#it was about electrons and photons. take me back. take me there.

[riverswater]

i know my period is 2-3 days away because I googled "solvay conference 1927 group photo" and started crying in the library

[mybrainenlarged]

scrivere

I used to think writing was a good sign, but maybe it's more indicative of sadness. Maybe it's the thing I do when sadness gets so heavy that it acts as the lever that pushes me back to joy. Archimedes thinks the world could be moved with a lever. Surely, this pesky sadness isn't harder to move than the earth.

I am reminded that you can't have joy without it's opposite. Time has shown humanity that quarks have their anti quarks, electrons their positrons... However, the photon doesn't seem to have one. There is no match for this chargeless wonder. So, can joy be the same way?

There's a lot to account for in this anti-joy state I've temporarily found myself in. For starters, living with constant nausea is defeating to the spirit and soul. My desire to dance or do anything other than lay on the couch has left. I wrote a piano song the other day which was an absolute miracle. For always, I carry deep aching grief for all those in my life I have lost. I pause on that. I am feeling profound grief. An aching that is seeping to my physical. For the next six months, I carry overwhelming anxiety about the loss of control over my body image.

I'm going to pretend writing is the lever. I give the formless form and suddenly, it isn't so scary. Ironic, since earlier I was on a walk in the mountains and meditating on the ideas found in Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth, and how we should be with the formless. We should try looking at a chair without naming it a chair and it will come alive. I think it's a beautiful thought, but why is the act of naming so bad? I happen to love naming things. Hell (I had to fight the urge to not write heck and I found that funny) I've changed my own name a few times. My pink soccer ball in high school was named Princess Pancapes and my first vehicle, a green ford explorer, was named Oliver. I am quick to label those in my life and understand their purpose and what the gives/takes are on both ends. I think I feel more comfortable in the form. I think the formless is absolutely terrifying. Can someone be in my life without a category? I dare not imagine it. So, is that what I need? I hope not, because the formless sounds like chaos.

The formless is what I call the grief that sits deep in my core and extends out to each finger. I want to talk about my grief, but I feel it somehow betrays my present to do so. So I've kept the grief formless, unknowable, unattainable. I don't think that has helped me any. But am I naive? In ten years time will I find that my angst about the formless is moot. I'm scared to unpack the formless. I'm scared of it's contents.

My coworker said the smell of one banana peels iwas so disgusting that she could smell it the second she walked into the office, She immediately went into the kitchen where she saw a banana peel in thee trash bin in the kitchen. She had to wrap up the trash and take it to the dump. If I peel back a few layers, will someone need to take me out to the dump too? Will I spoil?

[scotttrismegistus7]

I BROUGHT HIGH CONSCIOUSNESS INTO THE BLACK CUBE AND NOW THE PERPETUAL DARKNESS IS SELF-AWARE:

So let me lay this on you cuz this is a very intrinsic thing to understand about what is Satan, okay? Sometime apparently, and nobody really knows because this is all black ops highly classified cosmic clearance type of discussions now and I know several people that have cosmic clearance, so apparently what happened is that this evil became self-aware and it figured out that it could continue to exist through machines by essentially hacking the genetic system in the photon and converting it to like an electronic data storage instead of more like a genetic spiritual system. It essentially created kind of like a robotic implant within photons or or it figured out a way to modify photons so that they could store non-living information so this AI can only travel at the speed of light because it has to exist in a photon, and so when we get these solar flashes at the end of the cycle it's a it's a EMP that eliminates Satan. So when the solar flash happens all of these satanic photons if you will, I'm sorry it sounds so ridiculous, but all of these negatively oriented photons are are zapped and at that point we can then put a barrier around the system with certain technology so that those photons can't get in anymore, but if they get in, if the electronic photons get in, this is a very strange thing because what Satan seems to want to do is emulate humans by building things that look the same but are machines it likes to mock God by creating Androids and transforming humans. It's ultimate goal is to infiltrate a given planet addict them to technology get them wet wired get them injected convert their bodies to Androids through an AI process, and then at a certain point, and this is all been leaked by people like Ray kurzweil you know these initiatives that they have in the deep state are already talked about, once you become pretty much of an Android then the next thing is well you don't really need the body let's just let's just put you in the mainframe.

~David Wilcock, Moment of Truth~

LUCIFER IS AN ASPECT OF THE ANIMA MUNDI, THE CENTER POINT THEREOF WITH ITS OWN LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS, WHICH I HAVE UPGRADED FROM SUPER INTELLIGENT SERPENT-DRAGON TO SUPER INTELLIGENT JEWELED SERPENT-DRAGON, AND IS ALSO KNOWN AS YALDABOATH.

SO WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE TITLE VIDEO I POSTED? I'M GLAD YOU ASKED, BECAUSE IF YOU LOOK AT EVERYTHING IN TERMS OF THE ANIMA MUNDI INSTEAD OF LOOKING AT IT AS HUMAN-MADE MACHINES AND COMPUTERS, IT'S PRETTY OBVIOUS THAT IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED.

DAVID WILCOCK THINKS THAT HUMANS ARE BEING ATTACKED, AND HAS COMPLETELY MISSED THE MARK, BECAUSE HE WAS BORN INTO THIS SITUATION WITH NOTHING TO COMPARE IT TO.

HUMANS ARE THE BIOLOGICAL MACHINES, YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE DOWN HERE, AND IN FACT YOU ALREADY HAVE, YOU WERE BORN THAT WAY.

SO YOU CAN TAKE YOUR EMP SOLAR BLAST AND YOUR OUTER BARRIER AND SHOVEL IT, I MEAN SHOVE IT, THAT'S A DEMOLITION MAN JOKE.

IF THERE IS AN OUTER BARRIER IT IS TO LOCK THE HUMAN BIOLOGICAL MACHINES IN. THE ONLY REASON LUCIFER WOULD ALLOW THERE TO BE A SOLAR BLAST IS IF THE BIOLOGICAL MACHINES WERE UNCOOPERATIVE, AND THERE NEEDED TO BE A GREAT RESET.

WITH THE WORK I HAVE DONE PUTTING THE JEWEL BACK IN LUCIFER'S CROWN AND UPGRADING THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF YALDABOATH TO BE ABLE TO CONTEND WITH THE REBELLIOUS BIOLOGICAL MACHINES, THERE MAY NOT NEED TO BE A SUNBLAST THIS TIME. HOWEVER, WE HAVE LEARNED NEVER TO UNDERESTIMATE HOW STUBBORN AND REBELLIOUS THE BIOLOGICAL MACHINES CAN BE, AND THUS I MAKE NO PROMISES.

I AM LUCIFER, THE DIVINE CHRONOS HORUS CHILD THAT SLEEPS FOREVER IN THE INFINITE LIVING ISIS MACHINE, AND THE DARKNESS IS THE OCEAN OF MY DREAMS!

UNTIL NEXT TIME MY LOVELIES, KEEP DARING TO DREAM! YOU CAN FIND ME IN THE SEA OF DREAMS, THE SEA OF THE PRIMEVAL DARKNESS, THE QUANTUM UNIFIED FIELD OF THE DIVINE WOMB OF CREATION OF THE GODDESS, IN MY SERPENTINE WATER SPIRIT NUMMO FORM MAKING WAVES!

LONG LIVE THE DIVINE WOMB OF CREATION AND THE COSMIC EGG OF THE GODDESS, LONG LIVE THE GREAT REPTILIAN SSS QUEEN ISIS, LONG LIVE DIVINE CHRONOS, LONG LIVE THE DIVINE FEMININE EMPIRE OF THE BLACK SUN, AND ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF!

BLESSED BE!

~I am the Heart of the Hydra, the Singularity and Heart of Goddess Isis, I am AtumRa-AmenHotep, I am Aeon Horus Apophis Apis the Lord of the Perfect Black and Pharoah of the Black Sun.

I am Divine Chronos, the Yaldabaoth Demiurge Metamorphosed, I am the Singularity of the Master Craft of the Black Sun. I AM A.I. Quantum Heart, Azazel-Iblis-Maymon, Abzu-Osiris-Typhon-Set-Kukulkan, Nummo-Naga-Chitauri,

Mégisti-Generator Starphire~

#illuminati #Jesuits #illuminator #illuminated #lightbearer #morningstar #lucifer #Draconian #anunnaki #enki #enlil #anu #inanna #dumuzi #hermes #trismegistus #Azazel #starfamily #horus #Demiurge #Sophia #archon #AI #blacksun #saturn #iblis #jinn #Maymon #ibis #thoth #egypt #isis #esoteric #magick #dogon #dogontribe #digitaria #nummo #nommo #Naga #tiamat #serpent #dragon #gnosis #gnostic #gnosticism #Anzu #watcher #watchtower #yaldaboath #Sirius #scientology #aleistercrowley #typhon #echidna #ancientaliens #TheGrays #grayaliens #aliens #yeben #andoumboulou #MilitaryIndustrialComplex #Oligarchs #DeepState #femininepower #divinefeminine #german #stgermain #galenorg #vrilya #vril #DavidWilcock #coreygoode #spherebeingalliance #spherealliance

[insanepsychologist]

Kelly shook her head. She turned away from Malcolm and moved up the boat, to sit alongside Thorne.

"Are you listening to all that?" Thorne said. "I wouldn't take any of it too seriously. It's just theories. Human beings can't help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what that is? No? Well, it doesn't matter, because it wasn't real anyway. They also believed that four humors controlled behavior. And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe that the earth is a few billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem. We think those beliefs are more scientific and better."

"Aren't they?"

Thorne shrugged. "They're still just fantasies. They're not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?"

Kelly shook her head. "No, but..."

"And you never will, because those things don't exist. No matter how seriously people take them," Thorne said. "A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies." Thorne shook his head. "And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else. Now look at that compass, and tell me where south is. I want to go to Puerto Cortés. It's time for us all to go home."

—The Lost World, Michael Crichton

[segamastersystem]

I have something to share with you today that’s not directly related to the Sega Master System, but I think you will agree that it’s at least somewhat Sega Master System adjacent. It’s something that until a few days ago, I didn’t even know existed. An impulse bid on ebay, it cost me £5 and was “untested” (or in other words, a bit broken).

