Wapsi Square Forum

Luci has no idea what she's asking for, does she...

Hmmm. The problem with naked eye viewing air based Cherenkov radiation is that by the time you recognize it, you're already dead, so the blast wouldn't really do anything. Of course, if Pickle digs a nice deep water pool for Luci's protection, the shock wave would shred her.

Decisions, decisions.

It's just a little plasa discharge capable of reducing rocks and other matter to sub-atomic particles, how bad could that be for your skin?

It needs to put the lotion on its skin.

Thats right Miis Atom Bomb i want you to just let loose. Blow your top. Show me what ya got so i know how to help and be safe. No i dont wanna step back, i want the full effect and i gotta see everything.

oldmanmickey wrote:Thats right Miis Atom Bomb i want you to just let loose. Blow your top. Show me what ya got so i know how to help and be safe. No i dont wanna step back, i want the full effect and i gotta see everything.

If Castela REALLY cuts loose, I hope she aims up in the sky, I'm not sure the local terrain could handle it.

Satellites and planetary bodies will have to take their chances.

lake_wrangler wrote:Luci has no idea what she's asking for, does she...

And she acknowledges that. But Castela has been pitched to her as a living engine of destruction that needs to learn how to control her responses and center herself, and it is best that Luci have some idea of what the possible consequences of failure might mean.

oldmanmickey wrote:Thats right Miis Atom Bomb i want you to just let loose. Blow your top. Show me what ya got so i know how to help and be safe. No i dont wanna step back, i want the full effect and i gotta see everything.

I am reminded of Jones, from Gunnerkrigg Court. So far nothing Man has done has been able to harm her, and it's implied even the gods can't do that, although they can stop her. I think Jones would find Castela very interesting.

And vice versa.

Jones spent a billion or so years entombed in hardened lava...

Opus the Poet wrote:It's just a little plasa discharge capable of reducing rocks and other matter to sub-atomic particles, how bad could that be for your skin?

i suppose it is a bit extreme for a peeling session ...

If Wapsi Physics worked like real-world physics, a large part of Minneapolis would likely have died before Bud had her first chance to prank Justin.

It all makes sense now. There are several major forest fires going on in Northern Arizona right now.

Canyon de Chelley is located in northeast Arizona.

I guess that Castela didn't plan ahead for this one. Perhaps she needs to start leaving a crate of sunscreen, goggles, heavy aprons, and other safety gear by the canyon just in case of visitors.

eee wrote:If Castela REALLY cuts loose, I hope she aims up in the sky, I'm not sure the local terrain could handle it.

Depending on what sort of power she has and how it all is applied, venting into the atmosphere could also be a spectacularly bad idea.

Catawampus wrote:I guess that Castela didn't plan ahead for this one. Perhaps she needs to start leaving a crate of sunscreen, goggles, heavy aprons, and other safety gear by the canyon just in case of visitors.

eee wrote:If Castela REALLY cuts loose, I hope she aims up in the sky, I'm not sure the local terrain could handle it.

Depending on what sort of power she has and how it all is applied, venting into the atmosphere could also be a spectacularly bad idea.

Bud's little fastball special into the Sun should have released a lot of radiation as it headed out.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

Catawampus wrote:I guess that Castela didn't plan ahead for this one. Perhaps she needs to start leaving a crate of sunscreen, goggles, heavy aprons, and other safety gear by the canyon just in case of visitors.

eee wrote:If Castela REALLY cuts loose, I hope she aims up in the sky, I'm not sure the local terrain could handle it.

Depending on what sort of power she has and how it all is applied, venting into the atmosphere could also be a spectacularly bad idea.

Bud's little fastball special into the Sun should have released a lot of radiation as it headed out.

Radiation, shmadiation... I'd be more worried about setting the oxygen/whole sky on fire...

lake_wrangler wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:Bud's little fastball special into the Sun should have released a lot of radiation as it headed out.

Radiation, shmadiation... I'd be more worried about setting the oxygen/whole sky on fire...

Actually, oxygen doesn't burn.

Things {mostly*} need it TO burn, but the gas itself is not flammable.

========================

* Titanium {and, presumably, other elements} will happily burn in pure nitrogen.

