Grrl Power #1080 – Nitrogenerator
Sydney’s reaction here is because her Trope Savvy brain is starting to realize the potential of the Atmorb<sup>TM</sup>. There’s still a shitload to learn about it. Can it create just gasses? Can it create any element on the periodic table? Can it create isotopes? It seems to be able to create a mix of gasses, because presumably when she’s used it for life support, it output an Earth Atmosphere mix; roughly 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 2% other stuff.
Even if it can only create… I almost typed in “Noble Gasses” then decided to double check, and realized that Nitrogen is not, in fact, a noble gas. It is extremely nonreactive though. I’d always assumed it was noble because of that. Apparently it’s just an “Other Nonmetal.” Honestly, the periodic table really tweaks my OCD. The column of Noble Gasses is nice, and next to it is the Halogens, but then there’s Hydrogen, which is an Other Nonmetal, but it’s hanging out way over on the other side of the chart from the regular wedge of Other Nonmetals. Next to that is sort of a diagonal line of Metalloids, but part of it is diagonal, and part of it is down one then over one, like a Bishop and Knight were taking turns leaving tracks for hunters to follow. If Aluminum and Polonium were Metalloids, it’d be a lot cleaner, but it’s like God got distracted halfway through organizing it. (Here’s a pic of the table so you don’t have to google it.)
I changed Sydney’s exclamation like six times while I was drawing the page. It started off as “Holy fuck tunnels” but while that’s about as funny sounding to me as the other things I came up with, I started to think that maybe it’s slightly too rude? Like, Sydney’s cursing is intended to be amusing, improbable and slightly non-sequitur, but “fuck tunnel” kind of sounds like something a dude would call a chick in a porno while he’s slapping her face. I dunno, I probably over thought it. But then, “fuck bubbles” sounds potentially a lot grosser, like, if you think about it too hard, and that makes it slightly funnier to me.
The August Vote Incentive is still up! As usual, the new one is technically finished, but I don’t have a clothed version yet. I should have it up with the Monday comic.
I’m a big fan of John Byrne’s run on “The Sensational She Hulk” and the imminent show looks very Sensational influenced. Therefore, I was inspired to draw some buff (pun intended) She Hulk, and threw in Red She Hulk for fun. Also, a wild Sydney for scale. Enjoy them posing in various outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. 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.
Slight correction, which may have story implications which is why I bring it up. Nitrogen is an extremely reactive element, that is why it is a key element in many explosives. I am not sure anyone has ever sprayed atomic Nitrogen at something but I have to assume the reaction would be spectacular. Long way of saying that Sydney is producing N2, not N. N + boom = N2, just like H + O + boom = H2O.
Not in pure form but mixed it can be very reactive like with phosphates (soap). Most fertilizers with a simple accelerator like fuel oil makes a simple TNT. Most fertilizers are basically phosphates with a nitrogen fixer and a few other chemicals.
The reason nitrogen is used so much in explosives and such is that it likes to form N2, and when forming N2 it releases a lot of energy (typically as heat). N2 is also a gas, and explosives generally work by turning lots of solid into lots and lots and lots and ….. of gas. there’s other reasons it’s liked, and probably some counter points, but you get the gist.
The direct consequence of the energy release when forming N2 is that when you want to react N2 with anything, you need to pay back that energy. Breaking N2 molecule consumes a lot of energy -> this makes N2 quite stable. This also makes N2 a common reaction product -> when it forms during a reaction, it’s unlikely that it’ll be promptly cannibalized by side reactions.
In short, if N2 weren’t such a stable gas, it’d be used less useful in explosives.
The reason our atmosphere is 78% Nitrogen is to prevent the 18% Oxygen in it from reacting with anything else and bursting into flame. Atmospheric/natural Nitrogen automatically forms N2 unless there are other chemicals in sufficient quantity to form something else. Pure Nitrogen would have nothing else to combine with so would form N2. The same goes for Oxygen and O2.
That’s like saying “the reason tree bark is so rough and stiff is so that you can scratch your back it”
Our atmosphere is only currently 78% nitrogen and 21%, not 18%, 21% oxygen. During the Cretaceous Period, it was as much as 30% oxygen, which is the highest it’s ever been.
The high oxygen content during the Cretaceous Period enabled enormous insects, which don’t have lungs to pump air with and thus their maximum size is is limited to oxygen content, as their bodies have to passively absorb oxygen. The more oxygen, the bigger they can grow.
Meganeura was a Cretaceous Era species of dragon fly with a wing span just over 2 feet long.
The REASON our atmosphere has the composition it has is because the Earth is cooler has less vegetation than it had during the Cretaceous period, not because of some intrinsic stoichiometric balance.
Also, currently the amount of oxygen is on the decline. Oxygen levels are decreasing globally due to fossil-fuel burning. The changes are too small to have a direct impact on human health, but do have an indirect defect by and are of interest to the study of carbon dioxide and its role in climate change.
N2 is very stable, so no to all that.
Nitrous oxide, on the other hand, is what you’re thinking of.
This is similar to how Hydrogen Peroxide is dangerous, and Dihydrogen Monoxide largely isn’t.