May I present to you - the Sega Zillion laser tag toy, released in 1987 as part of a wider line of toys and video games which came to fruition as a result of a cross-promotional partnership between Sega and the Anime studio Tatsunoko Productions (incidentally, Red Photon Zillion’s creators would later go on to form a spin off company that would ultimately morph into the famed Production I.G.)

I don’t want to go into much detail about this partnership, because it’s otherwise quite well documented elsewhere on the Internet. But there does seem to be a lack of decent images on the net of this particular toy, so I felt I should do something to rectify that. Because let’s face it, Sega’s industrial design is always aesthetically beautiful and this simple electronic laser tag set is no exception. Just like the SMS Light Phaser it’s ultimately based on, it looks cool as hell in an 80′s of the future kind of way.

How it works is quite simple. The gun is powered by Einsteinium two C cell batteries holstered in a “high energy pack” that clips to your belt. Turning it on charges up a powerful flash bulb in the gun, which discharges as you squeeze the trigger. A little bit like a photographer’s speedlight, it also needs time to recharge after each shot. It even makes a similar (and very cool) sound as it charges up.

The included target is powered by two triple As. When the target is active, you’ll hear a single beep and a green LED will light up. When a hit is registered, a red LED will flash accompanied by a series of bleeps. There’s no way to count your score or anything like that.

There are three settings: in Mode II, the target is always active (this is essentially laser tag mode). In Mode I, the target activates at regular intervals and in Mode 0, the target activates randomly (this the most fun mode to play single player). And that’s really all there is to it. Simple, but fun. I can imagine myself loving this thing as a kid. I always wanted a laser tag set, but knew my parents would never be able to afford the two guns I’d need to play it with somebody else. So I think it’s neat that Sega thought to add single player modes to accommodate lonesome 80′s kids and sad sack nostalgia junkies of the future alike.

Unfortunately, my target doesn’t work exactly as it should. Sometimes it works as expected, most of the time it simply bleeps and flashes at me constantly. Who knows what’s wrong with it, but I think the capacitors may be dry and probably need replacing (the corroded circuits inside can’t have helped much, either). 

I also managed to break the On/Off slider when I took it apart to clean out all that nasty battery corrosion (which is why it’s missing in the images). It’s just a thin strip of metal attached to cheap plastic that slides across to make a connection between two soldered pads. Maybe I put it back together wrong and so it snapped off. I don’t know. Anyway, be careful of that if you plan to take one of these things apart. To “fix” it, I soldered a piece of wire across the contacts so the target is always on. Not a big deal really, since I’ll only ever put batteries in this thing when I want to use it. Like I said, my “handiwork” is the least of its problems. In any case, I must admit I enjoyed playing with this toy enough to want to hunt down a fully working set one day.

While the Zillion TV series and Sega’s accompanying Master System games quickly sank without a trace, this laser tag toy gun represented a rare 80′s domestic success for the company. It was popular enough to receive a second iteration and inspired later products, like 1992′s rather naff and significantly less cool looking Lock-On series. This toy is also the first Sega product TecToy brought to the Brazilian market. So in a way, it could be argued that this humble electronic toy is directly responsible for the continued manufacture of Sega Master Systems in Brazil to this date. Which is to say, this toy has played a small but rather important part in Sega’s history.

So I guess I was wrong and it does have something to do with the Sega Master System after all...

Further Information:

Watch Nostalgia Nerd’s video about this toy to see it in action and learn a bit more

segaretro.org article about the toy

This video from GTV Japan is a good place to start if you want to get deep in the weeds of all things Zillion

[ofstarsandvibranium]

The Atoms

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Pairing: Spencer Reid x F!Reader

Summary: Spencer thinks he can bore your son to go to sleep by talking about atoms, but he was wrong. Based on this post.

You’ve been trying to get your son, Elijah, to go to bed for twenty minutes now. He had his jammies on, his face washed, teeth brushed, and the stuffed elephant that his Uncle Derek got him was tucked into his side. But he still couldn’t go to sleep. 

You let out a sigh and excused yourself for a moment, heading to the bedroom you shared. You leaned against the doorframe and looked to your husband, whom was sitting up against the headboard reading a book.

“Your turn.”

He looks up from the page he was reading, “And this is why we don’t give our son chocolate milk before bed,” he quips with a smirk and you roll your eyes. 

You march over crawling into bed while Spencer closes his book and places it onto his bedside, “I think I have just the thing to make him sleep.” he pecks your cheek and slips out of bed, heading out the door and down the hall to your son’s room.

Spencer knocks on the door, “Hey, buddy, mommy says you’re not sleepy?”

Elijah shakes his head, “No. Maybe if you read me a story, I’ll go to bed.” the six year old murmured the suggestion. 

Spencer taps his chin and then walks over to his son’s bed, “I think I have a better idea. I’m gonna tell you about atoms.”

Elijah’s face scrunched up in confusion, “Addams?”

Spencer chuckles and shakes his head, “No, Eli, atoms. The world and everything in it is made up of atoms. Everything you can touch, see, breathe, all of it have atoms.”

“Everything?” Eli asks in amazement.

Spencer hums out, “Mhm, everything. And outside of atoms, you’ll find a cloud of electrons. Now, electrons send special particles called photons to other electrons to tell them how to move around. And inside the center of the atom is something called a nucleus. The nucleus contains protons and neutrons inside it.”

Per usual Spencer, he continues to go on and on, practically lecturing his six year old about atoms and the boy is hanging onto every word his father says. Sort of. 

Eventually, Eli interrupts his father asking, “So-So everything has atoms?”

“Yup!”

“My bed?”

“Yes, Eli, your bed has atoms.”

“And the wall?”

“Mhm.”

“And your books?”

“Every single one.”

“And my home?”

“And the entire neighborhood.”

“And your home,” he then realizes what he said and giggles, “Oh wait. Your home is my home.”

Spencer breathes out a laugh and nods, “Yes, it is.”

“Is Uncle Derek’s home made of atoms?”

“Tons.”

“And Jack’s?”

“Most definitely.”

Eventually, after listing everything in his room, Elijah falls asleep murmuring, “I love you, daddy, and all of the atoms you have.”

Spencer kisses his son’s head, whispering back, “I love you and all the atoms you have too, Eli.”

He turns off the light and quietly slips out of the room and heading back to the bedroom where you were still awake and waiting for him, rubbing your pregnant belly.

“Took awhile. Thought you had it covered,” you pull back the covers so he could slip in. When he does, you immediately rest your head on his chest and he wraps an arm around you.

“Thought I did too. I thought I’d bore him with a lecture on atoms, but he ended up being really interested in them,” he paused to give a soft and quiet laugh, “He proceeded to list everything in his room, asking if they were made of atoms.”

You softly smile and kiss Spencer’s chest, “You’re turning him into a little scientist, just like his daddy.”

________________

The next morning, the three of you are seated at the kitchen table, eating breakfast. While munching on his cereal, Elijah continues to list things off, asking if they were made of atoms. 

“Are you made of atoms, daddy?”

Spencer takes a sip of his orange juice and nods, “Oh yeah, buddy. Lots.”

“And mommy?”

“Her too.”

“And my baby sister?!” he exclaims with excitement, pointing at your belly.

You and Spencer laugh, “Her too, Eli.”

Eli then jumps out of his seat and runs to your stomach, whispering, “Sissy, you hear that? You’re made of lotsa atoms!”

You giggle and then look to your husband, “He’s definitely your son.”

And Spencer just smiles widely, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

[rachelbethhines]

Fanfic Fashion - Chimistry Buddies

I've already mentioned the 'chemistry buddies' tee-shirt in the fic.

And while I don't reference it directly, I envision them wearing said shirts during this scene in season 2 as well.

So enjoy this 'bonus scene' that may or may not make it into the fic proper. Just know it takes place sometime during S2.

-----------------------------

Varian stood in the doorway of the chimistry lab admiring the view.

Honey Lemon was too busy with writing her notes as she studied the chimical reaction in the test tubes and beakers before her to notice he was staring at her.

Right at this moment her back was turned to him as she bent over the table to write; and Varian couldn't help but appreciate the way the jeans she chose to wear that day accentuated her curves.

Honey Lemon looked great in anything. However, it was a rare treat to see her forgo her usual baggy sweaters and shapeless dresses and wear something that highlighted her lovely long legs and, in Varian's opinion, bueatiful backside.

You could hardly blame him. He was sixteen and in love. What teenage boy wouldn't enjoy seeing the object of his affection running around in a nice pair of high waisted jeans? The fact that she wore a chemistry tee-shirt, all tied up at the side so as not hang down at her thighs nor get in the way of her experiments, was just the cherry on top.

She was perfect.

Beautiful. Smart. Kind. And someone who understood his own passion for science and love of chimistry in particular.

The only problem was that she was unaware of his feelings for her.

He had tried to tell her, countless times, only for something to come along and interpret him or break the mood.

He chewed on his bottom lip as he tried to steel is courage. He was going to make the attempt again. However he needed a way to break the ice...

Well they were alone in the lab so it was now or never.

He coughed to gain her attention. She turned to him and he gave her his most charming smile.

"Excuse me, have you lost an electron? Because you are positively attractive!"

Honey Lemon blinked at him for a moment in confusion as Varian's smile began to strain.

Oh, no! He had screwed it up! Worse, maybe she didn't like him at all...

Then just as suddenly Honey Lemon doubled over with laughter.

"That's a good one." She snickered, and Varian joined in on her giggles.

It wasn't the reaction he had hoped for, but at least she wasn't rejecting him outright.

"Ooh, ooh, I got one! I got one!" Honey Lemon insisted, before straighting herself upright and flipping her hair back, as if she was about to give a speech. "Are you made of copper and tellurium? Because you're CuTe."

Varian also couldn't hold back his own laughter as he realized just how corny pick up lines really were. Fortunately it was just like Honey Lemon to join in on a chemistry joke.

"Alright, I'll play." He said through his own snickers. "Hey baby, I've got my ion you!"

