Grrl Power #1032 – Physics 501
Man, I really hope I got the physics close to right on this.
It’s definitely not obvious, Dabbler. I watched a video on the Electroweak Force, and… basically didn’t understand anything. (I might have been half paying attention and browsing Twitter at the same time, but still.) As far as physics are concerned, there’s simple Newtonian shit and thermodynamics – all that is practically common sense, because that’s the world we live in. Then there’s advanced stuff like relativity, which I think most people “get” in a vague sense until they really start thinking about time dilation and stuff like how gravity and acceleration are really the same thing, then there’s the quantum stuff which is just… “I’ll have to take your word for it, math person.”
Not knowing what/where 95% of the mass and energy of the universe can tempt one to wonder if 95% of what we think we know about physics is wrong. I don’t think that’s the case, I think asking a scientist what we “know” is very different than asking your crazy uncle what he “knows” about lizard people in the government. One’s standard of evidence involves mathematical and observational proofs, the other involves online articles he “skimmed the title,” and a dire lack of knowledge about .mpeg compression artifacts.
One thing you can count on in this comic is that I’ll never introduce Dark Matter as some sort of physical thing used to power starships or anything like that. Yeah, it’s funny in Futurama when Nibbler poops dark matter out in his litterbox, but the term dark matter isn’t talking about some undiscovered element, it’s a reference to unaccounted for mass in macro-level views of the universe. Yes… fine, it might actually be some undiscovered isotope (wildly unlikely) or some form of infectious strange matter or something, but once we know what it actually is, we’re probably not likely to keep calling it dark matter are we? We’ll name it after whoever discovered it like with the Higgs Boson/Field. Hopefully the person who discovers it doesn’t have a dumb last name or we’ll have to call it lipshitzium, or wiglesworthite, feltersnatchium, svejokovsky-eyjafjallajökullium (a Polish woman married a volcano, see?)
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: It’s done!
210K words of weapon building, dinosaur fighting, harem satisfying, lumberjacking, moderate diplomacing, bad guy chopping action. Also some humor.
New incentive is up! Dabbler decided to get out of the pool, in slow motion (see the bonus comic at Patreon), possibly with added “physics.”
Cue Mele Kalikimaka.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Dark Matter is just a placeholder name for “whatever matter makes up the majority of the mass in the universe that keeps our equations from working properly.” :)
let’s look at the line up of “maybe this is what is making up that invisible mass/holding the galaxy clusters together/maybe also aiding in expanding the universe”
we have
Dark Matter,
Dark Energy,
Strange Matter (a super dense stabilized Borg particle)
countless trillions of primordial black holes,
Neutral matter (I think there is a more recent name for this, but doesn’t interact with other forms of matter other than to push them away but also produces gravity),
white holes *despite the theory being they also expel light so should be very visible*
and
Space/Time fountains *like a white hole except it expels space/time not just mass, and thus expands the universe not just in one big expansion but in threads/streams as well, due to the space/time distortion this causes is identical “observation” as regular mass produced gravity.,,,vut the universe should in these areas be expanding faster or unevenly than other regions *not sure how you’d detect that…but there it is*.
I think you’d detect that with weird redshift patterns for far-off objects in nearby regions, not matching predictions
yeah, the lensing, although without observable objects being affected chances are a space/time fountain may be interpreted as a black hole, at least as far as I could follow it.
What if it’s *all* made of tiny space-time fountains, bubbling up wherever matter isn’t. Any place that there’s less than a certain density of matter, or a certain distance between particles of matter, space makes a little more of itself. Thus, red shift. and the further stuff gets away, the more red shift.
that is an interesting take on the rebirthing universe hypothesis (the idea that as the universe expands and matter moves further and further apart, that the point where the big bang occurred is actually a *something* that is triggered by the absence of mass to start the cycle again and expel more…or a new quantum field/universe overwriting the previous universe.
something like that but more of the same type of space/time perhaps occurring at different points like a branching universe or series of fountains through a hill side is an interesting postulation.
Sounds rather like the Steady-State cosmological model proposed by Fred Hoyle et al in the middle of the last century. And I suspect the same evidence which sank that theory may also rule yours unlikely.
I think “White holes” were hypothesized as a way for accounting for energy lost in black holes (conservation of energy said it must end up SOMEWHERE, and “White holes” were a possible explanation.) they were always treated with skepticism, since as you pointed out, they should be very visible. The idea was pretty much laid to rest when hawking radiation accounted for the entirety of the “lost” energy, and poof, no need for white holes to explain it away anymore.
I’m sure the same will happen to dark matter&energy, as one or more things are discovered to account for all or part of the imbalance.
There is a hypothesis that has gained some traction that uses a different formula for gravity and the need for dark matter / energy disappears, but it breaks other stuff, so it kinda just moves the problem around rather than solves it. Is it right, or dark matter & energy? Time will tell.
Not exactly, but you are right that white holes should be very visible and we haven’t found any (yet), they are the theoretical antithesis of a black hole, the inverted properties.
Hawking radiation is a thermal regulation bit where one particle goes into the event horrizon and another is expelled…which somehow also equals the gradual decline of the black hole (so gradual that it takes over such a ludicrous length of time that a black hole could easily make up the difference with a small “meal” or the unknown property that somehow accounts for black holes many magnitudes larger than the math says should be possible at the current age of the universe, so whatever is behind that could thumb its nose at hawking radiation in the future…and the confusing if a black hole inverts time and space so there is motion but time is stopped then how the hell is there some loss of anything taking any amount of time when time is no longer a factor, but whatever leave that do the debate if ringularities and black hole spins screw up all that math anyway. like does the hawking radiation reduce mass and the rotational energy at the same time or rotational energy alone before mass or mass directly but not rotational energy…
oddly enough with hawking radiation there is a debate on if white holes should experience it as well, although a white hole is a constant blast of energy and mass back into the universe…
but then we have the exotic matter hypothesis that the black hole isn’t even losing mass but breaching other realities and what is being emitted is from that reality and not its self…or the white hole is the other reality side of a black hole and we don’t see them because our reality is the giver and another timeline with slightly different physics gets to be the receiver or whatever.
