Grrl Power IV: Constantly Expanded Universe

[Keltest]

No, it's one of those "Quantum physics ignores what we call common sense" moments.

Nope, theyre definitely wizards.

[-D-]

No, it's one of those "Quantum physics ignores what we call common sense" moments.

You mean - "I don't know Quantum theory from a wet sock, and it all sounds like gibberish to me, so it might as well be space fiction wizards" moments.

I hate those people.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The more I think about it, the more I kind of like the idea that the Entity on the Alari homeworld is actually the power-copying blood-golem-mecha.

Firstly, there's a bit of physical resemblance. The mecha, last we saw it, lost its bipedal form and primary power supply, and existed as a small mecha-tentacle snake with a single glowing eye. It also had powers of regeneration and a scanning ability. We see the glowing scanning eye in the Entity, its form is somewhat ambiguous, hidden by sand, but is definitely comprised of some kind of mecha-tentacles.

Second, there's definitely a motive. Since it is intelligent, and only obeyed commands as per being a golem (at least that seems to be the case), it would probably harbor some not-insignificant dislike of the Alari, and Sciona in particular. Even the singling out of Sydney works in this context, as there definitely was some animosity between them.

I still can't quite work out the method by which the mecha-golem would have gotten there, or known where to go and what to do there (it very likely used outside help to crush the Alari, as we see it calling in the ship rather than attacking itself). There's probably something involving a stable time loop, where the first time around the Alari invasion happened but with the ARCHON interference ultimately failed, and this somehow allowed the required information to get to the golem-mecha. It might have hitched a ride on whatever ship came in to pick up the captive Alari, or borrowed a flight power from someone and gotten there by itself. In the stable loop timeline then, the Empire is destroyed because the portal opening into the destroyed homeworld and subsequently allowing the future-Alari souls come back to present Earth, also brought that information to the golem-mecha, and allowed it to act again, completing the loop.

[HandofShadows]

Spoiler

Show

Well we get see what Sydney is doing and surprisingly she is doing something rather smart. Max must be a good influence.

[lord_khaine]

The more I think about it, the more I kind of like the idea that the Entity on the Alari homeworld is actually the power-copying blood-golem-mecha.

I think your making the rather human error of trying to find meaning or connections where there might not be any.
The Alari is by all accounts a extremely unpleasant people. There are countless reasons for why someone might decide to put an end to their civilisation.
It does not need to connect to something taking place a few years earlier and lightyears away on earth.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Clearing the point of contact might be the smartest thing to do right now. If they can't pursue, you have time to think out a plan. If they can pursue, you have much bigger problems.

[Rogar Demonblud]

I think your making the rather human error of trying to find meaning or connections where there might not be any.
The Alari is by all accounts a extremely unpleasant people. There are countless reasons for why someone might decide to put an end to their civilisation.
It does not need to connect to something taking place a few years earlier and light years away on earth.

Nitpick, that battle was a couple days ago at most. Otherwise, I agree with you, especially about paredolia.

[lord_khaine]

Nitpick, that battle was a couple days ago at most. Otherwise, I agree with you, especially about paredolia.

Ah no you misunderstand. The thing im talking about is the future extermination of the Alari empire.
It would have needed to be quite a bit into the future for the missing golem to have grown enough to murder a FTL civilisation. But not so far it exceedet Harems lifespan. Since she could connect to herself.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Ah no you misunderstand. The thing im talking about is the future extermination of the Alari empire.
It would have needed to be quite a bit into the future for the missing golem to have grown enough to murder a FTL civilisation. But not so far it exceedet Harems lifespan. Since she could connect to herself.

My interpretation is actually that the golem did not, in fact, destroy the Alari homeworld. It merely assisted those who did. You'll note that while the glowing-scanner-eye-entity has a resemblance to the golem, it did not attack the heroes by itself. It just called in some kind of Exterminatus spaceship that dispenses discount Phyrexian Dreadnoughts as shock troopers.

Plus of course the timing of the destruction is far too convenient in regards to the portal opening. It has clearly happened not so long ago when Sciona punches through. The fires still burn, etc. One way or another, there is some kind of correlation.

[lord_khaine]

My interpretation is actually that the golem did not, in fact, destroy the Alari homeworld. It merely assisted those who did. You'll note that while the glowing-scanner-eye-entity has a resemblance to the golem, it did not attack the heroes by itself. It just called in some kind of Exterminatus spaceship that dispenses discount Phyrexian Dreadnoughts as shock troopers.

