Wall of Nessus

Rob · 17 Jun 2010, 03:20 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: roobarr at gmail.com (Rob)
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:20:09 +0800
Subject: (urth) Wall of Nessus
Message-ID: <AANLkTinGPf-WvXTPRZXK6DCZAsAZPMHqPsAdeJGy6CQU at mail.gmail.com>

Some quick calulations on the height and length of the wall.
If we believe the 9 miles (2.6 Leagues) high by 9000 miles (2606 leagues)
long this matches the "a few leagues in height and a few thousand long."
However we are talking about a wall approximately one and a half times the
height of everest from sea level with a radius of 1432 miles assuming it is
circular and encompasses about 6 million square miles. If the citadel is
assumed to be at the centre then this is a ~20-30 days brisk walk to reach
the wall.
Also, using some planar trig (I've never learnt to adapt to spherical
geometry) and a bit of logic the wall, even at that size, should be
invisible over the curve of the earth from the centre.
I've always thought this was a conversion issue from the "translation" as
even using archaic measurements such as miles (just to help the yanks)
introduces confusion and uncertainty. Surely the translator working on a
foreign language with alien measurement systems could have simply
miscalculated completely.
Rob
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