Crescent Pulsar S wrote:14: I don't know what the anime's answer was to that, but Saturn was responsible for that in the manga.
I've been told in the past that it was the result of
Queen Serenity in the manga with Sailor Saturn getting the blame.
Spica75 wrote:5) Why doesn't Ami point to the fact there is no trace of the Moon Kingdom in terms of history or physical evidence?
Why should she? There are dozens of "lost kingdoms" even on earth that have been written about sometime in history, but noone has managed to find. And a few such that has been found, usually after much effort.
Just take a look at the Sahara desert, educated guesstimates figures there´s hundreds of "city" ruins spread out over it from the time 8-10k years ago when the end of the glacial period brought a much nicer weather for some time.
There´s been a steady trickle of artifacts coming out of the desert via touaregs for centuries, but only a handful of ruins have been officially found.
And this is still on EARTH, with relatively easy access.
And in regards to historical evidence? The story specifies "thousands of years ago", we have decent historical evidence for the last 500-1000 years, and spotty for another 1500 or so. Anything beyond that is unlikely to exist in surviving sources.
Then of course, there´s the list of "lost civilisations" to pick from, almost anyone of which potentially could be that evidence.
I was talking about the state of the solar system. Based on the manga we know that Sailor moon takes place no earlier then 1994 (Sailor moon is at least 22 at the beginning of the 21 century). According to uniformitarianism geology (which I use in my own fanfic) the Moon has been a DEAD hunk of rock for over
4 billion years, Mars a desert world for millions of years, Venus a pressure cooker of a world for
millions of years, and so on. In fact, Carl Sagan in 1980 points to this event:
It was the Sunday before the feast of Saint John the Baptist in the summer of 1178.
The monks of Canterbury Cathedral had completed their evening prayers and were about to retire for the night.
The scholarly brother, Gervase returned to his cell to read while some of the others went outside to enjoy the gentle June air.
In the midst of their recreation they chanced to witness an astonishing sight: A violent explosion on the moon.
This was a time when the heavens were thought to be changeless.
The moon, the stars and the planets were deemed pure because they followed an unvarying celestial routine.
They were expected to behave without unseemly disruptions like monks in a monastery.
Was it wise to discuss such a vision? In every time and culture there are pressures to conform to the prevailing prejudices.
But there are also, in every place and epoch those who value the truth, who record the evidence faithfully.
Future generations are in their debt.
A fire on the moon.
Might it be some portent of ill fortune? Should the chronicler of the monastery be told? Was this event an apparition of the evil one? Gervase of Canterbury was a historian considered today a reliable reporter of political and cultural events of his time.
This is his account of the eyewitness testimony he was given: "Now there was a bright new moon and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted toward the east.
And suddenly the upper horn split in two.
From the midpoint of this division, a flaming torch sprang up spewing out over a considerable distance fire, hot coals and sparks.
After these transformations," Gervase continued "the moon from horn to horn that is along its whole length took on a blackish appearance." Gervase took depositions from all the eyewitnesses.
He later wrote: "The writer was given this report by men who saw it with their own eyes and are prepared to stake their honor on an oath that they have made no addition or falsification." Gervase committed the account to paper enabling astronomers eight centuries later to try and reconstruct what really happened.
It may be that 200 years before Chaucer five monks saw an event more wonderful than many another celebrated Canterbury tale.
If a small drifting mountain were to hit the moon it would set our satellite swinging like a bell.
Eventually, the tremors would die down, but not in a mere 800 years.
So is the moon still quivering from that impact? The Apollo astronauts emplaced arrays of special mirrors on the moon.
Reflectors made by French scientists were also put on the moon by Soviet Lunakhod vehicles.
When a laser beam from Earth strikes a mirror and bounces back the roundtrip travel time can be measured.
At the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas a laser beam is prepared for firing at the reflectors on the moon 380,000 kilometers away.
By multiplying the travel time by the speed of light the distance to that spot can be determined to a precision of The width of a hand.
When such measurements are repeated over years even an extremely slight wobble in the moon's motion can be determined.
The accuracy is phenomenal.
The error is much less than one-millionth of a percent.
The moon, it turns out, is gently swinging like a bell just as if it had been hit by an asteroid less than 1000 years ago.So there may be physical evidence in the age of space flight for the account of the Canterbury monks in the 12th century.
If 800 years ago a big asteroid hit the moon the crater should be prominent today still surrounded by bright rays thin streamers of dust spewed out by the impact.
In billions of years, lunar rays are eroded but not in hundreds.And there is a recent ray crater called Giordano Bruno in the region of the moon where an explosion was reported in 1178.
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We are not talking about some small "lost civilization" with the Moon Kingdom as with Plato's Atlantis or the island of Mu. We are talking about according to the anime and manga a solar system spanning civilization on par with Tech Level 1 to 2 on the Kardashev scale or somewhere between TL 10-11 on the GURPS TL scale. For reference Star Wars is at TL 8^, Star Trek is (6+3)^ and we are at 7 going into 8.
Being as knowledgeable as Ami is she would be aware of the state of the solar system and so would NOT be buying Luna's story of a Solar system spanning empire. There is simply nowhere in the last 5000 years to put such an empire.
It would be as if a empire on par with that of Rome went belly up and not one trace of it surviving!