Grrl Power #947 – Mass Spec…ulation
I thought it’d be amusing to show Sydney moon-jumping around and for some reason I thought that would be best illustrated from the foot up. So, a slightly odd page. I regret not being able to make it all feet – not because I’m trying to satisfy some foot fetish checklist or anything, but it would have been a nice touch thematically.
Really, they should have done this with the orbs straight away. They did scan them for radiation, but it didn’t occur to them that they might be outgassing. I don’t know how fast Mass Spectrometers are, or if they have to scan for one thing at a time, or do everything at once. I guess whatever the answer is, this particular Mass Spec is going to take a few hours because someone took it apart to see how it worked and maybe had a few extra bits and bobs left over when they put it back together.
No, I don’t have a Who’s Who entry for “The List.” Yes, I have considered doing that.
I was going to post that since Dabbler is normally digitigrade, (yes, technically unguligrade, but I think Dabbler would agree that word is insufficiently sexy) walking around on super high heels wouldn’t present much of a challenge for her. But that’s because I momentarily forgot that she only looks like a beach bunny because of her glamor, not because she’s a shapeshifter. So, she’s still just walking around on her hooves. Even though her glamor is like a fully realized illusion with full tactile components, so you could give her a foot rub, and you would feel a foot while doing it. She would feel the contact being mapped to the correct part of her foot, which would be important if she was going to react correctly – and since succubi glamors are pretty hard core, it would be dumb if there was such an easy way to detect them.
Not that all succubi have digitigrade legs and hooves. As with most other demons, there’s a lot of morphological variety, but since their glamors will usually have to deal with hiding horns, and occasionally have to hide wings or tails, they are extensible to cover things like hooves and extra arms.
Note that when Dabbler is glamored as a plantigrade human wearing heels, she tends to stand slightly pigeon-toed, but in her “natural” guise, she stands duck-footed, which is evidently the opposite of pigeon-toed.
The new vote incentive is up! Some of you got sort of invested in Lapha and Garamm, so here she is testing out her new duds. I don’t know if or when they’ll show up in the comic again, (probably more a question of ‘when’) but we’ll have to see if she got any other options besides the tail. Personally I’d go for retractable, venomous fangs, but presumably if you get those, you also have to get a special upgraded pancreas or liver or something, in case you accidentally bite the inside of your own cheek with your fang.
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Honestly I’m with dabbler on this one. For all we know Sydney’s list could be a countdown to her doing something like taking down the Kaiju boss.
Or becoming one…
Why not both at once?
I figured they’d already done that, but that was before the life support orb was ‘figured out’
BOING!
Backflip.
As if Sydney wasn’t Tigger-ish enough already.
Didn’t dabbler try to scan the orbs already waaaay back near the start of the comic? They showed up as being “literally nothing existing in this space” so she actually couldn’t get a scan of them.
I think you are right about that.
They’re not scanning the Orb directly this time, only the atmosphere around it in order to detect any outgassing it might be producing automatically.
I dont think theyre scanning the orbs but the atmosphere around the orbs to see if anything is being produced.
Gwen scanned them indirectly in issue 80 and Dabbler really tried to scan them back in issues 102 and 103.
It says in the blog post. They’re scanning for off-gassing.
Hmm, being able to casual slow-motion backflips all the time does seem pretty neat.
Also “Grindy Gears, Bleep Bloops, Garage and The Pit”
Hmmm…
Grindy Gears (follow the yellow line): Mechanical workshop?
Bleep Bloops (follow the blue line): Electronic workshop?
Grarage (follow the green line): Vehicular workshop?
The Pit (follow the maroon, or maybe sanguine as in blood-color, line): Thaumaturgical workshop, as in Infernal magic (which might fit well with a sanguine line)?
Ohhhhhh. “Touch Nothing” I like that sign. But with Sydney around you better put the safety locks on any red buttons.
More to the point, how exactly did Arianna manage to get Max to agree to doing that poster on the wall behind Mr. Mass Spec?
I’m not convinced that’s max. it might just be the technician under orange light.
The girl in the poster seems to be wearing digit’s goggles just like digit does (on forehead). It could be Digit.
Am I the only one getting vibes of Abby Sciuto’s Lab here?
