Grrl Power #783 – Cosmic cameo
NdGT isn’t a patron of the comic, but I couldn’t help but think that if someone had traveled to deep space, met aliens and then returned, every goddamned scientist in the world would want to hear all about it. The science community brought out the big guns for this and gambled that Sydney would know who he is and be a fan. He was probably already in town for Dabbler and Cora’s press conference already.
Honestly she should have known who he was the moment he spoke. He’s got this patient cadence to his voice that’s pretty distinct.
Sydney isn’t blabbing anything actually classified here. The stuff she’s not allowed to divulge is how she got into deep space in the first place, that time travel was involved, and that there was a planet killing alien force there. The general news has said that the Alari that were already on Earth were chased off their planet by a hostile force, but haven’t really been able to learn or divulge anything more than that. She is allowed to talk about Fracture Station and her return trip on Cora’s ship, so… she’s in the clear here.
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.
You rat bastard!
I figured Arianna would of been all to happy to arrange the advertising. I assume she’s arranged Archon a cut
Considering she was on the news the previous night…
Careful, I hear that if you invoke Neil deGrasse Tyson then he shows up and pokes holes in your sci-fi.
Yeah, but it’s not sci-fi. It’s sci-fi via magic. Much of which isn’t even explained. So we’re cool. For now.
Apparently you missed the time he whined about Frozen’s magic snowflakes not being the right shape.
“whined” . . .
Translation: He praised the poster for Frozen for correctly showing a snowflake having six-fold symmetry (which all snowflakes everywhere do), noted that an early promo piece for Frozen II had a ‘snowflake’ with four-fold symmetry, and noted that it wasn’t too late to fix the art.
(Side note: the ice palace Elsa creates in Frozen has six-fold symmetry too. The central floor has a huge snowflake shape, and the pillars rise up from the tips of that central crystal. They cared about having details seem consistent and true to life, which helps suspension of disbelief when you’re creating a fantasy as much as it helps realism in sci-fi or historical fiction.)
Man, now you got me all thinking about how awesome a review of Grrl Power by Neil deGrasse Tyson would be. Or if we want to be super crazy, we could go for a group convo with NdGT and the XKCY guy. *fan boy drools*
*grumble* XKCD guy*
Someone WAS wrong on the internet!
Neither of which should be confused with the XLKY guy who, I’m assuming, writes a very different webcomic.
What about SMBC? That’s vaguely in the same league.
Randall Munroe?
Would a cameo of Randall be drawn the way Randall draws himself?
Randall has drawn himself?
Yes. https://xkcd.com/1057/
I’d recognise him anywhere!
He’s done a self-instert in many other comics, as well.
Who or what is Klout?
Thank you for asking that question, was wondering that as well
Klout was a social media influence aggregation service. You got a Klout ‘score.’ It was lame as hell. They went ‘kaput.’
Basically, FartBack ‘Likes’ then
…Both are actually cool enough that they could agree to that.
I immediately started imagining this the second I saw his face.
Superheroes have always been a fantasy genre
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/gp0006/ ;)
I loved it when Merriam Webster dunked on him for complaining about the use of the word Awesome. “Neil.”
Hey, where’s Neil in the Who’s Who? He has talking parts!
There are a LOT of folks with talking parts that aren’t in the Who’s Who!
When your level of Nerd Royalty becomes sufficient, you don’t need an introduction.
Well, yeah, but even OBAMA rated a Who’s Who entry! Or are you suggesting NDGT doesn’t rate that high??
NdGT is higher than Obama in Nerd Royalty, duh~!
Obama got an entry because his relevance was strictly related to the period in which it was set – it wasn’t there so much to say that ‘this is Barack Obama’, as to confirm that ‘this is happening during Obama’s presidency’. The implications of meeting a former POTUS are rather different from those of meeting a current one, in terms of the level of access involved (and regardless of the degree of political and personal contrast). Tyson’s position as a celebrity astrophysicist isn’t time-dependent in the same way.
