totm nov 2022 The Orion space drive. Was is the secret key feature of LOTR?

[kerbiloid]

(Following the established tradition of indirect updation of the Orion master thread by subthreads merging, let me bring the idea which is just in the air since the new LOTR pseudo-prequel has raised the ancient evil from abyss.)

 

 Can a mythril door stop Balrog at least for a second?

If yes, the dwarves could forge a pusher plate out of mythril, collect some fire elementals spawned by Balrog instead of nukes (maybe in mythril pots), and build a Telumehtar or Menelmacar space drive.

Quote

Telumehtar (Quenya "Warrior of the Sky") is another name of the constellation Menelmacar. It is known in our world as Orion.

Behind this name lies an early story about a Vala named Telimektar, son of Tulkas, who apparently was converted into the constellation of Orion^[1]. 

Maybe some of the dwarvish failures (like Moria) were in fact an attempt to actually build it, and Moria was an underground launch site?

Or even it was a joint venture between the dwarves and the elves, an interstellar ark to escape from the Middle Earth, say, if Sau wins?

The dwarves of Moria provide the nuke drive, the elves of Laurelindorenan provide the life support and G.E.C.K.  HURRY POR/TER "rapid terraforming portable kit"  (remember the aggressively survivable mallorn seed and the potion of growth tested on two GMO hobbits).

***

Sau had realized this long ago, he was running an opposing project ("Saurion"?) in Mordor (why, do you think, it's covered with ash and slag like a nuclear test site?)

Orodruin was probably a lava pool launch system. Maybe also a molten salt reactor or drive prototype.
Btw, what is the Balrog energy? Don't they consume uranium ore, naturally enrich it, and have a molten salt nuclear reactor in stomach?

And orcs were a little bit rough because they were created as extraterrestrial colonists.
As everyone knows, orcs are originally mutated elves, and this fact shows the origin of the Sau Orion project,
His creative ancestor, Melkor, was trying to upgrade the elvish-dwarvish project, and Sauron is maintaining the legacy hardware he owns.

***
Saruman's vanity was running his own low-budget project, the Orthank (sic! "Or-"), with water pool launch pad.
And an unlicensed clone of orcs.

***

What if the Middle Earth map is actually a map of competing space projects based on the Balrog energy, mythril constructions, and elvish Big Pharma biotech?

Edited October 25, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Vanamonde]

Melkor could not have been working on spacecraft, silly. In his time (middle) earth was flat. There would have been no way to orbit it. 

[kerbiloid]

18 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Melkor could not have been working on spacecraft, silly. In his time (middle) earth was flat. There would have been no way to orbit it. 

It could not be an orbital spacecraft.
(Though, the Tilion and Arien daily skyboats could mean that it's also not that simple).

But it can be a space hopper, say to reach one of the mentioned skyboats (aka Moon and Sun), or reach Valinor by space jump.

As Ulmo was controlling the sea, it would allow to bypass his guard.
Sauron even had no alternative. And the dwarves, too.

***

Thinking again, the Orion drive was probably the Moria & Lorien project.
While Sauron was developing a Zubrin-style molten-salt rocket.
It also explains why Orodruin exploded when just a golden ring was dropped into.
The ring had desstabilized the radiation and heat fine balance, and the reactive medium got supercritical.

[Vanamonde]

Earendil uses I believe just sails, and he gets to space just fine. Nukes seem over-powered. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Holy Tentacles! Now I have to dig out my copy of the Silmarillion (boxed since High School) and pore over the lore. 

This is a TOTM candidate for sure 

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Earendil uses I believe just sails, and he gets to space just fine. Nukes seem over-powered. 

Earendil was using one of the Silmarils, which they don't have.

This artifact first opened him the way to the Valinor through the Shadowy Seas barrier, then let him fly in the sky despite of the gravity,
As the world was finally turned from 2d to 3d to prevent such travels, the Silmaril is obviously a topologically active artifact affecting the n-dimensional world metrics and curvature.

As we can remember, the Silmarils were some transparent containers, filled with the "light of the Two Trees of Valinor".
The flasks themselves are described like "looking like diamond but harder", or so.
So, we can even presume some carbon monocrystal matrix containing some kind of exotic matter (in magnetic field?).

The nature of the exotic matter of the Trees stays unknown, but as the Trees were enough bright to illuminate the whole world, it's something rather specific.
(No need to understand the "trees" literally as biological plants. It was some glowing twin-tree-like structure of unknown nature, described by the elvish poets for illiterate Middle-Earth audience.)

So, the Silmarils were something like blackhole drive or Alcubierre drive, or another exotic matter drive, working on the space-time continuum level.

As originally Feanor wasn't going to use them for travels, probably they were first of all exotic matter reactors, just used for the space travel purpose.

This also explains the Melkor's perseverance in the Tree and Lamp destroying and Silmarils hunting. 
It was not vandalism, it was a struggle for the exotic matter and its power.

***

So, as nobody in the 3rd Epoch Middle Earth had a Silmaril, they had to try the alternative ways of space travel. The rockets and the Orion.

