community to discuss Cosmic Horror in it's many forms; books, films, comics, art, TV, music, RPGs, video games etc.

"cosmic horror... is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock... themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries... the sense that ordinary life is a thin shell over a reality that is so alien and abstract in comparison that merely contemplating it would damage the sanity of the ordinary person, insignificance and powerlessness at the cosmic scale..."

For more Lovecraft & Mythos-inspired Cosmic Horror:-[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

Fun fact: If there was air between us and the sun to carry sound, we would constantly hear it roaring at around 100dB (as loud as a jackhammer).

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

More fun facts: ~~When the stars are right~~ In approximately 5 billion years, the sun will ~~awake from his slumber~~ enter in his red giant phase and ~~devour~~ engulf Mercury, Venus, and possibly also the Earth.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

And some previous sun(s), after growing into even larger red giants, created most of the matter you see around you in an act of such violence it likely destroyed any planets they hadn't devoured.

And some of what it created still contains enough rage to make the most violent creations humanity had made--up to the point when we realized we could use that to power an even more violent creation: a brief and miniature version of our slumbering sun.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It will eat Earth and at some point the heat will likely make all the planets and their satellites unsuitable for humans. There might be a possibility for life on Pluto though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Pluto’s gonna get the last word after the other planets kicked him out of the planet club

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Well not really, it's not like Pluto's mass(1/6 of our Moon) will grow much in that time. But there are evidences of water on Pluto and even suggestions of underground liquid water oceans(due to it's core's heat) so it may be suitable for life even now.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Can we agree on shrieking?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Who's to say it's doing something vocally at all? Perhaps it's simply breathing but our feeble biology cannot handle its immense power.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

how do we know it wouldn't sound like an opera singer holding the longest sustained note in the universe?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Another fun fact: If we could hear the sun and it would suddenly disappear we would still hear it for another 13 to 14 years.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago

Not eight minutes and twenty seconds?

Not even an edit: I typed this then realized I was thinking of the speed of light, not sound. Sorry for doubting you.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

If there was air between us and the sun we would long have been burned to a crisp, though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Why is this so comforting

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

How so? And at what frequency?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Cause it's basically an ongoing explosion.
And supposedly it would sound something like a huge waterfall.

[–] Jax 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

I can't help but wonder what effect that would have on life. Assuming that there's a circumstance where a form of life can somehow be exposed to the infinite roar of its benevolent tyrant - what would that do to hearing? Would life even develop hearing? I can't imagine things like echolocation would be very useful, but I'm just some dude thinking about our eldritch sun god. Idk.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

We'd probably be safe from the "Quiet Place" monsters, at least.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

i love the idea of hearing being a niche thing that only exists in caves sufficiently insulated from the surface, it would definitely make vision even more popular than it is as it stands

[–] Jax 2 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, I'd have to wonder if surface eyes would become stronger as a result. Think a Quiet Place monsters but instead of sensitive hearing they have eagle eyes and night vision. Scary stuff.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago

No, it is not an ongoing explosion. It is in equilibrium, an explosion is not, that is it's defining thing. Why should it sound like water when the processes happen on far larger scales (lower frequencies)? They should almost exclusively be inaudible.

[–] brbposting 3 points 3 weeks ago

Do you know how loud it would be if you were right next to it, assuming it was all surrounded by air?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

This is some dark souls shit

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Praise the sun or it will find you

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Not any more, there's a blanket

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Why limiting it to gaming?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Also bloodborne & Elden ring vibes

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

corporate-difference-meme.webm

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Damn, we putting .webm at the end instead of .jpg these days?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

webm is google, and we all know google owns us all

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Funny thing, unless they updated it in the last few months Google Voice can't handle Google's own image format.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I'm glad someone got that 😅🙇🏽‍♂️✊🏼

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

It has a very Sekiro quality too

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

I've always loved this movie even if the "science" behind restarting fusion in the sun was nonsense

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Really great movie.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Dammit I must have clicked outside my subscriptions again.

So anyway here's a reminder that if you take a stellar lifetime and map it down to something like a human lifetime, the relative slowness of the speed of light mostly goes away, down to something within an reasonable approximation of the speed of sound in air, give or take.

This means that stars, at least in close proximity to each other, could theoretically be having conversations (by means of light across vacuum) that to them, don't seem to take all that long at all.

And they have all that boiling mass doing who knows what and so much real time to think...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

the relative slowness of the speed of light mostly goes away, down to something within an reasonable approximation of the speed of sound in air, give or take.

Nice try buddy, the ratio is 138 times higher for stars / lightspeed than it is human / soundspeed, not to mention the distance at which we have conversations is 1 human wide, clearly not the same between stars.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

I admit it's been a while since I did the calculations so I must have misremembered the speed of sound part.

Trying again now (with less brain than I once had) I think you could still get a few million intercommunications between stars hundreds of light years apart within their lifespans, and stars only a handful of light years apart could be even more chatty.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

You're comparing based on size. I think lifespan would be more relevant. Let's compare a 10 billion year lifespan to a 100 year lifespan. That makes 1 year of human life equivalent to 100 million years of a star's life. So a distance of 10 light years would mean 10 years for a message to get across. Which, at the 1 to 100 million time rate difference, still means an equivalent of 3 seconds. So yeah, communication would be slower than for humans, even for relatively close neighbors.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

The op in op re-invented reasons for sun worship.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

i mean...

Plasma ejecting from sun on November 7, 2024.

source

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Now lets pull a necron and let's use the star god to power our civilization.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

some people just want to be herded