np NP, Friday September 17, 2016

[hkmaly 490]

4 hours ago, Scotty said:

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Hmmm ... yes, it's possible you can also prolong enchantment using own energy, which would make Nanase able to keep simple enchantment going indefinitely even outside Moperville even if it wouldn't be HER enchantment. Of course, Guardian form spell is NOT simple enchantment.

I was thinking more along the lines that simple enchantment could use less energy to keep going than the natural recovery rate which could mean indefinite duration, but the guardian form and other complex enchantments would burn energy faster than the recovery rate.

I meant that there may be difference between own spell and enchantment someone else casted on you. Obviously, you can prolong your own spell with your energy, but it may be more complicated with someone else's spell, even if it's casted on you.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:

The guardian form itself probably would have one of the highest energy usage rates out of the known spells, Elliot's heroine form would be a complex enchantment but it might break even with his recovery rate.

Guardian form certainly have highest energy usage "at rest". Cheerleadra may (maybe) get close when Elliot is actively fighting - using flight, superstrength and regeneration all at once. But I think it will consume even less than his recovery rate when he just is transformed and stand or even hover on place.

Meanwhile, Sarah's spells likely consumes big amount of energy in the instant it's casted - possibly equivalent of several seconds or even minutes of guardian form - but next to nothing afterwards.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:

Elliot's recovery rate was abnormally high due to his improper awakening so that probably helped a lot, but if his acceptance of the female morphs has fixed his buildup issue then it's possible his recovery rate is lower now.

No. The buildup issue is NOT raising your recovery rate. The buildup issue makes you unable to stop recover energy, forcing you to cast spells even when you don't want to. When you fix it, your recovery rate doesn't go lower, you just get the option to simply stop recovering energy when you are at maximum and can't recover more.

I'm sure Nanase's recovery rate is higher than Elliot.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:

Let's see, Elliot likely would have morphed before he went to pick up Ashley for their date

He likely did, but not in the crazy "burn off as much energy as I can" as he did before the interview. I don't think he was at zero.

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

No, because boars are not known to have very exact nutrition meters. Also, just because the holes in ground were bigger, doesn't mean it found more stuff to eat. And it needed more nutrition to power the transformation.

I see no reason why the need for food would not scale with the weight of the creature in question. For example, humans eat about 1-2% (dry weight) of their body weight in food per day. Scale up a human to ten times as tall, and the body mass increases by a factor of a thousand. So, a fifty/sixty foot tall person would eat about a ton of food per day.

Enlarging enchantment will NOT use several gigaton of TNT of energy to actually create more mass for your body, and it will not "return" that energy afterwards. It's just enchantment, cheat on physical law. The bear was not affected by square-cube law either (confirmed by Raven).

We were talking about this. Shrinking, then eating some food and growing again will NOT make you save on food, because you get the same amount of nutrients from the food as without shrinking. Growing food will not make it have more nutrients. Both confirmed by Dan.

Instead, there seem to be some process which "sync" the shrink energy - transfer it from the person to the food or the other way - to make both shrunk with same ration before or while digesting the food. And similarly when growing.

... in fact, the bear might be getting smaller by eating ... although not as fast as he would get if the enchantment ended.

 

[malloyd 23]

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

I see no reason why the need for food would not scale with the weight of the creature in question.

Because it doesn't for real organisms?  Metabolic rate (and hence stuff like food and oxygen demand, and heat dissipation requirements) scale faster than surface area, but slower than mass.  The exact exponent is a point of some debate, but it's somewhere around Mass^0.75, so scale weight up by 1000, and metabolic load only goes up by about 180.

[ijuin 572]

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

We were talking about this. Shrinking, then eating some food and growing again will NOT make you save on food, because you get the same amount of nutrients from the food as without shrinking. Growing food will not make it have more nutrients. Both confirmed by Dan.

Instead, there seem to be some process which "sync" the shrink energy - transfer it from the person to the food or the other way - to make both shrunk with same ration before or while digesting the food. And similarly when growing.