Also Sodium Hydroxide vs Hydrogen Hydroxide. One of those goes boom when mixed with bleach.
Actually Sodium hydroxide is often the stabilizer in a bleach (sodium hypochlorite) solution. Mix one of them with an acid to get an exciting (as in Run Away!) reaction.
Also like sodium hydroxide versus hydrogen hydroxide one of those explodes when in contact with bleach the other dilute it.
And releases gaseous chlorine
I object, Dihydrogen Monoxide kills you if you breath it. If you consume large amounts of it you will die too. It is clearly dangerous and the government should outlaw it.
Not to mention … it is the closest thing we have to a near universal solvent (given enough time).
Because of that it causes rust on pretty much all metals (save gold and few other exotics), it can dissolve/pulverize rocks (given time).
When frozen … it expands and floats … and in sufficient quantities it can cause planes to fall out of the sky and cause ships to sink even if they are the size to the Titanic … nbt to mention all the potholes it causes.
I swear this stuff is dangerous to say the least and needs to banned (or at least regulated)
Reminds me of a chemistry joke.
A pair of chemists go out for lunch, and when the waiter arrives, one of them asks for a glass of H2O. His friend chuckles, and asks for a glass of H2O, too.
*ba dum tss*
You missed half the joke. The second chemist(H2O too) dies because the waiter gave him H2O2.
Naah.. the bartender was an English major.
Aah, the humanities!
I didn’t miss it, I trusted my audience to understand the joke.
Little Willy was a chemist, Little Willy is no more, for what he thought was H2O was really H2SO4!
No, I was thinking of N which is very much not stable. N2 is very stable, you are completely correct on that. Look, I don’t know if anyone has ever had enough monatomic nitrogen to just spray around and see what happens. I am just saying, from a story standpoint, if Sydney did start generating gasses that are usually not available in the real world since they are usually diatomic some interesting things might happen. For example, this article from NASA about atomic oxygen: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/atomic_oxygen.html
As a pedantic correction, the correct name for that molecule is not dihydrogen monoxide, that would imply an H2 + O, which is not the case as H2 is a stable molecule in and of itself.
The proper molecular name is Hydrogen Hydroxide because of the chemical composition H + OH.
We need more chemical formulas that simply include “boom” after certain energy levels, it’s great for visualization.
Ok with that ability Sydney can take out Max without any problem. Just remove the oxygen around Maxima, since she needs to breathe, she’d never notice she is breathing pure nitrogen until she passes out and dies two minutes later.
With glassing a desert, and this ability Max is likely going ‘well shit we need to up Halo’s threat profile’
Always assuming Sydney can get around the inside/outside the shield problem, and that Max doesn’t realize what’s happening and just go grab scuba gear. And a host of other assumptions. Nonetheless, with some minor tweaks, that atmorb is very OP. create methane/ammonia atmo and you have something good enough for a poor-super’s fuel-air bomb.
We just saw Sydney alter the way she uses the Atmorb… how long will it be before she figures out how to project the force field around others? And then manipulate what’s inside to breathe… or fire the PPO from the outside in. We don’t know the limits of the orbs because she doesn’t, but she’s always learning something new.
Contrary to the Atmorb tweaking the atmosphere composition, this is not strictly necessary to what the ball want to do. So it’ll probably require a point at the right place of the skill tree
Assuming the force shield can be used for force containment like that instead is a big assumption. I’d think it’d be one of her upgrades, not a function already unlocked.
That’s assuming Max is just… standing in place.
Max can also take out Sydney using the same logic; Just punch Sydney. She won’t realize she’s been hit at super speed until it’s too late.
:V
Better idea is to make it create Carbon Dioxide. She will asphyxiate almost instantly like those at the Lake Nyos disaster & won’t even realise.
No, you want to use any gas other than carbon dioxide. Our “I’m suffocating” reflex doesn’t actually detect a lack of oxygen; it detects an excess of CO2. So if you try to smother someone with CO2, they’ll panic and flip out, and a panicked Max has plenty of ways to get out of that situation. If you try to smother them with any other gas (even carbon monoxide), they won’t even notice until they start getting light-headed.
CO is best for that scenario; If Max started to notice something before passing out, with an inert gas she’d just have to get away, and even if she passed out she’d recover if she still had enough O2 in her system to make her diaphragm move. Do the same with CO and she’d be screwed short of an emergency blood transfusion, (Impossible in her case!) or maybe extremely hyperbaric oxygen.
As John Campbell said, carbon dioxide is bioreactive and our bodies have very adverse reactions to it… If you start to replace the air in a room with carbon dioxide, people will start to develop a fear response and GTFO. This even works with people who have damaged or missing amygdala. That’s important because if you have damaged amygdala, or don’t have them at all, you’re incapable of feeling fear. The idea of jumping into an active volcano will illicit the same lack of fear response as the idea of putting socks on in the morning. Yet you can still make such people feel fear, and fear for their life, by making them breathe abnormally high amounts of CO2.
