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hkmaly

NP Friday, Aug 16, 2019

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34 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Nowhere in Superman comics was it said that kryptonite is 100% harmless to Earth life. The radiation from it is shown as being just about as dangerous to Earth people as handling refined subcritical pieces of uranium--for example, Lex Luthor wore a ring with a fragment of Kryptonite in it to keep Superman away, and developed leukemia from it. Given that kryptonite has also been described as a significantly more potent nuclear power source than uranium or plutonium (Metallo was able to run for years on a fragment of kryptonite, whereas he needed to change his uranium-based fuel units every single day), it suggests that the kryptonite radiation mostly just passes through normal Earth-life like neutrinos, only striking a few molecules here and there, whereas the more resistant Kryptonian matter (made super-resilient by the yellow-sunlight exposure) doesn't let it pass through and instead interacts with it more heavily.

That's interesting (and makes more sense than it being harmless to earth life), however doesn't change the fact that we don't know of any kind of radiation like that.

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53 minutes ago, ijuin said:

True, but it's no less plausible than Superman being ultra-powerful in the first place . . .

True, and in fact the physical law explaining Superman getting powerful might be the same one explaining the kryptonite - like, both might be ultimately related to same subatomic particle for example.

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On 8/17/2019 at 8:57 AM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

First thought upon seeing the first panel was of this oldie.

This comic could use a soundtrack...

What I want to know is how Tommy Roe could see Sweet Pea if she was out'a sight. Is this evidence of x-ray vision? A couple of decades later, and she'd have been rad, then he could detect her from her nuclear signature, but it seems in the late 60s he's have less to go on.

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2 hours ago, ijuin said:

Nowhere in Superman comics was it said that kryptonite is 100% harmless to Earth life. The radiation from it is shown as being just about as dangerous to Earth people as handling refined subcritical pieces of uranium--for example, Lex Luthor wore a ring with a fragment of Kryptonite in it to keep Superman away, and developed leukemia from it. Given that kryptonite has also been described as a significantly more potent nuclear power source than uranium or plutonium (Metallo was able to run for years on a fragment of kryptonite, whereas he needed to change his uranium-based fuel units every single day), it suggests that the kryptonite radiation mostly just passes through normal Earth-life like neutrinos, only striking a few molecules here and there, whereas the more resistant Kryptonian matter (made super-resilient by the yellow-sunlight exposure) doesn't let it pass through and instead interacts with it more heavily.

Does anyone remember various color kryptonites with different effects, or is that so old that it is forgotten and no longer part of the plot? The most egregiously silly one had a different effect each time he was exposed.

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Just now, Darth Fluffy said:

Does anyone remember various color kryptonites with different effects, or is that so old that it is forgotten and no longer part of the plot? The most egregiously silly one had a different effect each time he was exposed.

I do.

The green variant was the killing one.
The red one was the one which would do something absurd like turning him into a monkey, making him bald, turning him into a girl... anything the plot demanded.
The white variant killed plants. Any and all plants, earth ones included.
The gold variant would permanently remove all superpowers from Kryptonians.
Finally, there was a blue kind which only affected Bizarro doubles of Superman, for some reason.

These were the kinds I remember from silver age comics. They mostly got done away with after Crisis on Infinite Earths. They experimented a bit with a 90s variant, but for some reason it didn't make him snarl, distort him anatomically and cover him with pouches.

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Are you forgetting...

Kryptonite-X that gave animals super powers and created the Legion of Super Pets?
Jewel Kryptonite that let Phantom Zone villains telekinetically ignite or detonate anything flammable on Earth?
Pink Kryptonite that would turn Kryptonians Gay? (Yes, DC really published that story)

Yes there were more...

As for how Kryptonite Radiation affected Kryptonians so much more that other life forms, in my mind it seemed similar to how Carbon Monoxide is so much deadlier than Carbon Dioxide to humans.

Human hemoglobin can transport Oxygen, but would chemically rather hold on to Carbon Dioxide.  It is one of the most difficult things our lungs do is to coax the CO2 out to be replaced with O2.  But CO binds with hemoglobin much more strongly than O2 or CO2. If CO gets into the Red Blood Cells, they won't give it up to the cells or the lungs.

Kryptonians use Solar radiation to charge their cells.  But Kryptonite radiation, although deadly, is absorbed by Kryptonian cells far more readily than Solar radiation.

Of course, that analogy is strictly my own head cannon based on a single semester of introductory biology in the 1980s.

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Are you forgetting...
Pink Kryptonite that would turn Kryptonians Gay? (Yes, DC really published that story)

That's just wrong. It should have been lavender or rainbow for gay, pink for female. Someone at DC needs to review their color codes.