I’m pretty sure you didn’t get NdGT’s tie right. Apparently he has a pretty amazing neck tie collection, I doubt he’d wear such a plain tie to meet The Mighty Halo.
Did you run a black light over it? Or an infra-red torch?
Not DaveB‘s fault you are looking at it in the wrong spectrum :P
It’s probably a shot of the evening sky with the Milky Way showing, and we just can’t see it in enough detail. :-)
I would bet that NdGT would wear ties that look plain but have cool images that are photo-luminescent, only show in IR, only show up under UV, or even all three (with different images for each) if they were available, though.
I’m imagining one with luminescent stars, corresponding constellation lines that show up in UV, and fanciful constellation images that show up in IR.
Noooow, would he have some tie only Halo with her seeing-through-illusion orb would see as cool?
Headcanon achieved.
He would have to know about her Tru-Site ball, and… that’s Highly Classified
Oh, crap. Yeah, I meant to add stars to it.
Just means you have to bring him back for another appearance or two! :-)
He does wear plain ties sometimes, when he’s wearing one of his Cosmic Vests of Cosmicness.
Is it just me, or does Neil look more like Steve Harvey in that last panel? Well, if Mr. Harvey had hair…
Yes! It’s not just you.
You could also bave gone with Michio Kaku. Hes also does a lot of sci-fi talks. Cool dude.
Correct. But he doesn’t seem as cool to me, though I’ve watched a lot of stuff with him.
Class: S
– Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Class: A
– Michio Kaku
– Brian Cox
Michio Kaku can be raised a grade. He made a video on time travel for All You Zombies as the mother of all time travel story ever which it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUsaq_DZD2I
I will take Travis Shane Taylor over NDGT any day. He may be an astrophysicist but, his physics is highly suspect. He’s pedantic to a fault. More so than smart people usually are. Can come across as a pompous ass at times w/o realizing he’s dong so.
Nah, coolest astrophysicist is my wife: Dr. Russet McMillan. Appeared on Mythbusters (2008 Lunar Landing hoax episode, in addition to numerous other TV appearances) and routinely blasts the moon with a laser.
Here’s a video that I made showing some behind the scenes of the laser program.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npLmDTmKHB4
The website URL takes you to my photography site that has lots of photos of the observatory, including photos of the underside of the 3.5 meter mirror.
I liked that episode :) And I think your wife will be very happy that she’s your favorite astrophysicist.
AHHH ! ! mixing Genres !
What? No love for Matt O’Dowd of PBS SpaceTime fame?
Michio Kaku got me interested in science :)
LMAO at the first four NPCs and the warning sign.
You know, right now I am sooo wanting one of those pictures to be analyzed and spot Dues wandering around the spaceport in the background. It would do wonders for his credibility for taking the alien refugees under his wing… Not.
Fripping spellchecker: Deus not Dues
Deus: ‘Yes, I went there to do some shopping. ‘Shopping’ doesn’t break any laws, does it? What method did I use to travel there and back? That is covered by Galatyn national interests, I am not obligated to say, especially as Galatyn is not a signatory of the Outer Space Treaty. I’ve noticed that ARCHON has not been forthcoming on how Ms Scoville got -to- Fracture Station, so what’s good enough for the United States is good enough for Galatyn?
Prior contacts with aliens? Does ARCHON ‘really’ want to pull the curtain back on just how many aliens are on Earth, how long the United States government has known of them, and its role in concealing that knowledge from their own citizens?
Except, what he used was stolen alien tech that he is on record claiming no knowledge about (which includes how it functions)
I thought it was a magic artifact?
Magic doesn’t rule out alien, and he still claimed no knowledge of it (or what ever lawyer jargon BS he used)
Technically, Max never asked, and Deus never answered. In fact, he told the exact truth… along with some silly speculation.
Also, he didn’t a acquire the brane ripper until AFTER she was done with it.
