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chaosmosis comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85 - Less Wrong
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I just thought of something.
When Quirrell shows Harry the stars in outer space he's probably getting the images from his probe-Horcrux.
Think one step further. What does this imply about his other Horcruxes?
That they're in places with a not-so-good view? In chapter 46, Harry guesses:
Apparently I was being excessively coy. I meant they can't be destroyed without his knowledge. (Also, I notice you left out the stratosphere one.)
If you meant without his immediate knowledge then I interpret it as evidence pointing more towards the opposite conclusion, although it doesn't point very far either way. He possibly wouldn't bother to go to check on his Horcruxes if he was immediately aware of what their condition is. It's only weak evidence but it points against the idea that he's aware of all of his soul-parts at once.
if you meant that he'll find out as soon as he goes to check on them, then I agree.
What do you mean by "goes to check on them"? I just meant he could set aside an hour every Sunday to cast "view-of-space, view-of-sky, view-of-dirt, view-of-magma, view-of-ocean" for five seconds each. Presumably the spell would fail or something if the viewpoint Horcrux had been destroyed.
ETA: Quirrell states to Harry (so take with an entire shaker of salt, but still) that the spell takes a lot out of him to cast, so he couldn't cast it again "today, or tomorrow either". Even assuming that's true, that just imposes a three-day break between individual checks, so the longest a Horcrux would go unexamined would be two weeks. Or he could leave the Spacecrux out of the usual lineup because it's relatively unreachable, just check it on special occasions (and to show off for Harry).
That's the type of thing I was referring to with "goes to check on them", I didn't mean to imply that he moved his physical body.
Dualism makes for stupid problems with grammar.
Oh, okay. If I remember correctly, this was suggested by Dumbledore in canon (with some handwaving about Voldemort not noticing it, because his soul is too hurt), that's probably why this didn't occur to me.
I read the scene as the stratosphere idea being a precursor to the space idea, not an idea on it's own. Although after re-reading, I'm not so sure anymore…
(Fire, Earth, Water, Air, Void/Ether.) Also, canonMort settled on six Horcruxes because he thought splitting his soul into seven pieces would have some beneficial effect (never specified, perhaps because his first 'crux was destroyed by the time he made the sixth). If the stratosphere doesn't qualify, that leaves a Horcrux unaccounted for.
You mean, like, the book he gave Harry?
That isn't a Horcrux, from Word of EY.
Why do we think that this is a Horcrux? Just canonical similarities?
Yes. That and the fact the book is resistent to rough handling. Though of course if I were a magical archaeologist, I'd also find some spell that makes those valuable artefacts as indestructible as possible.
That explains something that was bugging me about the star spell, namely why the sun and the moon don't dominate the view field.
It also explains why the spell has to be kept a secret.
The moon wouldn't be visible as a distinct point of light from the sun, and while the sun would be bright enough to attract attention, various people have suggested it could be positioned directly below Harry's feet to avoid notice.
Also, this led to a different thought immediately afterwards which I didn't have time to post.
This could explain (some of) Quirrell's dormant-times. He's visiting his other Horcruxes and checking on them. It doesn't fit perfectly because I wouldn't expect it to take much longer than a few seconds for him to check on them. Maybe he's possessing people during those times, or something.
Perhaps a better suggestion is that his "down time" involves synchronisation of his memories/program state between Horcruxes, and it gets worse the further Pioneer moves from Earth... Even with magic, there's no way round speed of light limits.
Quirrell probably wasn't expecting that, which could explain why his days as a Dark Lord are numbered (and also explains why he's desperate to train up Harry as a replacement, assuming his goal of uniting the wizarding world is sincere).
I'm also wondering if the 6 hour limit of Time-Turners is a crucial variable somehow, so that he could synch at distances up to 6 light-hours, but not otherwise. Does anyone know when the Pioneer 11 probe got more than 6 light-hours away from Earth? Was it around 1991/1992??
It's been on its way since April 1973 (for right about 39 years), so assuming a steady speed, it would've passed the six-hour limit roughly 19,5 years ago, or in late 1992.
