Grrl Power #675 – Hot scanning action
When I started to draw the screen with the planet and the diagram of the orbiting probes, I was trying to decide the minimal number of probes that would let you get a clean scan. A tetrahedron (a D4) might work, but you’d need the probes to be really far away from the planet in order to avoid oblique scanning angles. The same can be said for a lot of shapes, actually.
I thought a dodecahedron (D12) would be nearly ideal, but those actually have more points on them than an icosahedron (D20). That is to say, a D12 configuration would take 20 probes, whereas a D20 would only take 12, because a D12 is comprised of pentagons, but the D20 is made up of triangles. That may seem obvious, but it was a bit of a surprise to me.
I’m sure someone has done a proper study about the fewest number of probes needed to scan a sphere. The diagram I drew probably has them too close to the surface to get a good look but it’s probably representative and not literal.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
“Cora, the explorer”
LoL.
“Squidward, no sniping!”
I still can’t get past the description of ‘maleiens’ :)
Dodecahedrons and Icosahedrons actually have the same symmetry (the vertices of an icosahedron correspond to the center points of the faces of a dodecahedron and vice versa). Same relationship as between a cube and an octahedron.
And yes packing arrangements of various size objects for minimal or maximal all sorts of things have been analyzed in great depth. Mostly by materials scientists since bulk properties can change depending on how exactly the same atoms or molecules are packed together.
Yes.
Each of the five Platonic solids has a companion (another of the five), which has the numbers of faces and vertices but reversed. The Tetrahedron is unique in this sense as it is its own companion (4 faces, 4 vertices).
. . .
What about “solids-with-benefits”?
Ya their chasing something far worse since they probably will soon see 2 corpses of what ever attacked and whiped out the planet. Their probably thinking what kind of monster can take down beings that wipe out worlds.
you know considering the destination that planet it is looks like a machine world that could be pretty amusing if she actually managed to make friends with them. Or if somehow they got orders from her and in a hyper idea she blurts out, “I have a robot army I shale rule the Galaxy!” unfortionally they take that as an order and once she leaves the Mashines start to prepair for the Galactic conquest so Halo will rule the Galaxy. Granted that probably won’t happen but it would be funny.
..Or even funnier if she stumbled across a human that somehow due to some kind of power or something got stranded here and is currently overly emotional after finally seeing a human after a long time.
Sydney is now a “What the hell is that!!!” In the intergalactic community.
I wonder with the bit’s and pieces of info the guys back home here what will Sidney’s co workers think about what she’s doing in space. I bet someone will think Sidney in a Dark Vader outfit on a thrown with a bunch of Storm Troopers all lined up.
I’m not sure what most will think…except for Dabbler it would probably be something censored with a lof of guys and/or girls/tentacle things.
Well… if she landed on Wereworld, she could meet a human stranded there… or a former human at least.
/me looks at all the references to Elder Scrolls refs, decides to go with a different direction
She should have gone with a Monero Causeway, the exchange on those is a lot better right now.
Or an Interstellar Bypass. I heard the Vogons recently built one near Alpha Centauri.
Those aren’t blockchain systems, though. Cock-blockchain, maybe.
“Leave no traces once they close!”
… Did Sydney (almost) f*** herself over here?
yes
not really, because she can go to the destination and check it out, not find anything she likes and come BACK to here, that’s when Cora and crew will get to scan Halo as she’s ARRIVING via an Aetherium causeway…
Those probes look enough like weird space missiles that I thought the ship was deploying it’s own Very Dangerous Array.
No reason it can’t be.
Any sufficiently advanced propulsion system is indistinguishable from a weapon.
These have warp capability, and what looks like a exhaust from a rocket, ion, or other drive. Between the two of those, I’m sure that even without warheads these probes can ruin your average mook’s day.
That’s assuming the form of propulsion actually throws something out the back to push itself forward (equal and opposite forces based propulsion, such as current rocket tech). It’s possible this engine produces thrust much like the super’s form of flight, it directly exchanges energy into kinetic energy, aka there is no “fuel” that’s expended. But the “exhaust” we see is just the result of the technology.