Like said: lawyer jargon BS
And he ‘acquired it’ when he knew Archon were looking for it (that’s how he knew where it was and that Sci-fright was ‘done’ with it)
Technically correct. The best type of correct.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/909/991/48c.jpg
This page?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-603-schtooping-with-the-frenemy/
Because he can claim he was never asked directly if he had any items from the vault. Man can deflect like the veteran rules lawyer he is.
I appreciate that Sydney has a whole box of cards for the Archon Public Relations department. When people start asking questions, she starts handing out the cards.
Thought that was a nice touch as well. Arianna probably puts in a box of PR cards in every single container of merch Halo will be signing.
Sydney reveals she was at Fracture only a few days prior,
info gets back to Deus…who must now become very suspicious.
he did recognize her “Wheeeeeeeee!” on this page here so he already suspects…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-699-snek-surfing/
Deus “has this annoying knack for knowing stuff he shouldn’t.” We can’t rule out that Deus not only knew she was on Fracture, but went out of his way to avoid meeting her because she was sure to be a distraction. More reasonably, he is likely fully aware of all of Sydney’s recent activities.
Absolutely nailed him in the forth panel.
Damn fine work. Thank you.
‘The stuff she’s not allowed to divulge is how she got into deep space in the first place..’
Darn, so no taking him to Pluto and making him acknowledge that it IS a planet..
He’s seen it. He’s not saying it’s not there. They just made a rule that “planet” = big enough to compress into a spheroid shape and massive enough to sweep other objects out of its orbital path, and “dwarf planet” = big enough to be spheroid, but not massive enough to sweep its orbit. It could be argued that that’s not a good distinction (Ceres is in the asteroid belt, plus Jupiter swings a big gravitational stick, Pluto has a huge path to sweep) or it is (Ceres doesn’t fling away asteroids noticeably at all, really, and Neptune clears an orbit nearly as huge). But no one’s arguing that Pluto isn’t there, so taking him to see it isn’t going to change anything.
Actually, under the version that NdGT was part of drafting, the Solar System has more planets, not less, since Ceres and a number of dwarf planets past Pluto got added, instead of Ceres just being a round asteroid, and the further dwarf planets being “trans-Uranian objects,” or, as I like to phrase it, “objects past Uranus.”
Brian Regan gave a fantastic rendition (pre-requisite clip) of Pluto being evicted by the Planet Definition Committee. I am unable to discuss Pluto seriously without making sure everyone has seen it first.
I imagine Sydney would take him there anyway and he wouldn’t object.
*shrug* I consider Luna a planet.
That’s factually inaccurate. Planets orbit stars directly, moons such as Luna orbit planets, planetoids, or other celestial bodies that directly orbit stars.
Then consider that the Urth and Luna both orbit a common point which is not the center of either. Twin planets, as it were.
Yeah, but the common point (called the barycenter) is still inside Earth’s radius. Earth averages 3,958.8 miles in radius; the barycenter is approximately 2,900 miles away from the center of the core. Therefore, you can argue that Luna is orbiting the Earth.
It’s nothing like Pluto and its moon Charon, where the barycenter is actually somewhere between the two (albeit closer to Pluto than Charon). I’ve linked a video below; watch the purple diamond. In this case, the two are considered to be orbiting each other.
https://youtu.be/IiUaImOsa0E
It is true, however, that Luna is unusually large in comparison to the size of the planet it orbits; it’s the 5th largest moon in the solar system, behind Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, and Io. It’s also the 2nd densest moon behind Io.
Also the fact that Luna is made from Dirt, how many other ‘moons’ were created from the planet they orbit (moons orbiting gas giants don’t count :P )?
They were just being contrarian; There isn’t a “planet” in the solar system that has genuinely “cleared its orbit”, if you take into account asteroids in halo orbits around the Lagrange points.
“Planet” isn’t a natural category anyway, so it isn’t really a big deal. But it was a deliberately ginned up controversy.
