NavList:

Peter Monta, you wrote:
"But yes, if the angular size of the Moon was five degrees, that would be hundreds of millions of years ago, and so they'd be somewhere on Pangaea."

Ha ha. Yes, well, that's one possibility! I was actually expecting someone would notice that this is the same stock moon photo that we have seen many times before. It is a view that's quite impossible from the surface of the Earth --at any angular size. The Moon as it appears over Saruman's shoulder is a photo taken by the Apollo 11 astronauts departing the Moon, and the dividing line between the normal near and far sides of the Moon is close to the center as seen from this vantage point. This means that, either Middle Earth is located on a very large space station high above the Moon's trailing side, or Peter Jackson didn't pay much attention to the Moon in post-production. Assuming the appearance of the Moon is intentional, then Middle Earth is presumably in an elongated orbit librating about L₅, the co-orbital Lagrangian Point trailing the Moon in its orbit around Earth. Differing gravity levels in such a station, like the one pictured below, would help explain the evolution of a number of hominid species (humans, elves, dwarves, etc.) if the space station was placed there perhaps 100,000 years ago. :)

Some people also say that Middle Earth is located in New Zealand, and those beautiful vistas are images of a real place. This fanciful New Zealand, so they claim, is a vast country floating in the middle of the ocean on the underside of the world. I don't believe in such fantasies. If a country existed in an ocean on the bottom of the Earth, both it and that ocean would fall off the planet and drift away! It seems much more probable to me that Middle Earth with its many human-like species is an ancient space colony orbiting near the Moon. They wouldn't just make this place up. That would be far too expensive. Much easier to fly a film crew out there and employ the native elves and dwarves and wizards and such in a film about their home world.

Middle Earth is a space colony near the Moon. See what problems we can solve with the tools of celestial navigation! ;)

Frank Reed
Conanicut Island USA

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