Was the first thing I though of upon seeing “Mr. Mass-Spec”.
first thing I thought of was how much the blonde beside it looks like Gadget Hackwrench
It’s already been speculated (in the Comments section) that Gadget was DaveB’s inspiration for her way back when we first saw her appear in the comic. I’m not sure what page that was & don’t have time to look it up & link to it right now.
“Mr. Mass Spectrometer” – reference to “Mr. Coffee” from Spaceballs, Or reading too much into this?
Mr. Mass Spec is a reference from NCIS. Abby frequently used the term.
…Do you understand how incredibly frustrating and infuriating that sign is?
‘Touch nothing’ – yeah, right. And how I supposed to touch that ‘nothing’? Do they even bothered to describe the Nothing, or just define it? “Touch the I don’t know what”, ‘touch nothing’ my fuzzy ass…
That’s some pattern screamers level of pataphysical unreality recontextualization, I tell you.
Sydney is ironically about the only person who physically could go in there without touching anything. (Bubble and flight ensuring she doesn’t make contact with the floor or air) despite her being the least psychologically capable of not touching anything.
The “Nothing” that I’ve heard about was a major feature & plot point in the first “Neverending Story” movie. I can’t say how they got it contained in the labs here, though…
Ah, [i]Die unendliche Geschichte[/i] – limited,more lighthearted version of [i]Unaussprechlichen Kulten[/i] made for young ones; yes – that was a good one.
Well, I guess it [i]could[/i] be something akin to Buddhist imperative – “break the chains of samsara, and touch the Nothing”…
Perchance, they experiment with apotheosis mechanisms there.
They need some signs along the lines of “Do not look into laser with remaining eye X—–“
Would anti-gravity/feather fall also mean that the effects of such on her body are now removed/reduced? Perky for logger, stronger bones for longer etc
That’s an interesting thought – though staying perky may be a thing, spending time in reduced gravity weakens bones. Astronauts on the ISS have to stick to a strict workout routine to mitigate it.
With Sydney already having issues with her body compared to the others, she really wouldn’t want that to happen.
I would think that it’s an inertial dampener rather than an actual gravity dampener. Just slows her down if she is falling at too high of a speed.
When the skill tree is finally full and Sydney transforms into an Nth level being, then people will discover the consequences for being on “The List” o_o
Assuming that as an Nth level being Sydney is not evolved past the need for vengeance. I can’t believe I actually wrote that without cracking up. Yeah we’re all gonna die when that happens.
You just reminded me of an “Outer Limits” episode: “The Sixth Finger”
A god with ADHD sounds bad. At least she will be chaotic good.
A scary thought is that an Nth level being has evolved beyond any human concept of “alignments” or morality/ethics…
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I can see Sydney evolve into Sheogorath eventually.
Since Sydney has only one (Hentai Orb) tentacle, after her transformation she might actually look “weird” even when compared to Lovecraft’s lineup of Cosmic Deities.
She only has one tentacle currently. But she does have plenty of so-far-unknown upgrade options within that capability…
You mean, it was not a crurophilic fanservice?
Also, pity that Dabbler’s feet here are actually an illusion.
They might be an illusion, but it’s one of those blue pill illusions where it doesn’t matter because the result is the same. You touch her feet, they feel like feet. She can move them like feet, even she feels them as being like feet. All the senses of anyone involved tell them they’re feet in every way shape and form. So, since the feet a re indistinguishable from reality, what does it matter?
What is Mind: no matter. What is matter: Never Mind.
Mmmm… a Mass spec is pretty quick, all things considered.
The simple version of it is you zap it, and take a look at the pretty graph that comes out (representing the spectra of all the things being vaporised… err… the specific electromagnetic wavelengths that come off it aka light etc.)
Though getting a sample to test is the hard thing in this situation – usually you zap a tiny amount of a thing – or just look at the light already being given off, e.g. when you want to know what a star is made of.
The orbs being fairly large, and invulnerable as far as we know, would make that a bit hard to do, so that could be the explanation for the time taken.
They have it in an enclosed chamber, so they’ll collect anything weird that is releasing at a veeeeeery slow rate. It’s probably doing periodic scans.