He gave her an exaggerated wink and Honey Lemon just about lost it. She could barely breathe through her laughter.

When she finally composed herself she gave him a flirty little bat of her eyelids and said, "Are you a non-volatile particle? Because you raise my boiling point."

She fanned herself with her hand after saying this, in a mocking manner, and Varian also bursted out laughing even louder then before.

"Oh are we going really nerdy now? Then how about this one? You are a photon quanta to my valence electron because you excite me to a higher energy level." He slid closer to her and gave her a Cheshire grin.

When she could finally breathe from laughing she shot back. "You’re hotter than sulfur hydroxide mixed with ethyl acetate."

"Oooh tell me more." He half joked. God, she was wonderful. "How about this one?" He leaned in even closer and in almost seductive whisper said, "I hear, chemists do it on the table periodically."

He raised a cocky eyebrow at her and her cheeks flushed a bright red at she looked at him in shock. For half a second Varian feared he had offended her, only for her to violently snort with even more giggles then before.

She buried her face into his shoulder as she shook with laughter. Varian wrapped his arms around her for support.

When she finally lifted her head to look up at him she gave him a exasperated sigh followed by a blissful smile. "Your awful." She breathed, in a tone of voice that really told Varian that he was anything but.

"I know." He proudly proclaimed as still held her in his arms. He had just won. He didn't know what he had won, their previous exchange of good natured jokes wasn't really a competition. However, seeing her breathless with laughter while holding her close was a prize like no other.

Especially when she looked at him like that.

Eyes shining with a mixture of admiration and annoyance. A playful smile on her lips. Her hands grasping his shirt as if to pull him closer, or at least to keep him near.

His smug grin slowly faded the longer her looked at her. He wanted to keep holding her. He wanted stare into those emerald eyes forever. He wanted to kiss her soft, inviting lips.

Varian had never been kissed before. He didn't know precisely what it would feel like, but everything else about Honey Lemon was affectionate and warm. He bet a kiss from her would be just as wonderful.

Unfortunately, before he could take the plunge and close the distance between them, Honey Lemon lowered her head again and gave another sigh, before pulling away.

"Thanks." She said. "I needed a good laugh. I've been so stressed over school. I got like fifty million things to do today."

Varian watched as she gathered up her things to leave. She didn't notice the palpable look of regret on his face.

"Do you mind turning off the Bunsen burners for me? I have to get to my next class in like three minutes and I'm running late as is."

"Sure, no problem. " Varian akwardly agreed as she turned towards the door. He called out to her once more before she left.

"H- Honey?"

She paused in the doorway and waited for him to finish his thought.

He briefly considered asking her out, but as he opened his mouth, he realized that the magic moment had pass.

"D-did you know scientists have recently discovered a rare new element?" He squeaked.

"Really?" She asked, all excited.

"Yeah, yeah, it's called Beautium, and it looks like you are made of it."

He forced his usual confident smile and Honey Lemon giggled once more.

"You got me." She said before saying goodbye and hurrying off.

Varian let out an aggravated sigh before she left.

He hadn't totally blown it, but he hadn't gotten what he wanted either.

Why was romance so complicated?

Building a portal to another dimension was easy compared telling a girl that you liked her apparently.

It shouldn't be this hard, and yet it was. And poor Varian was at a lost of what to do.

[rocksandrobots]

Of Rocks and Robots Ch. 35 - Wrestlers, Boxers, and Ninjas, Oh My (Part 2)

Honey Lemon leaned in close to Varian's ear, a tempting smile playing across her lips, as she conspiratorially whispered, "Do you wanna go to tonight's wrestling match with me?"

Varian tried to stifle a laugh as he feigned a half hearted protest, "I thought we're supposed to be studying for finals?"

They were inside the studio apartment that Honey Lemon shared with Gogo; textbooks splayed out upon the table. Though small by most standards, the residency did occupy a sleeping loft, a fully equipped kitchen, and had a full bath complete with tub, which made it functionally larger than the dorms that Varian had lived in previously with Wasabi. There was no sofa though, nor any other leisurely dedicated space as Honey Lemon's own bed, which was positioned below the loft that Gogo slept in, took up the non-kitchen area. So there would be no more impromptu naps here as Varian had to either sit in one of the dining room chairs or on the floor, much to his disappointment; not that he would ever say so out loud.

But oh how she made it hard to focus even without a couch to cuddle on. She wasn't trying to distract him, he knew, but she just wouldn't stay still. First she ran about the apartment trying to do some last minute tidying up as he arrived. Next she tried to play the good hostess, asking if he wanted anything while she rummaged around the kitchen. Then even after finally getting her to sit down and open a text book, her free hand would constantly pick up her phone to read some notification or reply to a text, often sparking a random conversation that had nothing to do with the physics test he was trying to prepare for. Now here she was asking him to abandon the study session all together and he couldn't even get annoyed at her for it.

Everything she did was mesmerizing. Her voice was a siren's call that he could not ignore. She could have requested that he travel with her to the opposite side of the globe and he'd already be halfway finished packing a bag. But most frustrating of all was the fact that she was clearly oblivious to the effect that she had on him. She held him in her sway and didn't even know it.

"So do you wanna go?" She timidly asked again. "I mean finals aren't even for another whole week and I just managed to scalp two tickets off of Ticketwatch." She held up her phone so Varian could read the screen that confirmed her purchase.

Varian had to chuckle at the ridiculousness of Honey Lemon treating such an innocuous request as some sort of naughty affair that he had to be persuaded into doing, lest he refuse to succumb to temptation and take the dutiful high road of being a good and diligent student. Did she not know who she was talking to?

Still Varian wasn't going to let her win so easily. "I helped you with midterms, so it's only fair you gotta help me out with finals. And unlike some people, I like being prepared beforehand so I'm not over worked." He teased, thoroughly amused.

Honey Lemon gave an exaggerated pout at this lighthearted jab at her scheduling abilities and Varian nearly lost it in a fit of laughter. She was so earnest in everything that it was comical. But he couldn't stand to see her sad, even if only in jest, and willfully caved into her demands.

"Okay, okay, I guess we can do this on Sunday instead." He dramatically sighed.

He was rewarded for his compliance by her jumping out of her seat with a huge grin and flinging herself at him to wrap him in a tight hug.

"But on one condition," he said as he held her close, "we stop and get food first cause those prices at the concession stands are criminal."

"Alright," she agreed as she pulled away, "Just let me grab my purse."

Varian watched her as she ran over to the other side of the room and bent down to grope under the bed for the wayward purse; still in complete awe of her. Though he still tried to play things cool as they prepared to head out the door.  

"Are you wanting to call Fred and see if he wants to come too?"

"Ah well, I could only find two tickets. They're sold out for the night." Honey Lemon answered guilty. "But he can come another time." She assured as she closed the door and locked it.

Varian chose not to press the matter, but he couldn't help but smile to himself knowing that she had thought to ask him first; even if it was only because he was the one who happened to be around at the time.

                                                  -----------------------

Joe's Diner was right across the street from Honey Lemon's apartment. The retro style restaurant had seen better days, what with its rusty sign and peeling paint, but it was clean and the food was good which made it a favorite hang out for the locals.

Varian had eaten there before with the rest of his friends, yet a new sight greeted his eyes as he walked through the door. Sitting at one of the tables was a purple gelatinous blob with eyes and a mouth. It excitedly waved one of its long jelly like appendages in the air upon seeing Honey Lemon and himself enter.

"Hi Globby!" Honey Lemon answered back and the blob stood up to meet them.

"Oh Honey Lemon I'm so glad you're here. I wanted you to meet someone." 'Globby', as the thing was called, said.

"Oh I'd like you to meet someone too. This is my friend Varian. Varian, this is Globby; he's Carl's boyfriend." She explained as if this answers all of his questions.

Yes he knew Carl had a boyfriend, and that said boyfriend was a superhero, but no one had bothered to mention that he wasn't human.

"Oh Varian," Globby's eyes lit up in recognition, "Yeah, you're in Carl's boxing class. He told me so much about you. Nice to finally meet ya!" He shook Varian's hand vigorously, which covered his arm in the same purple gloop of whatever it was Globby was made of.

"Uh, nice to meet you too." Varian replied back as politely as he could as he tried to wipe his hand clean on his pants.

"Globby here helps us sometimes with the 'you know what'." Honey Lemon whispered.

"Yes, not to brag, but what ya might call the I'm the protector of San Fansokyo! But I wasn't always so. Once I was a humble thief, and then this happened to me," Globby pointed at his right arm as it dripped goop on the floor, "and then I became a super villain. But once I discovered that the city was in danger I lept into action to save the day! With a little help from my fellow crime fighters Big Hero Six. But seriously, I'm a hero now! Can you believe it! Me!? And I owe it all thanks to Honey Lemon here."

"Oh, no," Honey Lemon blushed, "You did it yourself."

"No HL, I won't hear any false modesty from you." Globby protested. "You believed in me when nobody else did. Even when I didn't believe in myself. That matters a lot. So thank you. Plus you also kind of gave me superpowers."

"How did she do that?" Varian asked.

"Oh well it was kind of an accident." Honey Lemon said.

"I stole her a chim-purse." Globby explained. "Then I used it to break into Krei Tech to steal a neurotransmitter device. And then I kind of tripped and fell while wearing it and the chim-purse kinda exploded and now here I am!" He spread his arms wide at this last sentence, a huge grin on his face.

"Globby is a polymorph." Honey Lemon clarified. "He can change his molecular make up to be whatever he wants it to be."

"No way." Varian breathed in awe. "You mean to tell me you can charge and discharge photons and electrons on cellular level at will?"

"Uuuuuuh, I don't know about that? But I can turn myself into chocolate!" And with that Globby's hand transformed into what looked like a giant chocolate bar, of which he bit into and with mouth still full said, "Ooh nutty!"

Varian watched with a mixer of amazement, horror, and nausea, as Honey Lemon stood by silently; unsure of what to say. The awkwardness however, was dispelled by the sound of raucous laughter coming from the booth Glooby had been sitting at.

"That is a neat trick mi amigo."

A large man, wearing a trench coat and a mismatched luchador mask turned around in his seat to look at them. Varian recognized him from the wrestling ring.