(this is a hypothesis mind you and the same grain as assuming things like space/time fountains can exist, a…It could be possible, but nothing supports it so don’t assume its real).
the biggest problem with black holes and anything related to them is we can’t observe and experiment with them directly, there are many things in science where there is a theory, the math checks out, but then through observation and experimentation different events occur, unexpected results, double checking theories, adjusting for unforeseen forces and variables that previously were unexpected, etc…
its one thing for the math to check out, but when you actually get to observe and experiment with a thing directly you may find that variable X didn’t even exist and variable Y didn’t account for variable X not existing and there being another unknown variable in its place.
sometimes the universe likes to be counter intuitive and if you didn’t see it you’d never think it would work that way. like how a greater pull between mass doesn’t change the speed of the attraction, even if you’d think it would, the classic bowling ball and feather in a vacuum; there is a stronger attraction, yet despite this there is no difference in the speed at which the mass is pulled towards each other….this makes sense to us as we have been told this since elementary school, but it wouldn’t be surprising to find another reality where the greater attraction equals greater speed of attraction and our reality looks like Alice in wonderland (that would be if gravity were a force there would increase acceleration, but we live in a reality where gravity isn’t a force but a space/time distortion so the slope of acceleration has a cut off point no matter how much you increase the amount…we think..
like somethings in thermal dynamics the math on that could not account for very high gravity and for all we know the stuff inside a black hole is accelerated beyond what gravity normally can and produce unexpected results.
unless gravity is neither a force or a distortion and has gravitons or quanta of gravity so…*I know nothing about this theory so stopping there, think its a new one, but apparently it ties into the universe is made of pixels theory and the quanta hold code from the quantum foam that controls all this as cosmic data or something along those lines*.
You missed Multiverse Theory, and interactions therein.
I surmised that DM was basically reflected mass shadows of stuff bending space on otherwise of things. Observable via grav lensing same as our large masses can bend space time locally. (I have degree in applied physics with nuclear schooling from navy on the side). I leave the math to math geeks and the fiddly bits to engineers. The d/f between mass values and projections should be similar to how voltage works. From large to small forces both. Resulting in energy/force we can use and tap into.
I have made two pure physic guys seriously look into this. And I got cited in there papers (one not so nicely as “from the mouth and minds of a baby idiot. Probably libelous, but he said I’d be the daddy of the new science…)
The location jumps of electrons and how wave theory and light act similarly to leave states to pass “energy walls” as if they didn’t exist can be parlayed in reverse to dump energy away aka shields. How to do this would result in former as well as tons of other field manipulation possibilities and capacitance and transformation of energy in many forms. From strong to weak, from potential to kinetic to use of them to trick locals physics and laws into being your Lil bitch and doing what you need it to do at that moment.
Would you happen to have a link to either paper or both?
Yes, but it appears to be* a combination of large matter (things we could>see, like an asteroid or a neutron star, but which are so far away and radiate so little that they are effectively invisible to us unless they pass in front of a radiating object such as a star) and some unknown particle(s) which is/are all around us and within us, but that we do not know how to detect in minute quantities and can only speculate about because of observations of massive objects such as galaxies.
.
* Super laymans termy here. I’ve read a bit about it, I have a fairly large amount of math and physics education (much of which is not directly applicable, as I am an EE), but I still will not pretend to understand it any better than the understanding you could impart to any reasonably bright high school student or college undergrad across a semester of a class on the subject.
Close, but not exactly. It is a placeholder name, but for whatever the source of that gravity is. It isn’t necessarily matter.
Yes it is a placeholder for matter. That’s why it’s called Dark MATTER. It’s ‘Matter which we can’t currently find which would make our equations work properly.’
There’s also a placeholder for energy called Dark Energy, which is a placeholder to explain why the universe is expanding faster and faster, since they have no idea of the source of that energy increase either. It’s all placeholders for incomplete equations.
A funny idea would be if there’s NO Dark Matter to begin with, and the problem is with gravity itself, not with our accounting of matter and energy. Which is a possibility for people who theorize that the big bang happened because gravity ‘leaks’ into other dimensions. That could mean that the additional matter simply doesnt exist in the universe in the first place.
But I’m a lawyer, not a physicist. A lawyer that has studied physics sure (I needed to learn a lot of areas of science for the patent bar), but I’m not a physicist, and most of my talking points come from watching shows on theoretical physics and reading online.
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Mansplaining: The act of offending a sexist by means of rationality.
Or in actuality, it’s when you talk down to a woman about things she already knows because you think having a penis means you’re smarter. You can’t just “no u” what it is, that makes you look exactly like the kind of nitwit who talks down to people habitually.
because being condescending requires a penis and being condescended to requires a vagina…
Uhm, no. Anyone, regardless of sex can be condescnding and be dondescended to, BUT, men have had the tendency to just assume that they know more about any subject than a woman, no mater what she has expertise or experience in. And not just assume they know more, tey also assume the woman wants it explained to her, even while she is discoursing expertly about said subject.
Don’t feed the trolls, this is not productive discussion – some men are butthurt that misogyny is being fought, and some others very merrily engage in it, and neither of those two groups will be engaging the subject in good faith. Save yourself time and annoyance for stuff you will enjoy ;)
So, riddle me this… Why do they NEED to use a word that assumes a sex-derived stereotype?
The term itself is highly sexist. It’s a sexist synonym for “being pedantic” or “pedantry”, when the pedant is male and one of the persons being explained to happens to be female. The guy may be pedantic with literally everyone, regardless of sex.
The word is not used in solely the context you claim, even. There is no limit on how many listeners other than the woman are present. There is no limit on whether the audience did actually know the information or not. There is no attempt to determine if the didactic speech/writing is happening because of the gender of the listener, or not.