The slow bit of a mass spec run (apart from setting everything up; that’s insanely difficult — and expensive — to do for general trawling for whatever is in a sample) is doing the chromatography to separate the various gasses. You don’t want to put everything through at once if you can help it; you end up unable to figure out what is what in an enormous pile of data if you do that. Of course, they’re looking for gasses, and that speeds everything up hugely. It’s the low-volatility high-molecular-weight stuff that takes ages. And the sorting through the data afterwards, always.
They should first just measure pressure and weight of the chamber it’s in. No changes = nothing created or destroyed.
Then they can test with mass-spec just to make sure it isn’t passively transmuting hydrogen to helium or something.
Pretty sure it’s not generating chemicals, though. Hm, what’s a good undetectable passive effect? “Extended Lifespan”, maybe? They wouldn’t figure it out until fifteen years later when they notice Sydney still looks twenty-something.
Not going to lie, if I was in Syd’s boots right now I would be doing all the backflips.
The problem is, mass spec destroys whatever you put in it. Nothing you put in can ever be taken out because it breaks down the molecular structure into bits and pieces. A more realistic analytical device for this purpose would have been Fourier-Transform-Infrared-Spectroscopy or SEM.
True that, for analysing the Orbs themselves, a radiation-based spectroscopy would probably be required (UV, VIS, IR, and I think a bit further either side is also feasible; FT is a technique rather than a range, and doesn’t suit every subject). But MS would work fine on any gases being given off. And it’s generally better at identification, within the constraints of what it will detect.
It just occurred to me, what if it works like a rechargeable air tank and the passive ability is automatic recharging while in a compatible atmosphere? This way it isn’t creating mass from nothing, it is just compressing/storing mass for later use and we haven’t seen Sydney hit the tanks limit due to it holding a lot and the passive keeping it charged whenever she isn’t in an enclosed or underwater space.
I don’t see “creating mass from nothing” as an issue for these orbs. They already create pew pews and tentacles from nothing, and with no recoil. Plus if they’re absorbing atmosphere passively, that would just make Sydney’s mass show as much MUCH higher than it really is, seen as how moving the orbs moves her and vice versa. You can hand wave away the added inertia, but at that point you’re just cherry picking which laws of physics you’re choosing to ignore.
Besides, we already know the orbs disobey the laws of physics, and that the orbs are basically space wizard tech the likes of which even Krona can’t match, and Krona can create things out of thin air, provided she has the right code written to do it, such as with her weapon reloader cheat code.
True, I was just trying to think of a function that would compliment the known function while not being immediately obvious and it occurred to me it might work more like a tank and that without the passive pip one might have had to actively restock that tank to use it later.
As a possible alternative the passive could be scanning gases/liquids it comes into contact with and “recording” the percentage makeups of those things for later recreation, so like the Aetherway had the records of “recently visited” locations, it is passively recording the makeup of atmospheres it has been in contact with so they can be reproduced later as desired.
It’s possible that the Orbs are only the physical manifestation of an extra-dimensional machine & in our 3D universe we can only perceive 3 of the dimensions that the orbs occupy. The Orbs might even be one single machine but from our 3D perspective it appears as a number of Orbs that shift around in position.
If that’s the case, then there would be no measurable gain or loss in mass from this side, no matter what the Orbs take in or expel, as any such matter would be getting stored or retrieved from other dimensions. You know, like Hammer Space that we wouldn’t even know exists.
If it were passively recharging, Sydney would not have oxygen deprivation issues when bubbled too long.
In this situation I meant recharging as “taking in” atmosphere from the surroundings rather than producing it, stockpiling it automatically for later usage, but as pointed out above it is unlikely to actually need to store atmosphere in hammer-space for later recall due to Nth level tech shenanigans allowing it to just create stuff from nothing.
Or, instead of creating/destroying, they use an advanced form of fusion or fission to “rearrange” existing molecules of the right type as needed. Heck, for all we know, any energy produced by such processes might be automatically stored (in a way that we can’t detect) & used by the Orbs produce a Lighthook or shots of Pew-Pew; Really, where does that energy come from anyway?
I suppose what bugs me most about the creation of matter from nothing is the difference in the order of magnitude of the energy required to do it. Sure the PPO and Lighthook both exert enormous amounts of force and energy, but nothing that I’ve seen from those are on the order of e=mc² nuclear explosion power. It is the same thing that bugs me about Star Trek replicators, converting energy stores to mass is orders of magnitude more power required then rearranging existing mass into different forms.