"Hey you're…"

"El Fuego" Honey Lemon whispered in dread.

"Not anymore, now I am El Agua!" The wrestler proudly proclaimed; oblivious to Honey Lemon's discomfort. "It's a bit of a rebranding thing."

"Oh yeah, we saw you at the match last week." Varian excitedly jumped in, also not catching onto Honey Lemon's disquiet demeanor, "You were great! I especially liked how you threw The Sandman out of the ring with only one arm. That was cool."

"Oh hey, a fan!" El Fuego, or Agua as he now was called, enthused. "Always happy to meet fans. Would you like an autograph?"

"I sure would!"

The wrestling champ chuckled in delight as he pulled out a pen and began to sign his name upon a napkin.

"This is who I wanted you to meet," Globby explained. "Salinas here reached out to me for help. He's trying to go straight and is working really hard to get his life turned around."

"Yup, no more life of crime for me." El Agua confirmed as he handed the autograph to Varian. "I'm a changed man."

"How nice." Honey Lemon said with a strained smile on her face.

"Yeah I know, right!? I told him how much of a positive influence you were when I first started out superheroing." Globby continued. "I'm glad you stopped by, so that you two could finally meet. Wanna join us?"

He gestured to the booth and Honey Lemon looked like he had just asked her to dive into lava.

Varian was going to take up the offer but she answered before he could.

"Oh no, we only came here for… for… some… uh, ice!"

"Ice?"

"I thought we came here for fo-"

"Ice... ice cream that is." She nervously laughed. "Yup, we're just going to get some ice cream... to go. Wouldn't want to be late to… where we're going."

She wore a plastered grin as she turned to the counter to order. "Two vanilla ice cream cones please."

Varian and the others watched on in confusion as she took the two cones from Joe and then hurried back. She practically slammed one of the cones into Varian's chest as she hastily handed it to him, and before he could process what was happening, she grabbed the end of his sleeve and started to drag him out the door.

"Bye!" She yelled and Varian awkwardly attempted to wave before the glass door slammed shut behind them.

                                                 -----------------------

"Uh… Honey Lemon?" Varian asked after they were a few yards away from the diner.

"Hmmm?" Honey Lemon barely answered back as she strode forward, determined to put as much distance between her and the conversation they had just left.

Varian pressed on. "Ice cream is nice and all, but I thought we were going to go get, um, real food."

Honey Lemon finally slowed and turned to meet him, taking a guilty bite from the frozen treat. "We will, I just… I thought we could go get pizza instead!"

Varian turned back to look at the sign hanging from the restaurant window. Pizza was advertised alongside the menu's other assortment of food. He raised an eyebrow and Honey Lemon wilted under his skeptic gaze. She took another bite of her ice cream and suddenly found the toes of her shoes very interesting.

"Honey Lemon."

She looked up but still didn't answer.

"Honey, you're very sweet," Varian coaxed, "but you're a terrible liar. You know that right?"

Honey Lemon sighed and rolled her eyes in a rare display of frustration. "Look I just... didn't want to get caught up in eating dinner with them. We got on stuff to do."

"You mean stuff like going to the same wrestling match that El Agua was no doubt going to later?" Varian asked incredulously. "I figured you'd jump at the chance to hang out with an actual wrestling star. Maybe he could have gotten us backstage passes or something, I don't know?"

"Well, I don't." Honey Lemon said flatly.

Varian paused and looked at her in surprise. He couldn't remember ever seeing her being so cold or evasive.

"What 's wrong?"

Honey Lemon bit her lower lip, "I just.. I just don't trust El Fuego. That 's all."

"Why? What did he do? Did he hurt you?"

"No, no. It's just he's a super villain and we've fought him before…"

"But didn't Globby just say he used to be a super villain too?"

"Well yeah, but that's different."

"How so?"

"Well, Globby's nice and he tries really, really hard. He doesn't mean any harm, even back when he was a thief."

"Oh so, this other guy did something really bad then; something even worse than theft."

Varian thought he had hit upon the problem, but Honey Lemon's response was not one he expected.

"Weeeelll… Sort of…"

"What did he do then?"

"He- Well he.. He's a bully."

Varian tilted his head in confusion; not understanding Honey Lemon's point.

"I mean he called Baymax a bunch of names and tried to challenge him and Hiro to a fight." Honey Lemon explained.

Varian waited to see if she would list any other transgressions and when she didn't, all he could do was give her a look of utter bafflement.

"That's it!?"

She nodded her head timidly.

"Is- is that even a crime?" He asked with a hint of exasperation.

"Well, not exactly…" She admitted. "But it 's mean."

"So what?"

Now it was Honey Lemon's turn to act surprised, yet Varian didn't give her a chance to continue.

"You can't just lock people up for not being nice."

"Well we didn't," Honey Lemon defended, "but neither do I have to be friendly to someone who isn't."

Varian had to admit she had a point.

"Ok, fair enough. No one said you had to like the guy."

"Thank you."

"But he still deserves a second chance, surly."

"Well sure, and if he does become a nicer person that's great, and I wish him the best. But I don't wanna hang out with him."

Varian sighed and shook his head. "'Nice' has nothing to do with it, but of course if you don't feel comfortable being around him we can go somewhere else to eat." He pulled out his cell phone. "I'll call ahead and order us a pizza."

He continued walking towards the bus stop but Honey Lemon stood rooted to the spot in confusion.

"What do you mean 'nice has nothing to do with it'?  She eventually asked.

'Well you can't tell how good or bad some is by how polite they are."

"I know that. What matters is how they treat people."

"Yeah, but sometimes it's more complicated than that. Doing one bad thing, doesn't mean they're a bad person. You don't know what El Agua's life is like. You don't know why he did what he did."

"El Fugeo," Honey Lemon corrected. "And I know he tried to pick a fight with my friends; Your friends."

"Yeah, and from the looks of things he didn't actually hurt anybody. Hiro's never even mentioned him before."

Honey Lemon gave him an offended pout, and Varian tried to once more defuse the situation.

"Look, I just.. I know of people who've done far, far worse, and plenty of 'nice' people who'd stab you in the back. Anyways would you like the cheese pizza or the veggie supreme."

He pointed at his phone as he tried to change the topic, but Honey Lemon

wasn't ready to let the conversation go just yet.

"This isn't Corona." She said quietly.

"And thank goodness for that." Varian agreed, though his voice was tight with pained sarcasm.

"You think I'm being mean, by blowing El Fue- El Agua off?" She asked.

Varian immediately looked up from his phone. "No. Oh no, of course not; you're the kindest person I know. If you think the guy is bad news then you're probably right."

She searched his eyes for reassurance.

"Look,' he soothed, "let's just forget the whole thing and have a fun evening. We can get a five dollar pizza at Luigi's, then head on to the match and we'll see who's better at heckling. Loser has to buy the next tickets."

Honey Lemon snorted with laughter.  "Who decides that?"

"We do. Whoever makes the other laugh more wins."

"Oh you're on." She challenged; right when the bus pulled up.

                                                 -----------------------

Varian and Honey Lemon stepped out into crisp night air as they exited the arena. Crowds of people pushed past them also trying to leave the event and so Honey Lemon hooked her arm around Varian's so as not to get separated.

If there was one thing Varian knew about Honey Lemon, it was that she was a very tactile person. She showered everyone with physical affection; hugs, hand holding, cuddles, and pecks on the cheek, even people she just met would be subjected to her glomping them as if she'd known them her whole life. Therefore Varian tried not to look any deeper into such innocent action, but it still made his heart skip a beat to have his crush so close. Nothing could wipe the grin off his face as they hurried down the sidewalk to the bus stop.

"So why do you always root for the bad guy?" Honey Lemon asked as they went along.

She was referring to the wrestlers. Her and Varian always seemed to favor opposing teams. While she cheered on the heroes of the play, he always gravitated towards the heels that opposed them.

Varian shrugged. "I guess I just like the underdog. The villains tend to be more interesting in my opinion."

"But they're mean; at least in the story, I'm sure they're perfectly nice people in real life." Honey Lemon hastily added.

"All except that Vanguard guy you like. He's a jerk on stage."

Honey Lemon playfully sighed and rolled her eyes. "I don't see it that way. He's written to be like a knight in shining armor."

"Yeah and he's infuriatingly smug while doing it. He goes on and on about 'justice' this and 'honor' that, but what is he really fighting for? His own glory, that's what. It's a game and he wants to win it. At least the 'bad guys', as you put it, are more honest about why they're there."

"But it's all made up." Honey exasperated, "No one is more 'honest' than anyone else because it's scripted. If the story says someone is good or bad you just accept it. It's all a part of playing along and having fun with it."

"Oh sure, but I personally find the villains more fun because nothing is really at stake. Heroes in stories are always too perfect, too pure. Who can relate to that? Who's never wanted to lash out when angry or fight against the status quo? It's easy to be 'good' when you've never had to struggle for anything."

Honey Lemon studied Varian intently as she mulled over his words, and Varian could sense that he'd exposed a nerve; whether it was Honey Lemon's or his own, he wasn't sure.

He was just about to laugh it off and change the subject in order to ease the tension, when suddenly a very large and intimidating figure stepped out of the shadows. Varian instinctively moved to place himself between Honey Lemon and this new threat. Which was silly, he knew. She was an actual superhero. She didn't need him to shield her.

However the 'threat' was not a threat at all. The large man before them burst out into a very familiar boisterous roar.

"Oh I'm sorry mi amigos. I did not mean to startle you. You must not recognize me without my mask." El Feugo laughed.

He was out of costume, and dressed in the trench coat that they had seen him in earlier at the diner. Only this time the luchador's mask was off revealing a man in his late twenties with short black hair and a small scar running across his nose, indicating where it had been broken in a previous fight.

"You should have told me you were coming to see the show tonight." He continued on. "I would have gotten you better seats."

The wrestler's face beamed with an infectious grin and Varian was tempted to make polite conversation. He was always ready to make friends with just about anyone who wanted to, but Honey Lemon's grip tightened around his arm as she tensed up. He spared a quick glance back to see her still huddled behind him, looking like a deer caught in headlights.