As I discussed in another reply, when they’re talking about “cleared its orbit”, they’re not talking about literally wiping out everything in its path. They’re talking about being the dominant gravitational body in its orbit. (I can already hear your argument: “Well, why didn’t they just say that?” Do you think that the average layperson who knows nothing about astrophysics would understand that?)
The Earth is the dominant gravitational body in its orbit; if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have that 40-meter asteroid orbiting the Earth (it’s about 9 million miles away at its closest point, so it’s not going to hit us; and even if it did, it’s too small to survive re-entry.) Pluto, on the other hand, literally can not be the dominant gravitational body in its orbit. It has a mass of less than 1% of all the other objects in its path. It would have to be made of much denser material.
Re: ” They’re talking about being the dominant gravitational body in its orbit. (I can already hear your argument: “Well, why didn’t they just say that?” Do you think that the average layperson who knows nothing about astrophysics would understand that?)”
Yeah, the average person is going to hear “dominant gravitational body” and, if anything, picture a large woman in leather carrying a whip (the above average person will be picturing Greta Gravity from Spinerett or BlackHole-chan).
Having said that, Rule 34 dictates that somewhere there is an image of BlackHole-chan in leather with a whip, with the caption “Dominant Gravitational Body.”
There will be now :P
I can honestly say I have not seen a dominatrix Blackhole chan, even when googling Blackhole sama. So it would be something new for a change. Also kinda surprising that no one had, or at least not somewhere easily come across.
*takes a few minutes to search to find out who that guy is and returns to read the comments*
I now want a patreon picture of Sydney taking NDG, Bill Nye, and Michio Kaku to Fracture Station.
neil degrassse Toucher~ betcha he tries to grab her”orbs”
…Did anyone else notice that the ARCHON Public Relations number is…over 9000? *dons shades*
I just checked the Rule 34 site and there are no Sydney pictures at all unless there was one mixed in the Halo video game stuff.
There’s no way I’m wading through almost 300 pages of that crap on the offhand chance someone decensored one of Dave B’s topless pics of Sydney.
I am reminded of the story of the meeting of 2 celebrities, each a fan of the other. [Details mostly forgotten, but not important] A comic? and a dancer? The comic later reported, “First he bored me by trying to tell some jokes. Then I bored him by trying to dance. We ended up talking about potatoes.” Hopefully, Sydney will fare better.
That’s something that is often true, not just in one instance.
The local VFW had a charity “Hollywood Squares” fundraiser, and a bunch of us got to talking about how Phyllis Diller and Joan Collins usually failed to be funny on the show in its height (which we decided was probably the Sixties and seventies) yet singer Rosemary Clooney usually was unintentionally funny.
This is true. Paul Lynde, though, was always hilarious (at least IMO).
Comceded, Paul lynde, George Goebbels, and (late in the run) Jamie Farr usually managed to be funny.
Heh, this is awesome. Neil and Sydney just made each others day with this meeting.
I hope the real Neil appreciates the honour!
*wags tail cheekily*
Probably not the best scientist in the world, but certainly the most charismatic. So it’s fitting he is the public face
The cellphone photo in question:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-677-xeno-economics/
The cellphone photo in question:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-676-double-death-star/
Is it just me, or does being in GrrlPower put twenty pounds on an astrophysicist?
Sydney is svelte. Anybody standing next to her will look chunkier.
True, although it’s telling that Neil refers to his college wrestling career as “40 pounds ago” instead of “40 years ago”.
That uncomfortable moment when someone unironically praises NDT in 2019.
Well, it’s not 2019 in comic, as we saw President Obama not that long ago in in-universe time. Anyway, this is an alternate universe at least.
Well obviously an alternate universe,
it has supers above D class publically known, competent supernatural creature society, and completely different alien races to our own…
I mean, its all fiction, nothing to see here; now look closely at this blinking red light.
Not the characters, but the author through said characters. We still live in reality, as does the man writing this.
There was no obligation to put a real-world self-aggrandizing huckster in the comic.
He’s done a lot of good with popularizing science and similar work. Why not put him in? If this was set in the mid-late 60’s, Halo might be excited to meet von Braun.
