Rethinking the mechanics of DayNight and seasons on Discworl

[Andras]

Why not put the desert in the middle and the arctic on the outside. The middle is surrounded by reradiating land (heat island), while outer portions are only half surrounded. There could be a mountain 'range' running all around the outside keeping everything in. Evaporation cycle deposits water vapor as snow and ice on the mountains, which eventually melts and runs towards the center, evaporating as it gets to the hot center.

With the impassible mountains around the continent you can also say this is just one portion of a larger world and the rest is hidden beyond the range. Which allows for the atmosphere actually belonging to a larger body.

As for the day/nights/seasons with a true disc-world. The discworld is gravitationally locked facing away from a larger body. Disc world orbits the larger body creating day/night as it goes around, but never faces it so the inhabitants don't know it is there. The larger body orbits the star and thus creates the seasons.

[Irbis]

Ok, so I wanted to get peoples feed back on the following...

So what that is supposed to be, is a 'theoretical' "Flat" disc world, based upon the assumption of heat and climate in relation to the sun. The above is a No continents, no mountain ranges world (so no break up of weather patterns)

My thought was to use this is a test bed.. Draw continents and such and then work out how said oceans and continents would effect the base Biome pattern I have. My question is, does everyone thing the above pic works as a valid 'default' stage for biomes?

This would only work if the disc had multiple suns, or was literally surrounded by shield of fire. While the area in the middle would be coldest, yes, you'd have winter equivalent at both sides of the disc farthest away from sun's orbit.

My rotating model was designed to follow the seasonal change from Discworld, if you assume the orbit is stable, though, you'd have deserts at 'equator poles' closest to orbit and tundra/small ice caps at 'perpendicular poles' farthest away from it.

By the way, why you have desert not on edge? Logically, desert (or even something worse, furnace-like biome we don't have on Earth) would be closest to the rim.

Why not put the desert in the middle and the arctic on the outside. The middle is surrounded by reradiating land (heat island), while outer portions are only half surrounded. There could be a mountain 'range' running all around the outside keeping everything in. Evaporation cycle deposits water vapor as snow and ice on the mountains, which eventually melts and runs towards the center, evaporating as it gets to the hot center.

Because it's the farthest away? On Earth, poles are excellent heat reflectors (white and reflective) and it doesn't help the surrounding land any. Arctic on the outside would only work if 'sun' was suspended right above the center of disc.

With the impassible mountains around the continent you can also say this is just one portion of a larger world and the rest is hidden beyond the range. Which allows for the atmosphere actually belonging to a larger body.

As for the day/nights/seasons with a true disc-world. The discworld is gravitationally locked facing away from a larger body. Disc world orbits the larger body creating day/night as it goes around, but never faces it so the inhabitants don't know it is there. The larger body orbits the star and thus creates the seasons.

Little problem, atmosphere dense enough to breathe would act as excellent aero-brake for something the size of Discworld, or even scour its surface clean at typical orbiting speeds. That's why we have elephants in DW, to firmly anchor Disc to the larger body (A'tuin).

[Crossroads Inc.]

OK first off.. Before going too far, I have decided to go with a Snake and Giant Manta Ray for this Disc.
Basically the Disc will be anchored to a Giant 'World Snake' Coiled in a circle. And the Snake will rest atop the back of a Giant Manta Ray Swimming in Space.

Now next, Andrew? Your Suggestions fix soon many problems!!!
Have the Disc moving around, or now to better think of it, the Manta ray swimming in "Loops" to make a Day night Cycle, I will not have to deal with the Disc itself "Rotating" to get Day night. I mean, How is a Snake supposed to budge a disc around in a regular circular pattern? Also Having it go around a Large central Star, I won't have to deal with the Discworlds 'mini sun' problems.

ALso Not having the disc 'spin' solves the problem of Centralfugo force... In reality, such a spin on a disc would;d cause people to experience stronger and strong gravity the closer they get to the rim. Which would just be really annoying...

I drew up a quick "Cross-section" of your mountains idea:

Basically Grey is the "utter crust" some sort of Fanciful Super Material for holding everything together. Red is "Magma" Kept heated by...magic for now.. The disc world uses massive concentrations of "Octrin" to keep its magma heated, not sure what I will use.
The brown would of course be the Crust/Lithosphere.
And the blue, it's a bit faint' but is obviously the Oceans.

Also here is a new Biom idea...

This time around, the 'White' in the very middle would be a 'super hot' area where water is being ducked up into the air
(again disclaimer, this version is also a 'mostly flat' setup with no other mountain ranges breaking up weather patterns and is being used purely as a testing floor)

Now, I like the idea of an "Inverse" disc world... Cold on the outside, hot in the middle.
I mostly like that because of the idea of Water melting, running down to the middle, evaporating, hitting the "Mountain Wall" And falling back down as snow and Ice. Icebergs eventually split off the coast into the ocean, melt, cycle repeats.
I really like the "Mountain Wall" because it fixes another Discworld problem, mostly the fact that with the "rim ocean" Discworld looses a titanic amount of water, more then could ever be made up by normal rain storms.
With the mountain wall, it servers as, well, a wall. Water would rarely be lost to the void of space and for the most part be kept in the water cycle.

Now the problem is, as Irbis mentioned, trying to think of a 'Semi' logical reason for the inverse cold...
If our 'Star Manta' is swimming around a central star, what would it use to focus the stars heat in the very middle of the disc?
If I am using a 'Bowl' snapped disc, could you saw the oceans could acts as a parabolic mirror focusing heat? Would that be enough?

[Andras]

With the impassible mountains around the continent you can also say this is just one portion of a larger world and the rest is hidden beyond the range. Which allows for the atmosphere actually belonging to a larger body.

As for the day/nights/seasons with a true disc-world. The discworld is gravitationally locked facing away from a larger body. Disc world orbits the larger body creating day/night as it goes around, but never faces it so the inhabitants don't know it is there. The larger body orbits the star and thus creates the seasons.

Little problem, atmosphere dense enough to breathe would act as excellent aero-brake for something the size of Discworld, or even scour its surface clean at typical orbiting speeds. That's why we have elephants in DW, to firmly anchor Disc to the larger body (A'tuin).

You've combined two separate 'minimum magic' ideas I posted. Either this alternate fake disc-world is not actually a disc but an isolated section of a larger body with atmosphere, OR if it is a true disc world and in order to justify days/nights/seasons then it is a grav locked disc orbiting a larger world, but not in that body's own atmosphere (geo stationary)

Crossroads, something else I just thought of, would be you could have a large 'Mediterranean Sea' in the middle fed by the Rivers coming from the mountains. With the 'North Africa' climate surrounding it. The problem with the outer ocean ring is you won't have rivers flowing into the disc if that is your source of water.

Depending on how big your disc world is to be, draw a line from the center of MedSea (say Malta) through Turkey and the BlackSea out to the farthest East tip of Russia; or go up Italy through France and Germany to Scandinavia (sidestepping the Alps). That's your climate bands surrounding however big you want the central warm sea. You could have large subsidiary body's of water collecting the rivers as they come in from the mountains, like the Black Sea.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I was thinking of having the disc "about" 10,000 miles across, similar to Discworld's size.
I think part of my current problem is wanting to have a counties range of Biomes. And the truth is, A world doesn't NEED to have them all... I mean If we do the hottest part in the middle. and them middle is going to be an ocean.. Then theres no point in worrying about Deserts and what not. We could have smaller desert areas, but there may not be a big Sarah or such.

Im just heading to work so can't type to much, but hoping to draw up a test world later today

[Andras]

You can also center it on the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico and make the centermost land areas a hot jungle/tropical rainforest.