It doesn’t matter if the pedant explains stuff to LITERALLY EVERYONE… it’s denigrated as “mainsplaining” because he’s a man, and because that one woman feels that receiving the explanation represents condescension. It’s just a sexist way to shut down a male who is explaining anything…without demonstrating any error whatsoever in the information he is presenting.
When I was coming up in IT, being pedantic was pretty much default behavior for the top IT nerds. If you couldn’t point out any errors in what they were saying, then you didn’t have the tech chops to be respected. Respect was earned by applicable knowledge… and there were lots of subfields the knowledge could be in. (A bit like “Stack Overflow” is these days.) There were very few women around, and they did it to men far more often than me, so sexism had zero to do with it.
Sexism may exist as part of things that are perceived as “mansplaining”, or may not. if you’re not verifying before you use that sexist term, then you are stereotyping and you are a bigot.
So if someone ever misuses a term, it invalidates the term for all other contexts?
Being pedantic is not synonymous with being condescending.
cy414: “because being condescending requires a penis and being condescended to requires a vagina…”
Uh, yeah, it does, when you’re giving a definition of “mansplaining”. Did you miss that bit?
Stop stop stop! You’re going to take someone’s eye out. Besides, you’re saying it wrong: It’s LeviOsa, not Leviosaaa!
Mansplaining: A behavioural pattern more common in the more patriarchal cultures, where condescending explanation is directed from the patriarch to those of a lower status like children, slaves, and women. Especially pathetic in young adult males, since they have done nothing to earn their status yet. These are mocked as much by the actual patriarchs as by those of lesser status. In these societies the actually adult males understand that there are different types of power and pissing off the one that prepares your meals has serious downsides. Also, it makes you lose status in the eyes of certain peers without any upside beyond stroking your fragile ego.
It has become less common since basically all cultures have become more egalitarian, except for rare temporary extremist counter-culture flare-ups. The dying embers of a past great conflagration.
Personally, I find “mansplaining” to be an INCREDIBLY sexist and offensive term, especially since it carries with it an implicit assumption that one gender is above such behavior. If you think that women don’t engage in such antics, just check out Ayn Rand’s literary sewage. (though there’s a more recent example that made the rounds earlier this year: a tiktoker who claims that the Roman Empire never actually existed, and sneers at anyone who points out the facts that contradict her claims)
I’ve seen it coming from individuals from every group, in fact. Males, females, Evangelicals, atheists, young and old, political conservatives, political liberals… a desire to elevate yourself and make yourself feel superior without having to put in the work of actually attaining the knowledge and experience.
See, my issue with the whole ” mansplainining” is that it’s based on the assumption that you know the motive of the individual in question and, not only that, it is immediately assumed that the intent is negative. What’s more due to the nature of the wording, it is automatically attributed to what is assumed to be a male characteristics( not that the otherway would be better).
Makes me think about the inherent value of such a term to begin with as it does, from my perspective, appear to be a very negative approach to conversation and more or less appear to be a simple conversation stopper.
Otherwise known as a thought terminating cliche. No need for self reflection when you can just assign sexism to someone instead of considering for a brief moment that the other person may not be able to read your mind and thus is covering everything in irritatingly exhaustive detail just in case.
Where does motive enter into it? It’s a question of tone, and the assumptions the speaker is making about the knowledge of their audience. Condescension is annoying and rude by default, but it’s even worse when it’s an amateur to an expert.
So you’ve explicitly demonstrated that it’s a sexist term, since it uses “man” as a bigoted proxy that perpetuates a sexist stereotype that crowds out the common and plain English terms involved: condescending, patronizing, and pedantic.
So, we could bring back the word “hysterical” for women who become overly emotional when discussing things and rejecting factual discussions. That’s the equivalent level of offensive stereotype, I believe.
Or, alternately, report anyone to HR every time they use the sexist term “mansplaining”. It’s probably the better strategy for ending the sterotyping.
Thought it was dumbing it down so a man could understand beyond rudimentary grunts and farts
Panel 2 NOTICE ME SENPAI
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oq7B44odQ00
Dabbler said “it’s obvious” and here we have two opposing earth groups that have access to the exact answers on an off-earth space station for the simple bribe of some authentic earth souvenirs.
it’s no longer a secret when two people (can) get the answer.
I had a physics teacher in college joke about the “its obvious” mindset, or he was ranting, its been like twenty years or more since then. Any who, he was going on about how after reading the text book or attending lectures some students would get a big head and after seeing it explained *usually in a super simplified way so they get the basics of it* think it was so obvious and then start to talk down to others who didn’t figure it out *forgetting they didn’t either and it was explained to them as well*.
the high school student time traveler dilemma, go back in time, know about all these cool things, how to use them, the basic ideas about how they work, but then realize that without the ready made tools at your disposal or the in depth education you can’t actually make, utilize, or properly explain so others can understand anything you thought you knew.
Although if you are smart, you bring back the things you will need to use what you know. You bootstrap yourself so that when you get to the point where you have once again built the time machine you can go back and bring better stuff this time.
Basically, imagine that 2022-you is sitting there reading this comment and suddenly a series of portals open and nine different ‘you’s walk out, all of them coming from successive iterations of 2052.
I think the idea was a Yankee in King Arthur’s court (or time travel Isekai for modern audiences) scenario. Like you, not a time machine inventor, with your high school and college grade book smarts ends up back in time. Sort of pointing at those students who think its so obvious and easy till they have to apply that knowledge in a blank slate situation.
Dabbler is right, the answer is obvious. Love is what’s keeping the two nuclear forces together!
i thought it would be magic
Potayto, potahto
love, sex, robots.
If Star Trek is right then space time and thought are related. Maybe all matter can think. Gravity exists because we want it to. >>>>
So did you use a Potoo or a Muppet as the model for Dabbler in panel 2?
