121-667: In J. R. R. Tolkien 's legendarium , the Two Trees of Valinor are Telperion and Laurelin , the Silver Tree and the Gold Tree, which bring light to Valinor , a paradisiacal realm where angelic beings live. The Two Trees are of enormous stature, and exude dew that is a pure and magical light in liquid form. The craftsman Elf Fëanor makes the unrivalled jewels, the Silmarils , with their light. The Two Trees are destroyed by
242-517: A cutting from the tree and makes a second tree like it to stand in their city of Tirion. This tree, named Galathilion , is identical to Telperion except that it does not emit light. It has many seedlings, one of which is named Celeborn , and grows on the isle of Tol Eressëa . In the Second Age , a seedling of Celeborn is brought as a gift to the Men who live on the island of Númenor . It is Nimloth,
363-622: A frame story that changed over the years , first with an Ælfwine-type character who translates the "Golden Book" of the sages Rumil or Pengoloð; later, having the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins collect the stories into the Red Book of Westmarch , translating mythological Elvish documents in Rivendell . The scholar Gergely Nagy observes that Tolkien "thought of his works as texts within the fictional world " (his emphasis), and that
484-526: A lunar eclipse , always illuminated by the Sun, but from Earth the visible illumination shifts during its orbit, producing the lunar phases . The Moon is the brightest celestial object in Earth's night sky . This is mainly due to its large angular diameter , while the reflectance of the lunar surface is comparable to that of asphalt . The apparent size is nearly the same as that of the Sun, allowing it to cover
605-565: A continuing examination of Tolkien's works and supporting mythology, became a scholarly area of study soon after his death. A legendarium is a literary collection of legends . This medieval Latin noun originally referred mainly to texts detailing legends of the lives of saints . A surviving example is the Anjou Legendarium , dating from the 14th century. Quotations in the Oxford English Dictionary for
726-425: A decisive role on local surface temperatures . Parts of many craters, particularly the bottoms of many polar craters, are permanently shadowed, these " craters of eternal darkness " have extremely low temperatures. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter measured the lowest summer temperatures in craters at the southern pole at 35 K (−238 °C; −397 °F) and just 26 K (−247 °C; −413 °F) close to
847-434: A few kilometers wide), shallower, and more irregularly shaped than impact craters. They also lack the upturned rims characteristic of impact craters. Several geologic provinces containing shield volcanoes and volcanic domes are found within the near side maria. There are also some regions of pyroclastic deposits , scoria cones and non-basaltic domes made of particularly high viscosity lava. Almost all maria are on
968-503: A global dipolar magnetic field and only has crustal magnetization likely acquired early in its history when a dynamo was still operating. Early in its history, 4 billion years ago, its magnetic field strength was likely close to that of Earth today. This early dynamo field apparently expired by about one billion years ago, after the lunar core had crystallized. Theoretically, some of the remnant magnetization may originate from transient magnetic fields generated during large impacts through
1089-718: A hospitable environment for future astronauts, protecting them from extreme temperatures, solar radiation, and micrometeorites. However, challenges include accessibility and risks of avalanches and cave-ins. This discovery offers potential for future lunar bases or emergency shelters. The main features visible from Earth by the naked eye are dark and relatively featureless lunar plains called maria (singular mare ; Latin for "seas", as they were once believed to be filled with water) are vast solidified pools of ancient basaltic lava. Although similar to terrestrial basalts, lunar basalts have more iron and no minerals altered by water. The majority of these lava deposits erupted or flowed into
1210-480: A hypothesized Mars-sized body called Theia . The lunar surface is covered in lunar dust and marked by mountains , impact craters , their ejecta , ray-like streaks , rilles and, mostly on the near side of the Moon, by dark maria ("seas"), which are plains of cooled lava . These maria were formed when molten lava flowed into ancient impact basins. The Moon is, except when passing through Earth's shadow during
1331-533: A landscape featuring craters of all ages. The Moon was volcanically active until 1.2 billion years ago, which laid down the prominent lunar maria . Most of the mare basalts erupted during the Imbrian period , 3.3–3.7 billion years ago, though some are as young as 1.2 billion years and some as old as 4.2 billion years. There are differing explanations for the eruption of mare basalts, particularly their uneven occurrence which mainly appear on
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#17327647665941452-633: A mostly symbolic significance, standing both for the kingdoms in question, and also as reminders of the ancestral alliance between the Men who had lived on Númenor and the Elves. The destruction of one of these trees precedes trouble for each kingdom in question. Martin Simonson describes the destruction of the Two Trees as setting a "mythical precedent" for the transfer of the stewardship of Arda (Earth) from
1573-525: A private project to create a mythology for England . The earliest story, "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star", is from 1914; he revised and rewrote the legendarium stories for most of his adult life. The Hobbit (1937), Tolkien's first published novel, was not originally part of the larger mythology but became linked to it. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (1954 and 1955) are set in
1694-569: A publisher would take it, and notes that Tolkien was a perfectionist, and further that he was perhaps afraid of finishing as he wished to go on with his sub-creation , his invention of myth in Middle-earth. Tolkien first began working on the stories that would become The Silmarillion in 1914. His reading, in 1914, of the Old English manuscript Christ I led to Earendel and the first element of his legendarium, "The Voyage of Earendel,
1815-428: A radius of about 500 kilometres (310 mi). This structure is thought to have developed through the fractional crystallization of a global magma ocean shortly after the Moon's formation 4.5 billion years ago. Crystallization of this magma ocean would have created a mafic mantle from the precipitation and sinking of the minerals olivine , clinopyroxene , and orthopyroxene ; after about three-quarters of
