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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7388560" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, I was a chem major, but I ate science for breakfast and I still read a lot about many subjects. So the other day I read on Ars Technica all about yet another (of several) theories and advances in the understanding of Western North America. What did I get out of it? We know almost squat. SOME sort of really complex plate tectonics is going on, but its like trying to decipher where all the swirls came from in the chocolate chip swirl ice cream. Except its a giant 4.5 billion yr old pudding. Its not that we know NOTHING, but from first principles we're not even close to being able to figure out what sort of terrain would result from a given set of conditions, nor if some hypothesized terrain is realistically possible or not, beyond a certain point. As for other planets, we have very little understanding of the basic planetary geology of Mars, like how its crust is structured, what layers it has, etc. Anything beyond that? We can deduce something about the various moons of Jupiter/Saturn from gravimetry, but we're still just guessing about the processes involved in surface formations and why the various moons all look so different when they are effectively all made from very similar starting materials. The point is, you could hypothesize almost anything that wasn't stupidly extreme like 500 mile tall mountains with an Earth-level gravity, and nobody could really call it 'impossible', or even be sure if its improbable, given that we have one sample Earth to judge by. In terms of more local smaller-scale features, I think there's a certain understanding "this basin was formed because of crustal extension, see those extension faults over there that you call hills?" but WHY was there extension? Nobody is quite sure...I've yet to be called on anything. I have mile-tall trees in my campaign, floating chunks of rock (only one that anyone has found so far, but still) etc. I expect if I hand you my largest-scale map you'd mostly decree the geography to be modestly plausible, but nobody has ever bothered to comment on it, and I think only 2-3 players ever got interested enough to even look at it for more than 5 seconds.</blockquote>

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