Panel 2 is the best and most accurate portrait of Xuriel Tantalis I have seen. it brings Oliver Cromwell to mind: “I desire you will use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not to flatter me at all; but remark all those roughnesses, pimples, warts, and every thing as you see me: otherwise I will never pay one farthing for it.”
But I think Cromwell was slightly less up himself than Miss Tantalis is.
I doubt Xuriel has much competition for how much can be ‘up herself’, certainly among other residents of Earth.
It’s obvious that “supers” are the result of magic. Magic explains everything.
(Looking up definition of “magic”)
Magic: Anything not explained by science.
God dammit.
In one of my older fantasy/sci-fi series I married magic and science so gave my magical affinity super-humans an “Astral Quality” that explained their special skills and which types of magic they had an easier time learning,
and when it came time to bring in the sci-fi elements just changed the names, Astral Bodies became “Dimensional Imprint Signatures) Mana became Multi-Dimensional Distortion Potential, and Elemental Affinity became Dimensional Distortion Quality Signature.
Topwebcomics website is making safari freak out and it won’t let me actually go to the website to vote. Is there another place to vote this comic up?
This is because their HTTPS certificate is subtly broken. It works for http://www.topwebcomics.com, but NOT for http://topwebcomics.com – try adding the www. manually.
[I think the comment system may have eaten my first reply. If this ends up as a duplicate my apologies.]
Try adding “www.” to the URL by hand. Their HTTPS certificate is subtly broken and only covers the website if www is included.
I’m not sure how subtle, “lack of subdomain wildcard” is. It’s only been a thing for as long as certs have been around.
Panel 2: Due to an odd twist in the space-time continuum, Dabbler is momentarily replaced by Toad Dabbler from Earth-8311.
I have watched and read so many conflicting theories that to mention any one will almost always result in a “but actually” reply from someone who likes or thinks the physics and math of another or adhere to an older model they were taught so brush off newer theories etc… Dark matter, dark energy, primordial black holes, and strange matter, oh and invisible self contradicting white holes have all been pointed as as holding together and expanding the universe, have time both as a universal stage but another that space aka the quantum foam/field is the stage and time a distortion caused by a distortion that distorts equally to space distorting so hard to tell apart, and some me theories about how space/time is usually treated as the stage even if it can be distorted but what if instead the quantum foam its self contains reactive reality code properties that may influence things further down by being tied to them and reacting to those changes its self to influence them, basically hidden reactive influencial forces. Among dozens of other theories on how the forces relate, and relate with sub atomic particles and going up from there
I always make a point of sussing Sabine Hossenfelder’s YouTubes, she is very clear in layman’s terms and has little sympathy for physicists. PBS Space-Time tries very hard to be helpful, but has difficulty in letting go of yesterday’s astro-physics.
Sorting through the mess, this is my understanding:
# Time is a field in which events happen. It has one dimension, and is measured by the distance between events. “Events” may be singular, or plural, which is to say: more than one event may happen at a point in time, or only one, or none.
# Space is a field in which matter happens. It has three dimensions and is measured by the distance between lumps of matter. Lumps of matter may be motionless with respect to anything, or nothing.
# Mass is a property of matter, not a synonym. However, AS FAR AS WE KNOW, only matter has mass, so using the word as a synonym is not a capital crime.
# Gravity *seems* to be a force generated by events (#Time) involving two or more lumps of matter in close-ish proximity (#Space) to each other. Relative motion would seem to be irrelevant.
That is all.
Was a Thermal dynamics class that convinced me to stop being a physics major. Paraphrasing, but professor said:
“This is a formula we teach as un disputed law because Einstine came up with it and he was really smart. But it doesn’t fit with experimental results, espically at higher temps.”
I give a side ways glance to so much high energy physics and cosmic scale stuff because I was told for the sake of formulas they ignore things like black holes having a spin,
and they are so married to Hawking radiation and that black holes will fade away some day *even when hand waving the time frame is a ludicrously high amount of time…and then handwave they can make up trillions of years of lost mass with “one” meal of a star or a few planets…and no idea how the super massive black holes even exist *given the current age of the universe and theories on how black holes expand they shouldn’t be able to get that big yet*…so there is an unknown factor that allows black holes to grow rapidly, and many scales larger than comprehension properly allows.
then read up on conflicting theories on how space/time relates and that if not treated as a stage but a participant than so many things can be messed up. *they don’t like mixing their physics because there is no unified theory of how it all relates. What is happening on the tiny quantum scale seems to be in contradiction with things at like the molecular scale and larger, or even atom scale and larger.
just look at the pro and anti quanta camps.
It’s pretty widely accepted that our understanding of physics is almost completely wrong, but close enough to right for most of the things we need it for, most of the time. We’ve got to have something to work with until we figure it out.
That’s all of science in a nutshell. We know it’s wrong, we can’t wait for perfection, we’ll improve it as we go.
just done be alien Jizz or somthing xD can see it more the soul bonding with somthing and unlocking inate power.
but that’s how all the super humans in Ben 10 got their powers, alien jizz.
-while not directly stated it is implied that most aliens in these series have some special power, for humans it is apparently being able to have children with almost any sapient alien species and that species’ special power being passed down to the human children.
On the naming dark matter when its discovered, I vote for cosmic silk or Yggdrasillium or Y-Dendritic mass (as it supposedly either spreads out like a spider web or branches out like a cosmic tree *although root system or fungal system would make as much sense, just not as romantic in the naming department.
I recommend watching Sean Carroll’s Biggest Idea in the Universe. Start with Conservation, and keep going until you get completely lost.
You got the essentials right. One of my favorite potential gravity theories RN is that it’s actually not a fundamental force, but an emergent property.
That said, relativity is one of those theories that seemed obvious in hindsight (at least to physicists), as all the evidence for it was already sitting there in the Maxwell equations.