Also while gnomes dwarves and elves were using mythril for barbaric tools like plates and axes, and there is no known nuclear reactors at their places, Sauron needed a source of energy for his Tesla tower and industry.
The molten salt reactor probably appeared for him to be the design of choice.

We know that in the Mordor there was Sea of Núrnen, the remains of the Sea of Helcar, named after the Helcar Lamp ruined there.
So, it's very possible that the Sea of Núrnen, which is thus actually a flooded crater of the exotic matter catastrophe, is rich with various isotopes created by the Helcar explosion.

So, the Sea of Núrnen is the place where the Mordor refineries were taking the raw materials for the Orodruin powerplant.
This defined for them the choice of the molten salt reactors, while the dwarves and elves had an access to the mythril and the Balrog fire.

Also, see, the molten salt reactor can run the thorium cycle. The thorium ore is often known as "mona'zite mopedantte  _{stupid word filter autoreplace} sand".
And the Núrnen land is described as "dark", "dark-gray", "black", "sad", etc.

Now welcome the typical mona'zite sand.

Spoiler

You can see here a typical Núrnen coastline.
That's why Mordor is dark-gray and ashy, It's full of mona'zite sand from the Sea of Núrnen.

This in turn makes to presume wide usage of uranium-233 in the Mordor nuclear plants and devices.
(The uranium-233 appears in the irradiated thorium-232).

Btw, it has three times lower critical mass than the traditional uranium-235 and can be used in nukes.

Spoiler

Operation Teapot / test MET

U-233 + Pu-239, 22 kt.

 

You think "It's Mordor..."
Mordor thinks "It's Tuesday..."

But the problem with the uranium-233 usage is that it contains a lot of parasite uranium-232 which is very radioactive.
That's why it's not widely used instead of the uranium-235.

And this also explains why the orcs (originally elves) are so ugly.
Working for thousands of years on the U-233 and U-232 separation plants, they have a lot of mutations.
On the other hand, it allows to use them as expendables, because any death for them is just a desired euthanasia.

This also makes to think that Mordor is rich with thorium but poor with natural uranium.

And the previous two citadels, Utumno and Angband, were same, too.

Probably it can tell something about the Valinor "Trees" and the Silmaril glowing substance nature.
On explosion, they produce a lot of thorium, but a few of uranium (or the uranium gets burned in process, so only the thorium remains).

***

The Orodruin explosion caused by the Ring is very descriptive here.

If Frodo did like Gandalf told, and just threw the ring into the molten salt uranium-233-thorium "lava", probably nothing would happen, just the ring would be melted.

But the ring dived in the "lava" being put on the Frodo's finger, bitten off by Gollum.

The finger consists of flesh, which is 70% water.
The water hydrogen is an effective neutron moderator.

Look at the ring shape.

Spoiler

Its cross-section is flat, like it's a short cylinder.
It's made of gold, a very dense and high-atomic-number element.

So, the ring was looking like an improvised pusher/tamper of a nuclear charge.

When the ringed finger fell into the reaction zone of the Orodruin and dived due to the high density of gold, the ring was heated up to nuclear temperatures and started emitting heat photons.
Also it started ablating.
As its inner surface has less area than the outer one, the radiation and ablation compressed the ring and made it shrink, together with the uranium-233 atoms replacing the burnt finger.
At the same time, the hydrogen of the former Frodo's finger was acting as neutron moderator, lowering the critical density value for the uranium.
Thus, some tiny amount of uranium-233 received the criticality.

This still could finish with a weak fizzle and a splash of "lava".

But aside the Gollum's body got evaporated, injecting a lot of hydrogen atoms into the "lava", moderating the neutrons, and causing a flash of slowed neutrons irradiating the compressed ring.

The critical mass inside the ring exploded.

The explosion was rather weak, but it caused a shockwave in the molten nearly-critical uranium-thorium "lava".

This caused a chain of local instabilities, causing numerous secondary local fission fizzles.

And the whole mass of the Orodruin reacting "lava" started uncontrollably exploding, resulting in the total destruction of Orodruin and proximities.

This also explains the absence of fireball and mushroom cloud.
It was not an all-at-once explosion, but a rapid unplanned explosive disassembly, so the energy melted the rocks and pushed out the gases, but not released everything at one point.

***

On the other hand, the Balrogs are described as highly self-manageable plasma entities.
This makes to think that their nature is not based on uranium fission, but on some version of catalytic fusion in confined plasma.

Remember, they are always described as using whips.
Why should they use whips when they are fire?

The only explanation is that the "whips" are actually protuberances appearing when the Balrog plasma moves along the magnetic force lines.

So, the dwarvish-elvish project was utilizing some natural phenomenon of stable long-lasting plasma entities used as a fusion reactor.

What is "mythril" stays unclear, but it's a relatively high-atomic element (elvish "silver") probably not belonging to the periodic table.
But stable and not radiating (otherwise the mythril armor would be killing its owners).

And the mythril is found below the mountains, close to the stable fusion anomaly known as "Balrogs".

It can be presumed that mythril is a remaining mass of metal affected by the "Lamps" explosion, when the splash of exotic matter enriched the metal ore with particles like hyperons.
So, probably the "mythril" contains some amount of stable hypernuclei giving it its specific properties.