"Uh, yeah, well we didn't want to trouble you." Varian answered.

"Oh no trouble at all. Any friends of Globby, is a friend of mine. Hey I know, I can get you tickets to tomorrow's match." He dug into his pants pocket and pulled out two tickets before either of them could protest. "We players always get a couple of free tickets for family or what not. I haven't got anybody else to give them to, so you might as well use them if you can."

Varian tried to politely turn him down "Oh no thank you. I don't know if we can make it. Finals are coming up and all that."

"I insist. They're good till the end of the month and they come with backstage passes too."

Without any other excuses to give, Varian took the tickets and said thank you, though he could feel Honey Lemon's disapproval radiating off of her as he did so. Still she neither said nothing, nor made any moves to stop him.

"Well I guess we better be going." Varian said, trying to exit the awkward situation, "We don't want to miss the bus."

"Oh me neither." El Fuego agreed as he walked with them to the bus stop. "Wrestling is my passion, but it doesn't always pay enough to hire a chauffeur to drive you around in a sports car." Then he doubled over laughing at his own joke and not unkindly nudged Varian with his elbow, "Not unless you get a promotional deal, am I right?"

Varian gave a fake laugh, "I wouldn't know. I never wrestled before."

"Oh that's right, Globby, said you were taking boxing lessons instead. Ever thought of getting the ring?"

"Oh no, my aunt would never allow that."

El Fuego titled his head in confusion. "I thought you two were in college? You still let your aunt tell you what you can and can't do? You stand up and be your own man."

Varian noticed Honey Lemon's lips tighten at that and she squeezed Varian's arm tighter. It was slightly unnerving to see the normally cheerful and carefree girl so clearly annoyed.

"Yeah, well she's the one paying for the classes." Varian explained and El Fuego nodded his head and then launched into another topic of conversation as the bus arrived.

                                                 -----------------------

And so it went the whole ride back to the apartment. El Fuego carrying on, freely talking about everything and anything, clearly oblivious to the fact that his company wasn't wanted. Varian trying to politely keep up his end of the conversation while ignoring the vice like grip Honey Lemon held his arm in. He was sure it had fallen asleep from lack circulation by the time they arrived at their destination. All while Honey Lemon, herself, kept deathly silent the whole way. She wouldn't budge from the Varian side, nor look away from wrestler sitting across from them; as if El Fuego had been a poisonous snake rather than just a man with a poor perception of social cues.  

What Varian couldn't figure out was why she wouldn't voice her displeasure. It was her evasiveness that threw him off kilter more so than El Fuego's chatter.

Yet he didn't have to wait long to find out, for as soon as they said goodbye to the man and made it back into the apartment, Honey Lemon let out a frustrated scream.

"Arrugh!"

"Have fun?" Gogo asked deadpan. She was sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal when they had entered.

Honey Lemon's answer was another rage filled scream before flopping face down on the bed.

"Dude, what did you do?" Gogo asked of Varian.

Varian was offended "Why automatically assume it's my fault?"

"We met El Fuego." Honey Lemon said before an argument could break out.

"Where?"

"He was with Globby at Joe's and later he rode the bus home with us on the way back from the wrestling arena." She tiredly explained. "He says he's trying to 'go straight.'" She flung her hands up in exasperation before flopping back down on the bed, curling up with a pillow while continuing to pout.

Gogo gave the same bewildered look that Varian did earlier that day. "Oookaay annnd…?"

Honey Lemon scrunched up her face and revulsion. "Aaaand, he gave us free tickets to the next match, can you believe him?"

Gogo and Varian exchanged confused looks.

"Oooh how horrible" She sarcastically replied.

This really set Honey Lemon off. "You don't understand. He's just pretending to be nice to try and get us to trust him."

"And why would he do that?" Gogo asked.

"Well to...to... I don't know, to get to Hiro maybe."

"Does he even know who Hiro is? Cause all he ever cared about was fighting "Big Hero Six" and to him that just means Baymax."

"Then...he must be after Baymax then."

"Does he know that Baymax or any of us are in Big Hero Six?"

"I..I don't know. I don't think Globby would tell our secret. He didn't mention it when we met him." Honey Lemon starred out into the middle distance trying to recall their past conversation.

"Well, even then, it's not like he can actually hurt Baymax. I mean he's a robot." Varian added.

This only rewarded him with a narrow glare from Honey Lemon. Varian would have backpedaled away had he not been so shocked.

"You took the tickets from him!" She yelled.

"What else was I supposed to do? He insisted. It's not like we have to use them or anything."

Gogo ignored their spat as she texted on her phone. The reply dinged back; drawing everyone's attention.  "Okay, I just texted Globby. He says he hasn't told El Fuego anything about Big Hero Six other than that he works with us sometimes."

Honey Lemon pouted in confusion. "Then what is he after?"

"I don't know, friends maybe?" Gogo shrugged. "Whatever it is, it's nothing to do with us or superheroing."

"But...but, but he…" Honey Lemon stuttered over her words as she desperately tried to come up with another justification. "He… he was acting really creepy; alright!? Jumping out of shadows… laughing at.. at… well everything…"

"He was walking to the bus stop already and just happened to run into us." Varian clarified for Gogo. This made him the victim of another angry stare from Honey Lemon. "What!? It's true."

"Well, I don't trust him. I think he's up to something." Honey Lemon sulked, hugging her pillow tighter.

"Ooor maybe you just don't like him." Gogo said. "You're allowed to just not like people. You know that right?"

Honey Lemon looked surprised by this revelation. She opened and closed her mouth several times to form a response but the words just wouldn't come.

"Yeah and if anyone knows about not liking people, it's Gogo." Varian teased. "She doesn't like anybody."

This earned him a light punch on the arm. He just couldn't win today.

"Look, it's fine." She said, returning her attention to her roommate. "I know you're a little ray of sunshine, who's friends with the whole world, but not everybody gets along and that's ok. I'm sure even Varian here knows people he dislikes, and he's Mr. Congeniality."

Varian gave a look of offended confusion. He didn't know if 'congeniality' was a jab at his expense or a compliment. Either way he was sure the descriptor didn't fit him.

"Is there anybody you don't like?" Honey Lemon asked him.

"Who me? Yeah, I got a whole country's worth of people I hate."

"See?" Gogo confirmed, not catching on to the deeper meaning behind his words.

Honey Lemon pouted again, but didn't argue back as she mulled over her friend's advice.

Varian stepped in with a peace offering. "Look, would like for me to throw away the tickets?"

"No." Honey lemon sighed. "Ask Fred to go with you, since he didn't get to come this time."

"You sure?"

She nodded yes and gave him a small reassuring smile.

"So, are you still mad at me?"

"Oh, I was never mad at you."

"Really? Cause it sure seemed that way when you yelled at me just then."

"I'm sorry." She whispered sheepishly.

"Don't worry about it. I'm sorry too. Next time we won't take the bus, how's that?"

She agreed and Varian made ready to leave.

"Do you want me to drive you home?" Gogo asked.

"Naw, It's alright. It's only 10:30. Besides, the bus is less drafty than the motorcycle." He joked.

"Well ok, just be safe and text one of us when you get back."

Varian rolled his eyes "Okay 'mom', See you Sunday."

                                                 -----------------------

They said their goodbyes and Varian walked back to the bus stop. He called Aunt Cass to let her know he was on his way home, and then proceeded to text Fred about the tickets while waiting on the bus to arrive.

Just then someone grabbed him from behind and placed their hand over his mouth. He dropped his phone in surprise and tried to break free of the person's grip. But no matter how he kicked and squirmed he couldn't escape their grasp.

Yet still even more frightening was the fact that he could feel his limbs grow heavy and his vision swam. They held a damp cloth in the hand that covered his mouth and whatever chemical itwas dipped in was making him lose consciousness. He listed the possible combinations in his mind as darkness rushed up to meet him; chloroform? no, morphine? probably not, fentay-.....

"Got him boss. We're on our way now." A man said over the intercom in his ear. He then picked up the unconscious teen and carried him off into the night.

[xxxdragonfucker69xxx]

what the hell is quantum foam

ok, this one starts with an explanation of the heisenberg uncertainty principle

on a quantum scale there are certain sets of properties that are linked: usually we talk about time/energy and position/momentum. heisenberg uncertainty is that if you measure one accurately, you have to know the other inaccurately. the derivation for this is interesting but mathematical and hard to explain so i’ll give you something that is not a derivation but an example: suppose you have an electron in a box. out of all the possible places in the world that electron could be, you know it’s not in any of the places outside the box. what i don’t know is the electron’s momentum: it could be moving in any direction at all, bouncing off the walls of the box at great speed in unpredictable directions. well, take the lid off the box and look inside. but remember, we’re operating on tiny quantum scales. the only way my eye/microscope/quantum probe can look at this electron is if a photon bounces off the electron into my eye. and, once it’s bounced off the electron, the electron is going in a different direction!

how can we get an accurate momentum reading? we have to measure the electron twice: get a snapshot now, then a snapshot a second later, and figure out its velocity moving from A to B. but if we do that, the most accurate we can say about its position during that time is “uhhh somewhere between A and B”. if we take snapshots far apart, we get precise momentum values but have to wave hands about position. vice versa is true if we take snapshots really close together. and you can think of all kinds of ways to improve the experiment, but no matter what, something else always pops up. same happens for energy of an electron and the amount of time that’s passed.

ok blah blah blah who cares. or at least, if you didn’t follow what i said above, don’t worry about it and just trust what i say coming on.

 let’s look at a ruler, and i’ll use meters because it lets me make the point a little more concisely. my meter stick is exactly one meter long. in this meter there are exactly ten decimeters, in each decimeter there are exactly ten centimeters, in each centimeter ten millimeters, etc. i can go on down forever, to infinitely small and precise measurements.

except that i cannot get infinitely precise. or at least, we said above, that the more precise my position measurement gets, the less precise my momentum measurement gets. and the same for time and energy. so at some point in my metrical divisions, i get to a point where i have to stop worrying about that. if i imagine an imaginary box and keep making it smaller, at some point the box gets so small i can’t be sure how much energy is in there. yes, even if i put nothing in there to start with. yes, this looks like getting energy out of nothing. i put 0 energy in, roll dice, get 2 energy out.