Most people see the orb creating gas as if from nothing and go “oh that’s kinda neat, nowhere near as powerful as giant laser beam though” and I see it and go “holy shit if that really is making matter out of nothing but pure stored energy I want me that power source cause wow that is a lot of power”.
With the Star Trek replicator’s they aren’t rearranging matter on an atomic level or even on a molecular level…Starships have cargo space dedicated to storing “raw materials” & the “transporter tech” merely accesses the “raw molecules” from storage & adds them together, much like you putting ingredients together in a kitchen to make your food. It also takes far less energy to assemble molecules from a stockpile of atoms than it would to assemble atoms from stockpiles of sub-atomic particles, but even so, what Star Trek does is stockpile matter already in molecular form.
Even so, a spaceship capable of warp-travel while using power generated from matter/antimatter reactors, it’s not like they’re lacking in ways to use that energy in ways other than propulsion…Even so, their Impulse Engines are based on nuclear fusion reactors to generate thrust while in “normal space” anyway.
Heck, even in Marvel comics, they’ve proposed theories that some superhumans (like when Banner turns into the Hulk & vice versa) that are capable of gaining or shedding body mass might even be getting unconscious/unknown means of extra-dimensional link dedicated to the transfer of that mass specifically.
But if Sydney’s Orbs actually have regular, dedicated-purpose access to multiple dimensions, they could be generating & using power and/or materials that would make ST Starships look like kitchen matches in comparison…And all of this energy/matter might not even be detectable from our 3D-based side.
So basically Star Trek Replicators are molecular 3-D printers linked to a transporter.
I’m not sure if this is really happening… But I choose to believe Maxima is taking a step back from Sydney in Panel 8 at the idea that she’s emitting something that could be causing Max to put up with her.
Interestingly, now that they know this, it’d probably be beneficial to put the next point into the unknown cloudy orb next, in the hopes of trying to work out it’s function.
Nope.
Shield passive next. “Not dying” is the greatest superpower.
The best chance anyone can have to defeat their enemies is to survive beyond anything they can throw at you…
Can’t argue that some passive increase in survivability or toughness isn’t a priority for practical, combat reasons.
Only in a discovery sense, I guess, is putting the next point into the encapsulated node of the cloudy orb the most beneficial move.
Sydney having to sit still for a few hours? For that I’d put her on The List too.
wait didn’t a lot of folks already performing a deep scan?
also: Spectrometers analyze everything at a time, it’s the scientist (or a computer software) job to analyze what is what.
The pin up in the second to last panel (penultimate sounds too pompous), is that Digit? It looks like a Mashup of her and Max.
To expand on Baldrick’s comment… the sample is ionised and the emission spectra are recorded and matched against the known spectral signatures of elements. Relative brightness indicates the proportions. This does not tell you what the compounds were before “zapping” so it is is not a great indicator of the danger level. A microgram of mercury is not especially good for you, but a microgram of dimethyl mercury touching your skin will kill you slowly and horribly. Hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen are present in normal air. Re-arranged as HCN they are commonly known as cyanide.
True for a purely elemental analysis, but that’s not the only method. Most will give at least a ‘parts of molecule’ level of information: you can tell how the atoms are combined at a local scale, even if it still takes interpretation (or a good reference library) to figure out how those local-scale bits fit together.
Also, i guess Max is finally testing for the stupidity aura Ingsol mentioned.
I am gonna call it. The orbs are not releasing a compound. The passive is a slight over-pressure to keep harmful gasses away.
I’m betting the encapsulated nodes aren’t specifically passives but more emergency effects. Like how the air ball just happened to go into her hand when she needed air.
So shield might give her emergency shields from an attack she doesn’t see coming so spidy shields.
The ppo an emergency hadoken.
Telapresence being a emergency port home. Or work as an emergency pair of glasses/knight vision. And so on.
thats my thought
auto shields
PPO auto selects the best weapon setting for a target
telapresence floats in front of her face when it detects something hidden it wants her to see
and so on
Alternatively, The List is an anger/frustration management tool taught to her.
