The Aurbis, Spacetime, and General Relativity

Hi all,

Long time lurking mathematical physicist here… seeing how this week’s topic of Astronomy has nicely coincided with my viral bedridden-osity, I’ve decided to take a stab at casting some new light on some scattered concepts within the cosmology of the Elder Scrolls. Many of the following ideas are tied to our world’s mathematical and physical principles, which really means they’re not necessarily responsible for how things work in the Aurbis. However, since many ideas in the lore are drawn from our world, they might give you some insight on the how and/or why of things in the Elder Scrolls universe…or, at the very least, leave you with some food for thought.

Now please bear with my mildly feverish writing as I try to explain a few ideas I’ve been tossing around in my brain.

Anu proclaimed I AM, and eventually embodies Time. Simultaneously, Padhome proclaimed the inverse I AM NOT, and eventually manifested as Space. One cannot exist without the other, which leads to the notion of spacetime, the fabric of Mundus. In our universe, wrinkles and wobbles in the fabric of spacetime lead to the phenomenon we like to call gravity. Speaking plainly, curvature in spacetime leads to gravity, which in turn tells mass how to move and deforms spacetime. The theoretical machinery of spacetime is called General Relativity, henceforth abbreviated GR1.

Mathematically, we can describe the curving of spacetime with a metric tensor. In flat 3D spatial geometry, we think of the straight-line distance as being given by Pythagoras’s Theorem (recall: the square of the total distance is the sum of the squares of each coordinate’s distance). In the special case of flat 4D spacetime, the natural notion of 4D distance involves subtracting the 3D distance from the square of the time coordinate. In other words, Space (I AM NOT) has a relative negative sign compared to Time (I AM). Light in our world travels equally in the temporal and spatial dimensions, so from the viewpoint of a lightbeam, everything in the Universe is reduced to a spacetime point2,3.

Now, I ask that you assume that the basic idea of “curved spacetime implies gravity” from GR holds in the Aurbis. Then, the following notions seem to naturally pop out:

• The stars and Solar Magnus: We know they are tears in the fabric of Mundus4 that let Aetherial energies leak through. Within our spacetime framework, it is only natural to assume that all of the stars within TES universe are white holes: tears in the fabric of spacetime that spew out energy and matter instead of hoarding it in. This idea is especially apt since Aetherius is viewed as another, unreachable realm, which consists of pure energy.5

• Gravity and Nirn: It seems quite fitting that Nirn naturally confines everything on it to naturally fall back down to the ground through gravity. With this interpretation, we can think of Y’ffre’s sacrifice as an anchoring/facilitating Earthbone as imbuing all of Nirn with mass, which in turns curves spacetime and draws everything on the planet together. Nirnian gravity also makes Void travel quite difficult, and requires a large expenditure of energy.

This naturally leads to the big question… what about THE PLANETS?! From MK’s Cosmology document:

[That the planets] appear as spherical heavenly bodies is a visual phenomena caused by mortal mental stress. Since each plane(t) is an infinite mass of infinite size, as yet surrounded by the Void of Oblivion, the mortal eye registers them as bubbles within a space.

Thus, we are left with an apparent paradox, which is unsatisfactorily resolved. Talking about relative sizes when discussing infinities has some meaning in our world, but not when it comes to mass. In addition, infinite masses within GR lead to gravitational collapse with no exceptions6. However, there is a possible interpretation that does not completely break GR:

The planet’s 4D volume is infinite. If the infinite mass is spread in the 4D volume, we are not necessarily led to a gravitational collapse. However, there would be a ridiculous amount gravitational lensing, which implies that the view from Tamriel is the entire planet 7.

In other words, let’s say you take a ride on your favorite voidship to your favorite planet. You can explore the planet forever, but never map it out completely, despite the planet looking perfectly finite in 3D from Tamriel. However, your friend back on Tamriel can observe you through a looking glass, and perceives you to move more slowly as you start to reach what (s)he’d call the 3D boundary of the planet. In fact, if you pointed your looking glass right back at Nirn, it would appear that the rest of the Aurbis is moving quite slowly through Time. This link might help you visualize the picture better, but keep in mind that we’re considering 4D, with time as an axis!