So, the dwarvish-elvish Orion ship propulsion system would be made of very strong hypernuclei-impregnated metal, and use the pots made out of same metal, with self-confined fusion plasma.

***

Besides the Valinor, let's remember that the Middle Earth is just a part of much larger continent, and it's unknown, how many continents else are around.

Also, as the world became 3d from 2d in the end of the Third Epoch, this can mean that all objects we can observe in 3d, were being placed on the infinite 2d flat surface before the 3d collapse.

So, by hopping enough long, you could jump to another planet, star, or galaxy system.

This makes the perspectives of the Middle Earth space torchships very promising.

The Sauron's molten salt rocket would have much shorter range.
But it would allow him to send the troops everywhere around and maybe capture the Valinor.
Then he could make the Balrogs provide him with full-featured Orion fleet.

***

Besides the nuclear topic.

Traditionally the Middle-Earth is referenced as Europe, the Shire as England, etc.

But look at the Helcaraxe straight.

Spoiler

Quote

Valinor lies in Aman, a continent on the west of Belegaer, the ocean to the west of Middle-earth. Ekkaia, the encircling sea, surrounds both Aman and Middle-earth. Tolkien wrote that the name "Aman" was "chiefly used as the name of the land in which the Valar dwelt" [i.e. Valinor].[T 4] The land has a warm climate generally, though snow falls on the peaks of the Pelóri mountains, the highest being Taniquetil. Tolkien created no detailed maps of Aman; those drawn by Karen Wynn Fonstad, based on Tolkien's rough sketch of Arda's landmasses and seas, show Valinor about 800 miles wide, west to east (from the Great Sea to the Outer Sea), and about 3000 miles long north to south – similar in size to the United States. The entire continent of Aman runs from the Arctic latitudes of the Helcaraxë to the subarctic southern region of Middle-earth

<...>

In the extreme north-east, beyond the Pelóri, was the Helcaraxë, a vast ice sheet that joined the two continents of Aman and Middle-earth before the War of Wrath.[T 10] To prevent anyone from reaching the main part of Valinor's east coast by sea, the Valar created the Shadowy Seas, and within these seas they set a long chain of islands called the Enchanted Isles.[T 11]

And compare it to the 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia

Spoiler

So, the Valinorean elves have passed from the meridionally oriented land to the very East of a much greater land mass, across the ice shield covering the arctic straight, to the continent to the East from the Valinor.

This obviously shows that Valinor can be identified as Kamchatka and Chukotka peninsulas, Enchanted Islands are Commander and other Pacific islands, Bay of Eldamar is Gulf of Anadyr, Alqualonde is located at the modern Anadyr town, Aman is Eurasia, and the Middle-Earth is North America.

Spoiler

The Middle Earth locations probably can be identified with the North American landscape details, too, but to the moment I haven't gotten that deep.

(And no, it's not a compliment that the Trees, Lamps, and the elves origin are located on the North American continent.
It just means that the continent was used as a wasteland test site to experiment with highly dangerous matters, to keep the Aman continent safe).

Edited October 26, 2022 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Sea_of_Núrnen

Quote

Núrnen was located in the southeast of Mordor. It was fed by rivers flowing down from the outcroppings of the Ephel Dúath and Ash Mountains that separated the volcanic plateau of Gorgoroth from the fertile volcanic plains of Núrn, and its waters were described by Tolkien as "the dark, sad waters of Lake Núrnen". Its waters were likely used for irrigation purposes to irrigate the fields of Nurn.

Spoiler

And both Ephel Duath and Ered Lithui are described in the same colors.

So, we can state that the Sea of Nurnen was just accumulating the mona'zite particles brought by the rivers from those mountain ridges.
And actually, the North-West Mordor mountains were the deposit of the thorium ore.

***

The very corner of Mordor is occupied by the Udûn valley.

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Udûn_(Mordor)

Quote

Probably the origin of Udûn is related to the volcanic activities present lands of Mordor. The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad suggests that the genesis of Udûn was linked to the formation of Mount Doom. In fact, according to Fonstad, the valley could be a caldera or more likely an anular dike.[1]

We can see a watered depression at both sides of Udûn.
There is Dagorlad to the NW and Nurnen to th SE.

As Udûn is presumably a caldera filled by sediments, and both thorium-rich ridges are connected to it with one end, we can presume that the main thorium deposit is lying beneath and around the Udûn valley, and the Mount Doom (i.e. Orodruin) has appeared naturally on its creation and was full of thorium as well.

This makes to think that the Sea of Nurnen is just the upper open pool of underground water basin under the Gorgoroth plain and Orodruin itself.
So, it's possible that there could be a natural nuclear reactor beneath Orodruin, if it was rich with uranium ore instead of thorium.

And this explains the choice of this place for the heart of the Mordor industry.

The were mining the mona'zite sand at the Sea of Nurnen, feeding it to the thoriun-cycle molten-salt reactor developed just inside the potential natural underground reactor.
The produced uranium-233 mostly was staying inside this huge reactor below the Orodruin, but was partially extracted, enriched (cleaned from U-232) and stockpiled for further usage in the Sauronukes and portable molten salt reactors, including the torchship engine.