Having a method of propulsion like this is probably mandentory for FTL space travel, as leaving mass flying around at FTL speeds in the universe isn’t a good idea (sure its being thrown out the back of the ship at hundreds to millions of km/h, but light is faster, and if we’re going faster than light, so must the exhaust). As a gass/particle exhaust trail going at such speeds meeting a planet might make a new astriod belt.
So there’s reason to believe its not exhaust, meaning it can’t be a weapon, unless you turn the probe into a very expensive kinetic missile. As an example a modern rocket can be used as a weapon, since the exhaust (and the fact there is an exhaust) is very hot gasses moving at high speeds, aka not very effective flame thrower.
Some bonus info
Popular Science, damage on ISS window Chip on a window on the ISS “was caused by something tiny, no more than a few thousandths of a millimeter across, crashing into the window at high speed. Likely candidates are a paint chip or a small piece of metal” going “at 17,500 miles per hour” or just over 28,000 km/h. Nothing to the speed of light.
Also the glass is quite something on the ISS, a car’s windshield would be nothing in comparason. For good reason, four layers of glass is very heavy and bulky.
wikipedia, rocket engines not very effective flame thrower – “rockets run with combustion temperatures that can reach ~3,500 K (~3,200 °C or ~5,800 °F).”
and the speed of light (rounded)
– 300 000 000 m / s
– 300 000 km / s
– 18 000 000 km / minute
– 1 080 000 000 km / h
so the paint chip was going 0.00260 % of the speed of light.
Most SciFi universes I know have space ships with two types of engines and don’t actually use rocket classical propulsion engines for FTL travel.
Star Treck bends space so they don’t actually travel with FTL but shrink the distances they travel.
Star Wars and many others have some form of Hyperspace, While the methods to get there and the details are different, the general idea is that this higher dimensional space does not have the upper limit of the speed of light, making it the love child of the fast lane and Vegas.
Warhammer tears the universe a new one and travels through hell.
No, no such assumption is needed. A propulsion system can either propel by throwing stuff out the back, as you’re suggesting and as we are familiar with, or could conceivably just propel without exhaust. Either way, you have something which is accelerating, and sufficient acceleration can turn *anything* into a weapon.
I mean, why point the exhaust at your enemy when you can point the car at them, yeah?
yes, hence “unless you turn the probe into a very expensive kinetic missile”
He did specify “warhead” which usually means missile. But going on a tangent and going with Ironman style “my thruster is also a weapon” was fun to think about.
But really, why turn one of the probs into a hammer head missile (from the depths anyone?) when you could probably just do an incorrect warp and get an effect similar to putting a D&D portable hole into a Bag Of Holding, basically turing the probe into one of these. For the unknowageable, when this is done, everything within 10 feet of the reaction is moved to the Astral Plane.
Well, Dabbler’s sword is partially made of “auracite”, which she describes as “crystallized aether taken from an aetheon throne”. We have no idea what that is other than sounding cool, and auracite is exceptionally good at channeling magic.
What I’m getting from this is – if we assume the thing Sydney did a couple strips ago is the aetherium causeway, is that the orbs are proper magitech: they are some kind of technology which enables the user to use magic or a combination of magic and more mundane energies to generate various effects. Of course, in this universe it’s possible that especially at the highest levels there’s no distinction between magic and technology, but whatever effect the orbs have seems to draw on what we’d call magic.
Also, the technology of Cora’s ship is able to detect, and her crew can recognize, an aetherium causeway. It’s clearly considerably beyond what Cora was expecting, though. I’d posit it’s a “This is a thing used by entities or races which are waaaaaay beyond our ability to handle, what the hell Dabbler?”
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Therefore any technology that is distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
And then there’s the Girl Genius version: Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology.
It has been awhile but I once pointed out that the orbs seem specifically designed to counter magic with minimal counters to technology (only so far is the skill tree can’t be seen by cameras). Magical scans only detect empty spots, yet the orbs and their light can be seen; the force field can cut off magical effects in the area even; there may be a chance they have a bonus against magic vs ordinary weaponry.