 

In that case, a shrunk person who stayed shrunk for a long time would starve because they would need to eat more food than would actually fit in their stomach, assuming that it was not shrunken food. If the person is 1/10 height then their stomach is 1/1,000 volume. And even if the food shrinks inside the stomach, their throat is 1/100 the cross section and their mouth is 1/1,000 as big too, which means that they can't eat fast enough if their calorie requirement stays full-sized...

[hkmaly 490]

41 minutes ago, ijuin said:

In that case, a shrunk person who stayed shrunk for a long time would starve because they would need to eat more food than would actually fit in their stomach, assuming that it was not shrunken food. If the person is 1/10 height then their stomach is 1/1,000 volume. And even if the food shrinks inside the stomach, their throat is 1/100 the cross section and their mouth is 1/1,000 as big too, which means that they can't eat fast enough if their calorie requirement stays full-sized...

The food WOULD shrink inside the stomach, but yes, if they would be eating normal sized food it would take them more time and with the ration 1/10  .... hmmm ... well, still doable, if they don't sleep, I think I would be able to eat enough calories for whole day in 24h/100 = 14 minutes.

Also, people can survive without food for longer than month. The shrinking enchantment is not likely to last that long unless they really want to. In fact, I suspect when they start feeling the hunger they would subconsciously start resisting even if they were ok with the enchantment before.

(And finally ... do we know what is the limit Rhoda can shrink to? She may not be able to reach 1/10 ...)

(Also, there may be additional protection based on breaking even more physical laws if things go dangerous, because transformation safety IS law in EGS. Remember the "enlarged person eats a lot" case?)

[Don Edwards 548]

33 minutes ago, ijuin said:

In that case, a shrunk person who stayed shrunk for a long time would starve because they would need to eat more food than would actually fit in their stomach, assuming that it was not shrunken food. If the person is 1/10 height then their stomach is 1/1,000 volume. And even if the food shrinks inside the stomach, their throat is 1/100 the cross section and their mouth is 1/1,000 as big too, which means that they can't eat fast enough if their calorie requirement stays full-sized...

Actually, the square-cube problem strikes for enlarging, not shrinking. If a person is 1/10 the height they have 1/1000 the volume and mass, and 1/100 the cross-sectional areas of bones, muscles, blood vessels, esophagus, trachea, etc. - so they would find it quite easy to eat enough, breathe enough, lift several times their (shrunken) body weight...

Conversely, if a person is 10 times as large they are 100 times as strong and 1000 times as heavy. Nearly everyone carries their own weight around routinely, but approximately no animals that are human size or larger can carry 10 times their own weight.

[hkmaly 490]

6 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

Actually, the square-cube problem strikes for enlarging, not shrinking. If a person is 1/10 the height they have 1/1000 the volume and mass, and 1/100 the cross-sectional areas of bones, muscles, blood vessels, esophagus, trachea, etc. - so they would find it quite easy to eat enough, breathe enough, lift several times their (shrunken) body weight...

Conversely, if a person is 10 times as large they are 100 times as strong and 1000 times as heavy. Nearly everyone carries their own weight around routinely, but approximately no animals that are human size or larger can carry 10 times their own weight.

It was directly said by Raven that boar is NOT affected by this because magic. We can assume anyone enchanted by Rhoda will share this "cheat".

[malloyd 23]

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It was directly said by Raven that boar is NOT affected by this because magic. We can assume anyone enchanted by Rhoda will share this "cheat".

In all honesty any story that involves survivable growth or shrinkage probably has to cheat on the laws of nature.  It's a fantasy element, not a science fictional one.  Change size by a few percent and you don't have to worry about how much food you can or can't eat.  It doesn't matter, because your changed size digestive enzymes no longer have the right distances between their binding sites to digest it anyway, and you can't breathe normal sized oxygen to burn it either.  You can go with adding or removing molecules or cells instead of changing their size to try to get around that, but that just moves the problems somewhere else - add or remove many cells from your brain and it doesn't work properly anymore....

[HarJIT 97]

Similarly, mirroring/flipping a person may pose major issues unless you have a decent supply of L-glucose, to say nothing of chiral amino acids.