I had heard some time back that time may be a reaction to a reaction. Just that it reacts with equal “intensity” to the distortion of space as to be mistaken as one with it.
something about mass reacting with masslessness produces gravity, which gravity in turn causing a secondary reaction with the quantum field or masslessness again to trigger the production of time, which is produced equivalent to the space distortion…or something along those lines.
ive been able to make a model of gravitational formulas that marry Einstein and Newton Views, that removes the idea of singularity at the centre of a black hole (black holes still exist) by linking max potential energy to the mass energy of the object, that works with all scales…
I just cant prove if this is just a nice potential model or how it actually works -.-
What in the world happened to Dabbler’s face in panel 2?
And on a related note we haven’t had a Dabbler Explains page in a while.
I sort-of recognise it as a ‘template’ meme-face, but couldn’t tell you what its more usual context is. Don’t think it involves waving a hand at the lecturer, especially not two right hands.
DB sometimes makes stuff cartoony when he’s indicating something’s extra silly. It was more prevalent early on, like when Sidney was pretending she was on fire and complaining stop, drop, and roll didn’t work. (And then she hid under the ambulance.)
The truth. The camera was able to utilise a form of Syddles’ “Truesight” and show Miss Tantalis as the spoilt brat she is.
This is giving me vibes of the one short story- “The Road not Taken” by Harry Turtledove.
I love that story!
Checking…
YES, my link is still active!
For those who haven’t read it, you are in for a treat!
https://pastebin.com/aJQfubrK
I know that “advanced alien civilization X withholds its advanced science from recklessly young Earthlings” is a standard sci-fi trope, but how exactly could that be enforced?
Sure, the leaders of the X aliens might refuse to hand over such knowledge when directly asked, but what prevents the knowledge from leaking like a sieve from a thousand other channels? Couldn’t Sidney teleport over to that alien crossroads location and take a moment out from enjoying the nuclear-hot meals to drop by a library? Or chat up a talkative alien college student? Or watch their YouTube? Or buy (or borrow or shoplift) a copy of their equivalent of “The Anime Guide To Physics”?
yes, but that’s the thing.
Sidney would be smuggling it back to Earth, Deus smuggled the tech to Earth.
the higher end aliens of the Xevoarchy look to have a customs system set up watching for tech and flagging it if the ship or wormhole is set to go to a planet marked as below that tech level.
obviously there would be criminal syndicates, smugglers, and others; and at best the aliens would either have to go after those individuals or send recovery teams to either destroy or confiscate the tech, which that second part could be seen as those with the power bullying those who can’t stop them (and it is), is like the prime directive (only sometimes interfering when it suits your needs but otherwise claim the reason is to let civilizations advanced on their own natural course)
AKA: filtering out those that might disturb YOUR status quo in the galaxy under the guise of natural development and peace.
control is control.
They miiight be able to scan for “tech” being transported. But knowledge?
In the last panel, Dabbler states that one or more of the key breakthroughs are simple enough to be “obvious” once you’ve tripped over it or had a good enough hint. Surely Sidney (or countless other Terrans) would be able to find a primer or watch an alien TV show that casually talked about what to the aliens would be common knowledge, then head home and pass along the info. The PTB wouldn’t be scanning everyone’s entire brain contents as they leave to see if they had picked up any grains of Forbidden Knowledge.
Even if they could (unlikely), there are apparently tons of aliens already on Earth, someone’s bound to spill the beans out of carelessness or for a reasonable price. “You didn’t hear it from me…”
eh, the whole policing knowledge thing isn’t new either and generally laws forbidding informing another culture or society of certain advances either gets a harsh enough punishment or social stigma to prohibit most from doing it. Yeah some will, most likely if the other society is high enough that the stigma is loose enough and the organization or individual can self excuse it, like a just over the line FTL sharing knowledge with a just on the line civilization on how to make those engines a little more efficient.
although when close like that it seems the laws are looser, back when Cora first explained this to Sidney it seemed that civilizations closer to each other would share and trade advances *makes sense as one may have advanced further in one avenue of technology but the other in another avenue so they exchange notes*, seems the rules and punishments may get stricter when its closer to *don’t give a space gun to a caveman*, although I bring back up the its all about control if they do try to police Sidney’s orbs and they are Nth tech, because policing tech above their own to something below their own should be outside their jurisdiction, but if their real goal is to filter out any civilization that would shake up their status quo and not “play nice” then they would anyway. (at least until something higher up they can’t strong arm decides to step in). A
-lower tech civilization gets hands on ultra tech water filtration device they said was a gift from the goddesses
-space empire: “we said you can’t have that”
(Sahralia the Star Killer shows up “I said they can”).
-space empire: …”oh..um, okay..sorry”
Schlock Mercenary has a whole page about naming dark matter particles. Although in this specific case, they’re mostly talking about particles that make up Pa’anuri, sentient dark matter, rather than regular dark matter.
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-09-01
Come to think of it, I can see Deus copying Petey’s techniques, within his technology set, but for much more sinister purposes.
Man, I miss that comic. Seems like it ended too abruptly, and nothing filled the void where it was.
I’d love to see more stories from him set in the Runewrite (right?) universe, that shit was a trip.
Is that Maxima’s soul leaving her body after Sydney’s joke?
Hmm…
Must also keep in mind, that where Deus is going with this theory of physics, is a conclusion that fits a world where super heroes and their powers are real.
Potentially, if Dave got all the physics explanations real-world accurate, and built a perfect proof for the existence of supers… then by transitive property, we should have supers in our own, real world.
So, something not quite matching would almost be necessary.
Daft Theory Time,
The Wave Front of the Big Bang,
Is Traveling at Near C
“Dark Matter” is the Difference between
The Rest Mass of the Domain, and It’s Average Relativistic Mass.
You mean, the same secrets you learnt “on your own” when you went to Fracture?
But, because you didn’t learn them on Dirt, you didn’t break any pacts or some such nonsense?
Don’t try and sound like you know what you are talking about Sydney, you heard about Higgs on TBBT and have been dieing for a chance to mention it ever since
Try this:
https://youtu.be/WoNaVb7b-tg?t=1860
The Electric Universe Theory explains how gravity snuggles into the equations.