1936-458: A satellite with similar mass and iron content to the Moon into orbit far outside Earth's Roche limit . Even satellites that initially pass within the Roche limit can reliably and predictably survive, by being partially stripped and then torqued onto wider, stable orbits. On November 1, 2023, scientists reported that, according to computer simulations, remnants of Theia could still be present inside
2057-718: A seedling in the snow on the mountain behind the city, and brings it back to the citadel, where it flourishes. Tolkien never mentioned any tree made in the likeness of Laurelin, writing that "of Laurelin the Golden no likeness is left in Middle-Earth". In the First Age, however, the Elvish King Turgon of the city of Gondolin creates a non-living image of Laurelin, named Glingal , 'Hanging Flame', which stands in his court. The Tolkien scholar John Garth traces
2178-484: A sequel to The Hobbit . Tolkien began to revise the Silmarillion, but soon turned to the sequel, which became The Lord of the Rings . Writing The Lord of the Rings during the 1940s, Tolkien was attempting to address the dilemma of creating a narrative consistent with a "sequel" of the published The Hobbit and a desire to present a more comprehensive view of its large unpublished background. He renewed work on
2299-690: A source of water and of light. Varda used the dew to form stars in the sky, in preparation for the arrival of the Elves. Laurelin has leaves of a young green, like newly opened beech leaves trimmed with gold, and her dew is collected by the Vala of light Varda . Each Tree, in turn, gives off light for seven hours (waxing to full brightness and then slowly waning again), with the ends of their cycles overlapping, so that at one hour each of "dawn" and "dusk" soft gold and silver light are given off together. Each "day" of first silver then gold light lasts twelve hours. Countless "days" pass, until Melkor reappears. He enlists
2420-822: A story in which the Elves awaken in Middle-earth, and are called to undertake the long journey to Valinor. The Elves of the Light, Tolkien's Calaquendi, are those who successfully complete the journey, while the Elves of the Darkness, the Moriquendi, are those Elves who, for whatever reason, do not arrive in Valinor . Matthew Dickerson writes that in the Second and Third Ages , the White Trees of Númenor and of Gondor , whose likeness descends from that of Telperion, have
2541-475: A study of Ina , a tiny depression in Lacus Felicitatis , found jagged, relatively dust-free features that, because of the lack of erosion by infalling debris, appeared to be only 2 million years old. Moonquakes and releases of gas indicate continued lunar activity. Evidence of recent lunar volcanism has been identified at 70 irregular mare patches , some less than 50 million years old. This raises
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#17327647665942662-502: A texture resembling snow and a scent resembling spent gunpowder . The regolith of older surfaces is generally thicker than for younger surfaces: it varies in thickness from 10–15 m (33–49 ft) in the highlands and 4–5 m (13–16 ft) in the maria. Beneath the finely comminuted regolith layer is the megaregolith , a layer of highly fractured bedrock many kilometers thick. These extreme conditions are considered to make it unlikely for spacecraft to harbor bacterial spores at
2783-439: A trans-Atlantic flight, 200 times more than on Earth's surface. For further comparison radiation on a flight to Mars is about 1.84 millisieverts per day and on Mars on average 0.64 millisieverts per day, with some locations on Mars possibly having levels as low as 0.342 millisieverts per day. The Moon's axial tilt with respect to the ecliptic is only 1.5427°, much less than the 23.44° of Earth. Because of this small tilt,
2904-457: A vision of the end of the world, its breaking and remaking, and the recovery of the Silmarilli and the 'light before the Sun'"; and in 1954, "Actually in the imagination of this story we are now living on a physically round Earth. But the whole 'legendarium' contains a transition from a flat world ... to a globe ". On both texts, he explained in 1954 that "... my legendarium , especially
3025-531: Is 1.2% that of the Earth, and its diameter is 3,474 km (2,159 mi), roughly one-quarter of Earth's (about as wide as the United States from coast to coast ). Within the Solar System , it is the largest and most massive satellite in relation to its parent planet , the fifth largest and most massive moon overall, and larger and more massive than all known dwarf planets . Its surface gravity
3146-407: Is about one sixth of Earth's, about half of that of Mars , and the second highest among all Solar System moons, after Jupiter 's moon Io . The body of the Moon is differentiated and terrestrial , with no significant hydrosphere , atmosphere , or magnetic field . It formed 4.51 billion years ago, not long after Earth's formation , out of the debris from a giant impact between Earth and
3267-489: Is around 3 × 10 atm (0.3 nPa ); it varies with the lunar day. Its sources include outgassing and sputtering , a product of the bombardment of lunar soil by solar wind ions. Elements that have been detected include sodium and potassium , produced by sputtering (also found in the atmospheres of Mercury and Io ); helium-4 and neon from the solar wind; and argon-40 , radon-222 , and polonium-210 , outgassed after their creation by radioactive decay within
3388-532: Is asymmetric, being more dense near the boundary between the Moon's dayside and nightside. Ionizing radiation from cosmic rays , the Sun and the resulting neutron radiation produce radiation levels on average of 1.369 millisieverts per day during lunar daytime , which is about 2.6 times more than on the International Space Station with 0.53 millisieverts per day at about 400 km above Earth in orbit, 5–10 times more than during
3509-561: Is estimated from about 500 km (300 miles) to 1,737 km (1,079 miles). While the giant-impact theory explains many lines of evidence, some questions are still unresolved, most of which involve the Moon's composition. Models that have the Moon acquiring a significant amount of the proto-earth are more difficult to reconcile with geochemical data for the isotopes of zirconium, oxygen, silicon, and other elements. A study published in 2022, using high-resolution simulations (up to 10 particles), found that giant impacts can immediately place
3630-440: Is on average about 1.9 km (1.2 mi) higher than that of the near side. The discovery of fault scarp cliffs suggest that the Moon has shrunk by about 90 metres (300 ft) within the past billion years. Similar shrinkage features exist on Mercury . Mare Frigoris, a basin near the north pole long assumed to be geologically dead, has cracked and shifted. Since the Moon does not have tectonic plates, its tectonic activity
