


The moon rotates and completes a full revolution in about a month the full moon occurs when the luminescent side is completely visible from the Disc the new moon when the dark side is shown. The other half is burnt black by the sun. One half is covered with silvery glowing plants, which feed the lunar dragons. The moon is slightly closer to the Disc than the sun.
SIMPSONS GRIM REAPER PNG UPDATE
This means that astrologers must constantly update and alter their horoscopes to incorporate all-new zodiacs.Ī tiny sun and moon orbit the Great A'Tuin, both about 1 mile (1.6 km) in diameter when described at the start of the series, but the description of their diameter is increased to at least 80 miles (130 km) later in the chronicles. This is similar to real-world sea turtles' habit of rolling over with their shell down to protect themselves from sharks.ĭue to the Great A'Tuin's travelling through the universe, the night sky of the Discworld changes markedly over the course of decades, as the turtle departs older constellations and enters new ones. A'Tuin has been known to do more complex rolls and corkscrews, but these are rarer. These stunts do not affect the Disc's population, other than to induce severe seasickness on anyone who happens to be looking at the night sky at that time. Great A'Tuin has been mentioned to frequently roll on its belly to avoid asteroid and comet collisions, or even to snatch these projectiles out of the sky which might otherwise destroy the Disc. Whether this was the event the Great A'Tuin was looking forward to or merely one step towards its ultimate goal is not mentioned. The little turtles have since gone off on their own journeys. Eric shows Great A'Tuin being made instantly from nothing, seemingly in support of the "steady gait" theory however, the events in The Light Fantastic, in which the Great A'Tuin attended the hatching of eight baby turtles, each with four baby elephants and a tiny discworld of their own, would seem to support the Big Bang hypothesis. The other theory, described as being popular among the Discworld's academics as the Discworld version of the steady state theory, which in-universe is known as the "steady gait" theory, is that he/she came from nowhere and is going to keep swimming through space to nowhere forever. All they have been able to discern is that the Great A'Tuin is looking forward to something. Attempts by telepaths to learn more about Great A'Tuin's intents have not met with much success, mainly because they did not realise that its brain functions are on such a slow timescale. The hypothesis is that all stars in the sky are obviously also worlds carried by giant turtles, and that when all the turtles meet they will mate passionately, for the first and only time from that mating, it is hypothesized that new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. If, as the Discworld version of the popular " Big Bang theory" states, Great A'Tuin is moving from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, then at the point of mating the civilizations of the Disc might be crushed, simply slide off, or else the entire world will end. The sex of the World Turtle is pivotal in proving or disproving a number of conflicting theories about the destination of Great A'Tuin's journey through the cosmos. Great A'Tuin's sex is unknown to the inhabitants of Discworld (though in The Colour of Magic Pratchett describes the turtle as male), but the subject of much speculation by some of the Disc's finest scientific minds.

The narration has described A'Tuin as "the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram".

Great A'Tuin is the Giant Star Turtle (of the fictional species Chelys galactica) who travels through the Discworld universe's space, carrying four giant elephants (named Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon, and Jerakeen) who in turn carry the Discworld. Pratchett first explored the idea of a disc-shaped world in the novel Strata (1981). The Disc has been shown to be heavily influenced by magic and, while Pratchett gave it certain similarities to planet Earth, he also created his own system of physics for it. It consists of a large disc (complete with edge-of-the-world drop-off and consequent waterfall) resting on the backs of four huge elephants which are in turn standing on the back of an enormous turtle, named Great A'Tuin (similar to Chukwa or Akupara from Hindu mythology) as it slowly swims through space. The Discworld is the fictional setting for all of Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy novels. The Colour of Magic (24 November 1983 ( )) The Discworld as it appears in the SkyOne adaptation of The Colour of Magic