I don’t think my previous post worked, so…
Go to YouTube.
Look up “Wal Thornhill: An Electric Cosmology for the 21st Century | EU Workshop”
Go to the 31:00 mark, and start watching to see a great explanation on how gravity is actually based on electorns, electricity & magnetism.
Also, if you want a good introduction to the Electric Universe Theory, start with the video titled “Symbols of an Alien Sky, Episode 2: The Lightning Scarred Planet Mars”.
As an experimental particle physicist collaborating on one of the large LHC experiments, I thought I would weigh in with some friendly feedback.
Regarding the electroweak force, this is basically correct. The theory has been astonishingly good at describing most particle phenomena up to and beyond the energy where the two forces join. Making the theory work at all mathematically required the addition of the Higgs field back in the 1960s, and our confirmation of the Higgs boson in 2012 (I managed to be at CERN for it!) pretty much clinched it.
Unification of the electroweak and strong forces is a bit more shaky. Grand unified theories (GUT) have an energy scale much higher than the electroweak, and way out of our experimental reach. And there are several competing theoriesm, all with their own issues and different predictions. So I think Deus’ view that the theory is already in place “observational confirmation pending” is premature.
And yeah, gravity is anyone’s guess :-)
Well just guessing,
*disclaimer the following guess is either higher dimension being concepts being poorly translated through the limited vernacular of this language and time with few of the concepts to describe it..(or I don’t know them…or think they sound stupid…P-branes.. honestly…)
or…its sci-fi and if it is even remotely correct is pulling a Donald Duck equation.
okay with that out of the way.
well the its so obvious connection is that gravity is the result of a quantum foam codex function as are all the forces triggered by the presence of mass and energy via the *matter alignment* property of the quantum foam codex as perfumed via the data of the reactive and more importantly interactive “bubbling” which is in reality infinite dimension waves “bouncing” about in code sequences that govern the base properties of this reality.
I misread .mpeg at first.
I’ve been in fanfiction spaces too long.
If she thinks it’s obvious, it’s probably something like the proof for Euclid’s fifth postulate, the sort of thing where you can go at the problem for generations if you approach it the wrong way, but it makes you snack yourself in the face once you realize how simple the solution is.
Aw darn, I have now lost the substantial amount of respect for Deus that I lose for anyone foolish enough to say “mansplaining.”
So you don’t respect yourself, since you just said it?
Deus alternates between trying to tiptoe around Maxima’s feminism, and barge right into it, depending on whether he’s in Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hide mode. He’s poking the bear, while trying to make a big deal about how he’s trying to avoid poking the bear.
You really should read what others have posted.
I quote Guesticules above:
”
“March 18, 2022, 4:47 am
”
“Thought it was dumbing it down so a man could understand beyond rudimentary grunts and farts”
“
Special relativity is pretty easily explained through visuals. It’s a trick of geometry, where we set time as a dimension perpendicular to the spatial dimensions. Since we can’t do 4D, however, ditch one of the space directions and imagine a sphere, where two dimensions are space and, say, the up/down dimension is time. Let’s call this sphere the universe. Within, we will place our object, which can be, I dunno, a rocket ship, but actually a cutout of a rocket ship (since our universe only has 2 space dimensions, remember?) The rocket ship is stationary at the moment, and only moves through time. Thus, it’s a paper cutout that has an arrow coming out of the side, representing its existence in/movement through time. The arrow is, of course, aligned with the direction of time within the universe.
If we want the rocket ship to begin accelerating through space, we need only rotate it inside the sphere of the universe so that the arrow coming out of its side starts to lean over. As it aligns more and more with a direction of space (which is really anywhere along the equator of our little universe), the rocket ship’s movement through time becomes more and more a movement through space.
Now, the consequences: Our ship isn’t moving through time quite as fast any more, since some of that movement is being co-opted for spatial movement. Its spatial dimensions (length and width) aren’t directly aligned with the universe’s space dimensions any more either. This manifests in reality as objects flattening in their direction of movement exactly as if they were rotating in some 4D sphere, with the math and the trigonometry all checking out. The way time slows down within a ship as it approaches light speed also works out to the same spherical geometry. At a 45-degree angle, the time arrow of the ship is exactly halfway between the time and space dimensions of the universe. Our multiplier for both time and space is root-2 over 2, just like you learned in high school.
It’s called relativity because from the ship’s perspective, it’s the universe that has misaligned its own time dimension with the ship’s. When you spin two circles or spheres relative to each other, how can you say which one is misaligned? When a ship approaches light speed, the universe thinks it has nearly frozen in time, and also squished itself into a pancake along the direction of its motion. Thus, the passengers experience almost no time, regardless of how long the ship takes to get to its destination. Well from the ship’s perspective, the universe shrinks to a pancake along its direction of motion, which means it takes almost no time for the ship’s passengers to reach their destination. Thus, reality is preserved despite the drastically different perspectives.
Any paradoxes involving astronauts turning around and returning to earth considerably younger than twins that stayed on earth are resolved by noting that the act of turning around at light speed is extreme acceleration, and under the purview of general relativity, not special relativity. Doing that is like jumping into the black hole in Interstellar.
Conclusion: Special relativity is easy to visualize. It’s objects spinning around in 4D (1 time, 3 space) spheres, moving through the universe and relative to each other by rotating their personal set of dimensions in order to turn time movement into space movement.
So what happens when the Arrow Of Time is rotated 180 degrees from it’s start position?
Does the ship travel back in time?
Nah, because the ship is still on the same grid and thus turns with it.