[hkmaly 490]

8 hours ago, malloyd said:

17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It was directly said by Raven that boar is NOT affected by this because magic. We can assume anyone enchanted by Rhoda will share this "cheat".

In all honesty any story that involves survivable growth or shrinkage probably has to cheat on the laws of nature.  It's a fantasy element, not a science fictional one.  Change size by a few percent and you don't have to worry about how much food you can or can't eat.  It doesn't matter, because your changed size digestive enzymes no longer have the right distances between their binding sites to digest it anyway, and you can't breathe normal sized oxygen to burn it either.  You can go with adding or removing molecules or cells instead of changing their size to try to get around that, but that just moves the problems somewhere else - add or remove many cells from your brain and it doesn't work properly anymore....

... even adding SINGLE cell into brain without disrupting something would be challenge. Sure, the brain will adapt ... but that's not exactly something which would calm that person you used to be ...

And adding molecules? Like ... let's make the cell core bigger by adding more DNA? ... not even modern CPU would survive adding molecules, and body is much more dynamic.

And, HOW do you make oxygen with different size anyway? It's not like if atom is solid. The "size" of atom is based on where are stable orbits for electrons.

Considering the possible alternatives, the "shrinking energy" and automatic shrinking or growing of air and food as it's entering your body is the MOST scientific way to deal with this (not counting the ways where the shrunk person WONT survive and stuff around will be damaged by weird interactions with resized atoms).

3 hours ago, HarJIT said:

Similarly, mirroring/flipping a person may pose major issues unless you have a decent supply of L-glucose, to say nothing of chiral amino acids.

Chiral amino acids? Those at least MIGHT be found in bacteria. Also, you can survive longer without amino acids than without glucose.

[malloyd 23]

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Chiral amino acids? Those at least MIGHT be found in bacteria. Also, you can survive longer without amino acids than without glucose.

And it's only an issue if your magic mirroring process has a particle exclusion.  You have more pressing problems if you come out of it made of antimatter.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

3 hours ago, malloyd said:

You have more pressing problems if you come out of it made of antimatter.

At least they would be over very, very quickly. So would the problems of most everybody on the continental land mass you happened to be on at the time.

[EmpactWB 21]

40 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

At least they would be over very, very quickly. So would the problems of most everybody on the continental land mass you happened to be on at the time.

Nah, it's not that bad. While a 60 kg (global average) person would wipe out Texas, I doubt Canada would feel a thing. An 80.7 kg person (average North American) could pretty much remove Spain and Portugal from the maps, but I'm confident that Romania would probably be fine. Lousy tourists.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

4 hours ago, EmpactWB said:

Nah, it's not that bad. While a 60 kg (global average) person would wipe out Texas, I doubt Canada would feel a thing. An 80.7 kg person (average North American) could pretty much remove Spain and Portugal from the maps, but I'm confident that Romania would probably be fine. Lousy tourists.

I dunno, I think the aftereffects on weather patterns with all that dust being hurled up, not to mention the massive burst of radioactivity, would be pretty fierce. Admittedly that would take somewhat longer.

[ijuin 572]

Antimatter explosions are mostly gamma rays and neutrinos--there are no loose neutrons generated in the way that fission reactions tend to do, so there is far less radioactive material left over afterwards than with nuclear bombs of comparable yield.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

4 hours ago, ijuin said:

Antimatter explosions are mostly gamma rays and neutrinos--there are no loose neutrons generated in the way that fission reactions tend to do, so there is far less radioactive material left over afterwards than with nuclear bombs of comparable yield.

A massive burst of gamma rays is still not good for your health. Marvel notwithstanding, it doesn't normally turn you into a superhero.

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

A massive burst of gamma rays is still not good for your health. Marvel notwithstanding, it doesn't normally turn you into a superhero.

Nah, you just need the right stuffed animal thing

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

49 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Nah, you just need the right stuffed animal thing

 

That doesn't count. 1) Dabbler is already a superhero. 2) She stopped the gamma rays in order to not get everybody killed rather than preventing them from gaining super powers. Which would be a bit redundant since 95% of everybody present had superpowers already.