 

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Of course, that analogy is strictly my own head cannon based on a single semester of introductory biology in the 1980s.

I'm envious. We did not study comic book physiology at all. Clearly, my edjumacation is lacking.

 

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Human hemoglobin can transport Oxygen, but would chemically rather hold on to Carbon Dioxide.  It is one of the most difficult things our lungs do is to coax the CO2 out to be replaced with O2. 

I read or heard in some context that you need some small amount of CO2 content to trigger breathing. It gets toxic rapidly as concentration of CO2 rises above normal.

 

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18 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I read or heard in some context that you need some small amount of CO2 content to trigger breathing. It gets toxic rapidly as concentration of CO2 rises above normal.

With Earth's atmosphere one fifth oxygen, it's easier to get enough O2 than to get rid of the CO2, so checking for excess CO2 makes a good "need to breath more" indicator that rises the longer you hold your breath. Humans don't have that good of a "need more O2" sense and can suffocate in atmospheres with too little O2 (but also no CO2) without much warning.

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15 minutes ago, Haylo said:

With Earth's atmosphere one fifth oxygen, it's easier to get enough O2 than to get rid of the CO2, so checking for excess CO2 makes a good "need to breath more" indicator that rises the longer you hold your breath. Humans don't have that good of a "need more O2" sense and can suffocate in atmospheres with too little O2 (but also no CO2) without much warning.

Blacking out is a good first indicator.

Of course, that is kind of a bit late.

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10 hours ago, The Old Hack said:


Finally, there was a blue kind which only affected Bizarro doubles of Superman, for some reason.

The blue kryptonite affected Bizarro because it was created using the same process that created Bizarro-Superman, thus it was Bizarro kryptonite.

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6 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I read or heard in some context that you need some small amount of CO2 content to trigger breathing. It gets toxic rapidly as concentration of CO2 rises above normal.

 

The body has a forced breath reaction to CO2 above a certain threshold, there isn’t a O2 bio sensor as such. In fact any anaerobic exercise is due to a local lack of O2 and ATP to burn. This is why if you want to hold your breath for a longer time it pays to breathe out deeply a few times first to purge your lungs of as much residual CO2 as possible.

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19 hours ago, The Old Hack said:
20 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Does anyone remember various color kryptonites with different effects, or is that so old that it is forgotten and no longer part of the plot? The most egregiously silly one had a different effect each time he was exposed.

I do.

I remember few of those but, like, wanted to talk about clearly established facts. I hoped that those colored kryptonites were retconned out of existence. Of course, explaining THOSE would be even more complicated.

16 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Pink Kryptonite that would turn Kryptonians Gay? (Yes, DC really published that story)

... especially this one.

14 hours ago, Haylo said:
14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I read or heard in some context that you need some small amount of CO2 content to trigger breathing. It gets toxic rapidly as concentration of CO2 rises above normal.

With Earth's atmosphere one fifth oxygen, it's easier to get enough O2 than to get rid of the CO2, so checking for excess CO2 makes a good "need to breath more" indicator that rises the longer you hold your breath. Humans don't have that good of a "need more O2" sense and can suffocate in atmospheres with too little O2 (but also no CO2) without much warning.

Also, humans actually need quite a lot of oxygen to breathe successfully. As mentioned, hemoglobin prefers CO2. You may have plenty of oxygen in lungs and be unable to breath because it's still not enough to displace the CO2 from blood.

8 hours ago, Skip said:

a local lack of O2 and ATP to burn

There is no exercise without ATP and no oxygen is needed for "burning" ATP. Now, for creating it ... I think you can get like 30 ATP from single sugar molecule WITH oxygen and 2 WITHOUT.

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Just now, hkmaly said:

Also, humans actually need quite a lot of oxygen to breathe successfully. As mentioned, hemoglobin prefers CO2. You may have plenty of oxygen in lungs and be unable to breath because it's still not enough to displace the CO2 from blood.

Good job that nitrogen doesn't affect the process much! :danshiftyeyes:

I remember one time in physics class. I was like twelve years old. I was eager to learn and determined to apply what I knew of scientific method to what the teacher told us. At one point we were informed that nitrogen was 'an odorless, invisible and nonpoisonous gas'. I was about to ask how we knew that and then I remembered that, well, DUH, it is about 80% of the atmosphere we are breathing so maybe that ought to be experimental evidence enough for me! :icon_eek:

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4 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
11 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Also, humans actually need quite a lot of oxygen to breathe successfully. As mentioned, hemoglobin prefers CO2. You may have plenty of oxygen in lungs and be unable to breath because it's still not enough to displace the CO2 from blood.