 

***

Moria.

As we can see, its door was flimsy, and the protection was absolutely weak and stupid, like:
"Say something".
"Something".

It shows that the strong mythril door was built not to keep something outside, but to keep it inside.
In other words, it was not a security door, but a firewall.

This means that the Moria dwarves knew very well what they have woke up,  and were agreed to risk with Moria.

Who are the balrogs?

They are described as absolutely free and merciless daemons of fire, and even Melkor wasn't able to control them.
But why are these villains just sleeping below when there is a verical well where the Gandalf was fighting???
Why would they not get up and burn everything?
Why were the dwarves so careless with that?

The answer is obvious: the balrogs don't have a will.
They are not agressive, they are just the fire which burns but not because it's angry.
They aren't "who", they are "what". Just stable self-containing clouds of plasma like the famous ball lightnings.
They don't attack anyone, they just get attracted by air flow or magnetic fields when a hero has started a mess.
Once they are stop getting forced, they just return to the default location by the magnetic lines.

So, to build a NoldOrion you can just attract a balrog, put it into a magnetic cage onboard, and then just make it spawning tiny fireballs, catch them with mythril pots and a second later throw away from the ship,
The fireballs (fire elementals?) will be a replacement for the Orion nukes.
Of course the pusher plate should be made of mythril to withstand this.

And that's why the dwarves just built a bridge on top of the balrog shaft, instead of patching it all.

It was a torchship launchpad.
Its position makes it easy the balrog loading/unloading, and provides the initial push to throw the Orion /  Telumehtar / Menelmacar torchship up to the safe altitude to start nuking balrogging.

***

Where is the balrog shaft situated?

The bridge they were crossing is Bridge of Khazad-dûm.
It's placed next to the Moria's eastmost Dimrill Gate, which is opened into the Azanulbizar/Dimrill Dale/Nanduhirion valley.

Quote

The valley was very deep and lay between mountain ridges leading up to the peaks of Bundushathûr in the north, and Zirakzigil in the south. The great peak Barazinbar, which was also called Caradhras

That's where the torchship launch shaft would be opened on top, once the ship is ready. 
At the green corner.

Spoiler

As we can see, it's pretty close to Lorien, where the vast majority of the elvish biotech is placed.

***

What do we know about the elvish biotech products?

Obviously, the mallorns which can rapidly occupy any territory seeming to be habitable.
Also they are hight, which means they are endemyc flora killers. Read the description of Lorien. It's just dark. Nothing would effectively grow in their shadow.

Lembas, a very caloric product looking simiar to bread.
Where can you find caloric plants in the dark forest?
Obviously, it's a super-GMO crop driven by the elvish biotech.

The potion of growth, occasionally tested on two random hobbits (with two others left as control group).

The potion was from ents? Yes.
But who were the ents from?

***
In the known video it's being explained that the ents are a symbiosis of semi-sapient slime mold and a random tree.
Their thoughts and personality belong to the slime-mold cell network, which acts like a distributed brain.
They are controlling the ent's tree body like Cordyceps controls an insect.
As no other reasonable hypotheses are suggested, this looks like a good explanation to the moment.
But in any case, who could run the semi-sapient (they are really stupid) trees except the Lorien elves?

The best explanation is that the elves have brought to the forest and spreaded the strain of GMO  slime mold which locally evolved into some amount of "ents".

It looks like these ents can follow a simple agressive defence program by killing the intruders or even attacking Isengard.

It doesn't look like they are able to do something else, and obviously their tree part is a random wooden junk.

But what if combine the slime mold tested on "ents" with the invincible mallorn seed?
It will be a ready-to-use invasion army of trees, making everything a new part of Lorien.

For safety the elves splitted these two GMO studies.

***

Are the Lorien elves aware of hobbits?
Of course, they are.

And they have used them to test both mallorn seed and potion of growth (and the crops fertlity modification caused by the grown mallorn).

Where the hobbits have appeared from?

Their names and native language (not Westron) show that they are in close relations with Rohirrim. (According to the additional materials).

Could their miniaturisation happen naturally?
Of course, not. They would be quickly eliminated by the neighbors.

Unless they were protected by

Quote

The Dúnedain of Arnor became known as the Rangers of the North, a wandering people living in secret. Due to the destruction of Angmar, and the Watchful Peace, which followed after the Wizard Gandalf and his investigation of Dol Guldur drove Sauron temporarily into the East, there was little evil in Eriador and attacks by the enemy were few and far between.

And their 16th commander was Aragorn, who

Quote

met and fell in love with Arwen, Elrond's daughter, newly returned from her mother's homeland of Lothlórien where she had been visiting her grandmother Galadriel.

So, Shire was an elvish experimental farm.
It was populated by the descendants  of captured Rohirrim, who was GMO-minituarized, told that they are "hobbits" and were adapted to be farmers.
Their simple and primitive culture was making them ideal elvish servants.
They were farming elvish GMO crops and fruits, so the harvest was always good.

Probably, the Lorien elves needed low-level gardeners for their future megaforest, and the hobbits were created for this purpose.
But the mallorn gardeners need to eat, so the Shire farming was a test of their food supply system.

