How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TARDIS)

[Brent]

So, in The Journey to the Center of the TARDIS, we learn that the Eye of Harmony is a Star in a state of decay before it explodes and becomes a black hole, held in perpetual decay.

But, how big was the Star? I couldn't grasp from the episode if the Star is a regular sized Star like ours, or if it was shrunken?

I'm trying to grasp the size of the room it was in. If it was a regular sized star, that'd be one massive room, about the distance from the Sun to Mercury or Venus.

So it is a big star, or a little tiny one?

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

It's probably as big as it needs to be at any given moment.

 

[The Badger]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

To become a black hole naturally a star would need to have a mass of at least twenty times more than our sun. So big, very big.

 

[Mr Light]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

The other question is, was that the original Eye of Harmony that Omega created? Or does every Tardis have an Eye in it because they can easily replicate the technology?

Does every Tardis have a portal to the same Eye, does every Tardis have its own Eye, or did the Doctor take the Eye at the end of the Time War?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

The hand of omega is a stellar manipulator.

Omega gave the time lords the power source, the ye of harmony, and got lost, but they thought he died.

I personally assumed from the language that one star powered the entire Time lord Civilization.

The movie kinda said that every Tardis had an eye of harmony.

After the timewar, the doctor no longer had access to the time lords singular power supply, which is why the ship needed rift energy to power up.

The last thing a star does before it collapses, is that it expands a couple hundred sizes.

How close to collapse is that sun?

Had it expanded, or was it only about to expand or had it collapsed a lot already and might be tiny on the way to being a complete nugget.

The Doctor knows where the Hand of Omega is hiding on Earth in 1963 where he can borrow it before destoying Skaro and make his own Eye of Harmony... The TARDIS might have hooked into the Eye after the seond Big Bang or when gallifrey came back mometarily?

No idea.

 

[Brent]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

Good question, IIRC the original Eye of Harmony was the nucleus of a black hole that was stored on Gallifrey, and provided power for Gallifrey and all the TARDIS's pulled from that.

However, with Gallifrey in a time lock, is that Eye of Harmony no longer accessible, I tend to think it is locked in with Gallifrey.

In that case, the TARDIS would need its own power source, so this is the "new" Eye of Harmony, but how it got installed post-Timelords, I do not know. Unless it has always been there, which the '96 movie suggests it was.

In that case, perhaps it is a backup power source if a TARDIS ever gets separated from its main source.

That's the best I can come up with

So I take it, the star was really huge in the TARDIS, and we were just looking at it from very very far away, which means the inside of that room has to be the size of our solar system

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

So I take it, the star was really huge in the TARDIS, and we were just looking at it from very very far away, which means the inside of that room has to be the size of our solar system

Which isn't all that surprising (but still very surprising) considering The Doctor said in this very episode that the TARDIS is infinite (and has said this in previous stories, if I recall correctly).

 

[diankra]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

To become a black hole naturally a star would need to have a mass of at least twenty times more than our sun. So big, very big.

Judging by Remembrance, the Hand of Omega can be used to turn a star of any size into a black hole, even if it wouldn't naturally have enough mass (a bit like the monoliths igniting Jupiter in 2010).

 

[Christopher]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

The other question is, was that the original Eye of Harmony that Omega created? Or does every Tardis have an Eye in it because they can easily replicate the technology?

Does every Tardis have a portal to the same Eye, does every Tardis have its own Eye, or did the Doctor take the Eye at the end of the Time War?

One of the books established that the Eye in the Doctor's TARDIS in the '96 movie was an "aspect" of the original in the Panopticon on Gallifrey ("The Deadly Assassin"). My personal take is this:

Imagine a universe as a flat sheet. A black hole is an infinitely deep "well" extending down from that sheet. TARDIS interiors are pocket universes -- imagine them as separate parallel sheets underneath the main one. Each parallel sheet intersects the "well" of the black hole. Thus, the same single black hole is a part of every separate pocket universe, linking them all.

However, if Gallifrey and all other TARDISes were destroyed, then the Doctor's would be the only one still connected to the Eye, so it might contain the whole thing now.

...The Doctor said in this very episode that the TARDIS is infinite (and has said this in previous stories, if I recall correctly).

Which contradicts what was established in the original series. In "Full Circle," Romana mentioned the TARDIS's total mass, which was about the same as the fully loaded mass of the Titanic. And in "Castrovalva," the Doctor jettisoned 25% of the TARDIS's interior architecture to burn off enough mass to escape a galactic collapse. So at the time, it was decidedly finite in extent.

Though later books, whose canon status is questionable, suggested an interior size that was comparable to a large city in one book and larger than the volume of Gallifrey in another. It seems to me that the TARDIS's size gets more and more exaggerated by writers over time, much like Superman's powers.

And remember rule one: The Doctor lies. At the very least, he's prone to hyperbole. It's not like there was actually a self-destruct either.