She makes a note of something that made her feel sufficiently bad, or records a nasty thought that even she recognizes is too much. Maybe ‘how someone made her feel and why’.
Maybe she burns the book later, or maybe she reflects on it, or maybe this is simply just a method of redirecting her anger or frustration into her book, with the side benefit of being some sort of nerddom-inspired ‘book of grudges’.
In short: maybe The Book is a good thing, and a tool for emotion management.
The List also contains Good Things, e.g. when Leon first attracted Sydney’s amorous attentions, he was added to The List, but she inverted the book and wrote his name ‘upside down’ and at the back.
So it’s basically a frustration dump. Write down what annoys you and put it in your pocket.
That could be a pretty useful thing to practice IRL
Also they are pretty cool to look at, DaveB check this out for a lost opportunity for engineered hotness https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/e9cktvJ41SU7EyGV250vxMx4aqQ=/4900×3267/filters:fill(auto,1)/toxicology-mass-spectrometry-579370896-5908b9833df78c92834d0d01-5c546d5046e0fb00013facc6.jpg
Does Mr. Mass Spec have any relation to Major Mass Spec over in the NCIS building?
The name is a reference to the Mr. Coffee coffee machine which the movie Spaceballs referenced.
Am I the only one who feels physical pain, when I look at Dabbler’s footwear? I know she’s doing an illusory representation of her hooves, but holy crap.
No. No you’re not.
Every time I look at those pictures (so I try not to) I realize that my feet would snap off at the ankles if I ever tried to wear something like that. (Of course, I’m also a 6’5″, 300lb man with not-so-good ankles… so mass and gravity are definitely against me.)
I think even seasoned ballerinas would look at that picture and have traumatic flashbacks to their “en pointe” training days.
In real life, I suspect shoes like that would result in a damaged or severed achilles tendon very quickly.
Not severed, but they would be seriously fucked up. If anything, they’d be messed up in the opposite direction. The tendons in the front would be all stretched out, making it hard to walk on your heels, eventually. Plus hammer toes, bunions, heel problems … enough to give a podiatrist nightmares.
Just remember she’s not actually wearing those torture devices in shoe form. They’re an illusion.
Yeah, I mentioned that part, but the visual is still there.
Ladies, if you’re wearing that sort of footwear to impress me, you can stop.
To put it mildly.
I don’t have a foot fetish. I thought I did, until I got online and discovered the guys with a real foot fetish. Turns out I’m just not grossed out by them, as most people are, and my girlfriends always got all of the foot rubs they wanted.
I’ve seen the women who wear even low high-heels all of the time. Their toes are a horror show; their arches get all weird; they get weird, pinched patterns practically cut into their feet.
That grosses me the hell out and makes me shudder.
I am not sure, but I think this may be the first time we have ever seen Digit. If so, I approve, she is adorable, then again, I do have something about techie females.
If you look at the “tags” section immediately under the comic you can click on “digit01” and see her other appearance.
And the Author’s Notes for that page include a link to her untagged third appearance.
Find me a techie female character who isn’t some form of cute.
I date you.
Gadget of Rescue Rangers.
Wait…
lol, I think you may have found the root for a lot of fetishes out there.
maybe so, but she certainly doesn’t seem like a Square root
I know a handful of furries. I usually hear Sonic the Hedgehog.
straw vs camel arrangement?
the list may work on an additive principle: nothing happens until you reach a certain threshold. But when you reach the threshold, that last add is “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” and you get a big-time retaliation in one go for every(small) thing that was added to the lst.
If you get added to The List too many times, you’ll eventually pass a threshold that demands active retaliation. “The straw that broke the camel’s back.”
This comic is some foot fetisch gold. Please don’t kill me Pander.
Considering Sydney, “The List” may date back to her school days and could possibly have more than one volume.
I wonder what it takes to get crossed off or removed from that list?
Just asking…
..for a friend.
Why? What did your friend do to Siddles?
…stands duck-hooved?
is “mr mass spec” a spaceball reference? like “mr coffee” and “mr radar”…
More likely an NCIS reference to Abby’s “Major Mass Spec”.
Surely it’s Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future?