See.. thats what makes it even more unlikely. By the same logic, Deus is a time traveling older version of Vehemence. They more or less resemble each other to the same degree.
(2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes). And its not like someone with technology superior to the Alari would need a discount experiment for anything.
Their shock troops pressed Sydney's shield to the limit. They dont need others to make scouts for them.

Plus of course the timing of the destruction is far too convenient in regards to the portal opening. It has clearly happened not so long ago when Sciona punches through. The fires still burn, etc. One way or another, there is some kind of correlation.

The same kind of correlation as when Sydney visits the exact bank Archon is staging a fake robbery at, on precisely the same time of day?
10 min earlier, 10 min later, and she would newer have been spotted by Max.

[Rogar Demonblud]

I believe the appropriate phrase is "The PLOT is strong with this one."

[Onyavar]

It's cute how Dave B. is trying to be all realistic here (Oh noes, it takes 3 days to fly to the moon with steady mach 4), but if Randall Munroe reads this comic, he would have a field day on gravity, propulsion and vacuum travel...

[Nettlekid]

It's cute how Dave B. is trying to be all realistic here (Oh noes, it takes 3 days to fly to the moon with steady mach 4), but if Randall Munroe reads this comic, he would have a field day on gravity, propulsion and vacuum travel...

Probably the first thing to point out is that since the flight orb can magically accelerate Sydney up to Mach 4 and keep her there despite gravity and air resistance, then in space where neither of those things is holding you back it should probably be able to apply constant acceleration and her velocity should be able to rise without limit.

[Keltest]

Probably the first thing to point out is that since the flight orb can magically accelerate Sydney up to Mach 4 and keep her there despite gravity and air resistance, then in space where neither of those things is holding you back it should probably be able to apply constant acceleration and her velocity should be able to rise without limit.

Youre assuming that her top speed isn't a built in limitation of the orb. Its basically magic, it doesn't have to play nice with physics.

[Nettlekid]

Youre assuming that her top speed isn't a built in limitation of the orb. Its basically magic, it doesn't have to play nice with physics.

Try telling that to the legion that was screaming that Harem's inability to teleport other people was solely due to their high mass and not a built in limitation of her power, as was explained to us in the comic.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Let me just add that Mach is actually a variable number because the speed of sound changes depending on temperature, pressure, humidity, atmospheric composition, etc.

[40kenthusiast]

Gahaha, poor Sydney. Your magic doesn't let you fly to the moon in an instant.

[Onyavar]

I was just saying "escape velocity". The world's most famous search engine tells me that standing on Earth, it's approximately Mach 33, and even in several thousand kilometers altitude, it's apparently still 2/3 of that (not measured in Mach of course). We are living in a gravity well.

So, if you sit in a jet that flies upwards and can constantly upholds a speed of Mach 4 with a fuel tank that never empties: I can only imagine that you will be stuck at some point in the atmosphere where you stop going upwards even going full throttle.

Youre assuming that her top speed isn't a built in limitation of the orb. Its basically magic, it doesn't have to play nice with physics.

Sydney's orb may be magical and whatnot, but I'm surprised that it actually let her fly into orbit, and apparently in a rather short time as it seems. The fact she could fly that high up should rather make her optimistic.

And yes, if it's following basic physics: once in vacuum/outer space, the orb should provide some constant acceleration (to the point where Sydney needs to brace loooooong before smashing hard into the moon's surface).

[halfeye]

I was just saying "escape velocity". The world's most famous search engine tells me that standing on Earth, it's approximately Mach 33, and even in several thousand kilometers altitude, it's apparently still 2/3 of that (not measured in Mach of course). We are living in a gravity well.

So, if you sit in a jet that flies upwards and can constantly upholds a speed of Mach 4 with a fuel tank that never empties: I can only imagine that you will be stuck at some point in the atmosphere where you stop going upwards even going full throttle.



Sydney's orb may be magical and whatnot, but I'm surprised that it actually let her fly into orbit, and apparently in a rather short time as it seems. The fact she could fly that high up should rather make her optimistic.

And yes, if it's following basic physics: once in vacuum/outer space, the orb should provide some constant acceleration (to the point where Sydney needs to brace loooooong before smashing hard into the moon's surface).