[Vorlonagent 442]

I think everybody at the fight had powers except Sydney and math, and Math might be an ASMA-sort of exception to the rules.

Hmmm....Greg vs. Math.  My money would be on Math the first time around...

[hkmaly 490]

21 hours ago, malloyd said:

23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Chiral amino acids? Those at least MIGHT be found in bacteria. Also, you can survive longer without amino acids than without glucose.

And it's only an issue if your magic mirroring process has a particle exclusion.  You have more pressing problems if you come out of it made of antimatter.

I don't think antimatter is mirrored form of matter ...

7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

12 hours ago, ijuin said:

Antimatter explosions are mostly gamma rays and neutrinos--there are no loose neutrons generated in the way that fission reactions tend to do, so there is far less radioactive material left over afterwards than with nuclear bombs of comparable yield.

A massive burst of gamma rays is still not good for your health. Marvel notwithstanding, it doesn't normally turn you into a superhero.

Even in Marvel it doesn't NORMALLY turn you into a superhero. Hulk - I mean Bruce Banner - was exception. Well ... ok, there were more exceptions like him, but the gamma radiation was still considered harmful in Marvel and at least in modern rewrites Banner had some mutation or something else which allowed him to survive the radiation ...

4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

I think everybody at the fight had powers except Sydney

The orbs ARE connected to her. I think we can count her as having powers now.

4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

and Math might be an ASMA-sort of exception to the rules.

The magic rules which allowed ASMA training to work are limited to EGS universe.

4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Hmmm....Greg vs. Math.  My money would be on Math the first time around...

I would suspect the other way around actually: Math would likely underestimate Greg on first try, but then adapts. On the other hand, Greg had black belt even before awakening, and now he also have more strength than is physically possible for human. Hmmm ... maybe, first three matches, Greg, Math, Greg? Or maybe not matches but rounds.

 

[Vorlonagent 442]

38 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I don't think antimatter is mirrored form of matter ...

No sure what else you'd call it.  Anti-protons, neutrons and electrons are all things that exist and work the same as the normal versions except for how well they play with those afore-mentioned normal versions.

38 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The orbs ARE connected to her. I think we can count her as having powers now.

It's the obs that have the powers, not Sydney.  Sydney is not, for example, morphing into an idealized physical body that all others with powers get as a part of the package, so there's some kind of difference in play.  By herself, the only power Sydney has is an ADHD-overclocked imagination.  She's defeated villains with it, sure...

38 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The magic rules which allowed ASMA training to work are limited to EGS universe.

I'm drawing a parallel.

Math is so skilled, he blurs the line between "skilled human" and "powered human"

To my mind that's very similar to the way that Greg blurs the line between sleeping and awakened without stopping at the usual EGS definition for "dreaming" (i.e. being Marked).  Elliot, Nanase and Justin all straddled this line as well before being Marked or Awakened.

I see Math as moving much faster than anything we've seen Greg do, though I'll grant we have not seen Greg go all-out either.  Greg is arguably tough enough to take what Math can dish out (he has a force field) and ought to have more powerful attacks, but actually hitting Math with them would be the issue.  Greg's techniques also require them to be spoken aloud.  Math could theoretically interrupt Greg's more powerful attacks.

For all this I tend to give first-engagement to Math.  But with Magic on Greg's side there's nothing stopping Greg from moving into Math's reflex range and that's when the balance starts to tip.  Math would be in heaven.   Form there it would boil down to how far and how fast each can escalate their training before they plateau.  I'm willing to give this one to Greg as well.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

For all this I tend to give first-engagement to Math.  But with Magic on Greg's side there's nothing stopping Greg from moving into Math's reflex range and that's when the balance starts to tip.  Math would be in heaven.   Form there it would boil down to how far and how fast each can escalate their training before they plateau.  I'm willing to give this one to Greg as well.

Greg cosplays as Chung Li. That is a level of awesome even Math will have trouble beating, so I agree.

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I don't think antimatter is mirrored form of matter ...

No sure what else you'd call it.  Anti-protons, neutrons and electrons are all things that exist and work the same as the normal versions except for how well they play with those afore-mentioned normal versions.

What about calling them antiparticles?

