Grrl Power #672 – Engage… your advanced math skills
On the plus side, Sydney does have her phone on her and it probably has a graphing calculator app. Not a 4 Dimensional Space Calculus one though.
If I was Sydney, I would have put that second point into either the shield and topped that out, or immediately put a second point into the warp tree. It would suck to get the warp speed upgrade, and only be able to go the actual speed of light, because, you know, as fast as that is, it’s still like 4 years to the nearest star from Earth. 4 years. Sydney may have all the air she can drink, and she’s got a granola bar in her utility belt, but she certainly doesn’t have the supplies for an extended trip.
Let’s be honest, she doesn’t even have the patience to get from Earth to Neptune at lightspeed, which is like 4 hours.
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Well Sydney can now pull up the navigation app, but she doesn’t know how to chart a course.
Could be worse. She could have a disembodied voice telling her to “make a u turn. Travel 200 feet. Make a u turn. Travel 1.2 miles. Turn left. Make a u turn.”
Cause I’m not too clear on how to make a u turn in a wormhole, or what would result. Would you meet the worm? Who knows?
Of course, there is always a waiting Worm. “What was will be. What will be was.”
Or at least that is what the Stellaris FreeDLC Horizon Signal taught me.
Recalculating…
Google maps once had me taking the same route over and over again when I was in a new city… I was thinking I missed a turn and that it was redirecting me…then I realized it wasn’t my fault and kept driving until it actually rerouted and gave me an actual way to get to my destination.
Or get stuck in a non-linear moment and scolded by familiar faces with unfamiliar hearts.
I know, right? Why can’t navigation computers be like guns, huh? A simple “point and click” interface would be nice, but nooooooo. Yer gotta chart around all those, whatchamacallit? gravitational anomalies and what not!
Not just gravitational anomalies. You have to consider black holes, rogue planets, uncharted star systems, and anything else that has a gravity well.
Time to engage the warped drive…
Sydney Scoville-marh phobic…!!
I meant math phobic!
Nah, she’s cool with Math even though he won against her.
Here’s hoping Sydney doesn’t engage the timespace transport function at random. There’s a reason the Doctor “Programs” the Tardis instead of piloting it. As the Late Douglas Adams said, “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Another reason is that if you don’t plan your FTL journey, “you could end up flying through the heart of a star. And that “that’ll end your day real quick!”
Or so we were told by a scruffy-looking nerf herder.
I believe the quote you are referring to is “Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?”
honestly, i CANNOT wait until she gets back to earth.
IKR! Oh, the things she will have to tell Dabbler.
I am not certain where our author is going with this but I hope it’s a rescue mission. Cora rescues Sydney and gets her back to earth.
BTW, With as much time as she has spent away from the base, when will her ADHD meds run out and cause her problems?
I tried to do this in a reply and Chrome locked up. Oh, well, it isn’t surprising that the center point did nothing. The other 2 points spent in the center also have the corresponding circles selected, which did NOT happen when Sidney selected the center point, its corresponding circle is still unselected. Which means *whatever* these points do, it takes 2 points to trigger, one in the middle and another in the corresponding circle. Which means, if it IS a new orb, it takes 12 points to get it, not six…
No no no! The central point are the features and controls of balls. It allows for more access to the information on each one. I bet that maxing it out will allow for full written output,inputs, and finetune controls for each and every sphere.
Right now she can switch functions of the Blue one
That certainly seems like a decent possibility of the central point. I would guess that if nothing else it might give a overall power boost to all of the orbs rather than a more powerful one for a specific orb.
You know, I think we have been guessing wrong on the pop-up.
When I zoom in, it looks like, left to right from our point of view:
1) Colored lines
2) Circle with a dot in the middle, a smaller portion of a circle and a line coming from it
3) Multiple colored areas with jagged edges
4) Insufficient data (it has a curved edge, though)
What if these are the selections for the visualization that is brought up by engaging the Warp Drive?
1) Default, current display. “Contour map” of the local spacetime fabric. More useful if you know how to read it.