Yes, that’s traveling backwards in time. It’s not physically possible within current physics, because simply reaching 90 degrees is already the speed of light and requires infinite energy.
maybe because its not traveling back in time but trying to strong arm reverse time.
but unless reality really is a simulation (with back logged saved memory) or works like an analogue VHS tape, you can’t reverse time at all and attempting to strong arm this is like trying to shove something backwards at full stop with a wall behind it made of *zero causality*.
or like trying to drive backwards by pulling the road forward under the car…to oversimplify and not really visualize it…you just…aren’t going to do it, now multiverse travel to timelines of related events sure, sideways across time is doable, just not…reversing it…and if you could reverse time something tells me the affects would be less…go back to ancient Egypt and more *Anti-entropy, unification via anti-reaction physics of another universe…you are dead and its mind bending horrifying what happens to your very atomic structure as you don’t so much hit rewind as change a base code function of existence to run opposite of its normal function.*
I wouldn’t be surprised if some people are learning what people mean by a unicorn for the first time in this webcomic.
‘Something that gives you the horn’?
So can anyone help me understand something here.
Why is sydney part of the conversation? I mean i get she’s the protagonist and dave wants her there but unlike before when she was present due to circumstances or requirements, she has no business in this discussion. It’s the equivalent of a private being part of highly classified brief where she has no “need to know” requirements.
What am i saying, that’s exactly what’s going on lol.
So why is she there? Why couldn’t she just stay outside like when she barged in with the prez conference? It’s not like she was personally invited by deus as far as i remember.
Well its not a top secret meeting and she was brought along by Maxima to a general invite by Deus.
she is also likely there as a way to buffer Deus personality for Maxima, general back up, she has assets both in detecting unseen enemies and a very quick exit *yes Maxima could blow up the entire country but sometimes just leaving with minimal mass destruction is the best option in the long run*,
and she can also be there for the same reason as Dabbler, a BS detector. Both have been in space, been around aliens, so can identify suspect technology *as Dabbler already has*, and Sidney due to her personality and the things she tries to keep to herself has probably become suspect to Maxima and maybe to Dabbler that she may be an alien herself, like a sleeper agent (or the orbs are and are feeding her intel/influencing her responses)…she really needs to come clean about the high tech glasses to partially alleviate some of that concern.
but Deus says something, or they pass by something, Dabbler and Sidney would be in the position to say “that came from Fracture station” or “that is or isn’t Alari tech” ect…
given both are also ADHD, having both there to hedge the bets one will notice something when the other doesn’t.
they are assets, might as well use them on missions like this…also she is kind of getting slotted into the position of being Maxima’s side kick and is considered Maxima’s project, and given Sidney recently was shown withholding information, and we the audience know she is still doing it and Maxima very likely suspects this, keeping the (potential to become an Omega class super someday), close by is just a good idea.
-heck her portals are also omega class *in range anyway*, and if the orbs are in some way responsible for the KT boundary event, they could get to that level someday, so best to have her near the only known S class who is also trust worthy near her at any given time.
I *love* the variety of Dabbler’s responses. I kind of want to turn them all into an emote pack.
How come the trio is still in the same room as the war criminal who openly admitted his desire to subjugate the world?
not to play Pander, but he technically has done nothing directly that makes him a war criminal (although selling weapons and tech to an aggressive nation is generally frowned upon), and he has this mock super villain public persona and methodology behind it that disarms those to dismiss his talk as corporate hyperbole.
Yes, and “subjugate” is hilarious.
“To subdue, and bring under the yoke of power or dominion; to conquer by force, and compel to submit to the government or absolute control of another; to vanquish.”
Deus has no need nor desire to conquer the world by force. He’s explicitly told us just in these couple of pages that he’s setting up the situation where nearby nations will **beg** him to take over, so they can experience an increase in safety and standard of living.
The guy has no intention whatsoever of taking over by force, because that is far too fragile and expensive. But, you have to be willing to look at the actual powerpoint, rather than imagine he is Lex Luthor x General Zod x Emperor Palpatine.
“not to play Pander,”
I think you played an excellent Pander, and I give you a gold star sticker for the effort.
I Question @Rhuen’s reasons, because due to Deus’s deal with Zimbabwe I suspect he’s the current head of the Gelatyn forces just like he’s now the head of Zimbabwian forces, in which case he has violated the no-supers-outside treaty and I suspect that, due to his attack on the old King that at least a few of the supers are on his personal pay roll, but he could have fixed this before the signing of the treaty.
My guess is much simpler: because if you aren’t willing to negotiate with and learn from your enemy you’re a shit tactician, strategian, politican, spy and diplomat. I mean the allies tried negotiating with Hitler(didn’t work), the current truce in North Korea was a succes, because war criminals were willing to negotiate with each other and with who do you think the US negotiated when they negotiated peace with the Taliban and Canada got its independence by asking a war criminal.
“, because due to Deus’s deal with Zimbabwe I suspect he’s the current head of the Gelatyn forces just like he’s now the head of Zimbabwian forces, in which case he has violated the no-supers-outside treaty”
1) You can’t retroactively say he violated a treaty, for which he never signed onto, because he wound up taking control (voluntarily for Mozambique, not Zimbabwe btw) of another nation, which ALSO had not signed onto the no-supers-treaty when the war started. Mozambique only signed on after they lost most of their supers.
2) The government which signed onto the no-supers-treaty in Mozambique may no longer exist if Deus, and thus Galytn, is now in charge. In which case any treaties with Mozambique are now null and void. If you make a treaty with Great Britain via the 13 colonies of the Americas, then the Americas break away from Great Britain and become their own country, those former colonies are no longer bound by the treaty. It’s a different nation and government.
3) Assuming Deus takes on all the duties and treaties signed into by Mozambique, he has not engaged in any wars sinze the war with Mozambique using supers. He can also still use aliens and demons, which are not covered by the No Supers Treaty.
4) Deus’s personal supers would not be part of a governmental agency, and would not be subject to the treaty in any case. Treaties are made between nations and governments, not with individuals and corporations.