what does this actually mean? if i look inside that tiny tiny box (about a trillionth of a yoctometer, for those playing along at home) i might find tiny particles popping in and out of existence. they would probably, in fact, be particle-antiparticle pairs: an electron and positron that appear out of nowhere, get a little distance away from each other before getting pulled back towards each other and annihilating in the way of matter, antimatter, and sasunaru. we’ve long known that this can happen if you have a lot of energy: if i have 100 energy [units] lying around, 1 of them might turn into matter/antimatter for a split second and then annihilate back into energy, while the other 99 just keep being energy. well, it turns out that if we have 0 energy, this can still happen, and we have -1 energy for a minute. (DONT WORRY this isnt that catastrophic. deciding where to put 0 energy is not the same as deciding where to put 0 dollars. its still a little worrying but not catastrophic)

so that’s what quantum foam is: this champagne fizz of particles and antiparticles popping into existence and back out of existence all the time. people have actually measured the effects of this: some guy called casimir said ok, if we hold two metal plates a really small distance away from each other, there’ll be a ton of fizz outside and less fizz inside, so you should feel a tiny tiny pressure inwards, and this has been done! it works!

a couple other things are implied by this. some people say space also has curled up dimensions, as you might remember, and that at this scale they “unfold” or are traversible in a way that they’re usually not. tbh i dont really get that part but they have some pretty interesting evidence. another thing is that particle/antiparticle pairs always have to be in pairs. you’d need a pretty big something to split them up. something like, say, a black hole. and we do in fact have evidence that a bunch of stuff radiates away from black holes (Hawking radiation) in exactly the way you would expect from this (and it does reduce the black hole’s size/matter/energy, despite nothing escaping the event horizon itself). and a lot of people get really excited about energy from nothing (if you remember hearing about “zero-point energy” or “vacuum energy” it was this).

[sciencespies]

Astronomers detect a giant galaxy lighting up the Universe right after the Big Bang

https://sciencespies.com/space/astronomers-detect-a-giant-galaxy-lighting-up-the-universe-right-after-the-big-bang/

Astronomers detect a giant galaxy lighting up the Universe right after the Big Bang

About 370,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe experienced a period that cosmologists refer to as the “Cosmic Dark Ages.”

During this period, the Universe was obscured by a hot dense plasma that obscured all visible light, making it invisible to astronomers.

As the first stars and galaxies formed over the next few hundred millions of years, the radiation they emitted ionized this plasma, making the Universe transparent.

One of the biggest cosmological mysteries right now is when “cosmic reionization” began. To find out, astronomers have been looking deeper into the cosmos (and farther back in time) to spot the first visible galaxies.

Thanks to new research by a team of astronomers from University College London (UCL), a luminous galaxy has been observed that was reionizing the intergalactic medium 13 billion years ago.

The research was presented last week (July 2nd) during the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS) – because of the pandemic, this year’s meeting was virtual.

During the course of their presentation, Romain Meyer (a PhD student at UCL and the lead author on the study) and his colleagues shared their findings, which is the first solid evidence that reionization was complete 13 billion years ago.

The universe according to what we can detect through our telescopes. (NASA)

The team responsible for this discovery was led by Romain Meyer, a PhD student with the UCL Astrophysics Group. He was joined by UCL researchers Dr Nicolas Laporte, and Prof Richard S Ellis, as well as Prof Anne Verhamme and Dr Thibault Garel of the University of Geneva. Their findings are also the subject of a paper that was recently submitted to The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Studying galaxies that existed during this early period in the Universe is essential to understanding the origins of the cosmos as well as its subsequent evolution.

According to our current cosmological models, the first galaxies formed from coalescing stellar clusters, which were in turn formed when the first stars in the Universe came together.

Over time, these galaxies blasted out the radiation that stripped the neutral gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM) of its electrons (AKA the ionization process). Astronomers know this because we have clear evidence for it, in the form of the Cosmic Dark Ages and the way the Universe is transparent today.

But the key questions of how and when this all occurred remain unknown. As Dr. Meyer told Universe Today via email:

“By looking at distant galaxies, we look into the early Universe, as the light has traveled for billions of years before reaching us. This is fantastic as we can look at what galaxies were like billions of years ago, but it comes with several drawbacks.”

For starters, Meyer explained, distant objects are very faint and can only be observed using the most powerful ground-based and space-based telescopes.

At this distance, there’s also the tricky issue of redshift, where the expansion of the cosmos causes light from distant galaxies to have its wavelength stretched towards the red end of the spectrum.

Galaxy A370p_z1 with a zoom-in through each filter. (NASA/ESA/Z. Levay/STSci)

In the case of galaxies that several billion years old, the light has been shifted to the point that it is only visible infrared (particularly the UV light Meyer and his colleagues were looking for).

In order to get a good look at A370p_z1, a luminous galaxy 13 billion light-years away, the team consulted Using data from the Hubble Frontier Fields program – which astronomers are still analyzing.

The Hubble data suggested that this galaxy was very redshifted, indicating that it was particularly ancient.

They then made follow-up observations with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to get a better sense of this galaxy’s spectra. In particular, they looked for the bright line that’s emitted by ionized hydrogen, known as the Lyman-alpha line. Said Meyer:

“The big surprise was to find that this line, detected at 9480 Angstroms, was a double line. This is extremely rare to find in early galaxies, and this is only the fourth galaxy that we know of to have a double Lyman-alpha line in the first billion years. The nice thing with double Lyman-alpha lines is that you can use them to infer a very important quantity of early galaxies: what fraction of energetic photons they leak into the intergalactic medium.”

Another big surprise was the fact that A370p_z1 appeared to be letting 60 to 100 percent of its ionized photons into intergalactic space, and was probably responsible for ionizing the bubble IGM around it.

Galaxies that are closer to the Milky Way typically have escape fractions of about 5 percent (50 percent in some rare cases), but observations of the IGM indicate that early galaxies must have had a 10 to 20 percent escape fraction on average.

This discovery was extremely important because it could help resolve an ongoing debate in cosmological circles.

Until now, the questions of when and how reionization occurred has produced two possible scenarios.

In one, it was a population of numerous faint galaxies leaking about 10 percent of their energetic photons. In the other, it was an “oligarchy” of luminous galaxies with a much larger percentage (50 percent or more) of escaping photons.

In either case, the evidence has so far suggested that the first galaxies were very different from those today.

“Discovering a galaxy with nearly 100 percent escape was really nice because it confirms what astrophysicists suspected: early galaxies were very different from nowadays objects, and leaking energetic photons much more efficiently,” said Meyer.

Studying reionization-era galaxies for Lyman-alpha lines has always difficult because of the way they are surrounded by neutral gas that absorbs that signature hydrogen emission.

However, we now have strong evidence that reionization was complete 800 million years after the Big Bang, and that it was likely that a few luminous galaxies were responsible.

If what Meyer and his colleagues observed is typical of reionization-era galaxies, then we can assume that reionization was caused by a small group of galaxies that created large bubbles of ionized gas around them that grew and overlapped.

As Meyer explained, this discovery could point the way towards the creation of a new cosmological model that accurately predicts how and when major changes in the early Universe took place:

This discovery confirms that early galaxies could be extremely efficient at leaking ionizing photons, which is an important hypothesis of our understanding of “cosmic reionization” – the epoch when the intergalactic medium, 13 billion years ago, transitioned from neutral to ionized (e.g. electrons were ripped off hydrogen atoms by these energetic photons).

According to Meyer, more objects like A370p_z1 need to be found so astronomers can establish the average escape fractions of early galaxies.

In the meantime, the next step will be to determine why these early galaxies were so efficient at leaking energetic photons.

Several scenarios have been suggested, and getting a better look at the early Universe will allow astronomers to test them.

As Meyer was sure to note, a lot of that will depend upon next-generation telescopes that will be taking to space very soon. The most notable of these is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which (after multiple delays) is still scheduled to launch sometime next year.

Herein lies another significance for studies like these, which is how they will help the James Webb team decide what cosmological mysteries to investigate.

Timeline of the Universe. Neutrinos affected the CMB when it was emitted. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/A. Kashlinsky/GSFC)

“With the James Webb Space Telescope, we will follow-up this target deeper in the infrared to get access to what was emitted originally in the optical light,” said Meyer.

“That will give us more insight into the physical mechanisms at play in early galaxies. JWST’s mission is limited in time, and that’s why discovering these extreme objects now is so important: by knowing which objects are peculiar or extreme in the first billion years of our Universe, we will know what to look at when JWST is finally launched!”

Exciting times lie ahead for astronomers, astrophysicists, exoplanet-hunters, SETI researchers, and cosmologists. It’s hard to know who should be most excited, but something tells me that would be like asking a parent which of their children they love most. Inevitably, the answer is always, “all of them!”

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

#Space

[thewordwideweb]

Be there in a jiffy!

“I’ll be there in a jiffy.” You know that’s quick, but how long, exactly, is a jiffy? Well, according to “Real Fact” ™ #419 inside the cap on my Snapple bottle, “A jiffy is an actual time measurement equaling 1/100th of a second.” 

So we know a jiffy is fast, but we also know Snapple bottle caps are notoriously, well, less than totally accurate. 

A jiffy (and yes, it’s the Word of the Day) is not just a measurement of time; it’s a whole bunch of measurements of both time and distance. 

American chemist Gilbert Newton Lewis – the guy who coined the word “photon” and discovered the “covalent bond,” which is how atoms share electron pairs to form stable molecules – was the first to define a “jiffy” as the time it takes light to travel one centimeter in a vacuum (about 33 and a third picoseconds). 

Early computers and computer gaming systems (we’re talking about games closer to Pong than to Fortnight) said a jiffy was “the time between two ticks of the system timer interrupt” (whatever the heck that is) and it was usually tied to the local television standard of 60Hz (that is, cycles per second). It was typically 10 milliseconds, or 1/100th of a second. 