 

[Tom]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

Perhaps with the destruction of Gallifrey and other Tardis's. The Doctors Tardis is now using the entire pocket universe including the Eye. It could have been there was only one pocket universe but it was divided up between other Tardis's and Gallifrey thus giving each Tardis finite size to use. With Gallifrey and other Tardis's now gone, the Doctor's Tardis expanded to take up the whole pocket universe space, and is now seemingly infinite in size and contains the Eye since Gallifrey can't anymore.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

Perhaps with the destruction of Gallifrey and other Tardis's. The Doctors Tardis is now using the entire pocket universe including the Eye. It could have been there was only one pocket universe but it was divided up between other Tardis's and Gallifrey thus giving each Tardis finite size to use. With Gallifrey and other Tardis's now gone, the Doctor's Tardis expanded to take up the whole pocket universe space, and is now seemingly infinite in size and contains the Eye since Gallifrey can't anymore.

Infinity minus infinity is still infinity.

I think when he said the TARDIS is infinite he wasn't talking about it's physical size. That would make no sense.
More like that the TARDIS can always add another room an infinite number of times but at any point the total number of rooms would still be finite and countable in theory.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

Perhaps with the destruction of Gallifrey and other Tardis's. The Doctors Tardis is now using the entire pocket universe including the Eye. It could have been there was only one pocket universe but it was divided up between other Tardis's and Gallifrey thus giving each Tardis finite size to use. With Gallifrey and other Tardis's now gone, the Doctor's Tardis expanded to take up the whole pocket universe space, and is now seemingly infinite in size and contains the Eye since Gallifrey can't anymore.

Infinity minus infinity is still infinity.

I think when he said the TARDIS is infinite he wasn't talking about it's physical size. That would make no sense.
More like that the TARDIS can always add another room an infinite number of times but at any point the total number of rooms would still be finite and countable in theory.

This is similar to, if not exactly the same as, the way I've seen it for some time. The pocket-universe (or whatever) that the TARDIS' interior structure resides in is infinite in size. The actual TARDIS structure is a finite construct.

 

[JoeZhang]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

Is the answer that the Eye of Harmony is bigger on the inside?

 

[ITL]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

Perhaps with the destruction of Gallifrey and other Tardis's. The Doctors Tardis is now using the entire pocket universe including the Eye. It could have been there was only one pocket universe but it was divided up between other Tardis's and Gallifrey thus giving each Tardis finite size to use. With Gallifrey and other Tardis's now gone, the Doctor's Tardis expanded to take up the whole pocket universe space, and is now seemingly infinite in size and contains the Eye since Gallifrey can't anymore.

Infinity minus infinity is still infinity.

I think when he said the TARDIS is infinite he wasn't talking about it's physical size. That would make no sense.
More like that the TARDIS can always add another room an infinite number of times but at any point the total number of rooms would still be finite and countable in theory.

This is similar to, if not exactly the same as, the way I've seen it for some time. The pocket-universe (or whatever) that the TARDIS' interior structure resides in is infinite in size. The actual TARDIS structure is a finite construct.

It could always behave like Hilbert's Hotel...

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faQBrAQ87l4[/yt]

 

[Green Lantern]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

I don't like the new eye of harmony. I like the one from the 96 film. My explanation for that would probably have to be that the 96 version is just a fancy doorway to the sun version.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

...The Doctor said in this very episode that the TARDIS is infinite (and has said this in previous stories, if I recall correctly).

Which contradicts what was established in the original series. In "Full Circle," Romana mentioned the TARDIS's total mass, which was about the same as the fully loaded mass of the Titanic. And in "Castrovalva," the Doctor jettisoned 25% of the TARDIS's interior architecture to burn off enough mass to escape a galactic collapse. So at the time, it was decidedly finite in extent.

True, but I'm also pretty sure it was described as infinite in the classic series, too.

 

[Mr Light]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

I would prefer to think that each Tardis runs off its own Eye of Harmony. That's a lot more powerful sounding that every single aspect of Time Lord civilization running off a single black hole.

 

[Christopher]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

True, but I'm also pretty sure it was described as infinite in the classic series, too.

I just searched Chakoteya's Doctor Who transcript site for the word "infinite" (by googling "infinite site:http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/"), and didn't find any such instances. No luck with "endless" or "limitless" either.

Anyway, people often use "infinite" figuratively to refer to things that are mathematically finite but vast enough to be effectively limitless from the observer's point of view. Actual infinity is a rather untenable concept when it comes to physical reality anyway. It's easy to say the word, but harder to grasp its true meaning or ramifications. So it's always best to be skeptical when you hear anyone using the word.

 

[publiusr]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

Rudy Rucker had a great book called Infinity and the Mind which I really like--as the old OMI artwork spread about how some infinities are larger than others.

I assumed the Tardis was a tessaract and that it's shell is a cosmological defect called a texture.

If for no other reason than I can see Matt exclaiming "Defect?"

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Re: How Big is the Eye of Harmony? (spoilers Journey to the center TAR

Perhaps with the destruction of Gallifrey and other Tardis's. The Doctors Tardis is now using the entire pocket universe including the Eye. It could have been there was only one pocket universe but it was divided up between other Tardis's and Gallifrey thus giving each Tardis finite size to use. With Gallifrey and other Tardis's now gone, the Doctor's Tardis expanded to take up the whole pocket universe space, and is now seemingly infinite in size and contains the Eye since Gallifrey can't anymore.

Infinity minus infinity is still infinity.

I think when he said the TARDIS is infinite he wasn't talking about it's physical size. That would make no sense.
More like that the TARDIS can always add another room an infinite number of times but at any point the total number of rooms would still be finite and countable in theory.

Yeah, I took it to be potentially infinite rather than actually infinite.