3751-477: Is simply Moon , with a capital M. The noun moon is derived from Old English mōna , which (like all its Germanic cognates) stems from Proto-Germanic *mēnōn , which in turn comes from Proto-Indo-European *mēnsis 'month' (from earlier *mēnōt , genitive *mēneses ) which may be related to the verb 'measure' (of time). Occasionally, the name Luna / ˈ l uː n ə / is used in scientific writing and especially in science fiction to distinguish
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3872-574: Is slow and cracks develop as it loses heat. Scientists have confirmed the presence of a cave on the Moon near the Sea of Tranquillity , not far from the 1969 Apollo 11 landing site. The cave, identified as an entry point to a collapsed lava tube, is roughly 45 meters wide and up to 80 m long. This discovery marks the first confirmed entry point to a lunar cave. The analysis was based on photos taken in 2010 by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter . The cave's stable temperature of around 17 °C could provide
3993-476: Is the lowest point on the surface of the Moon. The highest elevations of the Moon's surface are located directly to the northeast, which might have been thickened by the oblique formation impact of the South Pole–Aitken basin. Other large impact basins such as Imbrium , Serenitatis , Crisium , Smythii , and Orientale possess regionally low elevations and elevated rims. The far side of the lunar surface
4114-532: The Third Age of Middle-earth , while virtually all of his earlier writing had been set in the first two ages of the world. The Lord of the Rings occasionally alludes to figures and events from the legendarium to create an impression of depth , but such ancient tales are depicted as being remembered by few until the story makes them relevant. After The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien returned to his older stories to bring them to publishable form, but never completed
4235-466: The White Tree of Gondor stands dead in the citadel of Minas Tirith. When Aragorn restores the line of Kings to Gondor, he finds a sapling descended from Telperion and plants it in his citadel. Commentators have seen mythic and Christian symbolism in the Two Trees; they have been called the most important symbols in the entire legendarium. Their origins have been traced to the medieval Trees of
4356-470: The sundering of the Elves into different groups to the Two Trees and to the Prose Edda which speaks of light and dark Elves ; Tolkien treats the difference between these as whether they have made the journey to Valinor and seen the light of the Two Trees. The first sources of light for all of Tolkien's imaginary world, Arda , are two enormous Lamps on the central continent, Middle-earth : Illuin,
4477-542: The "primary 'legendarium'", for the core episodes and themes of The Silmarillion which were not abandoned in his father's constant redrafting of the work. The scholars Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter edited a scholarly collection " Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth ". Flieger writes that "...the greatest [event] is the creation of the Silmarils, the Gems of light that give their names to
4598-606: The 'Downfall of Númenor ' which lies immediately behind The Lord of the Rings , is based on my view: that Men are essentially mortal and must not try to become 'immortal' in the flesh", and in 1955, "But the beginning of the legendarium, of which the Trilogy is part (the conclusion), was an attempt to reorganise some of the Kalevala ". "Tolkien's legendarium" is defined narrowly in John D. Rateliff 's The History of The Hobbit as
4719-556: The 14th century text Mandeville's Travels . The Dry Tree had been alive in the time of Christ , and was prophesied to come to life again when a "great lord from the western part of the world" returned to the Holy Land , just as Aragorn brings the line of Kings back to Gondor. Cohen comments that the dead White Tree's replacement by a living sapling "upholds the metaphor of resurrection and enables Tolkien to draw an implicit connection between Aragorn and Christ". Finally, she remarks on
4840-452: The Earth and the material accreted and formed the Moon just beyond the Earth's Roche limit of ~ 2.56 R 🜨 . Giant impacts are thought to have been common in the early Solar System. Computer simulations of giant impacts have produced results that are consistent with the mass of the lunar core and the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system. These simulations show that most of
4961-520: The Earth's moon from others, while in poetry "Luna" has been used to denote personification of the Moon. Cynthia / ˈ s ɪ n θ i ə / is another poetic name, though rare, for the Moon personified as a goddess, while Selene / s ə ˈ l iː n iː / (literally 'Moon') is the Greek goddess of the Moon. The English adjective pertaining to the Moon is lunar , derived from the Latin word for
Two Trees of Valinor - Misplaced Pages Continue
5082-429: The Earth, due to gravitational anomalies from impact basins. Its shape is more elongated than current tidal forces can account for. This 'fossil bulge' indicates that the Moon solidified when it orbited at half its current distance to the Earth, and that it is now too cold for its shape to restore hydrostatic equilibrium at its current orbital distance. The Moon is by size and mass the fifth largest natural satellite of
5203-469: The Earth-Moon system might be explained by the post-impact mixing of the vaporized material that formed the two, although this is debated. The impact would have released enough energy to liquefy both the ejecta and the Earth's crust, forming a magma ocean. The liquefied ejecta could have then re-accreted into the Earth–Moon system. The newly formed Moon would have had its own magma ocean ; its depth
5324-530: The Earth. The newly formed Moon settled into a much closer Earth orbit than it has today. Each body therefore appeared much larger in the sky of the other, eclipses were more frequent, and tidal effects were stronger. Due to tidal acceleration , the Moon's orbit around Earth has become significantly larger, with a longer period. Following formation, the Moon has cooled and most of its atmosphere has been stripped. The lunar surface has since been shaped by large impact events and many small ones, forming
5445-509: The Evening Star". He intended his stories to become a mythology that would explain the origins of English history and culture, and to provide the necessary "historical" background for his invented Elvish languages . Much of this early work was written while Tolkien, then a British officer returned from France during World War I, was in hospital and on sick leave. He completed " The Fall of Gondolin " in late 1916. He called his collection of nascent stories The Book of Lost Tales . This became