Their half-size was a guarantee that they will create less problems that the elf-sized himans.

The next interesting step of the elvish study probably would be the installation of a Cordyceps-like fungi into the hobbit brains and a connection of the megamegaforest in one network.
Mallorns ents controlled by the slime mold and hobbit servants controlled by Cordyceps under the management of the Lorien elves with Alatariel on the pyramid top.

Edited October 26, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Vanamonde]

I believe the Silmaril acts more in the guise of a guidance module than a power source for Earendil. It does not produce winds for the sails. 

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

I believe the Silmaril acts more in the guise of a guidance module than a power source for Earendil. It does not produce winds for the sails. 

It's a light beacon for the surface travellers, the brightest star in the sky.

But as he was just sent away from the world to keep the Silmaril safe and to guard the Melkor's prison, he doesn't need a guidance as he doesn't have a destination.

It's saud that the Silmaril was illuminating hos path, which sounds strange because what to illuminate in the empty media where nothing reflects.
A lamp is useless without reflecting objects.

The only thing he could see is the "Earth" below, but it's illuminated by Tilion and Arien.

The dunction of the prison guard is also somewhat strange for the epic hero with no necessary experience.

It looks more like the Silmaril is a hyperspace lock or key whose exotic matter energy can open a portal, so he guards not the Melkor's cell, but the key to it.

***

Back to the Sea of Nurnen.

It's said that Mordor population was using its water for melioration.

So, their crops and other food should contain high concentration of thorium, and they get poisoned by heavy metal.
This additionally explains their psychics instability and bad color of skin.

***
After further reading it appeared that not only the US  (and probably the SU) have tested a U-233 nuke, but also India did it in 1998.

The Shakti V experiment was tested a Th/U-233 charge of 0.2 kt yield.
(Probably, they used thorium as pusher/tamper and uranium-233 for the pit).

Another reading has explained how they refine the 233. 
They just enrich the initial thorium, sorting out the Th-230, take the 232 from the reactor early, and chemically extract the produced protactinium-233, which in several months turns into U-233.
That simple. Just more expensive than 235 and 239, so usually not needed.

***

Thorium could be used in the secondary stage of a fusion bomb if Sauron was going to blast Laurelindorenan or Gondor. But strange, he didn't.

This raises another question: was Sauron able to enrich lithium at least up to 40% like in Castle Bravo and its weaponized descendants.

Since 1940s the main US (and probably worldwide) method requires a mercury.

Can't say from memory if the mercury or its ore cinnabar are mentioned as something typical for Mordor, but if they are it can show their efforts.

***

Based on that, the Sauron scientists were obviously able to refine uranium-233 from the Orodruin molten-salt thorium-cycle reactor and manufacture low-yield charges (required for the Orion drive) widely.

This makes to think that the Mordor industry was building both Orion (Saurion)  and molten-salt rocket (Zubrion).

Of course, they were intolerant to mythril, so its usage was restricted, but the quality of their steel looks sufficient. Angband is known as a steel fortress.

So, the Sauron's Orion project was using a traditional steel pusher plate, and Th/U-233 low-yield propulsion charges.

***

About the Shire.

As we know, there is a quasi-sapient killer tree in the forest next to Shire, the Old Man Willow.

And as there is not many travellers there except the hobbits, it looks strange that the brave Aragorn Rangers hadn't eradicated this monster years ago.

Either they don't think it's a monster, or it's a monster on its proper place.

And the only actor in the Middle Earth who has the power over trees are elves.
Sau and Mel were hating trees, Saruman was treating them as nothing special, so only the elves were able to create this monster.

It's explained that the Old Man Willow belongs to Huorns, a primordial ent-like race.

Quote

Huorns were ancient and long-brooding, and some were said to be black-hearted and rotten. At least one such sentient tree spirit inhabited the Old Forest by the banks of the Withywindle River, who was called Old Man Willow. As the Old Forest and Fangorn were the last remnants of the most ancient forests in Middle-earth, Old Man Willow wished to prevent further inroads into his realm. He held all the Old Forest in an enchantment by the power of his song and led all travellers to him, where with his limb-lithe roots and branches he consumed them.

So, as we can see, the worldwide forest had already existed, and the plants were forming a worldwide communication network.
It's just said in the source.

This explains the intentions of the Laurelindorenan elves and Alatariel herself.

As said before, they were planning to recreate the ancient wooden network to put the whole Middle-Earth under control.

And the balrog-powered Orion was the way to do it.

***

Another question is: who are the Huorns?

The text of elvish origin call them ancient race which was existing on its own.

But every other sapient race in the Middle-Earth was brought to life by Iluvatar directly (elves, probably humans) or indirectly by hands of Aule (dwarves).
Orcs  were mutated elves. Trolls probably also were a product of Melkor experiments.
Speaking Eagles are pets of Manwe.

It looks like only the quasi-sapient trees are noone's.

This makes to think that "huorns" are the original, bugged prototype of the ents, developed by the elves in the years when the worldwide forest was still existing.

That's why the Rangers didn't touch the Willow, and why the Willow was under Tom Bombadil control.