I don’t think it’s clear from the portrayal in the comic, or the author’s comments, that the inclusion of NDT is “unironic praise”. Who else would you pick as a “face” for science, someone in the public consciousness and still living that actually has done scientific work? Undeserved or not, there aren’t many people who qualify as “celebrity scientists”. Bill Nye, for instance, may be better known, but mainly hosting a TV show about science, and his advocacy, but not for any science he’s done himself.
It could have been a fictional character. Or skip the gag entirely. Again, this is a comic where the author has full control, and there is no obligation for the scene other than the author wanting to put NDT in the comic. I find it kind of silly that I need to explain why things happening in a fictional universe only happen because the author wants them to.
Doing either of those would have missed the mark (Mark is very grateful by the way)
If it was a fictional character, it wouldn’t have nearly the same impetus
If you have a problem with NeilyT… tough kookies, as you said, this is a comic where the author has full control, and he chose NeilyT
Imagine if Sydney met Adam Savage. It would be an absolute explosion of enthusiasm and geeky passion (Pretty sure the two main hosts of Mythbusters have made a cameo in the comic before, for that matter).
I’m not sure Neil is the big guns. He’s only out to make a name for himself. When he led the demote Pluto group they didn’t consider that unlike some planets it has an atmosphere and it’s own moons. He’s just a self serving little man.
He didn’t lead the Demote Pluto group. In fact, he wasn’t even on the IAU’s “Planet Definition Committee”. Take a look at this picture. This is the Planet Definition Committee. Do you see a single black man in that picture? No, you don’t.
https://en.es-static.us/upl/2016/08/IAU-planet-definition-committee-e1471861409554.jpg
Yes, Pluto has an atmosphere, but it’s nowhere near being breathable. The atmospheric pressure averages 0.00001% of that on Earth, and it’s mostly outgassed nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. It barely even qualifies as an atmosphere. And four of its moons are tiny rocks that are barely half a mile across, probably created in a collision with another rocky body in the Kuiper belt.
But none of that matters. The criteria for classification as a planet that they decided on were:
(1) It orbits the Sun.
(2) It has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape).
(3) It has “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit.
You will notice that none of those criteria says “has moons” or “has atmosphere”. If “has moons” was important, then Mercury and Venus would have to be demoted… and Venus is only slightly smaller than Earth, so it is definitely not a “dwarf planet”. If “has atmosphere” was important, then nothing would be demoted, because all the planets (and Pluto) have an atmosphere.
And at the same time Pluto got demoted, several of the larger asteroids (Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake) got promoted. They’re not asteroids anymore, they’re dwarf planets. If Pluto had been discovered 10 years later, when Edgeworth speculated about the existence of the Kuiper Belt, it might have never been awarded the status of planet in the first place.
EDIT: Whoops. If “has atmosphere” was important, then Mercury probably would’ve been demoted. If it weren’t for radioactive decay and the solar wind, it’d have no atmosphere at all. If you think people complained loudly about Pluto’s demotion, imagine the complaining if Mercury got demoted.
If “moons” mattered then they’d have to say exactly what a moon is- probably upgrading our largest moon, or affecting in some way Apophis. Isn’t that the name of that asteroid that has enough mass to have orbiting bodies?
I don’t think it does, and if it does they’d be very tiny. Apophis is only 370 meters across… some of Pluto’s “moons” are bigger! There are three asteroids that probably do have enough mass: Vesta (525 km), Pallas (512 km), and Hygeia (431 km). There’s also Ceres, which got promoted to dwarf planet, at 939 km.
Number 3 can mean it has no moons.
Yeah, I don’t understand this hate for him that’s become fashionable recently. You don’t see it for Bill Nye, with people calling him a jumped up little engineer. They are both primarily public scientists and educators.
If clearing the neighborhood were really a criteria here, there wouldn’t be any planets in the solar system. They all share their orbits with a load of asteroids. Heck, Neptune shares its orbit with Pluto! So why is Neptune a planet?