5566-527: The Finnish epic, the Kalevala ; or of St Jerome , Snorri Sturlusson , Jacob Grimm , or Nikolai Gruntvig, all of whom Tolkien saw as exemplars of a professional and creative philology. This was, Nagy believes, what Tolkien thought essential if he was to present a mythology for England , since such a thing had to have been written by many hands. Further, writes Nagy, Christopher Tolkien "inserted himself in
5687-691: The First Age to the end of the Third Age", and further that they "function as the ultimate expression of the natural world in Tolkien's mythos." Matthew Dickerson writes in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia that the Two Trees are "the most important mythic symbols in all of the legendarium". He quotes Tolkien's words in The Silmarillion that "about their fate all the tales of the Elder days are woven". They have that central place because they are
5808-504: The Moon approximately 10 minutes, taking 5 minutes to rise, and 5 minutes to fall. On average, 120 kilograms of dust are present above the Moon, rising up to 100 kilometers above the surface. Dust counts made by LADEE 's Lunar Dust EXperiment (LDEX) found particle counts peaked during the Geminid , Quadrantid , Northern Taurid , and Omicron Centaurid meteor showers , when the Earth, and Moon pass through comet debris. The lunar dust cloud
5929-458: The Moon derived from the impactor, rather than the proto-Earth. However, models from 2007 and later suggest a larger fraction of the Moon derived from the proto-Earth. Other bodies of the inner Solar System such as Mars and Vesta have, according to meteorites from them, very different oxygen and tungsten isotopic compositions compared to Earth. However, Earth and the Moon have nearly identical isotopic compositions. The isotopic equalization of
6050-495: The Moon for longer than just one lunar orbit. The topography of the Moon has been measured with laser altimetry and stereo image analysis . Its most extensive topographic feature is the giant far-side South Pole–Aitken basin , some 2,240 km (1,390 mi) in diameter, the largest crater on the Moon and the second-largest confirmed impact crater in the Solar System . At 13 km (8.1 mi) deep, its floor
6171-466: The Moon formed around 50 million years after the origin of the Solar System . Historically, several formation mechanisms have been proposed, but none satisfactorily explains the features of the Earth–Moon system. A fission of the Moon from Earth's crust through centrifugal force would require too great an initial rotation rate of Earth. Gravitational capture of a pre-formed Moon depends on an unfeasibly extended atmosphere of Earth to dissipate
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#17327647665946292-455: The Moon is a crescent\decrescent, [REDACTED] \ [REDACTED] , for example in M ☾ 'lunar mass' (also M L ). The lunar geological periods are named after their characteristic features, from most impact craters outside the dark mare , to the mare and later craters, and finally the young, still bright and therefore readily visible craters with ray systems like Copernicus or Tycho . Isotope dating of lunar samples suggests
6413-558: The Moon's solar illumination varies much less with season than on Earth and it allows for the existence of some peaks of eternal light at the Moon's north pole , at the rim of the crater Peary . The surface is exposed to drastic temperature differences ranging from 120 °C to −171 °C depending on the solar irradiance . Because of the lack of atmosphere, temperatures of different areas vary particularly upon whether they are in sunlight or shadow, making topographical details play
6534-403: The Moon, lūna . Selenian / s ə l iː n i ə n / is an adjective used to describe the Moon as a world, rather than as a celestial object, but its use is rare. It is derived from σελήνη selēnē , the Greek word for the Moon, and its cognate selenic was originally a rare synonym but now nearly always refers to the chemical element selenium . The element name selenium and
6655-594: The Rings stands for "the deeper history of Men in Tolkien's Secondary World , reaching back to [its ancestors,] the Two Trees of Valinor". During most of the action of the novel, the tree is dead, and has been for over a century, but all the same it serves as a symbol of Gondor's strength and national identity, and of hope for the Kingdom's renewal. She suggests that the White Tree parallels the Dry Tree mentioned in
6776-401: The Rings , did he realise the significance of hobbits in his mythology. In 1937, encouraged by the success of The Hobbit , Tolkien submitted to his publisher George Allen & Unwin an incomplete but more fully developed version of The Silmarillion called Quenta Silmarillion . The reader rejected the work as being obscure and "too Celtic ". The publisher instead asked Tolkien to write
6897-587: The Sampo complex, and chose to split the Sampo's parts into desirable objects. Its pillar became the Two Trees of Valinor with their Tree of life aspect, illuminating the world. Its decorated lid became the brilliant Silmarils, which embodied all that was left of the light of the Two Trees, thus tying the symbols together. Cynthia Cohen writes in Tolkien Studies that the White Tree of Gondor in The Lord of
7018-405: The Silmarillion after completing The Lord of the Rings , and he greatly desired to publish the two works together. When it became clear that would not be possible, Tolkien turned his full attention to preparing The Lord of the Rings for publication. John D. Rateliff has analysed the complex relationship between The Hobbit and The Silmarillion , providing evidence that they were related from
7139-494: The Solar System relative to their primary planets. The Moon's diameter is about 3,500 km, more than a quarter of Earth's, with the face of the Moon comparable to the width of either Mainland Australia , Europe or the Contiguous United States (which excludes Alaska , etc.). The whole surface area of the Moon is about 38 million square kilometers, comparable to North and South America combined,
7260-467: The Solar System, categorizable as one of its planetary-mass moons , making it a satellite planet under the geophysical definitions of the term . It is smaller than Mercury and considerably larger than the largest dwarf planet of the Solar System, Pluto . While the minor-planet moon Charon of the Pluto-Charon system is larger relative to Pluto, the Moon is the largest natural satellite of
7381-492: The Sun and the Moon. Parallels have also been identified with Celtic mythology , where several pairs of trees appear. The White Tree of Gondor, too, has been traced to the medieval Dry Tree , a symbol of resurrection . Verlyn Flieger has described the progressive splintering of the light of the Two Trees through Middle-earth's troubled history, noting that light represents the Christian Logos . Tom Shippey links