If she got into space at mach four, it doesn't necessarily follow that she is in orbit. As you say, low orbit means going sideways at mach 33, but it gets less higher up, so there is a point where mach 4 is orbital speed, but it may be outside the orbit of the moon. It would still be slow even if she was accelerating constantly. As the text beneath the comic says, the Earth-Moon distance is 30 Earth diameters, which is a heck of a long way, it took the Apollo missions several days, but it's still nothing to 700 light years.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Try telling that to the legion that was screaming that Harem's inability to teleport other people was solely due to their high mass and not a built in limitation of her power, as was explained to us in the comic.

That wasn't "a legion" (though there is a lot of me, if I do say so myself :P), I wasn't screaming, and it was/is a valid question to raise - Harem isn't said to be limited to teleporting non-living matter, IIRC. Unless it was explicitly said somewhere that she cannot teleport another person due to an intrinsic limitation, and not because her absolute maximum 'take-along' limit is at best half the weight of the average person (as has been explained in the comic), the point still stands.

Also the Flyball definitely doesn't play nice with physics. It's capable of near-instant acceleration and deceleration up to its max speed, and has some means of remaining tethered to the user's perceived reference frame, just as all of the orbs are tethered to the user. The one instance we saw of Sydney gradually accelerating to her top speed, was explicitly the time when Maxima gradually increased her speed in order to goad Sydney into going faster and test her limits. In all other instances we see her immediately snap to her desired speed, like in the most recent vertical escape from the explosion. Halo's flight is almost certainly of the "change in position" variety, especially as it effortlessly overrides such forces as buoyancy acting on a large air bubble under the ocean - which, at a conservative estimate of "~14 tons of force" for a measly 3-meter air bubble, would mean that Syd has the mass-thrust ratio that puts the SpaceX Merlin 1D rocket engine to shame. As in, just the naked engine, attached to a metaphysical infinite-fuel line.

Physics have no say in any of this. :P

[Douglas]

I was just saying "escape velocity". The world's most famous search engine tells me that standing on Earth, it's approximately Mach 33, and even in several thousand kilometers altitude, it's apparently still 2/3 of that (not measured in Mach of course). We are living in a gravity well.

So, if you sit in a jet that flies upwards and can constantly upholds a speed of Mach 4 with a fuel tank that never empties: I can only imagine that you will be stuck at some point in the atmosphere where you stop going upwards even going full throttle.

That's not what escape velocity means. Escape velocity is the speed needed to get out of the gravity well if you have no further propulsion whatsoever. A magic infinite-fuel Mach 4 jet could escape from any gravity well, no matter how high the escape velocity, because it has an indefinite source of additional propulsion.

[John Campbell]

Youre assuming that her top speed isn't a built in limitation of the orb. Its basically magic, it doesn't have to play nice with physics.

"Top speed" is a meaningless phrase. Speed always has to be measured relative to something. Just standing around on Earth's surface, Sydney would be stationary relative to the Earth, but she's moving at about a kilometer per second relative to Luna, and almost 30 km/s relative to Sol.

When she's in Earth's atmosphere, it makes sense for various reasons to measure her speed relative to Earth, or at least to the surrounding atmosphere, but in interplanetary space, there's no particular reason to prefer any particular thing to measure speed relative to, so there isn't even a valid answer to the question, "How fast is she going?" much less any sensible way to claim that it's too fast. I mean, if she's stationary relative to Earth, she's already moving through the solar system at 22 times her alleged speed limit.

And mechanisms that might physically limit her top speed relative to surrounding atmosphere - thrust to drag ratio, mainly - don't apply in space, because without an atmosphere, drag is nearly non-existent. She should be able to just keep accelerating forever, arbitrarily close to the speed of light.

"Mach" doesn't even mean anything in the vacuum of space, anyway. Mach numbers aren't universal constants; they're multiples of the speed of sound in the medium, which varies widely depending on the medium. Mach 1 in water is faster than Mach 4 in air, and Mach anything in space is a divide-by-zero error because sound doesn't propagate through a vacuum.

[Ibrinar]

Not to harp on it Onyavar, but now I am curious how you imagined a ship below escape vel trying to escape?

@Nettlekid: Still misrepresenting that opposing argument, I see.

[Onyavar]

That's not what escape velocity means. Escape velocity is the speed needed to get out of the gravity well if you have no further propulsion whatsoever. A magic infinite-fuel Mach 4 jet could escape from any gravity well, no matter how high the escape velocity, because it has an indefinite source of additional propulsion.

Not to harp on it Onyavar, but now I am curious how you imagined a ship below escape vel trying to escape?

@Nettlekid: Still misrepresenting that opposing argument, I see.