If it’s big enough to be forced round, and small enough not to ignite fusion, I’m gonna consider it a planet unless it’s orbiting another planet.
They really don’t “share orbits”, Brett. You’re assuming that all the planets orbit on the same plane of inclination. Pluto is at an inclination of 17 degrees from the ecliptic. Pluto is also in a 3:2 resonance with Neptune, so even though Pluto is sometimes closer to the sun than Neptune, they will never collide.
Also, “clearing their neighborhood” does not mean sweeping away asteroids. It means that the planet has to be the dominant gravitational body in their orbit around the sun, and therefore consumes or slings away smaller objects in its orbital path. The Earth is 1.7 times more massive than all the other objects in its orbit. Pluto is only 0.007 times the mass of the other objects in its orbit (which includes Neptune, as you pointed out).
I did say that Neptune and Pluto are never going to collide, but Pluto has a mass 1.3×10^22 kilograms and Neptune has a mass of 1.024×10^24 kilograms. If they did collide, who do you think would win? Answer: Neptune. So Pluto literally can’t “clear the neighborhood”.
Meh, they designed their criteria to demote Pluto. They just hate cartoons!
In a few years time, when* they discover planet nine, and confirm it to be a super Earth, but also ** find that its orbit is so vast, and there are so many smaller bodies out there that it has not cleared, then they will have to either fudge their definition yet again, or accept Pluto back into the realm of planets.
That or suffer the stupidity of having a ‘dwarf planet’ bigger than the Earth!
* Assuming that the predictions are not just an observationally biassed statistical anomaly.
** For the purposes of this hypothetical argument.
There is only one way to deal with this argument over Pluto being a planet or not
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yq2vprDScE
Ooh, someone I recognise from my YouTube subscriptions. I can see why Sydney freaked out!
People have been saying that Dave gave away too much by showing the phone number on the card. It is like the Staff of Rah headpiece in the first ‘Raiders’ movie. You have to read the back to get the full message. It says ‘invert the card’. The real number is 100-6909.
It occurs to me that her cellphone would overheat in space… But then it’s a fancy Archon phone… so maybe it doesn’t produce as much… produces very little… ok doesn’t produce any heat at all. But still.
i think it’s the shield that’s responsible, if she was in space she would have the shield or she would be very dead in varied and simultaneous ways
by which i mean, i think the shield protected the phone as well
When was her cellphone “in space”? At all times, it was in an environment with atmosphere, at a temperature comfortable for a human being.
I do think it’s a fair question whether or not any of the orbs regulate those details of the user’s environment, and if so, which ones. The “air” orb would be a likely candidate, but it’s possible that the force field orb may perform some temperature regulation, at least in terms of how much heat is allowed to enter or leave.
You forget how far Sydney got from the Alari homeworld when she was foolishly trying to fly to the moon. Also, she was pretty high above Fracture Station when she arrived.
Worth noting: while there’s a lot we don’t know about Etherium Causeways, it wouldn’t be surprising if it were super-dangerous to open one within a roughly surface-level atmosphere.
It may or may not be. But nth level technology can clearly compensate, even if it is. Not to mention keeping barely spacefaring technology nice and safe on its pilot.
Well if it holds true that Nth tech in this setting is comparible to similar described tech levels such as those that could manipulate the multi-dimensional fabrics of reality to create magical systems; and magic can open portals between worlds and even dimensions in an atmosphere safely. See no reason why this supposedly (according to the locals) much more impressive Aetherium causeway can’t do the same.
Yes, Sydney and her cell phone were both in space. But they were also both inside her force field. Why would her cell phone overheat?
The shield orb keeps energy from outside the shield from hurting Sydney. As such, it’s naturally on tap for keeping the temperature within the bubble in the range that she can handle. Also, it’s the one orb that was active 100% of the time while she was in vacuum. If it was the air orb responsible, she’d have had time enough to get uncomfortable before she used it again, so it would’ve been noted.