A magitech weapon or magitech survival kit or whatever would be designed with what is the common technology of its people in mind.
All this talk about number of satellites and orbits totally neglects the possibility that the probes may very well have the ability to form rigid tractor/pressor bonds between each other so that they can form a cage around the planet. At that point the only necessity is to apply enough pressor beams to the surface to keep it in place. High tech is high, not just a modest extension of our own tech.
If the probes form a perfect Platonic solid, there shouldn’t be any need for them to do anything but passively scan the surface, as the resultant force vector from the pressor bonds on any probe would act in an equal and opposite direction to the gravitational pull of the planet on the probe.
There is nothing “Platonic” going on, on Cora’s ship.
That’s a low blow!… Just the way Cora’s crew likes it, I guess.
Thank you. I like my entendres doubled.
Ya know, with people wondering why Cora was so quick on the trigger to help Dabbler. I have a Theory (A COMIC THEORY!):
What if Cora is a Relative of Dabbler? She could be a favorite Cousin from the “Alien” branch of her family tree.
Or just an old adventuring companion, doing a favor in exchange for a promise of future “Favors” of one type or another, or in payment of Favors of the past.
Also, we don’t know how quick on the trigger Cora was… could this be days after Maxima et. al. returned to Earth? Weeks? Months?
I ask because one implication of there being more Harems is that the incident on Sciona’s world may have happened in a different time frame from the one they left in Sciona’s lair on Earth, thus making her existence on the other planet concurrent with her existence back on Earth (past or most likely future)
During wormhole flight
*Captain the probes detected recent combat going by the heat decay signatures, a large number of small ships around that mother ship as well as concentrated fire on the planet near what appears to be the remains of one and what should have been a fatal shot to a second S-class entity*
Captain: and the destination?
…they appear to be heading to the resting body of the Aetheratron.
Some theories.
What if once they’ve lost a “host” the orbs gradually LOSE their abilities requiring the next “host” to regain those points like a gradual reset. So what if the previous “host” had been very powerful but upon arrival to Earth was confronted by *something* significantly more powerful like a Guardian of the Earth type entity that took them out.
-that or a Hyborean or Lost History era (possibly even sapient dinosaur tech) defenses are around Earth that specifically target the energy signatures of their enemies (even if non enemies later are using the same tech), reacted to the last Orb Wielder and took them out upon arrival.
Which would be a reason to static out locations like *do not go here, or fatal error occurred*.
Or maybe total anticlimactic he just died of old age during his stay on earth… until now we have no information that these orbs enhance the users lifetime/health (at least health should be there since it is so usefull)
Yeah, that is possible.
Although they’re not being known to the supernatural community (if they were they’d have likely been in that vault: PS: still posting Sydney should be wary of them knowing something like that exists and they now know about her and her orbs); makes it feel like they are somewhat relatively new to Earth…or so ancient they were buried in the sea floor only to be uncovered now I suppose.
But yeah, there is always the retired space cop route and accidently left his gun sitting in his living room as he didn’t expect to pass away right then.
my moneys on Atlantis in some form being where the orbs came form. i’m also calling it that these same aliens/super advanced humans/ whatever they are are also the ones who made super humans and the geode that gave max her powers.
so the lock would be that Cora here warps out to follow Sydney and the squids follower her to the new planet
Still don’t know what the seventh ‘unknown’ orb does.
If in keeping with a ‘battleship’ space ship theme, the function of the ‘unknown’ orb could be – ‘damage control’ or ‘autodoc/sickbay’ – or both.
After all – Sydney IS the operator of the ‘battleship’ – er, spheres. It would make sense keeping the operator in good health (or in good repair). And if I’m following the tech behind the spheres so far, everything about them makes sense, unlike much of human/earth technology (and let’s NOT discuss human/earth laws, and the sense they do NOT make…)
Looking at all the Aether discussion, there is ONE angle not discussed.
The root term, Aether originally refers to two things. The pure air of the world of the gods. and the primordial god who represented that air.
So this passage could refer to a type of worm hole that passes through a specific dimension normally only traversed/inhabited by powerful celestial beings.
That is quite a… form fitting… uniform…