Pioneer 11 is moving at a speed of 11.4km/s relative to the Sun. The Earth's orbital speed is around 30km/s. Hence it's possible that the Earth-Pioneer distance increases to over six hours for a while and then drops again.
What time is it in terms of Potter Time? The books take place a few decades ago but I forget exactly when.
April 1992.
Given that Pioneer fooled around in the Solar System for a while, making flybys of Jupiter and Saturn, our calculation should be a bit different. 1992 is a useful lower bound, which we arrived at by calculating what would happen if Pioneer took a straight path out into interstellar space. In fact, it flew by Saturn in September 1979. A bit of trigonometry tells me that if it left Saturn in a straight line tangent to that planet's orbit, it would probably reach the critical distance some time between '95 and '97, depending on Earth's own position in its orbit. This rough map seems to suggest that it did take that approximate path, but it's hardly accurate. If Pioneer skirted closer to the sun again, inside Saturn's orbit on it's way out then the critical distance comes later, but if it veered away harder then it comes earlier.
I had typed my calculations up, but I lost them just now when I accidentally pressed the back button. Hell's bells and buckets of blood.
Anyway, basically what this tells us is that Quirrel probably has at least a few years of grace before Pioneer gets too far away, if that is in fact what's going on. I think there's a fair likelihood that this theory is correct, but given what I've said here, I don't think the timing of the Pioneer's critical distance should be counted as strong evidence in favour of that.
Thanks for the calculations... I had a rough guess that 6 light-hours was reached some time in the 90s, but didn't know enough about the flight-path to check this.
I believe that the 6 light-hour limit only makes sense as a theory if Quirrell is going to hit it in this school-year (and it explains why it is impossible for him to continue as a teacher next year). If he's still got a few years grace it doesn't work so well, and I suspect that Eliezer would have done a detailed calculation if he was relying on this theory, rather than a rough-and-ready / linear interpolation calculation.
However, I still like the idea of Quirrell being hoisted by his own genius petard (and by his hatred of science, since if he'd bothered to study it, rather than just using it, he might have avoided that mistake).
How's he supposed to know that the Horcrux connection craps out at six light-hours? Presumably he's the first to have a Horcrux anywhere but Earth.
From Chapter 61:
If information cannot travel back more than six hours, and a "soul" (stored on a Horcrux) is information (as Quirrell describes it), then it is a reasonable guess that the soul cannot travel over a spatial separation of more than 6 light-hours. Further than that, and it seems the soul parts must fall out of synch, though exactly what happens then is anyone's guess. Does Quirrell die? Are there two separate Quirrells, one stranded permanently on Pioneer, and the other on Earth? Can the one on Earth be killed, even if the one on Pioneer is never destroyed?
...I meant April 1992 is when Taboo Tradeoffs happens.
I know. Gastogh made the 1992 calculation. I was making the point that although Gastogh calculated Pioneer to have reached the critical distance of six light-hours in 1992, and you pointed out that Taboo Tradeoffs was happening in 1992, we shouldn't take this coincidence as evidence in favour of the theory that communication between horcruxes and their master is limited to light speed, and that this is somehow related to time turners. I don't necessarily think either of you support such a theory, for that matter, nor am I making any argument for or against that theory itself.
Apparation might get around that. Fawkes might too.
Apparation and Portkeys, probably not- I don't believe we have an MoR viewpoint experience of Apparation, but in canon the interval is noticeable. An international Portkey is described in MoR as
If the transit time increases with distance, and is perceivable from one point on Earth to another, it's probably not FTL.
Phoenices are more viable, though. The description / speculation on firetravel in Chapter 82 definitely leaves open the possibility.
I can't see Quirrell making a mistake like that; and even if he did I think he would have noticed it and moved heaven and earth to fix it and get his Horcrux back before it got that far away as soon as it got far enough away for the problem to be noticeable.
No, this does not explain any dormant-times. See chapter 20: While Quirrell shows Harry the sphere of stars, he is not in zombie mode; he talks to Harry and even notices Dumbledore's imminent arrival.
Note though, that this doesn't not rule out the hypothesis of him visiting his Horcruxes during zombie mode – for all we know, there might be another mechanism one could use to check on one's Horcruxes.