Good job that nitrogen doesn't affect the process much! :danshiftyeyes:

Well, not until you change pressure. Rapid pressure change makes nitrogen aggressive.

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1 minute ago, The Old Hack said:
2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Well, not until you change pressure. Rapid pressure change makes nitrogen aggressive.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Not pleasant, that. Fortunately that is mostly only an issue when underwater.

Technically, it's also an issue when you are no longer underwater. :)

 

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Just now, hkmaly said:

Technically, it's also an issue when you are no longer underwater. :)

Well, it starts to be an issue already when you are deep underwater and moving further up, so that is just a cherry on top of it.

Explosive decompression isn't healthy either, I am given to understand. Though maybe nitrogen isn't the main issue there. At least not in a vacuum. :danshiftyeyes:

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16 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Well, it starts to be an issue already when you are deep underwater and moving further up, so that is just a cherry on top of it.

You CAN move from water fast enough to only feel the effect when already above water.

Of course,  IF you move from water so fast it's GUARANTEED you will feel the effect when above water, so it's definitely not recommended.

16 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Explosive decompression isn't healthy either, I am given to understand. Though maybe nitrogen isn't the main issue there. At least not in a vacuum. :danshiftyeyes:

Well, it is, but only because it's 80% of air so there is more of it than others.

(Assuming the person who explosively decompressed was breathing air before it. I mean, astronauts sometimes breathe other mixes.)

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

(Assuming the person who explosively decompressed was breathing air before it. I mean, astronauts sometimes breathe other mixes.)

Yeah. The inside of the Apollo 1 was 100% oxygen. That turned out to not end well.

Admittedly not for reasons of breath, it must be said. It had more to do with the fire that got ignited somehow.

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1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

Admittedly not for reasons of breath, it must be said. It had more to do with the fire that got ignited somehow.

With 100% oxygen atmosphere, I'm not sure if fire needs to be ignited somehow ; I think that in such case spontaneous combustion can happen.

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It isn't so much the oxygen percentage, it's the oxygen partial pressure - i.e. how much air pressure oxygen is providing.

Prior to Apollo 1, our manned space missions routinely used pure-oxygen environments - at partial pressures roughly equivalent to the oxygen content of the atmosphere at sea level.

The Apollo 1 fire occurred in a test of whether the space capsule would keep the air in. So they pressured it to above one atmosphere... with pure oxygen. Under those conditions, practically everything is flammable and some things are extremely easy to ignite - a few things will even self-ignite, that won't under more normal conditions.

The after-fire review asked two big questions that nobody had good answers for: why were they using pure oxygen for this test when ordinary air would have been fine, and what was the point of having the astronauts present for the test?

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7 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

It isn't so much the oxygen percentage, it's the oxygen partial pressure - i.e. how much air pressure oxygen is providing.

Prior to Apollo 1, our manned space missions routinely used pure-oxygen environments - at partial pressures roughly equivalent to the oxygen content of the atmosphere at sea level.

The Apollo 1 fire occurred in a test of whether the space capsule would keep the air in. So they pressured it to above one atmosphere... with pure oxygen. Under those conditions, practically everything is flammable and some things are extremely easy to ignite - a few things will even self-ignite, that won't under more normal conditions.

The after-fire review asked two big questions that nobody had good answers for: why were they using pure oxygen for this test when ordinary air would have been fine, and what was the point of having the astronauts present for the test?

Thank you for that information. That is terrifying and scary. I can only think of two potential answers to the above questions, and they are not good ones and certainly not exculpatory. Because nobody had thought about it and because they had always done it that way.

I admit I am shaped by my father's thinking. He is a medical professional and part of the work he used to do was improving safety procedures. He deemed preventing future repetition of mishaps far more important than placing responsibility for present ones and stated that if you assured those who had been part of the mishap that they would suffer no punishment for it, then you would get a much larger percentage of honest reports. Allowing anonymous statements was key to this.

I do not know the full scope of the incident in question. There is such a thing as criminal negligence and I respect that. I just wanted to toss in my two cents based on my father's much more valuable expertise.

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Why use pure Oxygen and not ordinary air?

$10,000 per pound.

In the era of the Space Shuttle, the cost of launching payload into orbit was approximately $10,000 per pound.  The price, proportionally, would possibly be higher back in the Apollo era.  So why load up pressurized tanks full of inert gasses the astronauts did not need to breathe?

There is a long tradition in almost every human endeavour of ignoring possible problems, if the preventive solution would be difficult or expensive, until after an actual disaster demonstrates the need to implement that solution.

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