 

Who was Tom still is unclear, but probably the elvish experimental farms overseer since early times.

(Probably known as Beorn when he was taking a vacation and leaved the forest, moving to another forest, with his man's lair (literally, lair, because Beorn), when he could have a rest being unshaved, smelly, and brutally speaking, taking off the PR image of a friendly good man from faery tales).

[Gargamel]

It’s like Stephen Colbert, Bill Nye, and Kevin Smith had a child…… this is amazing.  

[Vanamonde]

Quote

The only thing he could see is the "Earth" below, but it's illuminated by Tilion and Arien. 

Elves can see stuff humans can't. You don't know what he might be lighting up with that thing. Maybe he's steering around all the solid lumps of dark matter that all the bad science fiction movies seem to have nowadays. Or, like, road signs. 

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Maybe he's steering around all the solid lumps of dark matter

The dark matter is by defintion invisible. It can't interact with usual matter in any way by gravity, and the Silmaril is too small compared to the gravitational wave length.

2 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Or, like, road signs

Of course, some kind of road signs or beacons are used there, as his position in the sky is non-linear but predictable, but why need to see them when the exotic matter drive itself might be following the force lines and fly by wire.

***

Some quickthoughts.

We can remember that when Gollum performed his jump of faith, Frodo was standing hanging balancing at the cliff edge, exposed to the radioactive "lava" below.
While Sam was standing behind and was protected from the radiation with land mass.

Frodo was periodically suffering for three years before his escape to Valinor, and the symptomes were including some kind of anemia.
It's normal when somebody received a high dose of radiation.
The acute symptomes had been cured in hospital immediately after the evacuation by eagles, but the marrow was damaged, so his health got bad.

And it looks like that's not the first time when Frodo was hit by radiation.

Absolutely same symptomes were observed when he was wounded by nazgul with the "Morgul-knife", i.e. a steel knife made by the Melkor Industries.
This knife was described as "poisoned", and indeed, Frodo had to spend in the Rivendell hospital several weeks, receiving the intensive therapy. And was suffering all the road after.

The "poison" had survived too long for a chemical poison, and at the same time was affecting too slowly to make sense for a combat weapon.
This makes to think that actually it was not really a poison, but either the knife steel was containing radioactive isotopes, or was covered with radioactive layer.
Both variants are highly expectable for those who drink water from a radioactive lake, but very unusual for hobbits in their ecovillage.

So, Frodo got radiation sickness twice. First from the knife, then being exposed to the molten salt reactor active zone.
It happened in a half-year, then he stayed alive for three years, being ill.
Taking into account the immediately applied countermeasures and healthy conditions in Shire, probably he received about thousand rem.

For comparison, Sam, who was following him all the way, stayed healthy and gave birth to several healthy children, because he was shielded from the Orodruin radiation.

This explains why Gandalf (The Gray one) was so compliant when two unplanned hobbits joined the party (Sam was hired as a told volunteer).
When you send a group of expendables to the radioactive volcano, it's always better to have three backup hobbits than one.

And that's why Frodo was ensured that he and only he can carry the Ring.
Why expose to the potential radiation the backup hobbits when the currently used one still is able to walk.

All of that again proves the wide usage of radioactive materials in Melkor and Sauron technologies.

***

Gollum.

Smeagol / Gollum was living in a cave (obviously full of underground radon which he was constantly inhaling), was eating the cave fish (probably full of isotopes washed from the rocks), and was once tortured in Mordor.

So, he was full of radiation of all kinds, and it's not stramge that he was looking not healthy and going mad.
Probably before he had found the Ring (on Deagol's body) he was an exclusively healthy person, so he lasted that long.

***

Balrogs.

The self-containing plasma clots would not exist for thousands years.

On the other hand, who could talk to Balrogs to ask their names and be sure that it is the same Balrog like previous time?
We can state that the names given to Balrogs by elves and dwarves (like Gothmog or Durin's Bane) describe not the exact balrog, but any balrog appearing at same place.

This explains how the balrogs were surviving so long underground, why they were "sleeping", etc.

The balrogs weren't sleeping. They were a temporary plasma cloud appearing at the "sparkling" something, at the same place.

And this something can be only a piece of exotic matter from the broken Lamps, remaining where it fell.
Thus, the "balrog lairs" were situated at the several exact places, known from legends.

One of such pieces of exotic matter was under Moria, and it was spawning the balrogs.

The cleft in the rocks which the hobbits crossed by bridge (and Gandalf didn't) appeared when this exotic matter fell there and crashed the rocks.

This again probably means that the mithril was containing some unusual form of matter, like the heavy quarks, in form of hypernuclei.

"Mithril <...> It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. "

Obviously an alloy with such speciific properties could not have a "natural" origin.
It was a result of bombardment of iron nuclei with a quark bomb of exotic matter, dramatically changing its elementary composition.

***

Sting, the Frodo's "sword".

Quote

Sting had the (apparently) magic ability to detect the presence of goblins in its vicinity. When Orcs were nearby, it glowed blue, as Bilbo noticed when alone in the dark just prior to meeting Gollum.[2] This ability was used several times by Frodo and the Fellowship such as when the group encountered Orcs in the mines of Moria and by Aragorn upon the Fellowship's arrival at Parth Galen.