2) Labels for individual planets / logical groupings. System, galaxy, etc.
3) Border markers for various galacto-political groupings. You wanna know before you accidentally cross some Neutral Zone, after all.
4) etc…
Sydney: “My God! It’s full of…math?”
Hey, does anyone have a Thumb? Grab your towel & maybe we can hitch a ride with Slartibartfast aboard the good ship Bistromath!
If Sydney can wait long enough (she can’t!), she can always try hitching a lift off perfectly normal beasts during their interdimensional migration.
When Sydney gets back is she going to meet an older version of herself, who just says “Spoilers” before plotting a her a course back to the right time zone?
That or whoever Dabbler called intercepts her and brings her home to the right time. Or this is used as a Time Skip to update the status of earth, so she stays in whatever time she arrives in.
Or, it turns out it was neither a dimension nor a time jump to Alari, just like Squiddley never had a damn shield!!
Looks wormholey to me.
I admit when I saw that graph thing my first thought was Einstein-Rosen Bridge. I mean, I think I’ve literally seen that graphic in a movie trying to look scientific to explain it. So yeah, probably not FTL. That’s alright though. Wormhole travel is usually much more reliable and comes with fewer questions.
Where is the worm? With a hole that big it must be huge!
*looks around nervously*
*gives the doggy a biscuit*
Yeah, the map looks like either a Wormhole chart or one for a Tannhauser gate.
I’ve watched C-beams glitter in the dark …
*eats the biscuit, tail wagging*
I completely forgot here glasses were cracked.
Some enterprising soul with a lot of time should do an ” Everything Wrong With”
for this comic ala Cinema Sins ™ . I estimate 150 dings.
Definitely looks like Wormhole style math to me.
She found the options menu! She can change the language!
You are being VERY, VERY optimistic. Borderline naive, there. That just isn’t what this comic is about. Sydney won’t be finding something like that until 2020, at the earliest.
For the people talking about Sydney flying to mars at mach16, helping the space program etc, I think you have it all wrong. Either her flight power
A) provides X thrust. Thus, maxes at mach 16 at 1 atmosphere of pressure. In space, it has no effective max speed, its just time limited by acceleration (until relativity matters). In this case, a trip in space would be much faster, even with a heavy payload, as she can just keep accelerating.
B) OR, her flight system just has a speed dial, regardless of air resistance or carried payload. If this is the case, its pointless her flying to mars at mach 16. She would be far more useful just flying payloads into low earth orbit, from where they could be assembled into a ship for the mars trip.
As to a spacesuit for her. We already have a real world case where someone was exposed to almost a pure vacuum for about 30 seconds. From what I recall, with no significant effects. They screwed up while testing some equipment at nassa. I doubt Sydney would enjoy it, but she can probably switch orbs in space, without a spacesuit. A simple sealed face mask would probably prevent any problems at all.
Finally, Max is likely far better for this job. The main issue is payload capacity, not top speed. Its almost certain that Max could fly countless very heavy payloads into the upper atmosphere. I don’t remember her max speed, especially with a heavy payload. But, once you get it out of the atmosphere and too a decent speed, even small rockets can easily take up the slack.
Between the two of them, you have two reactionless drives. They should both be spending an hour or two a day launching payloads to low earth orbit! That is the hard part. Once you are up there, the rest is easy. Especially if you have a big payload of fuel for your ships. Fuel carried up by the hero’s.
Oooh! Yeah, EE Doc Smith referred to it as inertialess. Maybe the orbs are an upgraded Lensman’s kit?
Mach 10 or “ten times the speed of sound” sure was fast for a child of 6 watching Space Ghost. But now I know they really couldn’t give anything anyone would understand in 1967 who watches tv like I did. (I was such a video sponge then.) But now I understand that even at that speed it is fast on Earth, but not going even between our Earth and Luna.
I don’t see her getting out of this on her own. Either she accidentally hits a function that allows her to simply program her destination or her little ass is rescued. You literally cannot fly by the seat of your pants over stellar distances. Celestial mechanics isn’t for the faint hearted or the math challenged.