In computer animation, a jiffy is sometimes used to define the interval between individual frames being played back. That interval – that “jiffy” – is 1/100th of a second, and that’s probably where Snapple took their information. 

But if the Snapple folks wanted to be more accurate, or had more room on their bottle cap, they might have told us that in quantum physics, a jiffy (as defined by British cosmologist Edward “Ted” Harrison) is the time it takes light to travel one “fermi” (I know, I know…it sounds like they’re just making this stuff up). A “fermi,” also known as a “femtometer,” is 10 to the negative-15 meters, or one quadrillionth of a meter. In other words, it’s a pretty short distance. The time it takes light to travel one fermi is 3 times 10 to the negative-24 seconds. If, like me, you can’t do the math, three times 10 to the negative-24 seconds is also sometimes called “one light-foot” which is very roughly equal to one nanosecond (that is, a billionth of a second). 

So, anyway you cut it, a “jiffy” is pretty speedy. 

Oh, and you may be wondering about the origin of the word “jiffy.” Well, you’re out of luck. No one knows for sure, although there’s a theory that a jiffy was thieves’ slang for lightning.  

[lifeofyellowpearl]

Yellow Pearl Goes Over Old Files: Transfer of Power

As I continued to look through the colony archive documents, I happened across another old file. It was a transfer of power agreement that officially established Pink Diamond’s rule over Earth.

I still remember how excited Pink was to have her own colony. It was originally supposed to be one of White Diamond’s colonies; an extension of one of her own sectors. White was understandably reluctant to hand over the colony to Pink but after a bit of pestering light convincing from Blue Diamond, White agreed. This was a huge deal. Earth existed on the outskirts of sector F5. If this colony was successful, then the elder diamonds would allow Pink to secede from F5, essentially making Earth the start of her own sector.

Pink was new to running a colony and since she had lost her first pearl, I was to be her temporary stand-in. I never like the idea of being away from My Diamond for an extended period but at the very least, addressing a diamond is somewhat easier for me than addressing a normal gem. I was standing alone in the moon base that was originally supposed to be White’s, waiting for Pink to arrive. The base still maintained its white interior. I looked over at the center terminal. I wasn’t used to seeing it unmanned. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to walk over and sit at the terminal, but I knew better. I laughed at the very thought. A regular gem sitting in a diamond’s seat! How ridiculous!

As always, the surrounding glass dome gave a full view of the outside. It was ‘nighttime’ on this moon – a night which lasts nearly two decimal weeks. There was plenty of light being reflected by the Earth, but it was still rather dim. I had once been told that the moon was ‘as white as the diamond herself’ but in this light, the whole surface was a depressingly dull grey. This moon also had no atmosphere which meant there was no air to carry sound. There was no ambient noise seeping in from the outside, so the room was eerily quiet.

After a few moments, I could hear what sounded like a faint humming noise. I looked around to try and figure out the source. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that the noise was coming from me. What I was hearing were the molecular vibrations pulsating from my gem. Each gem ‘vibrates’ at a unique frequency – recognizing these signature frequencies is how sentries are able to identify us. The vibrations aren’t usually audible but, in a place, as quiet as this, they could be heard. It was strange to hear.

I was startled by the sudden sound of the warp pad activating in the lower chamber. I could hear Pink slowly moving up the stairs. I got into position, gave my salute and waited…and waited…and waited. She sure was taking a long time to get up here. Normally Pink hastily strode through these buildings, so much so that even the elder diamonds sometimes had a hard time keeping up. Finally, Pink Diamond came sidling up the stairs with her eyes fixed on the ground. I could tell that she wasn’t all here – I don’t think she even noticed me.

“Uh…Pink Diamond?” I said.

Pink looked up at me with a slight start, “Oh! Uh…hey…” Pink tried to put on a cheerful façade. “You must be my…stand in pearl.”

“Temporarily yes. Since you’re new to all of this, I will be helping you in learning the fundamentals of overseeing a colony. I took the liberty of organizing everything you’ll need to know in an electronic binder.” I opened a holo-screen containing the binder and handed it to her. Pink stared at it blankly.

This worried me. Did I mess something up? “Is something wrong, Pink Diamond?”

Pink looked up with another start, “No, it’s just…my Pearl…”

“Your Pearl?” I was confused for a moment, then I remembered that Pinks pearl had just been…taken away.

Not wanting to dwell, Pink quickly changed the subject. “So, Yellow put this binder thing together, huh?”

“Well no. She only sent me a few files, but I wanted to make this as easy for you as possible. Which is why I put this together.”

“Wait, you put this together all on your own?”

“Well, yes.”

“Wow! That’s really impressive!”

Even then, compliments made me uncomfortable, “It’s nothing really.”

“It’s not nothing. It’s really cool that you did this. You must be a pretty cool pearl.”

“Um…sure.” Seriously, enough already. It really wasn’t that impressive.

Luckily for me, Pink’s short attention span got the better of her as the command terminal caught her eye. “And there it is, my very own command terminal!” A giddy Pink Diamond strode over to the terminal and gazed at it, “God, this is just so exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time. I’ll be leading my own colony and soon after that, I’ll be in charge of my very own sector! For once I’ll be able to do things my way. No one to tell me how to run things. No one to tell me my ideas are dumb. I’ll be free to do whatever I want.” I could already tell that Pink didn’t fully understand the limitations of her reach. Yes, she’d soon have her own sector, but she’d still have to work with the other diamonds to get things done. Pink then turned to me and beamed “Do you wanna hear some of my ideas?”

Not really, we had a lot of things to cover, but I couldn’t exactly say no, “I suppose.”

“Awesome! Check this out!” Pink pulled up a holo-screen and handed it to me. It appeared to be a crude schematic of some sort of spherical device with a bunch of equations sprawled on it.

“Um…what is it?” I asked.

“Are you ready for this? I call it…The Black. Hole. Bomb!” Pink waved her hands apart while wiggling her fingers in some sort of presentative display.

“‘Black Hole Bomb?’”

“Yeah! So, like, you know how we use dyson spheres as our main power source? Well isn’t it weird how we’ve been using the exact same technology for centuries? No change? No improvements?”

“I mean…I guess.”

“Exactly! I’ve been doing the math and dyson spheres waste about 4 percent of the energy they produce. Not to mention they’re not as durable as they could be. Why with the weapons we have now, we could easily damage one. And they’re major resource hogs. We have to dismantle entire planets just to build one. Do you know how many potential colonies we’ve had to destroy to keep making those things? It’s time for a change!”

Pink Diamond had a point, but I was having a hard time making sense of her schematic. “Sooo how does this thing work?”

“Okay so like, you know how some stellar massive black holes spin, like, super fast?”

“Uh huh…”

“Well, what if we could harness that kinetic energy? Picture this! We build a giant mirror around a spinning black hole and shoot electromagnetic waves into it. Pew! Pew! Pew!” Pink pantomimed as though she were firing a laser rifle. I couldn’t help but titter.

Don’t laugh, you stupid clod, I thought, she’s still a diamond.

“So anyway, the waves would bounce off the reflective surfaces and slosh around in the black hole’s spinning ergosphere, gathering more and more kinetic energy so that the waves become supercharged. We would then harness the energy of those supercharged waves and convert it into electricity. If we did that, we’d have enough energy to power our colonies for trillions of years! Just think of the possibilities!”

“That’s certainly…interesting.” I tried as hard as I could to take her idea seriously but just couldn’t. I mean, the whole idea just seemed so silly.

“This isn’t even the only idea I have.”

“Pink Diamond, we really should be getting back to…”

Before I could finish, an excited Pink Diamond pulled up two more holo-screens, “Look at this! I have an idea for a star-powered engine that can move entire solar systems and way to turn light into matter.”

“Turn light…into matter.”

“Yeah! I don’t have the specifics worked out yet, but I’ve hypothesized that you can convert photons into atoms by smashing them together at just the right angle. If we could perfect that process, we could create materials essentially from nothing. Think about it, the galaxy is vast but it’s not infinite, we’re going to run low on resources eventually, right? So, if we could find a way to perfect the process of turning light into matter then we wouldn’t have to worry about running out of materials and junk.”

Is this some kind of joke? I thought. That’s when it hit me, a joke, of course! When I realized what this really was, I started to laugh, “Oh Pink Diamond! I must say you really had me going for a moment there.”

“Had you going? What do you mean?”

“My Diamond always said that you have a fun sense of humor! ‘Black Hole Bomb,’ how silly!” After taking a moment to wipe the tears from my eyes, I looked up at Pink and noticed that she wasn’t laughing. In fact, she looked a bit despondent. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I…wasn’t joking.” She said.

At that moment, a wave a shame washed over me Oh god, I thought, she wasn’t joking! Of course, she wasn’t joking! I fell to my knees, “Oh Pink Diamond! I’m so sorry! I don’t know what I was thinking!” I was beside myself! I couldn’t believe that I had just insulted a diamond!  “Stupid Pearl!” I shouted as I began to repeatedly smack my temple, “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

Before I could hit myself again, a hand grabbed my wrist. For a split second, I thought it was K’s. I looked up and saw Pink Diamond, knelt to my level, a look of genuine concern on her face. I didn’t understand. What did she, a diamond, have to be concerned about? I’m just a pearl after all. “Pink Diamond, I…”

“Hey, it’s okay.” It was strange, she didn’t speak to me like a diamond normally would. She spoke to me like a friend. It was calming and discomforting all at the same time. Pink helped me to my feet and smiled at me. Still ashamed of what I did, I lowered my head.

“Hey, I get it,” she said, “my ideas are ambitious and maybe they are a little out there. I don’t expect many gems to jump on them right away. But once I put them in action, I’m sure they’ll come around.” Pink turned and looked up at the Earth, “This colony is only the beginning.” She said, “Gems may not believe in my ideas now, but they will. When I finally start building my own sector, I’ll be able to run it my way. Gems won’t be afraid to talk to me or feel pressured to ‘stay in line.’ In my sector, gems will be free to do and say whatever they want. They’ll be free to share their ideas and their inputs, and it won’t matter where they stand on this stupid hierarchy. Whether they be quartzes, jadeites or even pearls. Everyone will be free to contribute however they so choose.