AnotherFairportfan wrote: Actually, oxygen doesn't burn.

Things {mostly*} need it TO burn, but the gas itself is not flammable.

Depends on your definition of "burn" and "flammable". The usual implicit definitions assume an oxygen-rich atmosphere, and in that context you're correct.

Go to a planet or moon which has a reducing atmosphere of hydrogen or methane, and you can make a very nice torch by burning a small jet of oxygen in the "air".

Zapping the air with plasma will tend to "burn" nitrogen (creating all sorts of toxic nitrogen oxides) and will also tend to burn the oxygen into ozone (also toxic). Fortunately neither of these reactions releases enough energy to make the reactions self-sustaining... otherwise, lightning and nuclear explosions would have set the whole planet on fire.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

Catawampus wrote:I guess that Castela didn't plan ahead for this one. Perhaps she needs to start leaving a crate of sunscreen, goggles, heavy aprons, and other safety gear by the canyon just in case of visitors.

eee wrote:If Castela REALLY cuts loose, I hope she aims up in the sky, I'm not sure the local terrain could handle it.

Depending on what sort of power she has and how it all is applied, venting into the atmosphere could also be a spectacularly bad idea.

Bud's little fastball special into the Sun should have released a lot of radiation as it headed out.

If by "a lot of radiation" you mean "comparable to the intensity and suddenness of a thermonuclear bomb", then yeah. A lot.

As for venting into the atmosphere: This may provide an indication of what might happen.

Atomic wrote:Hmmm. The problem with naked eye viewing air based Cherenkov radiation is that by the time you recognize it, you're already dead, so the blast wouldn't really do anything. Of course, if Pickle digs a nice deep water pool for Luci's protection, the shock wave would shred her.

Decisions, decisions.

I'm not sure air-based Cherenkov Radiation is what we're really seeing when Castela generates a beam. I think it may be closer to a laser (like in the second link above), which heats the air to a plasma and generates radiation that way. There could well be Cherenkov radiation happening, but I think that'd be a minority compared to the inner core of gamma and x-rays and the outer shell of infrared and visible-spectrum.

However, I do agree that a radiation suit is... Insufficient for protecting a squishy human from a threat level like this. There's no way a human body can support enough lead, aluminum, and copper (because lead fluoresces X-rays I think when exposed to gamma radiation? Ask Dave, he told me about that and it's too late for me to dig through my notes, I'm going with what I can find off the top of my head). Something like this requires a bunker, realistically speaking. I think.

It's possible Castela actually fires in rapid pulses to keep the plasma beam from growing too thick - if it were a continuous stream of energy, I'd expect a rapidly growing volume of air would become ionized.

It could also be more of a particle beam and less of a laser. In which case I'm not entirely sure what the hell would happen, because relativistic particle collisions are a lab replication technique for the infant universe. And I honestly know fuck-all about particle physics at that level. All I know is there's gonna be all kinds of wacky particles flying around that A: are haulin' ass, B: are very elementary, and C: are probably less then healthy, as demonstrated by that one Russian who stuck his head in a particle collider just as it was turned on.

GlytchMeister wrote:It's possible Castela actually fires in rapid pulses to keep the plasma beam from growing too thick - if it were a continuous stream of energy, I'd expect a rapidly growing volume of air would become ionized.

It could also be more of a particle beam and less of a laser. In which case I'm not entirely sure what the hell would happen, because relativistic particle collisions are a lab replication technique for the infant universe. And I honestly know fuck-all about particle physics at that level. All I know is there's gonna be all kinds of wacky particles flying around that A: are haulin' ass, B: are very elementary, and C: are probably less then healthy, as demonstrated by that one Russian who stuck his head in a particle collider just as it was turned on.

Actually my thought is it would leave nothing but a nuclear shadow such as were burned into the walls of building in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Well, that was generated by the flash, I think, rapidly sun-bleaching everything with line-of-sight to the detonation. And the flash, I think, came from the immense energy release heating and ionizing the air into plasma which then generated all of the X-rays and stuff.

All that electromagnetic radiation is just part of what would result from such an enormous energy dump - except the flash would last a lot longer in castela’s case, if she so chose.