So, the Sting was shining blue in presence of the radioactive creatures like the orcs.

It means that its handle was containing an absolutely common scintillating crystal.
The sword in whole was illuminated by its light, so the hobbits thought that the whole sword is shining.

The interesting fact is that the goblins were radioactive as orcs, while they were living in Misty Mountains.
This proves again that Melkor and Sauron were using radioactive materials very widely.

Btw, it was not glowing in presense of the Willow, auntie Dora, and other evil.
This ensures that it was detecting not an evil, but an ionizing radiation.

***

A vocabulary.

Valinormal
Acceptable for Valinor (see "Frodo", "Gandalf", etc.)

Validate
To ensure that it's given by Valar, not by Melkor.

Edited October 28, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Vanamonde]

But is dark matter invisible to Elves? 

[kerbiloid]

35 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

But is dark matter invisible to Elves? 

It doesn't interact with material objects in any way but gravitational.

And as the elves can cross with humans, they are material objects.

[kerbiloid]

So, just to make a brief summary of the Sauron Atomics.

In the early days of the Middle Earth there were two tower-like structures mounted, so-called Lamps. 
Each one contained a device powered with large amount of exotic matter.
Based on the further details, it could be a charged strange star, suspended in magnetic field, exactly like the Sau's Eye in the LOTR ecranization.

There were two of them,  The support structure Helcar with the "star" Illuin, and its Southern counterpart Ringil with Ormal in it.

The world (including at least Aman continent to the West and Middle Earth to the East) was 2-dimensional, so flat.
The stars and their modern constellations were visible on sky, and thus were not the part of this 2d world, but the planets were not described, so we can presume that the known planets were situated at the distant areas of this large flat world.

Thus, you couldn't be "orbiting" around something, but on the other hands you were able to reach another "planet" by hopping along a horizontal route.
Though, it doesn't play a role to the moment.

There were no real Sun and Moon there, they have appeared much later.
The strange stars in the Lamps were enough bright to illuminate the world instead of them.

***

When the Lamps had been destroyed due to some catastrophic events, their contents was splashed acrossed the land, as meteor shower of strangelets.

Most of them just pierced the land matter and disappeared in the abyss of space-time continuum.

But some got stuck and dispersed, damaging the surrounding rocks and modiying its minerals with enormous amounts  of exotic particles like hyperons.

This impregnated some metal ores (mostly the iron ore used for steel making)  with hypernuclei, some of which appeared to be stable in that surrounding media, and the modied metal is commonly known as mithril.

***

The Northern "tower", i.e. Helcar had bombarded with strangelets the lands known as Mordor, Moria, and others at the North.

The Southern one, i.e. Ringil, did that somewhere far to the South.
The details are unknown, but one can think that the modern Tierra del Fuego / Fireland is called so not just for the locals' fires, and it's rich with heavy metals not just because.

***

The falling concentrated strange matter was also causing nucleosynthetic reactions in the minerals, which usually take place only in star explosions.

Say, where they were hit the deposits of lead, the thorium deposits were appearing.

One of large stragelet clots hit the ground to the NE from Mordor.
A huge elongated crater was then filled by water and became the ancient Sea of Helcar.
In the Third Epoch the remains of the Sea of Helcar are known as Sea of Rhun and Sea of Nurnen.

Another piece of strange matter hit the place at the Mordor NW corner.
This huge caldera, filled with ejecta and sediments, is known as Udun valley.

Two huge mountain ridges appeared in the cracks of the Udun collision, to the East (Ered Lithui) and to the South (Ephel Dúath), almost perpendicularly to each other.
In between there is a spur with the Orodruin peak on top.

***

In the strange star splash, the territory to the south-east of Udun, including the listed ridges, was highly enriched with thorium ore (mona'zite.)
It contains some low amount of uranium-235, but is very poor for it.

The mountain ridges were especially rich for the thorium ore, and the place between them (where Orodruin stands) has a highly concentrated thorium ore deposit below.
Though, as it's thorium, it wasn't able to provide a self-sustaining chain fission reaction in it.

The rains which fall on the Ered Lithui and Ephel Dúath, wash out the mona'zite particles and bring them to the Sea of Nurnen.
It makes the Sea of Nurnen the greatest available mineable source of thorium (in the form of mona'zite sand) in the 3rd Epoch Middle-Earth.

And this dark-gray sand is what's making the whole Mordor dark-gray.

***

When Sauron started the Mordor land development, they were mining the mona'zite sand at the Sea of Nurnen coastline, extracting the small particles of the uranium ore.
After getting collected some inital amount of uranium-235, they made a pile of uranium-235 and charcoal bricks, and run a primitive fission reactor, like this one.

It was built in the Orodruin cave, right on top of the thorium ore deposit.

When the reactor got ready, they began putting inside the thorium from the Sea of Nurnen, so uranium-233 was being produced in it.

The collected uranium-233 first was being put into the reactor to replace uranium-235, then stockpiled around, right in pits dug in the thorium ore .