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#17327647665947502-426: The Sun completely during a total solar eclipse . From Earth about 59% of the lunar surface is visible over time due to cyclical shifts in perspective ( libration ), making parts of the far side of the Moon visible. The Moon has been an important source of inspiration and knowledge for humans, having been crucial to cosmography , mythology, religion , art, time keeping , natural science , and spaceflight . In 1959,
7623-535: The Two Trees. Tolkien%27s legendarium Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien 's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings , and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth . The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps , and inventing languages and names as
7744-458: The Valar to Elves and Men. In his view, this stewardship is central to the moral battle, as the Two Trees, like Men and Elves, are composed of both matter and spirit. Dickerson and Jonathan Evans note that Tolkien calls the Elves "stewards and guardians of [Middle-earth's] beauty"; they are constantly preoccupied with maintaining the beauty of nature, something they inherited from Yavanna's making of
7865-478: The White Tree of Númenor. When the dark lord Sauron takes control of the island, he makes king Ar-Pharazôn cut it down. The hero Isildur saves a single fruit of Nimloth, and plants seedlings in Middle-earth. During the rule of the Stewards of Gondor, the White Tree of Gondor , a descendant of Nimloth, stands dead in the citadel of Minas Tirith. On Aragorn's return as King at the end of the Third Age , he finds
7986-453: The ancestry of the tree and the lineage of the Kings merge into a continuum. Patrick Curry , in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , writes that the importance that Tolkien gives to the Two Trees shows "the iconic status of trees in both his work and his life." Richard Goetsch adds that the Two Trees are "central to many of the crucial plot developments of the entire saga, from the beginning of
8107-642: The body of Tolkien's work consisting of: These, with The Lays of Beleriand , written from 1918 onwards, comprise the different "phases" of Tolkien's Elven legendary writings, posthumously edited and published in The Silmarillion and in their original forms in Christopher Tolkien's series The History of Middle-earth . Other Tolkien scholars have used the term legendarium in a variety of contexts. Christopher Tolkien's introduction to The History of Middle-earth series talks about
8228-548: The centrepiece of its narrative. The whole of the history of Tolkien's First Age is strongly affected by the desire of many characters, including the dark lord Morgoth (as Melkor is now known) to possess the Silmarils that contain the only remaining unsullied light of the Trees. Morgoth desires them for himself, and manages to steal them, provoking the world-changing War of the Jewels. One of the Silmarils survives, and Varda puts it in
8349-413: The combined American landmass having an area (excluding all islands) of 37.7 million square kilometers. The Moon's mass is 1/81 of Earth's, being the second densest among the planetary moons, and having the second highest surface gravity , after Io , at 0.1654 g and an escape velocity of 2.38 km/s ( 8 600 km/h; 5 300 mph) . The Moon is a differentiated body that
8470-433: The crust and mantle. The absence of such neutral species (atoms or molecules) as oxygen , nitrogen , carbon , hydrogen and magnesium , which are present in the regolith , is not understood. Water vapor has been detected by Chandrayaan-1 and found to vary with latitude, with a maximum at ~60–70 degrees; it is possibly generated from the sublimation of water ice in the regolith. These gases either return into
8591-447: The dense mare basaltic lava flows that fill those basins. The anomalies greatly influence the orbit of spacecraft about the Moon. There are some puzzles: lava flows by themselves cannot explain all of the gravitational signature, and some mascons exist that are not linked to mare volcanism. The Moon has an external magnetic field of less than 0.2 nanoteslas , or less than one hundred thousandth that of Earth . The Moon does not have
8712-514: The depressions associated with impact basins , though the Moon's largest expanse of basalt flooding, Oceanus Procellarum , does not correspond to an obvious impact basin. Different episodes of lava flows in maria can often be recognized by variations in surface albedo and distinct flow margins. As the maria formed, cooling and contraction of the basaltic lava created wrinkle ridges in some areas. These low, sinuous ridges can extend for hundreds of kilometers and often outline buried structures within
8833-495: The diameter of Earth. Tidal forces between Earth and the Moon have synchronized the Moon's orbital period ( lunar month ) with its rotation period ( lunar day ) at 29.5 Earth days, causing the same side of the Moon to always face Earth. The Moon's gravitational pull—and, to a lesser extent, the Sun 's—are the main drivers of Earth's tides . In geophysical terms , the Moon is a planetary-mass object or satellite planet . Its mass
8954-626: The editor, Christopher Tolkien." Dickerson and Evans use the phrase "legendarium" to encompass the entirety of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings "for convenience". This would encompass texts such as the incomplete drafts of stories published before The History of Middle-earth in the 1980 Unfinished Tales . Shaun Gunner of The Tolkien Society has called the 2021 collection of Tolkien's previously unpublished legendarium writings The Nature of Middle-earth , edited by Carl F. Hostetter, "an unofficial 13th volume of The History of Middle-earth series". Unlike " fictional universes " constructed for
9075-468: The energy of the passing Moon. A co-formation of Earth and the Moon together in the primordial accretion disk does not explain the depletion of metals in the Moon. None of these hypotheses can account for the high angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system. The prevailing theory is that the Earth–Moon system formed after a giant impact of a Mars -sized body (named Theia ) with the proto-Earth . The oblique impact blasted material into orbit about
9196-508: The evil beings Ungoliant and Melkor , but their last flower and fruit are made into the Moon and the Sun . Melkor, now known as Morgoth, steals the Silmarils, provoking the disastrous War of the Jewels. Descendants of Telperion survive, growing in Númenor and, after its destruction, in Gondor ; in both cases the trees are symbolic of those kingdoms. For many years while Gondor has no King,