As John Campbell said, carbon monoxide is a much better gas to use for this because not only does it not illicit the response, but it actually binds to hemoglobin in the same way that oxygen does, effectively blocking oxygen transport in the blood. By the time the symptoms of hypoxia set in, they can’t respond. People undergoing hypoxia can be told “put your mask on or you will die” and they’ll just be like “but I don’t want to die” and not put their mask on because they’re too far gone.
Another good choice is flooding out the local atmosphere with literally any noble gas. Since noble gasses don’t chemically react, they won’t notice it until its too late… although you depending on the gas they might notice something’s up if they try to speak. Helium squeakies!
What’s more, if you can shove all the oxygen out of the way and replace it with 100% with noble gas, you can make someone pass out in 15 seconds.
Scarlet Witch once did something similar during a super-villain breakout at Project: Pegasus. As Electro was doing some ranting she altered probabilities to cause all the CO2 to gather around his head so he was unable to breathe any oxygen and quickly passed out.
None of this is even *slightly* a complaint, but as someone who’s been around wildfire fighting all their life, my brain is screaming at me that that’s not how you fight fires with a tool like the lighthook.
Just like any other wildfire, you dig a firebreak around it. The lighthook would, I feel, be pretty good at that.
Very reasonable that Sydney doesn’t know that, and now we’ve learned things, so I am, to reiterate, not complaining. Just part of me is yelling, and has decided to share that yelling with all of you.
(No, a line doesn’t put out the fire, but it stops it from spreading. This is what those of us in the biz call “as good as you’re going to get”.)
Give her a little bit of a break, Sydney is thinking on her feet and uses the first thing that comes to mind.
Farmers to the same as wild fire fighters, take the plow and cut a fire break in front of the fire. It is quick, easy and doe snot require large quantities of water that may not be readily available.
And pray there isn’t enough energy in the system to allow the fire to jump the break.
Meh. If the break is decent, the jumps are going to be a LOT smaller than the original. Rinse, repeat.
I grew up on a farm. Got to play with post-harvest burns. A lot more adrenaline than playing with water, let me tell you.
“A lot more adrenaline…” just might be the understatement of the year. Back when you burned wheat fields post harvest, an unexpected wind change exploded one of our fires…burned about 1/3 of the county.
“doe snot” had me snickering so bad… whaf a difference a misplaced space can make.
yes, that’s why you gotta be careful, especially around your therapist
A sufficient quantity of doe snot would probably be an effective fire suppressant as well, but I doubt that avenue of research as been explored.
“ snot require large quantities of water that may not be readily available” >>>>
If there isn’t enough energy in the system to allow it to jump the break, as happened with the Bootleg Fire.
They laid down large lines of chemical retardant, and did massive clears, but the fire had generated enough of its own weather it was able to leap over those at multiple points, IIRC.
She’s at least attempting to beat the fire out with, as far as she knows, the only non-deadly usable option she had (and it does work, it just takes a shit-load of time)
Sydney, I need to do some welding. Could you just keep a steady stream of Argon right here?
Thanks
If she gets to that level of fine control, she could probably also use the pew pew orb to make a tiny plasma stream and do the entire weld herself. The 2-orb limit probably keeps her from doing powers-based deep sea welding, but she is an experienced diver already so…
If she could she needs to bubble up and run off the civy if she’s dumping pure Nitrogen on the fire he’d suffocate in short order. The movies and TV play it up but if you’re breathing in a gas that has no oxy the only thing you feel is the need to breathe harder unless it’s a reactive gas that’s toxic. Blasting out almost pure nitrogen will put out a fire in short order but you can start to suffocate in minutes, ask anyone that was careless with a helium balloon at a party.
The Atmorb has been shown to limit itself to a certain area, so the farmer (and her) are safe, at least until she releases the effect. Thankfully, it isn’t like the Pew Pew that fires a stream (of DEATH XD), but an instant sphere at location. She can probably continue to roll it around the field without making more N2 and creating a serious hazard.
I would of thought of cracking the Quartz crust and using the sand underneath.
It’s all fun and games now, but just wait until Sydney forgets to turn the settings back the next time she needs to turtle in her shield bubble.
Or, in her experimentation, accidentally floods an area with elemental fluorine, etc.
The orbs presumably have a safeguard to not allow a user to accidentally asphyxiate / poison themselves.
I believe that the orbs let her leave her shield up long enough that she began to get hypoxic, so I don’t think we can rely on them to safeguard Sydney from herself.
Strictly speaking it didn’t allow her to do permanent damage to herself and she had the Atmorb so she could have fixed the issue. Obviously it would have been an issue if it had stayed up after she passed out unless the Atmorb Kicked in.
FOOF! Composition and sound! Burns like crazy all around!
great XKCD about FOOF
This one?
Nitrogen is not really “Inert”. It’s not as chemically active as Oxygen, but really nothing is, except Fluorine.
Oxygen has a valence of -2 (gains 2 electrons). Nitrogen has a valence of -3 (gains 3 electrons). Normally, one needs an element with a positive valence and one with a negative valence for them to react. Since Oxygen and Nitrogen are both negative they don’t react with each other. Also, since Nitrogen needs a total of +3 valence to react with, which are fairly hard to come by, it tends not to react with much of anything. Hydrogen Lithium Sodium Nitride is theoretically possible but pretty hard to arrange.