Okay, here I was wrong in physics. It's not my forte, but to me it seemed the comic must have done it wrong somehow. To me, Sydney rising into orbit looked way too easy - as she is affected by gravity even when she is inside the bubble.
So if other forumists like Douglas tell me it's possible to escape the gravity well even on slower speed than escape velocity, as long as you rise constantly with infinite propulsion... I guess they may be right. Actually, yes: it seems unlogical that, having reached a certain height, a ship with unlimited fuel would stop to ascend just because it isn't going fast enough: It has unlimited fuel. Going up should become easier the higher you get. Although the comparison is also missing the point, as Sydney isn't fueling her flight - the comic states she can't accelerate past her top speed for some reason. Built-in cruise control with a non-variable base velocity.

And we don't know how the shield bubble or the flight ball or their combination really work, so even if that DOES defy physics, it's still the power of orb magic.

Still think Mr. Munroe (xkcd) or also Kyle Hill (because science) could easily point out more incongruities with the shield and the flight orbs. Or even explain these incongruities as possible thanks to advanced quantum physics. Then again, this is a superpower comic - physics takes a backseat if it's inconvenient.

*shrugs*

[Rogar Demonblud]

Actually, her orientation in flight mode is entirely up to her, as shown by her habit of turning upside down, rolling onto her back, etc.

Escape velocity is actually pretty simple. All you need to do is exceed the force of gravity pulling you down. Technically, you do this when you jump, but you quickly run into issues of friction (minor) and a lack of continuing thrust (major). But as long as you can replace Earth's 1g with 1.000000001g of acceleration, you will eventually reach orbit--it's only a matter of time.

As noted, the primary issue is continuing thrust/lift.

[Traab]

Okay, here I was wrong in physics. It's not my forte, but to me it seemed the comic must have done it wrong somehow. To me, Sydney rising into orbit looked way too easy - as she is affected by gravity even when she is inside the bubble.
So if other forumists like Douglas tell me it's possible to escape the gravity well even on slower speed than escape velocity, as long as you rise constantly with infinite propulsion... I guess they may be right. Actually, yes: it seems unlogical that, having reached a certain height, a ship with unlimited fuel would stop to ascend just because it isn't going fast enough: It has unlimited fuel. Going up should become easier the higher you get. Although the comparison is also missing the point, as Sydney isn't fueling her flight - the comic states she can't accelerate past her top speed for some reason. Built-in cruise control with a non-variable base velocity.

And we don't know how the shield bubble or the flight ball or their combination really work, so even if that DOES defy physics, it's still the power of orb magic.

Still think Mr. Munroe (xkcd) or also Kyle Hill (because science) could easily point out more incongruities with the shield and the flight orbs. Or even explain these incongruities as possible thanks to advanced quantum physics. Then again, this is a superpower comic - physics takes a backseat if it's inconvenient.

*shrugs*

IS she effected by gravity inside her bubble? As we learned when she let go of her flight orb and went vertigo on us, when she is using her flight orb, everything is as stable as standing on the ground, no matter what her position is. As we see here, her hair doesnt move an inch even as she slowly rotates upside down. I have no idea how that might alter the mathematics behind gravity and its effect on her or her bubble while using the flight orb.

[Ibrinar]

Talking about her flying and shield and physics I wonder about acceleration. She can apparently accelerate rather quickly though I don't know how quickly. If it just accelerates all of her at once that wouldn't put any stress on here but I wonder how it works for shield passengers, do they get pressed against the back of the shield if she accels to quickly? I guess we will see if she has to fly her team somewhere in a hurry or do mid flight dodges with passengers.

[Lamech]

Escape velocity is when the energy of your velocity exceeds the gravitational potential energy at infinite distance.

I still think she should try the com orb. Maybe she can just think thoughts of home and teleport there?

[Rogar Demonblud]

Gravity appears to function normally for passengers, probably because they aren't actually 'flying', they're just held inside the shield. See the strips where they're commuting to the TC meeting.

[5a Violista]

Let me just add that Mach is actually a variable number because the speed of sound changes depending on temperature, pressure, humidity, atmospheric composition, etc.

Random thought:
What if her top speed is actually determined by the speed of sound? Her orb limits her acceleration to "accelerating to four times the speed of sound of the medium she is in". OR, maybe it's a sound-wave-based propulsion.

Which means she can't accelerate much, if all, in space. Thanks to momentum, she'd continue going the same speed as when she left the atmosphere.

It would fit with what's happened currently in the comic.