God, he’s one of the people I respect the most in this world. I would probably have a heart attack if I saw him in person, but it would definitely be worth the risk.
Hold up, we’ve got a cameo over here!
Pictures? She took pictures, not selfies?
Sydney has taste. Selfie with a famous celebrity, is just sharing an experience with another person. Interposing yourself in front of a famous landmark (or in this case a view of staggering scientific importance) is rather tacky (and would lose a lot of otherwise useful scientific information, such as close ups of stars in that area, or space traffic).
Also note that it’s Neil taking the picture here, rather than Sydney, so even *here*, she’s not taking a selfie. You can tell she isn’t, because her phone is in the picture.
Now I’m picturing a bunch of scientists showing up on NdGT’s doorstep and being all like “We have a mission for you.”
Forward time travel doesn’t count, even if you’re going at a different rate. That’s just how any space travel would work.
The whole team went forward in time… then most of it came back.
Only Sydney was left to take the “shortcut” home. The details are still “people traveled in time”. Depending on which model of time applies, that detail alone may make causality into a casualty of scientists chasing science-former-fiction.
If causality is an absolute bar to time travel, that does sound like a loophole. Provided your return journey does not take you back far enough (in time/space) that your pre-knowledge can influence the events at either location and create a paradox.
Mind you the nature of wormholes would allow time travel, or, at a minimum, information to be sent back in time which in itself would allow causality to be messed with.
And whenever PBS spacetime tries to explain it in more detail it melts my brain and the grey matter dribbles out of my ears.
The one explanation I kind of understood worked like this:
“If you create a wormhole that allows you to travel back in time, you’ve created a loop between the two wormhole entrances where energy that enters one mouth can exit the other, and then travel back through normal space to the first entrance. Because energy can do this, energy will do this. Because it’s a loop through not just space, but time as well, you will have infinite energy traveling through the wormhole. This will destroy the wormhole, thus paradox is not possible.”
I understood the explanation, I’m less sure I trust it to be anything like accurate.
The tachyon-duel paradox sounds to me like a bunch of physicists got drunk and confused effect for cause.
They did have the opportunity to use their foreknowledge to change things. Assuming it wouldn’t take 50 days to contact Cora and get her to Sciona’s homeworld, they could have arranged for Cora to already be there when ArcSWAT arrives through the broken wormhole. They could have alerted the Xevoarchy of the impending destruction of Sciona’s world, too. And believe that’s going to get mentioned if Sciona ever finds out about the time travel aspect of this whole thing.
Dabbler wisely chose to arrange for Cora to show up right after the wormhole closed. Cora got delayed, so the plan was slightly derailed, but the idea was clearly to rescue Sydney as soon as they could without effectively creating an Observer Paradox.
The concern about, and analysis of, Krona’s “checkpoint” program (that she thought was a time reset, and everyone was relieved when it wasn’t) shows that time travel is possible in the Grrlverse, paradoxes are achievable, and that they are a Bad Idea(tm).
(At least, I’m assuming that “chrono-rubber-banding” is a bad thing, and that a nervous assurance that the universe certainly won’t cease to exist and why are we even talking about that, heh heh, indicates the possibility of maybe, possibly, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny side effects).
Tangential comment: I love the crowd here, where the comic has us round table discussing topics ranging from astrophysics to consent.
Good point. The crowd on the Freefall forums are the same. I’m not surprised since Freefall, with the exception of the D.A.V.E. (Dangerous And Very Expensive) drive, is very rooted in hard science.
I love this Comic. But this page is why I really love this Comic.
WHO DIDN”T THINK TO CHECK HER PHONE FOR CLASSIFIED INFORMATION????
Classified information was removed.
Fracture was approved for public revelation.
Have you ever noticed that these days, whenever someone says, “NBD (No Big Deal)”….
IT’S A BIG DEAL.
SPIT TAKE FROM DEUS!!! I demand it after witnessing this post. Or his bodyguard,
Gamble… doesn’t everyone know who he is??