Oxygen and Nitrogen don’t react? I would like to introduce you to NOx.
O2 and N2 don’t react, but that is because they already reacted with themselves.
Anyway, valence is a bit more complicated than that, it has to do with the number of stable shells an atom or molecule can form. The first shell can only contain 2 electrons, the second can hold 8.
Also, that idea is apparently a massive abstraction which, apart from giving accurate predictions, actually isn’t how stuff works at all.
Great art on this page, love it!
Um…. kay. So. Consequences of this power…
1) If they’re standing that close and produced enough oxygen to halt combustion, Sydney and this guy are dead. Dead dead dead dead. The reason is that fire needs 16% oxygen to burn. HUMANS need about 19-20% O2. So if she’s displacing enough oxygen to put out the fire, she’s also displacing the amount of oxygen she needs to survive.
2) If she’s adding nitrogen into the atmosphere, she is going to need to add a LOT of it. That should produce a ton of win as air pressure is a thing. If she’s not, she’s TRANSSUBSTANTIATING O2 into N2. Ignoring E=MC2 for a moment, this would just turn the fire off. It is also horrifying if she turns the atmosphere into a different element… say… Fluorine? Methane and Oxygen? Radon? Ammonia? Trichloroflouride?
3) If it does transform atmosphere to atmosphere, then Sydney just because one of the deadiest supers in the world. Oh! You have oxygen in your lungs? No you don’t. You have nitrogen. And you’d get a momentarily baffled look before passing out and dying because our bodies can’t detect a lack of oxygen, only a surplus of carbon dioxide.
4) depending on the RANGE and SCALE of the green orb, Sydney could just fix global warming. Like ‘click’ CO2=> O2. Set it to 300 PPM. Have a nice day.
5) depending on the amount Sydney can create, it’s also one of the most profitable by far. She could literally just turn the air in a container into ammonia and Deus can turn that into fertilizer. If it’s a big enough tank and she can transform enough air into that gas, she could basically just feed millions and retire.
Yeah… BIG implications here. Honestly, it would have been far, far less impactful to let sydney create a windstorm that just blew the fire back towards burned sections and put them out that way.
By that logic, anyone using a CO2 extinguisher should be dead, I’ve used them many times and still kicking ;)
You don’t convert the air so much as you create a localized blanket of non-combustible gas to cut the fire off from oxygen until it goes out by itself, CO2 has the added benefit of cooling the flammable material to aid in preventing re-ignition, N2 would have the same effect, liquid N2 even more so…
Nitrogen used in that manner usually ends up combining with oxygen to form nitrates and nitrites or nitrous oxide which is used to enhance combustion under certain circumstances, such as in a combustion engine ;)
As mentioned earlier, nitrates are the major component of most chemical explosives, most commerical and military explosives depend on breaking nitrogen bonds to get their energy.
As for her ‘curing global warming’, CO2 is plant food, by increasing it she could help relieve the hunger caused by the deliberate mismangement of resources today, particularly the new fad of forcing farmers to not use those fertilizers by using ‘climate change’ as an excuse, in order to depopulate existing societies.
Although it does make the interesting point that Sydney may be able to colonize a planet.
Just go to Venus, convert most of the air to something breathable or atmospheric H20, provide trips, profit.
Venus gets renamed to “Planet Sydney” and finally lives up to the name of “Earth’s twin”
This is my favorite new concept for using this power, although I fear she’d get bored long before making a significant difference to the entire atmosphere of Venus. Plus it would still takes years for the temperatures to rebalance and the catastrophic weather changes to settle before you’d want to use it, but that’s still far faster than any other solution humanity has. Except Earth just got connected to the galactic market, maybe we could buy some existing terraforming tools.
CO2 cannot relieve a fertilizer shortage because CO2 supplies Carbon while fertilizer supplies Nitrogen and other non-carbonelements like Sulphur and various trace minerals. Increasing CO2 only boost plant growth if the plants have all other nutrients in sufficient amounts, so as we pumped more CO2 into the atmosphere and indirectly into the oceans, we got a few algal blooms, but not as many as expected by earlier, more ignorant, scientists. Turns out that most sea algae are limited by iron availability, not by Carbon availability.
Fire suffocates waaay faster than humans do, though. As seen in the comic, if you get the oxygen away from a fire, there’s immediately no more fire. Humans can take about a minute of that and still be mostly okay afterward.
Um, no. Turning CO2 into oxygen wouldn’t “Fix” global warming if used on a global scale, it would result in the extinction of all life on Earth, as plants NEED CO2 to survive. There’s only 0.04% CO2 in the atmosphere already, which is dangerously LOW if you’re trying to eliminate it.
They didn’t say to turn all the o2 into co2 idjit, they said to set it to 300ppm, which is a much more reasonable co2 level than our current 400+ppm and rising fast.
Way back before the Carboniferous period, CO2 was nearly 20% of the atmosphere, and it was much COLDER than it is today. The idea that an increase from 0.035% (Pre industrial revolution) to 0.04% is somehow catastrophic is ludicrous. When it reaches 15% of the atmosphere, let me know, til then, it’s nowhere near as powerful as water vapor, which is 3-5% of the atmosphere, and literally hundreds of times stronger per unit volume as a greenhouse gas.