It's true that there is theory claiming that antiparticles behave same as particles with reversed charge and mirrored spatial coordinates.

That theory was proven to not be true. (1964, with Nobel Price in 1980)

Which is good, because it gives much easier explanation for why our universe didn't annihilate itself shortly after big bang.

Note that mirror symmetry by itself don't work either, meaning mirrored particles would really behave differently than normal particles. It's just that the results wouldn't be as "flashy" as annihilation. In fact, you are extremely likely to never notice ANY difference, because it only occurs in weak force interaction - meaning radioactive decay - and human body already don't like if it's parts go through radioactive decay even when not mirrored.

[Vorlonagent 442]

2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

What about calling them antiparticles?

It's true that there is theory claiming that antiparticles behave same as particles with reversed charge and mirrored spatial coordinates.

That theory was proven to not be true. (1964, with Nobel Price in 1980)

Which is good, because it gives much easier explanation for why our universe didn't annihilate itself shortly after big bang.

Note that mirror symmetry by itself don't work either, meaning mirrored particles would really behave differently than normal particles. It's just that the results wouldn't be as "flashy" as annihilation. In fact, you are extremely likely to never notice ANY difference, because it only occurs in weak force interaction - meaning radioactive decay - and human body already don't like if it's parts go through radioactive decay even when not mirrored.

I think you may be overstating the case.  There are instances where matter and antimatter act differently.  They seem the exception not the rule.

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The orbs ARE connected to her. I think we can count her as having powers now.

It's the obs that have the powers, not Sydney.  Sydney is not, for example, morphing into an idealized physical body that all others with powers get as a part of the package, so there's some kind of difference in play.  By herself, the only power Sydney has is an ADHD-overclocked imagination.  She's defeated villains with it, sure...

Hmmm ... true, there are differences. But it's not like someone could steal the orbs and use them instead of her. In fact, he would fail to move the orbs more than few meters from her. (Also, we don't know what two of the orbs are for. Maybe one of them could morph her )

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

I see Math as moving much faster than anything we've seen Greg do, though I'll grant we have not seen Greg go all-out either.  Greg is arguably tough enough to take what Math can dish out (he has a force field) and ought to have more powerful attacks, but actually hitting Math with them would be the issue.  Greg's techniques also require them to be spoken aloud.  Math could theoretically interrupt Greg's more powerful attacks.

For all this I tend to give first-engagement to Math.

Actually, based on this explanation the first engagement would be draw, with Greg unable to hit Math and Math unable to hit Greg hard enough to matter.

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

But with Magic on Greg's side there's nothing stopping Greg from moving into Math's reflex range and that's when the balance starts to tip.

Greg actually training to be able to fight with Math better didn't occurred to me. Obviously he would win in such case.

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

Form there it would boil down to how far and how fast each can escalate their training before they plateau.  I'm willing to give this one to Greg as well.

That's obvious. Math can only go to the limits of human body. For Greg, only limit is he wouldn't be able to time travel. (Hmmmm ... does it means he will never be as good as Jedi knight, who can react to attack which didn't started happening yet?)

13 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I think you may be overstating the case.  There are instances where matter and antimatter act differently.  They seem the exception not the rule.

Well, yes, but it's an exception currently 91 billion light years in diameter.

You should notice, though, that mirror symmetry is clearly defined in physics and it will NOT turn particle into anti-particle. The transformation which will turn particle into anti-particle is called charge parity change.

(Alternatively, mirror universe in Star Trek is mainly from matter just as our universe. Also, similar prevalence of right-handed people. The thing which was different in THAT universe was morality.)

[Drasvin 123]

15 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

To my mind that's very similar to the way that Greg blurs the line between sleeping and awakened without stopping at the usual EGS definition for "dreaming" (i.e. being Marked).  Elliot, Nanase and Justin all straddled this line as well before being Marked or Awakened.

I would like to note that the technical definition of Dreaming is "Anyone with some kind of magic without being Awakened." The most common way for that to happen is to be Marked, but the broad definition allows for other possibilities. So those that successfully unlock ASMA abilities, but aren't Awakened, would be Dreaming