When this fight business started, a lot of people theorised that if the orbs function on an acceleration based system at 1 atmosphere, that she could technically speed off into space quick.
But the author quickly dispelled that. The orbs function based on a speed limit, and simply ignore all other limiting factors (Such as gravity, friction, and resistance of any other kind)
Before, on earth, or in space, or, with her shield up, potentially in a black hole? (Probably not, unless her shield is -really good-) She could go Mach 4.
Now, she can go Mach 16.
What you really want them to do is
a) Help build a rotating space station big enough to test different gravity requirements for human health. (although dabbler can probably just answer that). A station with enough shielding to block radiation
b) Have the hero’s nudge one, or more, of the really useful asteroids into a useful orbit, close to earth. Ultimately, resources and space mining are key for earth. Just one of those rocks, could save vast amounts of effort and damage via mining precious metals on earth.
This website has an awesome layout of candidate asteroids www,asterank.com
c) sure, support a moon or mars colony
d) lift materials for a skyhook, or the various variants. Possibly one at the mars and at the moon too. Something to enable ongoing operation without hero hand holding.
I would rotate it just a bit above 1G. Easier to adjust than at a lower G. Weightlessness is unhealthy for the heart, bones and so on.
If she could just jump to light speed would she be affected by inertia? No protective chair to sit in either. Eating, sleeping, excreting won’t be pleasant or possible in there. Just imagine….
If Sidney can approach light speed, she wouldn’t need patience – time dilation would make the trip seem much shorter to her. But if she left the solar system, she might be in for a surprise when she came back and 8+ years had passed. Imagine catching up on that many comics!
WHADDYA MEAN THEY CANCELLED GOLD DIGGER???
huh. i may have figured something out.
somone correct me if this is just plain dumb.
the map seems to be indicating her current location as being inside a wormhole? as in the planet lies in a bridging universe or some such?
Looks like a position indicator in a gravity well.
You know that looks a bit like a map.. I hope she doesn’t send anything here or her back there…Although I have to say so far fighting those guys seems to be the best way to get upgrades I would have to say I would seriously be tempted to stick around maybe see if I can upgrade some more things.
Here’s a frightening thought: the space faring military extermination race who wiped Sciona’s world assumes that Sydney’s people must be accomplices because why rlse would she be there? And then tracks the destination point of her wormhole (again, assuming we ALL can do this) and follows her to earth to crush the resistance pre-emptively. These guys didn’t get to be top dogs of the galaxy by just ALLOWING upstart civilizations to challenge their iron fist!
These’s a goddamn good reason why the humans in the Halo (*snickers*) games did everything they could to hide earth coordinates from the Covenant.
Actually the topdogs is the Xevoarchy, something closer to the Green Lantern or Nova Corp. Maybe the Federation. See comic 640
These guys are something new, that even Dabbler is not aware off. And most definitely not the Xevoarchy.
However they do seem to know about the Orbs, as they got agressive the moment they scanned Sydney.
“… the space faring military extermination race who wiped Sciona’s…”
The “Dark Forest Hypothesis” rears its head.
If the Dark Forest Hypothesis was in effect in this universe, there would not be alien tourists on earth.
My theory – the Forb gave her that weird 4-dimensional space math display because it’s aware that she’s not in her own dimension. It started by showing her the path ‘home’ – she just can’t understand it as such.
It seems the new Forb track may do more than FTL – some kind of wormhole travel?
the Forb gave her that weird 4-dimensional space math display
Since we were given time as the 4th dimension maybe you mean 5th dimension? Now that would be weird.
Our 3+1 universe is common place. Now a 4 + 1 would be be in a word, weird.
Superluminal tunnels a what is used in Star Wars. Not sure they are just at “Light Speed” as they say. They would need to be going “faster”. How else can they also have inter galactic travel?
Dabbler: Ah, a Gothwort/Zerbwaan branthor map with a multiplexed Xithxaanth overlay! Very clever… But how did you select your initial prime branthor vector?
Syd: Oh, I just picked a direction at random.