I think these are all pulling from an even older meme, that says “‘Mr. ‘ refers to a syncretized, easy-to-use, marketable-as-a-consumer-appliance version of .” Thus, Mr. Radar, Mr. Fusion, Mr. Death Ray, etc.
*sigh* one of these days, I’ll remember that gt and lt signs get interpreted weirdly by this comment system…
I think the trend started back a few decades ago by a guy that sold all sorts of neat little gadgets…Mr. Popeil.
Has “The Pit” (sign on the last panel) been mentioned before? There are questions arising.
Maybe the passive for the “life-support” orb is the reason why Sydney can handle all the spicy foods she loves without it killing her?
We, the audience, know things the in-universe characters don’t for various reasons, like how nobody in-universe was looking in the right direction to notice what Sydney’s orbs do when Varia makes contact with Sydney. We’ve already seen a noteworthy passive effect from the life-support orb: it leapt to her hand unbidden when she was in danger of drowning. No other orb has done that, and the Shield and Fly orbs have both been given reason to before.
I wonderhow featherfall will mess with sydney when she takes elevators or stairs ;)
The one who created the orbs likely had no need for those so…
I forgot to ask: is Sydney doing all these flips using the innate ability? If so, that’s more than just featherfall.
Reading the speculation…
Has anyone noticed how a normal human (no actual super powers, just… basically Tony Stark… but instead of “genius inventor” her genius is in “genre savvy”) is often confronted with things that would cause people to go “coo-coo for Klonopin”, but she pretty much takes them in stride?
Yes, I notice her reactions are a bit overblown, but those are either “quirky” or “oh the humanity!”. She never really gets scared in situations in which a brand-new hero would even lose their shit. Even the Archon resident psychiatrist has realized that she has a “bounce back” factor to a degree that led her to write that her therapy plan was “jingle keys”. And as someone with severe ADHD, having ADHD wouldn’t explain the virtual fearlessness.
Perhaps the passive in the green ball is something like having a perpetual “ward against fear” or “+20 save vs fear effects” for her. It would take a LOT to get through, but even then only when not life threatening (basically, once the adrenaline wears off) and even then she shrugs it off fast. She may have been through a lot already, but not enough for a recently minted hero to be THAT blasé about everything.
So, other than the vertigo (which the Flyball handles), I’m seeing a strong possible argument for some kind of fear suppression effect as a passive for the green one. (Mostly because in order to be able to use the other orbs effectively in a threat situation, you’d have to keep a fairly cool head. And the green orb takes care of that.)
Just my theory there.
(TLDR: I’m thinking that the green orb passive is “fear resist”/anti-anxiety, much like a moderate dose of Klonopin.)
It’s a possibility. We haven’t had much exposure to pre-orb Sydney. Mostly just the story of finding the orbs while doing a tourist level scuba diving thing. We are introduced to the idea that she is somewhat impulsive and that she is trying out scuba diving implies a certain level of stimulus seeking/ adventurousness but we really don’t know her baseline level of fear reaction. I expect that her level of bounceback is driven more by the needs of the story.
Feather fall isn’t reduced gravity, it’s constant velocity decent with the speed at one to three feet per second but also with the fear of death or injury from falling inhibited.
Maybe someone should be concerned that the orbs can do stuff to Sydney’s brain.
The orbs can probably destroy Earth. Why they should be concerned about Sydney?
Um, shouldn’t Sidney need to touch the ‘Life Support’ Orb in order for it to activate? Scanning it without her doing that during the whole process might be sort of pointless.
The Life Support orb already has a pip on its encapsulated orphan node, meaning it’s doing something passively without being held, just like the Fly orb does now.
They’re scanning it to find out if it’s emitting anything without being held.
They are checking for a passive effect, which is hands free by definition.
Panel 2 looks quite unhealthy on her ankles.
Okay, as a lot of people have pointed out, mass spectrometry is a mostly destructive test. Make a gas (NOT a solid) hot enough so that it glows, and the color of its glow will be made up by a unique set of spikes (called emission lines) across the EM spectrum. Each element (and each isotope of each element) has a distinctive set of spikes that operate as a fingerprint, easily identifying that element. (This is why hydrogen fires are always blue and wood fires, or the sodium in the soot of the wood fire, burns orange.) Blueshift or redshift the light and you shift the fingerprint up and down the spectrum but it’s still recognizable, which can let astronomers know how fast a given glowy object is approaching or receding. Mix it with other elements, and it’s still easy enough to separate out the overlapping fingerprints, identifying not just the list of all elements present but also which ones there are most of (based on which fingerprints are strongest).