This was leading to what had happened later.
The stockpiled uranium was being irradiated, heated up, the energy production in the reactor and outside of it was growing.
And at some moment the reactor was melted and splashed around.
The chain reaction exanded around, and the whole upper layer of the thorium deposit turned into a boiling lake of radioactive molten uranium-233 and thorium lava with chain reaction infinitely running in it.

The thorium deposit turned into a molten-salt thorium-cycle breeding reactor.

The active zone was expanding deeper and wider along the thorium ore deposit, and at some moment all Middle Earth had seen the ignition of the Mount Doom.
This reactor became the main powerplant for the Mordor industry.

It was being moderated, cooled, and managed by the underground water streams from same mountains.
The waste heat was partially dropped into the heat sink of the Sea of Nurnen, partially turned water into steam exhausted by the cooling towers, which the illiterate hobbits called "volcanos", "throats", and so on.

Since that time the Sauron's engineers weren't needing more fissiles for the reactor, but kept extracting the uranium-233 from the reactor for further enrichment.
To make it clean from the parasite uranium-232, they were taking it out very early, so the uranium production rate was extremely slow.

Sauron was immortal, so it didn't play a role for him, while the former elves, working there, were being irradiated for thousands of years, thus got mutated, and now are known as "orcs".

The purpose of the stockpiled uranium-233 was unknown, as if Sau wanted to turn the Middle Earth into a wasteland, he could do that much sooner.

This makes to think that its purpose was to build an Orion-like torchship to reach the distant lands by space hopping and capture them.

Also the molten-salt reactor technology allowed him to build high-thrust Zubrin-style rockets.
But due to their poor ISP (compared to Orion), we can presume that the molten-salt nuclear rocket engines were for the Orion launch boosters.

***

***

The Moria Incident and the World Geometry.

Another chunk of the strange matter hit the mountains of Moria, providing it with rich deposit of mithril (see above).

The chunk didn't disappear, it got stuck deep below, and was causing a local anomaly, known as "Balrog Lair".

The exotic matter stuck there, was a permanent source of extremely strong electromagnetic fields, causing local nuclear fusion reactions and spreading around self-confining clots of cooling hot plasma called "balrogs".
Like the ball lightinings, but extremely strong.

The elves together with the dwarves were going to catch such balrog into a magnetic trap, forge a pusher plate out of mythril, make a lot of steel pots, build an Orion-like torchship, and using the caged balrog as a fireball spawner, catch the fireball with a steel pot, throw it outside backwards, and thus propel the ship.

Their aim was the same: to hop around the world and terraform it (in the elvish and dwarvish sense of the word).

***

What could go wrong?

Later they explained to hobbits that "the stupid dwarves awoke the balrog".
But this is just a simplified explanation for a random audience.

The real reason was another, and with much greater consequences than a fired _{in both senses} herd of greedy idiots with pickaxes.

***

Mithril bomb.

As we can see, the mithril is (probably) a metal alloy, impregnated with hypernuclei, i.e. with atomic chunks of strange matter.

But what if extract these chunks and bring them together?
It will be a strangelet. A macroscopic chunk of strange matter with monstrous properties.

And if throw it at something, it will either turn it into a larger strangelet, or explode. (There is no scientific consensus to the moment.)

And how to extract the hypernuclei from mithril?
Make a balrog crush it.
Or put it between several balrogs.
The mithril nuclei will turn into a clot of strange quark-gluonic plasma, which will turn into a strangelet.

Could the dwarves invent this themselves? Of course, not. They are hands, not heads.

So, it was a joint project of the elves and the dwarves. To build a Mithril Bomb as an ultimate weapon and a sparkplug to ignite new stars.

Remember, Yavanna was igniting the stars in the sky.
The elves were going to do this themselves, too.
The dwarves were just pyromaniacs, they didn't care what to ignite.

So, the Balrog Lair under Moria was not just a physical anomaly, not just a launch well for the coming fusion torchip, but also a Large Hadron Collider of the 3rd Epoch Middle Earth, just with mithril and balrogs.

But the dwarbes were not enough cautious, secretly overpowered the balrog spawner, and the experiment exceed all expectations.

The created strangelet was so big, that its radiation killed almost everyone in Moria even througn the rocks, and then it started growing and falling down through the bedrock.

The strangelet was consuming the bedrock matter and growing, and its size finally reached the Schwartzschild radius.

The strangelet had collapsed into a black hole, and the local space-time continuum metrics turned the 2d Arda into a self-containing 3d ball.

Happily, the strangelet blackhole disappeared at this side of the Universe, remaining outside of it, so we can't find a blackhole in the center of the Earth, just molten rock.

***

Of course, the elves were very angry at the dwarvish stupidity, and their relations are very strained.

But the existence of the alternative project of Sauron makes them partners.
(Though, as the dwarves need food, and the elves don't want to dig deep, they will probably restore their balrog torchsip project a bit later.)

[kerbiloid]

The Sun is a balrog.

[Vanamonde]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

The Sun is a balrog.

No, it was made from the light of one of them trees Ungoliant ate. If it was a balrog the orcs wouldn't be afraid of it because it would be on their side. 

[kerbiloid]

Checked.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Sun

Probably, the Sun is not a balrog, there are several blurry descriptions.