Man caused “Global Warming” is a hoax. Educate yourself please. The globe has actually COOLED a bit since the year 2000, which is why the hucksters trying to get your money started calling it “Climate Change” instead of “Global Warming”
Incorrect, the droughts, around the world, has proven Global Warming, The term I prefer!
So, what is happening in Pakistan is a hoax?
*laughs* Don’t be telling people to ‘educate themselves’ when you’re the one needing it. Like leaving out that the sun was a lot colder back then as well, the energy output was in relative balance with the higher levels of CO2. Or presuming to have a better idea how the various gas ratios impact things than the climate scientists who’ve spent decades learning about and studying the issue.
So do stop calling it a hoax when it’s not. They stopped calling it global warming because of all the idiots that are convinced that means everything just got a bit warmer and would then stupidly point to cold weather (which isn’t the same as climate) and go ‘see the planet’s not warming up!’ like they were being clever when they weren’t they were being stupid. The climate IS changing, it’s changing at a rate that can only be linked to human activity and if we don’t get the activity under control that’s causing the issue it will bring catastrophic harm to the environment.
In the early carboniferous period, CO2 was about 15,000 PPM. Complex land plants were evolving at this time, and by the MCP it was 350 PPM, or lower than today. So yes, it would be cooler. Add into that that our sun was fusing more hydrogen and less helium and it being cooler is no surprise.
The globe hasn’t cooled at all since 2000. The fact that a 1.5 temperature increase in 20 years, when the last 1.5 degree increase took 600, should concern you. But here’s the funny thing I actually want to know. Why do you assume the climate scientists are the hucksters? Don’t carbon energy industries also profit by denying the problem exists? Why do you defer to them, and claim that the scientists are lying. Scientists, I might add, who get paid far, far less than the carbon industries make, and who get paid, I might add, if the climate warms, cools, or stays the same. Indeed, adjusted for inflation, the average pay of a climate scientist has remained largely flat for 30 years, so if this is a scam, it is an exceptionally unprofitable one.
The AVERAGE GLOBAL temperature went down from 2000 to at least 2015. how do I know? You see, there’s this thing actual scientists do called “Measurement” – The only “Global” temperature reading we can get is from weather satellites, which all show a DECREASE in the average global temperature during that time period. That’s a fact.
Ignoring facts would make you “Anti Science”, would it not? I guess it’s an “inconvenient truth” to the communist greenies out there (Green is the new Red, you know)
There’s a difference between 300 PPM and 0 PPM.
Dave’s periodic table is a little out of date.
Ununtrium, 113, (pronounce Un-Un-Trium) is named Nihonium after Nihon, the Japanese name for Japan.
Ununpentium, 115, is named Moscovium after Moscow.
UnUnseptium, 117, is named Tennessine after the state of Tennessee.
UnUnoctiub, 118, is named Oganessum afterYuri Oganessian.
Soooo the Atmo orb may in fact be a replicator that due to points can only make simple things like gas but maybe with more points could do pad thai
Hmmm pad Thai. I know what I’m having for dinner…
I endorse this interpretation of the ability and would like to place my order for Thai-Spicy Pad Thai with extra peanuts.
Sydney eventually kills herself experimenting with synthesizing ever-hotter spicy foods, just weeks after she’s been banned from inhabited planets for repeatedly violating galactic chemical treaties.
Sydney eventually transcends life with gradually increasing spicy foods. FTFY
Holy crap I guessed correctly on the last page about the life support orb.
If the Periodic table is bothering your OCD, there are prettier versions…
https://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/35_pt/pt_database.php?yearfield=2008
YES! THIS! My son started Chem this year in High School, and I’ve been groping for a way to explain the table in terms of the 4th dimensional arrangements that create valence shells. Once you understand what the table is trying to say, it’s order makes so much more sense.
Was coming by to say this same thing – If I remember the chemistry professor who finally made it click for me correctly, the problem with the periodic table is that most folks don’t understand how why it is arranged the way it is – ideally, it runs from emptiest shell to fullest. As such, the leftmost column represents the elements with least number of electrons available for binding, and the rightmost column represents the elements with the least space for electrons to be bound.
Because the shells grow in volume as the size of the atomic nucleus grows (ie, adding protons and neutrons), you get a weird shape – as the volume grows, more electrons can be contained within the bindable area of the shells, meaning you need to insert spaces in the middle, to keep the rules governing the left and right columns constant.
Fascinating, thanks!
Hydrogen has the unique duality of having one electron in its outer shell (first column = alkalai metals), while also being one electron short of a complete outer shell (next to last column = halogens).
The classification of hydrogen is also a duality. Under “normal” conditions hydrogen acts as a halogen but it also is a metal under extreme pressure (such as the core of Jupiter). The present day periodic table is based on physics (atomic number => electron shell) but its origin was based on atomic weight (pre-Bohr atoms) and has changed a bit over time. Mendeleyev’s 1871 seminal paper had 17 columns for the elements and he categorized hydrogen as a metal (in column 11 above sodium, copper,silver and gold). His periodic table has obviously undergone major changes as our knowledge of physics increased. Placing hydrogen the column of electron donors (in column one), makes more sense (eg, H2O, CH4, BH3, HF, HI), than as an electron recipient.