There are two major limitations of this test. First, it only identifies the atoms in a gas, not what chemicals those atoms are arranged in. You can make some good assumptions about chemistry based on how many of what atoms are present, but it’s just conjecture. And second, it only works on hot gas. In order to do mass spectrometry on something solid, you have to heat it until it vaporizes. Usually this is done by ionizing it (lots of electrons), which also lets you physically separate out the individual elements. That’s why it’s a destructive test, and if you’re using this on something important you should either just use a small sample or invest in handlebar mustache, a Vaudevillian helping of ham and cheese, and a villainous costume and mask that fits well with the moniker Mass Spectro. (“And now, Halo, if you don’t give me the codes, I will show you what this PUPPY is made of!”)
Subjecting the orbs to this process is a bad idea. I’m not sure in which way it’s a bad idea, but none of the possible ways are good.
So, how can we make this comic make sense? First of all, the vaporization chamber won’t be transparent like that. Watching the incineration might be neat, but the point is to capture the light for the ‘puter to analyze, not show it off for an audience. (Though, to be fair, this is the sort of thing I wouldn’t be surprised when engineers designed a model to sacrificed efficiency so as to let people actually watch it get ionized and disintegrated. You know,
because fire is awesometo allow visual confirmation that the machine is working right.)But if this Mass Spec is designed specifically to analyze gasses (as opposed to things it vaporizes into gasses), that might be a source chamber rather than the ionization chamber. Air flow feeds from the chamber the orb is in to the ionization chamber. It’s not analyzing the orb, just the gasses drawn from the source chamber, including any that the orb might be producing.
There. Sense made.
…. and ignore 90% of what I just typed, I was getting mass spectometry mixed up with spectroscopy. The rationalization of the comic still works, though.
And specifically with atomic emission spectroscopy, at that. Which is a great method for what it’s useful for, and often catches information that less destructive methods will miss, but is only one among many types of spectroscopy. Most of which are, thankfully, compatible with keeping the sample intact.
Valid point, though, that spectroscopic methods generally only give you small-scale information. They’ll tell you what bits are present, for different types of bits in different methods, but it’s then up to the operator to figure out how those bits go together (either from scratch, or via a library of ‘ones we ran earlier’).
In this case, they’re trying to analyse gasses being (potentially) passively emitted by the orb, not the orb itself. Nobody really cares if you mass spec a few gas molecules to pieces. (The level of destruction depends on how heavily the ionizer is set, but for gasses it’s usually pretty easy to get them charged.) I’d guess they’d need to jury rig a vacuum first so that they don’t get swamped by the atmosphere first, given that the gasses being made are probably going to include nitrogen and oxygen and that fact would be of interest here. Otherwise they’d never see a damn thing.
My guess is that the mass spec will find nothing.
This is Funny Future Tech, like the Mr. Fusion power source in Back To The Future. You never, ever, EVER try to compare Funny Future Tech with Contemporary Tech for reality. It’s just not done in order to protect your sanity.
Your mistake lies in assuming I want to protect my sanity. >:]
Most people’s mistake with me is that I had any sanity to protect in the first place..
Er… What’s “sanity”?
Sanity is for the WEAK!
Yeah, yeah, but what *is* it?
Subjective. Matter of perception.
To some extent; you might think you can fly, but good luck overcoming gravity on your own, and even if you think you are invulnerable, that semi has other ideas.
Everyone’s immortal…
At least, until they die.
(And “normal” is nothing more than a statistical term.)
Nah, immortal means the body doesn’t just break down.
By this definition, humans and most other animal species do not count as immortal, since even in an ideal habitat their bodies will eventually stop working due to many of the same genetic mutations which designed their biology. There is, however, at least one type of animal which is functionally immortal. . .
LOBSTERS!
So “sanity” involves sticking to proven safe practices, for example staying far from flying machines of any design? And also refusing to get nearer than 3 meters to horses and lookalikes? I am obviously sane!