““, because due to Deus’s deal with Zimbabwe I suspect he’s the current head of the Gelatyn forces just like he’s now the head of Zimbabwian forces, in which case he has violated the no-supers-outside treaty””
Also Deus literally already discussed this earlier in the comic, relying on how the wording of the treaty is vague enough to have a big loophole to step through. He argued that any land Galytn conquers becomes Galytn land, and Galytn is not a signatory of the treaty, and therefore no treaty has been violated. He said ‘it’ll take the UN a few years to rewrite the treaty to close that loophole, and by that time, he will have already cut a path to the ocean.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-840-loopholio/
(panels 3, 4, 5 and 6)
With Mozambique… he has cut a path to the ocean already.
1) He’s not a war criminal, and if you think he is, then you don’t understand what war criminal means.
2) His method of ‘subjugating the world’ is a completely legal and even ethical method.
3) I want to take over the world as well. I’m just not capable of doing so. That doesnt make me evil, nor a war criminal. That’s called being ambitious. Ambition does not mean you’re a war criminal, or evil.
4) Deus does not think as small as just the world. That seems short-sighted.
Last time I checked, annexing an entire country the size of Ukraine by force, was at least considered an Evil act, though.
That he literally employs demons in his forces, doesn’t strike me as wholly ethical as well.
By who, and by what criteria? Define evil, such that someone could examine a situation and determine whether or not it fit.
And what’s wrong with employing demons? You’re making certain assumptions about them that probably don’t hold in the setting.
1) He did not annex an entire country. There was a war to cut a path to the ocean. Then Mozambique surrendered a war they were in with Galytn that existed before Deus even was involved, under Indinge, and in exchange for them keeping their sovereignty, Deus takes over the infrastructure and military (not that the military mattered much compared to Galytn’s, and not that Mozambique had much in the way of infrastructure to begin with) so he can improve it in the same way he improved Galytn’s. And as a reminder, the people on the Zambezi were begging him privately to come into the area to fix their economy and infrastructure in the first place. Apparently because their own government was fine with letting them wallow in abject poverty, no clean or running water, no electricity, no work, etc.
2) Don’t try arguing based on emotion (rather than facts) by trying to compare this to Russia/Ukraine war. You are trying to make an emotional appeal based on something that is completely unrelated to Galytn. For some reason you think that all wars are evil acts. Would you consider the US declaring war on Germany and Japan to be an evil act? We basically occupied both Germany and Japan at the conclusion of WW2. Would you consider the Revolutionary War to be an evil act? How about the US Civil War? Mozambique is a horribly failed state which abuses its own people, has child soldiers, rampant corruption (some of the worst on the planet), constant disappearances of people who speak out against the government, and is one of the poorest nations on the planet as well. It was already in a war with Galytn, and only signed onto the Accords AFTER they had lost their supers – before it, they were using supers in wartime. Not much of a sacrifice to not use supers after your supers are gone. Deus went out of his way to minimize ANY casualties, before, during, and after the war. In fact, he did not want a war at all.
3) Last time you checked, no – war was not an inherently evil act.
4) The US has a demon working in ARCHON – Dabbler. So apparently you think the Archon is evil as well if we’re going to follow your logic. Just because they’re labelled as demons does not make them inherently evil. Dabbler literally went through a detailed explanation of this to Tamatha, the pre-teen Succubus.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-813-metaphysics-101/
(panel 7)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-815-do-what-i-say-and-also-what-i-do/
(panel 2)
Like both Sydney and Dabbler explained, Demons are like anyone else. Some are good, some are bad. It’s not based on the entire species. Humans have their dark ages and crusades, and so did Demons. But like every other entity in the universe, what they are is irrelevant. It’s what they do that matters.
Btw, angels have been known to kill the first born babies who did nothing wrong, and destroy entire cities for minor slights. Watch The Prophecy, for example. :)
If anything, the reputation of demons in the Grrlpower universe is based on them not winning a war against the Celestials and having ‘poor behavior’ during the war. The war has long since ended. If you think people are evil because of the actions of their ancestors, then you are either a Klingon or you’re, as DaveB described it, ‘speciesist’ :)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-814-history-demonology-101/
(panel 8)
In the Grrlpower universe, demons are not inherently evil. The Council has Demons on it. Decollete is a demon. She isnt remotely evil either. The Demons were employed by Deus to be in the Galytn army. Armies go to war. The war was legitimate (if you think wars are inherently illegitimate, then you’re ignoring most of human history – wars are not illegal or illegitimate – just certain actions taken DURING war are – which Deus did not do, but Mozambique actually DOES have a history of doing).
I think Deus here is a really brave man.
Although he did take actions to avoid explaining things to people they didn’t want explained, he took enough with information about a single degree.
There are for a super flying air force colonel and a super flying air force recruit who both have hung around in the nerd crowd like twenty ways they could have picked things up about physics that would offend them if he reexplained it to them.
I for example suspect they both had a crash course in the involved physics of their powers(aerodynamics and the law of slowness for flight and speed, tensile strength and cutting for super strength, whatever Sydney sees with her true sight, vectors for their super durability), had some dude explain to them a random physics concept in an attempt to woo them, had some person explain a random physics concept in a fight about fictional physics, have searched Wikipedia for a random physics concept for comic physics(Sydney’s example is the weight of the earth) and had unpredictable amounts of physics in high school.
“It’s SOOO obvious.”
Kinda like you, Dabs?
no she’s easy. she will readily tell you so.
If the electric universe theorists are right then it’s all electromagnetism, gravity as we have theorized it doesn’t exist.
Not much of a universe if it’s all pure electromagnetism. Something additional is required to even have the most base aspect of a universe, like photons, bosons, etc.
Physics : Its whats for Dinner
Xuriel is right – there’s a very simple model, which is obvious in retrospect – https://thehonestscientist.com/miles-mathis/ starts at the very smallest scales, and then Plasma Cosmology and the Electric Universe model expand that into the very largest – https://thehonestscientist.com/electric-universe/.
I can 2nd Xuriel’s comment. The answer is really twisted….
Shh, no giving hints. They’re not allowed to know yet unless they figure it out on their own.
Er… I mean…uh… WE are not allowed to know yet unless WE figure it out on OUR own.