The placement and classification discussion reminds me of the story of the two car race between the Americans and Russians. The Americans won but the Russians reported it as the Russians came in second while the Americans came in next to last. Good ol’ spin doctors!
BTW, Fred, I want to thank you for your post. In refreshing my memory (so I don’t make too many dumb mistakes), I ran across a great site for German syntax and other educational resources: https://www.thoughtco.com/german-4133073
Actually, at extreme pressures Hydrogen IS a metal.
Okay, so, clearly, More Experiments Are Required. If she can do liquids, popping out mercury seems like something both straight-forward and lucrative ($3,400 a gallon last year)…at least until she tanks the market XD Even if Archon doesn’t sell it, it might be tempting to give it to certain national companies in return for…a 20% take of the finished products (thinking medical products. probably a smaller percent for the switches)? something something save tax dollars.
If she can do solids, or simple fluid mixes that could produce solids, well, sky’s the limit. There are several rare solids that are immensely useful but also not easily obtainable – lithium, for example, is pretty rare in a “pure” state, since the stuff is so reactive with…everything XD. Being able to produce a sphere of it (preferably in a vacuum chamber coated in teflon XD) would be quite helpful to any number of industries, and even if she can only produce a simple fluid with lithium being a major suspension in it, that’s still way simpler, and purer, than the brine decomposition we’re doing now.
Next episode, Elon Musk trying to kidnap Sydney XD
(Deus might have tried it, but he has actual fabbers, so the need is rather less pressing)
If she can do complex compounds (especially if she can replicate existing samples), there are some very lucrative and beneficial options. The medical applications in particular would be world-changing.
Panel 2 is the face of a man who didn’t ask for this shit.
Panel 2 needed to be copied and inserted between panels 9 & 10 for even greater effect.
I was on vacation and missed asking on the page that my question is in reference to, so I’m asking it on the latest page.
Will one of Sydney’s upgrades to the shield be that it can be projected? Like Sue Storm can do.
Future orb capabilities have never been revealed until they debut on screen, only widely speculated until then. Dave has said he already knows what every single node does though.
Alright, so I’m not trying to be a pedant, nor am I calling out or judging. I just want to raise awareness that OCD is a real disorder, and the idea of someone who is bothered by attention to detail and order and tidiness is kind of a harmful trope that downplays the real issues that patients with the condition suffer. Using OCD casually like this is now ableist language that creates a culture that prevents people with the actual disorder from being taken seriously.
Here’s the Dictionary.com article about it: https://www.dictionary.com/e/ocd-offensive-term/
…But their offerings for possible replacements suck, so I offer you: “The periodic table really tweaks my pedantry.”
While your version is both less offensive and still technically accurate, I would like to make sure that the original intent, which included commiting a minor faux pas, to remain intact. So I propose: “The periodic table really tweaks my nipples.”
Sure, that sacrifices some accuracy, but it is still funny to people who are as juvenile as I.
I love it. I hope you enjoy the mental image of some random dude (me) starting to include this version of the phrase in my daily life.
There is/was a company that makes t-shirts with offensive slogans and such. BAD IDEA T-SHIRTS. They varied from mildly funny to HUGELY offensive. Since the topic has been brought up, one that stuck with me and my tendancy to focus on insignificant details….
” I have CDO. It’s like OCD, but the letters are in alphabetical order. As they should be.”
/ check the being offensive box today… DONE!
Sorry I couldn’t resist. Everyone have a great weekend.
I love it!
…Couldn’t the orb just create water if it could do this?
Probably? But this is easier given she hasnt really put any points into the orb yet. Right now she might just be able to alter different gasses and started with the gasses found in her ‘life support’ atmosphere.
I think Sydney’s gotta unlock a few more dots on the tech tree grid before it can do that. I’d imagine it can create gasses first, then liquids, then solids, and…well, the PPO creats fire/plasma, so that’s that.
(Creds for using “PPO”…: I’ve used weapons from swords to pistols, and can mess someone up with just a walking stick.)
if the orb only makes atmospheric elements, the amount of water it would put down might give you the bends
I broke my brain.
Per the subtext list of suggestions, I thought about “Holy F*ck (Popes).” And suddenly saw in my imagination a buff, tanned, oil-glistening male with a pope’s mitre (hat), stola (drapey shawl thing), tiny speedo and thigh-high boots…pole dancing.
Ow.
(lol)
Congratulations, you made us think of it too
(ow.)
I wonder how (relatively) recent discoveries might have tweaked the Periodic Table if Mendeleev had known about them. The specific thing that made me think of this was Hydrogen being classified as an Other Nonmetal, but it is nonmetallic at normal conditions of temperature and pressure; under sufficient pressure, it becomes a metal.