9317-422: The expansion of plasma clouds. These clouds are generated during large impacts in an ambient magnetic field. This is supported by the location of the largest crustal magnetizations situated near the antipodes of the giant impact basins. The Moon has an atmosphere so tenuous as to be nearly vacuum , with a total mass of less than 10 tonnes (9.8 long tons; 11 short tons). The surface pressure of this small mass
9438-1182: The exposed ones. Conversely, mare lava has obscured many impact melt sheets and pools. Impact melts are formed when intense shock pressures from collisions vaporize and melt zones around the impact site. Where still exposed, impact melt can be distinguished from mare lava by its distribution, albedo, and texture. Sinuous rilles , found in and around maria, are likely extinct lava channels or collapsed lava tubes . They typically originate from volcanic vents , meandering and sometimes branching as they progress. The largest examples, such as Schroter's Valley and Rima Hadley , are significantly longer, wider, and deeper than terrestrial lava channels, sometimes featuring bends and sharp turns that again, are uncommon on Earth. Mare volcanism has altered impact craters in various ways, including filling them to varying degrees, and raising and fracturing their floors from uplift of mare material beneath their interiors. Examples of such craters include Taruntius and Gassendi . Some craters, such as Hyginus , are of wholly volcanic origin, forming as calderas or collapse pits . Such craters are relatively rare, and tend to be smaller (typically
9559-510: The first human-made objects to leave Earth and reach another body arrived at the Moon, with the flyby of the Soviet Union 's Luna 1 and the intentional impact of Luna 2 . In 1966, the Moon became the first extraterrestrial body with a soft landing by Luna 9 and a orbital insertion by Luna 10 were achieved . On July 20, 1969, humans for the first time landed on the Moon and any extraterrestrial body, at Mare Tranquillitatis with
9680-427: The flood lavas that erupted onto the surface from partial melting in the mantle confirm the mafic mantle composition, which is more iron-rich than that of Earth. The crust is on average about 50 kilometres (31 mi) thick. The Moon is the second-densest satellite in the Solar System, after Io . However, the inner core of the Moon is small, with a radius of about 350 kilometres (220 mi) or less, around 20% of
9801-422: The functional place of Bilbo" as editor and collator, in his view "reinforcing the mythopoeic effect" that his father had wanted to achieve, making the published book do what Bilbo's book was meant to do, and so unintentionally realising his father's intention. Moon The Moon is Earth 's only natural satellite . It orbits at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), about 30 times
9922-415: The help of the giant spider Ungoliant to destroy the Two Trees. Concealed in a cloud of darkness, Melkor strikes each Tree and the insatiable Ungoliant devours whatever life and light remains in it. Yavanna and Nienna attempt a healing, but they succeed only in reviving Telperion's last flower (to become the Moon ) and Laurelin's last fruit (to become the Sun ). These are turned into flying ships crossing
10043-645: The hill of Tara. Lastly, the dews of Telperion and the rains from Laurelin that served "as wells of water and of light" match up, according to Barnfield, with Connla's Well and the Well of Segais . Tolkien read the Finnish Kalevala closely. Its central symbol is the magical Sampo , a device that brought wealth and good fortune to its owner, but whose mechanism is described only vaguely. Jonathan Himes, writing in Mythlore , has suggested that Tolkien found
10164-445: The idea of multiple 'voices' who collected the stories over the millennia. When Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937 (which was itself not originally intended for publication, but as a story told privately to his children), the narrative of the published text was loosely influenced by the legendarium as a context, but was not designed to be part of it. Carpenter comments that not until Tolkien began to write its sequel, The Lord of
10285-471: The lander Eagle of the United States ' Apollo 11 mission. Five more crews were sent between then and 1972, each with two men landing on the surface. The longest stay was 75 hours by the Apollo 17 crew. Since then, exploration of the Moon has continued robotically, and crewed missions are being planned to return beginning in the late 2020s. The usual English proper name for Earth's natural satellite
10406-633: The legendarium, and calls them axis mundi trees, like those in the Garden of Eden or the Norse world-tree, Yggdrasil . Tolkien, as a Roman Catholic , knew the significance of light in Christian symbolism ; he equated it with the Christian Logos , the Divine Word. The scholar Lisa Coutras states that transcendental light is an essential element of his subcreated world. In it, the Two Trees embody
10527-466: The light of creation, which in turn reflects God's light. Verlyn Flieger describes the progressive splintering of the first created light, down through successive catastrophes. After the destruction of the twin lamps of Arda, Yavanna recreates what she can of the light in the Two Trees; Varda catches some of the light, and Fëanor creates the Silmarils, filled with the light. They are the unrivalled jewels that give The Silmarillion its name, and serve as
10648-421: The magma ocean had crystallized, lower-density plagioclase minerals could form and float into a crust atop. The final liquids to crystallize would have been initially sandwiched between the crust and mantle, with a high abundance of incompatible and heat-producing elements. Consistent with this perspective, geochemical mapping made from orbit suggests a crust of mostly anorthosite . The Moon rock samples of
10769-521: The mantle could be responsible for prolonged activities on the far side in the Orientale basin. The lighter-colored regions of the Moon are called terrae , or more commonly highlands , because they are higher than most maria. They have been radiometrically dated to having formed 4.4 billion years ago, and may represent plagioclase cumulates of the lunar magma ocean. In contrast to Earth, no major lunar mountains are believed to have formed as
10890-406: The mare. Another result of maria formation is the creation of concentric depressions along the edges, known as arcuate rilles . These features occur as the mare basalts sink inward under their own weight, causing the edges to fracture and separate. In addition to the visible maria, the Moon has mare deposits covered by ejecta from impacts. Called cryptomares, these hidden mares are likely older than
