harry potter - What keeps Hogwarts (or Hogsmeade, or Azkaban) from being shown in the Google Maps satellite view?

As I understand, those places are not in some kind of alternate space/dimension, but physically in the real world, and the only protection is that if muggles get close, they feel an urge to go elsewhere and forget about what they've seen.

As the wizarding world has little or no ideas how computers work, how can they prevent automatic tools, like drones, satellites, etc. from seeing them, if they don't even know they exist? To make spells that effect computers and wipe specific pixels out of images would require a very good understanding of the highest muggle technology.

Or am I wrong, and there are other protections besides wiping the memory of muggles who wonder by? (like bending light, other dimensions - like how the knight express does it, etc?)

Answer

I don't think that it matters (in other words, they didn't really need to make Hogwarts not visible on satellite view).

Hogwarts is in Scotland, which has a gazillion of old castles - I can't tell you how much because I didn't want to wait for pages-long Wiki page to load :)

So Hogwarts wouldn't exactly stick out.

And there's no discrepancy between having an old castle on a satellite image and having an old ruin up close that says it's unsafe.

Q: Can Muggles see Hogwarts ? (Melinda, 11, CA)
A: ... When they look towards it, as a safety precaution, they see a ruin with a sign saying it's unsafe. . .they mustn't enter. They can't see it as it really is.
("World Exclusive Interview with J K Rowling," South West News Service, 8 July 2000)

In addition, the events at Hogwarts preced wide availability of consumer grade satellite views (Google maps was started in 2005, and IIRC Satellite View wasn't there till 2007) - Harry was at Hogwarts 1991-1998

Comments

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...

Blog

Search This Blog