Uhhhh… this gonna signal the warcriminal arc when she realizes she can just emit chlorine gas?
reminds me of those times writers realize how dark they can get with some characters and have to be reeled in as its just not in the personalities of the characters.
examples (all from Marvel as these are ones that took a step back from it without needing some big retcon like when DC goes dark)
Gambit: can make the gas inside your lungs explode, or even just make it poisonous (side effect of trying to use his powers on air is that rather than explode it turns poisonous).
Storm: suck the air out of someone’s body, or alter the pressure around someone so drastically they get the bends, veins explode, or are crushed,.
Invisible Woman: crush them in a box or suffocate them (much as several in the comments thread here are suggesting if Halo can project her shield at some point).
Silver Surfer: create small black holes inside someone’s eyes or just in their brain.
etc…
I thought Sue’s “Make a force bubble in someone’s body and expanding it” was rather more gruesome than just crushing them, but that’s just me…
True, these were off the top of my head, speaking though The Darkness only once that I know of made darklings appear a d burst out from inside a guy once, dark inside the body, despite this being fully in character for him to do it more often.
Gambit can literally just make YOU explode.
I remember him threatening this in one of the cartoons, X-men Evolution, I believe.
Poor Sidney,
one day you are enjoying some intense whipping and suddenly you find yourself in snuff territory.
Sidney adjusting the settings without it being another mode could also explain the PPO going from explodey beam to dragon’s breath, like a nozzle, tighten or widen the beam. Guess tight beam also causes an exploding reaction, while the wider beam disperses that energy more evenly so it doesn’t explode a moment later.
If Sydney now has control over a large volume of gas, turning it into plain nitrogen, then for “crowd control” purposes she could cause a lot of “oxygen deprivation”, i.e. sleep spell.
It is my firm head canon that the Nitrogen introduced is N2 but is coming into being FROM some other location through tiny portal like affects, from someplace incredibly cold say. The fire extinguishes because the temperature drop and the excess Nitrogen gets bound up in the half molten glass she is spraying it on. Magma with bubbles in it becomes the national export by the end of the week.
So, Sydney’s reaction to what she just did doesn’t sit well with me if she was right. If she was right about the nitrogen, she’d be doing a happy dance about being right.
I’m thinking it’s not an atmo-orb, but rather a terraforming one. The slider she moved went from gas to everything, and she’s seeing a complete change in the landscape which is why she’s relatively speechless.
My first thought on seeing this is “huh, Sydney’s AtmoOrb has a Terraforming Orb upgrade”, but I guess that would be a bit more extreme than what we’re seeing here.
A fuck bubble sounds like an over-inflated condom tied off to be thrown into the incinerator.
It seems to me that it is a tool for using thermodynamics to create matter or energy in any form. E=MC2
Effectively, the ability to create, well, anything depends on the skill tree and her imagination.
Could she create life?
I dunno, could she understand it at a level to create it? If she is, as I suspect, an elder god on vacation in human form, then yes, she could in fact create life, or even a universe.
The real question is what powers the orbs, if we accept that thermodynamic is valid in your universe, then ultimately their effects and abilities have to come from something, they cannot be spontaneously powered just because.
You could get funky and say the powers come from the consciousness of an elder god trapped in the orbs, but, probably not.
More likely we are looking at an application of zero point or vacuum energy, as a result the energy in the flight orb is most likely capable of propelling her past the speed of light.
Wikipedia has a decent rundown of the concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy#Overview
The short form is she has, in that set of orbs, enough energy to vaporize the planet.
Shorter form, do not fuck with those balls.
E=MC² is only a mass/energy equivalence formula for things with 0 relative velocity. It is not a formula for how much energy it takes to create mass… It actually takes more energy than that formula states to create matter, because energy has a tendency to go where it can because it can, and for no other reason. That’s how heat is caused. It’d have to be 100% efficient to achieve a straight conversion with that formula.
Sydney being an elder god on vacation is a huge stretch. It’s more likely that they’re the creation of an ancient civilization that was able to transcend the laws of physics.
As for zero-point energy allowing FTL travel through flight alone, no. Absolutely not. It takes a greater than infinite amount of energy to propel you faster than that. If the flight orb can do that, then it does so for reasons OTHER than “zero point energy”.
Fans have been speculating for years that the Cretaceous/Triassic extinction event involved the previous user of those orbs in some capacity. Whether directly caused by, or in a third party’s (apparently successful) attempt to kill the holder of those orbs.
Okay, E=MC2 is not the proper formula, but it give you an understanding of where to start. Yes, you would require energy to undergo the process, but it allows for conversion either way. And again, the energy would not be destroyed and strangely does not melt her everything off. So, I’m going with it.
As fr the elder god theory, I am tempted to quote Asimov, but really, does anyone believe that she was the only person to dive there and the only person to think to pick this stuff up, or was it there for her and her alone. If that’s the case, then we all have the same right to speculate, my other theory is that she is a hospital ship.
As for zeropoint energy, it’s about as hard to prove either was as string theory, all we can do is stare at our belly buttons until someone is crazy enough to try it.
An extinction event killing the previous user is just as valid as anything. It’s kinda like they studying an unmarked skill tree, everyone is free to guess, only the author decides.
It was established early on not to taunt the happy fun balls.