11011-672: The mythology and symbolism of the Two Trees to the medieval Trees of the Sun and the Moon. Tolkien stated in an interview that the Two Trees derived from them, "in the great Alexander stories" rather than from the World Tree Yggdrasil of Norse myth. Garth notes that the Wonders of the East , an Old English manuscript in the same Codex as Beowulf , tells that Alexander the Great travelled beyond India to Paradise , where he saw
11132-641: The name for the first two volumes of The History of Middle-earth , which include these early texts. Tolkien never completed The Book of Lost Tales ; he left it to compose the poems " The Lay of Leithian " (in 1925) and " The Lay of the Children of Húrin " (possibly as early as 1918). The first complete version of The Silmarillion was the "Sketch of the Mythology" written in 1926 (later published in Volume IV of The History of Middle-earth ). The "Sketch"
11253-571: The narrative framing device of an Anglo-Saxon mariner named Ælfwine or Eriol or Ottor Wǽfre who finds the island of Tol Eressëa , where the Elves live, and the Elves tell him their history. He collects, translates from Old English , and writes the mythology that appears in The History of Middle-earth . Ælfwine means "Elf-friend" in Old English; men whose names have the same meaning, such as Alboin, Alwin, and Elendil , were to appear in
11374-508: The nature of evil in Arda , the origin of Orcs , the customs of the Elves , the nature and means of Elvish rebirth, the "flat" world, and the story of the Sun and Moon. In any event, with one or two exceptions, he made little change to the narratives during the remaining years of his life. The scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that Tolkien thought of his legendarium as a presented collection, with
11495-524: The near side of the Moon, and cover 31% of the surface of the near side compared with 2% of the far side. This is likely due to a concentration of heat-producing elements under the crust on the near side, which would have caused the underlying mantle to heat up, partially melt, rise to the surface and erupt. Most of the Moon's mare basalts erupted during the Imbrian period , 3.3–3.7 billion years ago, though some being as young as 1.2 billion years and as old as 4.2 billion years. In 2006,
11616-440: The near-side. Causes of the distribution of the lunar highlands on the far side are also not well understood. Topological measurements show the near side crust is thinner than the far side. One possible scenario then is that large impacts on the near side may have made it easier for lava to flow onto the surface. The Moon is a very slightly scalene ellipsoid due to tidal stretching, with its long axis displaced 30° from facing
11737-573: The overlapping of different and sometimes contradictory accounts was central to his desired effect. Nagy notes that Tolkien went so far as to create facsimile pages from the Dwarves' Book of Mazarbul that is found by the Fellowship in Moria . Further, Tolkien was a philologist ; Nagy comments that Tolkien may have been intentionally imitating the philological style of Elias Lönnrot , compiler of
11858-449: The pine trees of Deirdre and Naoise , and the paired rose bush of Esyllt and vine of Trystan . Further, the hill of Ezellohar in front of Valimar's western gate matches the "sacred centre of Ireland", the Hill of Uisneach "to the west of Tara". The Two Trees of Valinor, in this context, align with the "feminine" Ash tree of Uisnech, and the "masculine" Lia Fáil , the standing stone on
11979-432: The possibility of a much warmer lunar mantle than previously believed, at least on the near side where the deep crust is substantially warmer because of the greater concentration of radioactive elements. Evidence has been found for 2–10 million years old basaltic volcanism within the crater Lowell, inside the Orientale basin. Some combination of an initially hotter mantle and local enrichment of heat-producing elements in
12100-587: The prefix seleno- (as in selenography , the study of the physical features of the Moon) come from this Greek word. Artemis , the Greek goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, came to also be identified as the goddess of the Moon ( Selene ) and was sometimes called Cynthia , after her birthplace on Mount Cynthus . Her Roman equivalent is Diana . The names Luna, Cynthia, and Selene are reflected in technical terms for lunar orbits such as apolune , pericynthion and selenocentric . The astronomical symbol for
12221-445: The purpose of writing and publishing popular fiction, Tolkien's legendarium for a long period was a private project, concerned with questions of philology , cosmology , theology and mythology. His biographer Humphrey Carpenter writes that although by 1923 Tolkien had almost completed The Book of Lost Tales , "it was almost as if he did not want to finish it", beginning instead to rewrite it; he suggests that Tolkien may have doubted if
12342-436: The radius of the Moon. Its composition is not well understood, but is probably metallic iron alloyed with a small amount of sulfur and nickel; analyzes of the Moon's time-variable rotation suggest that it is at least partly molten. The pressure at the lunar core is estimated to be 5 GPa (49,000 atm). On average the Moon's surface gravity is 1.62 m/s ( 0.1654 g ; 5.318 ft/s ), about half of
12463-471: The regolith because of the Moon's gravity or are lost to space, either through solar radiation pressure or, if they are ionized, by being swept away by the solar wind's magnetic field. Studies of Moon magma samples retrieved by the Apollo missions demonstrate that the Moon had once possessed a relatively thick atmosphere for a period of 70 million years between 3 and 4 billion years ago. This atmosphere, sourced from gases ejected from lunar volcanic eruptions,
12584-518: The silver one to the north, and Ormal, the golden one to the south. They are created by the Valar , powerful spirit beings, but are cast down and destroyed by the Dark Lord Melkor . The Valar retreat to Valinor to make their home on the western continent, and there one of them, Yavanna the Vala of living things, sings into existence the Two Trees to provide a new pair of light-sources. Of
12705-554: The sky to symbolise hope: it is Venus , the Morning and Evening Star. Tom Shippey , like Tolkien a philologist , analyses Tolkien's treatment of the light and dark elves mentioned in the 13th century Prose Edda : in Old Norse , Ljósálfar and Dökkálfar . Tolkien makes the distinguishing feature between these two groups whether the Elves had seen the light of the Two Trees of Valinor, or not. To make this work, Tolkien creates
12826-572: The sky, and each is steered by spirits of the same 'genders' as the Trees themselves: male Tilion and female Arien. This is why, in The Lord of the Rings , the Sun is called "she" and the Moon "he". The true light of the Trees now resides only in the three Silmarils , jewels created with the light of the Two Trees before their destruction, by the Elf Fëanor . Because the Elves that first come to Valinor especially love Telperion, Yavanna takes