Dabbler: *ears wilting* You.. picked… RANDOM?? But.. how… how were you not compressed into gravitonium sludge, or torn into a could of Beta particles by fluctuating Gothwort shear?
Syd: Well, things DID get really weird-looking after the second transition, but it never affected me. I just kept picking a new direction until things got normal again.
Dabbler: *ears wilt further* The Forb,,, maintained a stable Euclidean bubble.. INSIDE a branthor quintleplex… through MULTIPLE arbitrary multiphasic transitions?? *face starts twitching*
Syd: I guess… and eventually I wound up back here! Pretty neat, huh?
The math… the math! *Dabbler faints, twitching spasmodically*
Syd: …Dabbler?
The Day the Math Died! (with apologies to Mathias)
Sydney: 1, Math: 0
Sydney: “How many times do I need to tell you guys? NOTHING gets through Mr. Bubble!”
Noooooooooooo. I caught up. And you have t explained the deal with Harim yet. ( unless I missed something ). The one cut back to base showed Dabbler bakeing cookies.
Anyway I found this comic through tv tropes about a week ago. Addicting. I have / had a bunch of comments I’d have put out if they wouldn’t have been years old. ( for example the deal with the spider guy —- Vince ? Vance ? Forgetting his name currently – if I was a recruit and he pulled that my reaction would have been very different. I LIKE spiders. And have 60+ as pets. I’d be asking like.a million questions. ). Sigh well now I guess I need to go and do real life stuff until next update.
One orb per hand, even a babe can manage that…
https://i.giphy.com/media/y97hzmaDLeO4w/giphy.webp
He’s wearing an orb manipulation glove! Sydney wouldn’t be controlling anything through a glove!
What babe?
The babe with the power.
What power?!
The power of voodoo
Who do?
You do!
I do?
Do what?
Remind me of the Babe
Pfft that’s easy to figure out; just calculate the Expansion Rate of the universe you are in, cross reference it with the Speed of Light, do some Algebra involving the Visible Expansion, Geometry involving Gravity Wells around Blackholes and add the Time-Space Quotants, see how close to the nearest Blackhole you are and how close the target is to theirs then Math the distance between the Point A and Point B (this part is only if it’s two different Galaxies), and then make up some new Mathematical Principles that warp reality after tossing all that out because you’re better off with an Alcubierre Drive and just play drag the universe in the direction you want to go by Exploiting the universe’s Physics Engine. Do please make sure you don’t annihilate any planets with Gravitic and Electromagnetic Wavefronts, those are so hard to replace.
If your target is in another universe and you should invest in Dimensional Breaching Tech otherwise Good Luck spending several objective Eons trying to get to the next universe.
Also don’t forget to predict both the location of your target and the time of arrival as well as the movement of other astral bodies and calculate for their affects on your speed, location, and arrival time. The AD sounds a whole lot better when you can casually ignore all that and just flip the game board in favor of flipping the Game Board.
I am the Great Wormholio!
This is a bit late to post, but why is there a red Napoleon hat in the middle of the diagram in panel 5?
https://images.maskworld.com/is/image/maskworld/bigview/napoleon-hat–110282-napoleon-hut-napoleon-hat.jpg
Tequila!
Looks like Sydney’s purchase of the center slot space has been in the cards for a while, see reference to the “ring in the middle” from .
actually, if she was at lightspeeed, to her it would be instantaneous, to the normal universe time it would be 4h
are the 7 pie slices in the center the number of orbs she can use at once? you know since there are 7 slices and 7 orbs
She’s still limited to two at a time as far as we know, one per hand. It may be that filling the whole centre ‘pie’ unlocks hands-free access to all the orbs, but that would be a very big step up in power – I wouldn’t expect to see it for many years yet (even in comic time!), and if it happens it would probably be a sign that there’s a series-ending super battle coming up shortly for which such overwhelming firepower would be necessary.
as sad as the end of this comic would be seeing Sydney go hands free would be badass
you know, the seven upgrade points needed could be a upgrade to all the orbs (like a level up for the grid) or maybe a new orb.