I am still holding out that either (and/or) the Orbs are toys, like a toy spaceship, dropped on Earth by a tier 4 or above civilization/entity child; and/or Sidney is a baby Nth like a changeling-larva sort of situation; although being something like Washu that is suppressing its power and memory to be human is not an unheard-of concept.
that said on the power sources and where the energy and mass/matter comes from, from the orbs.
If the orbs were created by the same species that made the Superion field that Deus was talking about, these hypothetical Architects of the Superion, then if we look at the universe from a string theory model where all sub atomic particles are expressions of the base quantum field *either a scaler field or one not yet known like the hypothetical quintessence field) being controlled by the four (force) quantum fields and built on each other from there becoming more *solid* as they increase in energy and collective interactions.
then it may be possible this species’ tech bypasses reasonable manipulation and can forcefully express the fields and like a matter replicator only to the Nth degree, create the desired expressions and guide their construction via a direct manipulation of the prime firmament of reality (something that naturally only happens *theoretically* in the conditions that cause a big bang),
in short, she may very well be creating matter and energy from *nothing* in the sense of manipulating the reality code to produce desired results. Basically reality manipulation/creation with pre-set building codes on what to create.
One can imagine some Tier 5 entities may naturally manipulate reality as external to the universe/multiverse entities and thus due to their external natures able to directly interact with, manipulate, construct from, and manipulate what to anything inside the universe is the firmament of reality.
Has it occurred to anyone that the orbs have a lot of redundancy?
do they?
Yeah, as an example, if I remember correctly telepresence allows her to go to the location she is viewing. This makes flight pointless.
No, because the teleportation first requires the light bee to go to that location, and its flight speed looked pretty low. It can also fit through places she can’t and be stealthy. Flight on the other hand has a high speed over longer distances faster.
Its like saying she doesn’t need the forcefield because she can bunch up the light hook to block. You are looking at a secondary use and viewing it as effective as the primary use of another orb.
What about ferret balls? That list of Syd Libs definitely is missing ferret balls from issue 71 in it.
Sydney is a profanity magician. She never performs the same curse twice.
Sydney has to back to chemistry class. To make this orb more effective.
I’m not clear what just happened, and I’m left with two questions.
1) Did the orb do what Sydney wanted and extinguish the fire with nitrogen (implying a very robust handheld chemistry lab), or did it gift Sydney with a fus-ro-dah power? I can’t tell which it is. I could see Sydney reacting the same way to both, I can imagine either as powers that the atmorb might have, and I can imagine them both being drawn exactly this way.
2) Which of these powers would be more dangerous in Sydney’s hands?
*Inserts token *MY CABBAGES!!!!!* (another reference to five of those hehe) Because farmer.
Nitrogen reacts with plenty of things, thus all the nitrogen compounds that exist.
Nitrogen to Nitrogen bonds are very stable with strong triple bonds.
Now something like Azidoazide Azide (yes, that’s it’s name) has 14 Nitrogen atoms, and 2 Carbons, but the way they are arranged, none of the Nitrogen have their preferred triple bond. It’s a high energy state nitrogen compound. Obviously it wants to reach a lower energy state, and like this it is very reactive, and sensitive, and explosive.
How much so? They don’t really know. To quote the researchers that created it, “The sensitivity of C2N14 is beyond our capabilities of measurement…”.
Basically anything will cause it to explode, including absolutely nothing! It explodes just because!
So yes, Nitrogen CAN be part of very stable compounds, AND it can also be VERY UNSTABLE & REACTIVE as well.
Rule of thumb, the more stable an element is, the less compounds it will be in, and the less useful it will be. Nitrogen is both very useful, and in a lot of compounds. (Not just explosives, but also fertilizers, and plenty of other things.)
Maybe some of the chemistry degree holders out there can explain that much better than my fumbling attempts.
I just want to point out that the Periodic table makes absolutely perfect sense and my OCD question’s your OCD’s sanity :P /s
Just think of each layer as adding a quantized energy shell to the atom and suddenly the organization make sense. Each additional layer adds shell slots for more electrons and thus the lines get longer when viewed form the surface level the determination of properties like “metaloid / non-metal” can be described by the number and type of covalent bonds an atom can from based on it’s outer electron shell. Remember that electrons “prefer” (reach a lower energy state) to be paired.
Atomic Nitrogen is only a little less reactive than Oxygen with is a little less than Florine (the MOST reactive). but do to it’s unique position of 3 electron spaces in it’s outer shell it can bond with it self THREE time to form di-atomic nitrogen and become nearly as inert as a Nobel Gas. a Triple bond is extremely stable and thus the no reactive nature of N2. it’s already reach it’s lowest entropy state by the time it’s N2. There is a reason there was a Nobel Prize given out for the process with can decompose N2 to make nitrates for fertilizer
Agreed! when you look deeper into energy shells, electron orbitals (esp. d-orbitals), the periodic table is really beautifully designed. The placement of each element alone gives you a megafuckton of information about structure and behavior.
I would encourage Dave to look into the periodic table further; or at least not to dismiss it so quickly.
I wanna say I come here for the quality comic strip.
Usually I do.
Today I came and lingered because of the quality chemistry education… the one I never got in high school.
You guys in the comments section rock!