Have you ever stared up into Minecraft‘s night sky? I mean, like, really taken a good, hard look into the frigid cosmos? You might notice that something’s amiss. It’s kinda empty, and the moon is always opposite the sun, and… this world doesn’t work like ours, does it? Here’s a shockingly bleak theory on why that is.
In the video, spumwack applies real-life astrophysics to Minecraft‘s world and comes away with a theory grand as the most formidable of block creations. The gist? Everything is orbiting around the world — not around the sun, as is the case in our solar system. The moon and the stars and even the sun.
But why? Well, it could be some weird, nearly impossible anomaly or, as spumwack suggests, perhaps the planet’s inhabitants had something to do with it. He goes on to outline a theory in which a distant future saw the sun begin to die out, necessitating the creation of a new sun. Rather than face extinction, these people found a way to detonate their own planet and transform it into a new sun.
They then inhabited the surface of their old sun by coating it in stone, dirt, and life — thus creating a sort of giant, terrarium-flavored jawbreaker. That explains, among other things, the position of the planet relative to everything else in space and also why there’s extremely dense rock not far beneath the planet’s surface. You’re not striking rock bottom. You’re striking a dead sun. And when you look up? You’re staring at your old home.
But perhaps you still have doubts. Well, spumwack also put together a handy FAQ:
Q: Sun’s don’t turn into black dwarfs until after they explode. Wouldn’t this wipe out all life?
A: Indeed it would. However it’s entirely possible for life to arise AFTER the explosion. In this case, intelligent life would have millions or billions of years to respond to this threat.Q: Doesn’t the moon having phases negate your “second planet” theory?
A: No. It’s always roughly opposite the sun. There can be slight variations in orbit that affect its lighting.Q: Wouldn’t the gravity of the sun crush anything in its atmosphere?
A: Conventionally, yes. But we’re assuming that a civilisation has the technology to store energy and ignite their home planet, so it stands to reason that they would have the technology to negate that gravity. Maybe that’s why there is a huge void under the bedrock.Q: You can’t just blow up a planet and turn it into a sun.
A: That’s not a question. Anyways, this society had millions of years to adapt to a fading sun. This would likely lead to a plethora of creative ways to store and utilise energy, and I’m sure that given a million years to figure it out, they would come up with a solution. Maybe they ignited the atmosphere. Maybe they stripped the crust and exposed the core. Maybe they pulled energy from another dimension. A dying star gives you a long time to figure things out.Q: How do you transport an entire planet’s worth of “stone, dirt, and life”?
A: Again, this isn’t a fast process. Multiple trips over a few million years gives you enough time to get things done.
I highly, highly, highly doubt Mojang intended any of this, of course. It’s just a theory, albeit an impressively elaborate one. But hey, it’s fun to dream, to leave our own marks not just on the surface of these places, but within their very fabrics. So what do you think? And do you have any of your own theories about Minecraft‘s world and inhabitants?
Comments
9 responses to “A Dark Theory About The Origin Of Minecraft’s World”
Lol seriously? It is opposite because mojang got lazy and just programmed it that way. What is up with the conspiracy for a block stacking simulator.
Obviously no one actually believes that notch had this in mind when he made the game – that would be ridiculous, given the history of the game. It’s just an interesting theory that attempts to give reason to a bunch of meaningless decisions.
It’s called creative thinking – its how people create stories to tell other people. Those TV shows you like to watch come from stories people made up to explain something they wished was real. So while yes there are easy explanations thats not the point of the exercise.
Athletes train every day to ensure they perform their sport to the best of their abilities – creative people need to do the same with their minds or they just end up in dead end jobs doing repetitive tasks that ultimately don’t impact on anything but are just busy work for that persons until they reach retirement age and look back on a long life and realized they never followed their dream once.
It’s called fan fiction, actually.
If they were ‘Creative thinking’ athletes that trained everyday there is no guarantee they are competitive to ANY degree. It doesn’t matter how much you want to be a barbarian invader – If you lack the talent you can’t bloody well do it. The same applies to those on the internet that invent their own scientifically ‘applicable’ posits. In the case of Minecraft some nerd invents a reasoning for a simple game world and it becomes news. Which is sadder, the reporters or the people that are excited by fan fiction?
There’s these things called ‘fun’ ‘imagination’ ‘wonder’, I know I know, obviously not your thing, but that is the reason why people come up with and read theories for things.
That’s just nonsense! Everyone knows “Steve” in in fact Steve Nash of NBA fame. Whom was transported to this strange and mysterious land when he was sucked down a golf hole whilst playing golf against Larry Bird and Bill Murray. You can’t trick me with your silly planet/sun theory.
This is so dumb.
Almost as dumb as your usage of the word ‘so’ in that sentence? *trollface*
But seriously, I love this kind of stuff. It doesn’t mean that it was intended to be the truth about the Minecraft world.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s always fun to indulge in a bit grim-faced hypothesising (although I still hold that the “Ash is in a coma since episode 1” theory is also very dumb) but when there’s more reaching than “evidence” is where I draw the line.
I can still appreciate the science behind it though.
This theory is dumb and ignores a lot of established facts. So far as anyone’s been able to prove, the Minecraft “planet” is a flat plate of land that infinitely extends in all directions meaning that nothing can be rotating around it. The sun and moon have to be passing through the Minecraft plate, and the stars are merely points of light at a fixed distance from the surface of the plate. Given that both the sun, moon and stars are always a fixed distance from the player, the player is the locus of the universe, not the world.
With this in mind, the theory goes that there is a sphere of alternate existence around the player on which the sun, moon and stars are set. The solar and lunar bodies travel along this sphere at equally opposite points and are observable by the player, but never interact with the material realm save for their photonic particles. This “Skybox”, as we’ll call it, travels with the player and continually centres itself around their existence, thus maintaining the illusion of day and night whilst never getting closer or further away.