12947-547: The source of the light for the world of Arda while they live, and they are the ancestors of the various trees that symbolise the Kingdoms of Númenor and later of Gondor. Further, they contain the "thought of things that grow in the earth", placed in them by the Vala Yavanna when she sang them into being. Angelica Varandas likewise comments that the Two Trees are "the most significant symbols of peace, prosperity and order" in
13068-473: The start of The Hobbit ' s composition. With the success of The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien in the late 1950s returned to the Silmarillion, planning to revise the material of his legendarium into a form "fit for publication", a task which kept him occupied until his death in 1973, without attaining a completed state. The legendarium has indeed been called "a jumble of overlapping and often competing stories, annals, and lexicons." Much of his later writing
13189-460: The surface gravity of Mars and about a sixth of Earth's. The Moon's gravitational field is not uniform. The details of the gravitational field have been measured through tracking the Doppler shift of radio signals emitted by orbiting spacecraft. The main lunar gravity features are mascons , large positive gravitational anomalies associated with some of the giant impact basins, partly caused by
13310-421: The synonymous noun legendary date from 1513. The Middle English South English Legendary is an example of this form of the noun. Tolkien described his works as a "legendarium" in four letters from 1951 to 1955, a period in which he was attempting to have his unfinished Silmarillion published alongside the more complete The Lord of the Rings . On the Silmarillion, he wrote in 1951, "This legendarium ends with
13431-497: The task. Tolkien's son Christopher chose portions of his late father's vast collection of unpublished material and shaped them into The Silmarillion (1977), a semi-chronological and semi-complete narrative of the mythical world and its origins. The sales were sufficient to enable him to work on and publish many volumes of his father's legendarium stories and drafts; some were presented as completed tales, while others illustrated his father's complex creative process. Tolkien research ,
13552-593: The two magical trees. They drip down a wonderful balsam , and have the power of speech. They tell Alexander that he will die in Babylon . Garth writes that Tolkien's trees emit light, not balsam; and instead of prophesying death, their own deaths bring Arda's era of immortality to an end. Marie Barnfield, writing in Mallorn , states that the male/female pair of trees has numerous parallels in Celtic mythology , including
13673-505: The two unfinished time travel novels, The Lost Road in 1936 and The Notion Club Papers in 1945, as the protagonists reappeared in each of several different times. There is no such framework in the published version of The Silmarillion , but the Narn i Hîn Húrin is introduced with the note "Here begins that tale which Ǽlfwine made from the Húrinien ." Tolkien never fully dropped
13794-412: The two, Telperion is male and silver, while the other, Laurelin, is female and golden. The Trees stand on the hill Ezellohar, outside Valimar, the city of the Valar. They grow in the presence of all the Valar, watered by the tears of the Vala of pity and mourning, Nienna . Telperion's leaves are dark green above and silver below. His flowers are white like cherry blossom, and his silvery dew is collected as
13915-583: The verse that Aragorn recites when he sees the White Mountains of Gondor: "West Wind blew there; the light upon the Silver Tree / Fell like bright rain in gardens in the Kings of old," which she states links Telperion, the Silver Tree of Valinor, to the White Tree. Since Tolkien has left it ambiguous whether the Silver Tree of the verse, the place where the West Wind blew, or where the "bright rain" fell, are in long-ago Valinor or present-time Gondor ,
14036-544: The whole legendarium", equating the legendarium with the Silmarillion (which with italics denotes the 1977 book published under that name, and without italics means the larger body of un-edited drafts used to create that work). In the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , David Bratman writes that " The History of Middle-earth is a longitudinal study of the development and elaboration of Tolkien's legendarium through his transcribed manuscripts, with textual commentary by
14157-446: The winter solstice in the north polar crater Hermite . This is the coldest temperature in the Solar System ever measured by a spacecraft, colder even than the surface of Pluto . Blanketed on top of the Moon's crust is a highly comminuted (broken into ever smaller particles) and impact gardened mostly gray surface layer called regolith , formed by impact processes. The finer regolith, the lunar soil of silicon dioxide glass, has
14278-555: Was a 28-page synopsis written to explain the background of the story of Túrin to R. W. Reynolds, a friend to whom Tolkien had sent several of the stories. From the "Sketch" Tolkien developed a fuller narrative version of The Silmarillion called Quenta Noldorinwa (also included in Volume IV). The Quenta Noldorinwa was the last version of The Silmarillion that Tolkien completed. The stories in The Book of Lost Tales employ
14399-442: Was however concerned more with the theological and philosophical underpinnings of the work, rather than with the narratives themselves. By this time, he had doubts about fundamental aspects of the work that went back to the earliest versions of the stories, and it seems that he felt the need to resolve these problems before he could produce the "final" version of The Silmarillion . During this time he wrote extensively on such topics as
14520-424: Was initially in hydrostatic equilibrium but has since departed from this condition. It has a geochemically distinct crust , mantle , and core . The Moon has a solid iron-rich inner core with a radius possibly as small as 240 kilometres (150 mi) and a fluid outer core primarily made of liquid iron with a radius of roughly 300 kilometres (190 mi). Around the core is a partially molten boundary layer with
14641-401: Was twice the thickness of that of present-day Mars . The ancient lunar atmosphere was eventually stripped away by solar winds and dissipated into space. A permanent Moon dust cloud exists around the Moon, generated by small particles from comets. Estimates are 5 tons of comet particles strike the Moon's surface every 24 hours, resulting in the ejection of dust particles. The dust stays above
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