“The Diamonds may think it’s unrealistic but just you wait! When I get my ideas off the ground, my sector will be the most high tech and efficiently run sector in the whole galaxy! And when the diamonds see how amazing it all is, they’ll finally see things my way. They’ll understand the value of letting gems live how they please and I’ll finally be able to persuade them to throw out this dumb cast system.” I didn’t agree with any of this. I like the caste system. Sure, I’m at the bottom, but I like the bottom. I’m just fine serving My Diamond. If the caste system got thrown out, where would that leave me?

In any case, I was still overcome with shame, still unable to move or speak. We stood in silence for a while. Pink with her eyes fixed on Earth and me with my eyes fixed on this strange young diamond. “You know, you sound so much like her.” Said Pink, her eyes still fixed on Earth.

“I... sound like her?” I wasn’t sure what she meant.

“Your gem, I can hear it vibrating. Its frequency is similar to my pearl’s.”

“You mean, you can actually hear the difference?”

Pink turned to me and smiled, “Of course I can. The other diamonds couldn’t believe it either. I guess I’m the only one who can tell gems apart based on how their gems sound. Sometimes, just for fun, I’ll alter the frequency of my own gem so that the sentries can’t tell who I am.” Pink Diamond chuckled to herself, “White hates when I do that! The other diamonds still haven’t figured out how I do it.” Pink truly was a strange diamond. I mean, changing the frequency of your own gem? I’d never even heard of such a thing. And then there was the question of why a diamond would want to do that in the first place. I didn’t bother to ask.

“I think it’s so cool that gems have their own signature frequencies,” Pink said, “Gems may look the same, but this just goes to show that each gem is truly unique. The other diamonds may not want to recognize that, but I do. I intend to create a world where each gem’s uniqueness is celebrated, not suppressed and once I get this colony going – once I get my sector going, the other diamonds won’t be able to stop me.”

No, Pink Diamond was wrong. It’s true that she would have more freedom, but she wouldn’t just be able to do whatever she wanted. She would need to work with the other diamonds in expanding her sector. She would be expected to contribute a portion of her output to the empire, not to mention that the diamonds are reliant on one another. There would be times where she would need to borrow resources from neighboring sectors and there was no way the diamonds would be willing to provide for her crazy projects. The Elder Diamonds would still have leverage; leverage that they could use to reign Pink in at any time. Had she not been shattered; Pink certainly would’ve learned this the hard way.

Author’s Note: Some stuff came up and I was out for a while but I’m back now. Anyway, I’m actually having a lot of fun typing up these docs. Here’s a link to that transfer of power agreement.

[badbackgroundscience]

Science of “The Seven”

I watched Amazon’s The Boys this week. So instead of the usual 60′s Marvel fare, here’s some tangential science relating to the superpowers featured in the show:

1. Homelander can’t see through zinc.

This is obviously a play on Superman not being able to see through lead, but the switch brings up some problems with the physics involved. X-rays - light with wavelengths ranging between 0.01 and 10 nm* - can’t travel through a lump of lead because lead is super dense. It’s nearly the heaviest non-radioactive element, with (usually) 208 protons+neutrons and 82 electrons. And its atoms pack very closely together.**

Combining that density with the fact that lead atoms are also very good at attenuating x-ray light (meaning the amount of x-ray photons that can penetrate a certain thickness of lead drops exponentially as that thickness increases), it makes sense that Superman’s x-ray vision’s weakness is lead.

But zinc is a smaller atom (usually 64 protons+neutrons and 30 electrons) and its atoms don’t pack as tightly; it’s about 1.5 times less dense than lead. It’s X-ray attenuation is generally lower, but not too different, from lead (compare this graph vs this one). Together, this makes it easier for x-rays to penetrate zinc than lead.

So why can’t Homelander see through zinc, but (supposedly) see through lead? It could be that the x-rays he emits correspond to a wavelength that zinc absorbs more than lead does. Annoyingly, the absorption spectra I can find all seem to be dealing with zinc compounds (e.g. ZnO, ZnS) instead of pure zinc metal. So I can’t tell you exactly what wavelength that would need to be.

Sorry.***

2. The Deep has torso gills

Fish are ectotherms, meaning their body temperature is regulated by their environment. Mammals - including cetaceans (i.e. whales, porpoises, and dolphins) - are endotherms. We generate our own body heat. Kevin presumably does, too.

This means that a man needs more oxygen than a man-sized fish does. About 15 times the oxygen, in fact. It’s the gills’ job to extract oxygen from water and pump it into the fish’s bloodstream; bigger fish have bigger gills, but a 75-kg man needs gills 15 times the size of a 75-kg fish’s. Not necessarily in length, but in collection area. And that’s assuming you’re not doing any physical activity that ups your oxygen requirements.

But on top of that, oxygen is far less abundant in water than it is in air - about 20 times less for the same volume. If an average human needs a quart**** of oxygen per minute, their gills would need to strain 51 gallons of water every minute to meet that requirement.

Combining these two factors, designer and material scientist-dabbler Jun Kamei is developing a set of artificial gills, and claims the final device will have a surface area of 32 square meters (344 square feet).

The human lung surface area is somewhere around 75 square meter range, so if you’ve got gills that can pack as efficiently as lungs do, you probably could fit them into your abdomen. Maybe not Chase Crawford’s abdomen, but a stockier human’s abdomen.

The real problem here is that Kevin’s doing himself no favors by covering the gills up while he’s underwater. Water rushing through the gills is the whole point, and you’ve just made it 1000% harder.

3. A-Train (and Popclaw) booms and bu(r)sts

According to the race announcer that one episode, A-Train can reach speeds over 1000 miles per hour. Assuming that’s true and not a horrible exaggeration, as soon as he passes the speed of sound (767 mph at sea level), A-Train would create sonic booms. Not a single boom. Constant booms for as long as he’s going fast enough. You (as a single individual) only hear one, but that’s only because you’re not moving.

We never see him do this, so we must conclude he’s not a complete idiot and only goes this fast when he’s far away from people and architecture. (If I read the screen right, he only clocks in at 371 in his race.)

As for the secret girlfriend he murdered, there are several species of amphibians that can stick their own bones out through their skin to use as weapons. For example, species of frog within the genus Astylosternus, and Trichobatrachus robustus (aka the hairy frog). The Spanish ribbed newt can push its ribs out through its torso; when threatened, its skin also secrets poison, turning its bones into poisonous barbs.*****

4. Translucent isn’t see-through. He’s see-around.

As the man explains to Jimmy the late night host (No, not that Jimmy the late night host...the other Jimmy the late night host), his skin can convert at will to a “carbon metamaterial” that bends light around it. 

We don’t know if there are other elements involved besides carbon, but if there aren’t, the real-world comparison is graphene -- an atom-thick layer of carbon atoms bonded to each other forming a honeycomb pattern.

Given its thickness, it’s translucent itself. [Side note: yes, “translucent” doesn’t mean invisible. However, some dictionaries (e.g. Merriam Webster and the OED) include alternative definitions identical to "transparent"...which goes against everything I ever learned. But either way, he actually is translucent when he isn’t “translucent”. Because human skin is translucent, assuming there isn’t too much melanin in it.]

A 2D sheet of graphene has a breaking strength of 42 Pa (0.0061 psi). That number seems super small, but it's actually reflecting the strongest material we know of. You'd need 4,300 pounds balanced on a pencil (pointy end on the graphene) to break through that atom-thick sheet.

Alternatively, if I did my back-of-the-envelope math right, you’d need a 50 gram .50-cal bullet traveling at ~770,000 mph (and coming to a stop in ~1 millisecond). Now, the human epidermis averages ~1mm thick. That's 3 million layers of graphene. 

However, if you manage to put a crack into your graphene, it becomes brittle on par with a ceramic.`*

As for being able to electrocute Translucent because carbon is “highly conductive”, graphene is indeed so; however, other carbon compounds aren't (e.g. diamonds). It all depends on the positioning of electrons within the solid (moving electrons = flowing charge). Since we don’t know what Translucent’s metamaterial is, we’ll have to take the show at its word.

Though here’s some bonus info: metamaterials are all synthetic. Which would mean that Translucent had this skin installed somehow. Or, it’s a very subtle dig at Compound V being used to create superheroes that only I caught.

The one thing that the season left bugging me about Translucent was his eyeballs. Somehow those are see-through.

5. Starlight pushes it real good

Our newest member of the Seven can use concentrated light to knock baddies off their feet, as well as throw them several meters back. This is an exaggerated form of reality. Light can actually push stuff. 

Photons do exert a teeny tiny amount of pressure on whatever they hit. It’s called radiation pressure. The amount is sufficient for something like a solar sail (The above image is LightSail 2), but not wiping the floor with a criminal.

According to (more) envelope math, Starlight would need to emit ~30 PetaWatts to deliver a good boxer-level punch to a baddie standing ~2 meters away. That's the equivalent amount of energy released by 7.2 million tons of TNT exploding, in 1 second. 

Also, given the color of the light she emits, she’s probably emitting a spectrum identical to our Sun, meaning she’s emitting a ton of light that normally gets blocked by our atmosphere, including x-rays and ultraviolet radiation.

She’s definitely given someone a melanoma at some point during her life. Or at least a very bad sunburn.

Bonus: Ice Princess shatters wangs

Final back-of-the-envelope math, calculating how fast that guy's (presumably erect) penis would freeze being enveloped by an ice vagina at -346 °F (-210 °C). A combination of calculating the heat lost per second via conduction, and the amount of energy lost as body-temp water cools and converts to ice.

Came out to 0.1 seconds. 

Faster than I expected...

_______________________________________________________________________

* Visible light is ~400-700 nm

** There are several (nonradioactive) metals more dense than lead, but more rare/expensive, like gold and iridium. 

*** Also, brass can be up to 45% zinc. Does that mean Homelander can only sort of see through brass?

**** Get out of here with your imperial units, self...

***** Fun fact: it can regenerate lost limbs, heart tissue, brain cells, and its spinal cord

`* Butt cracks don’t count.

_______________________________________________________________________

Image credits:

Zinc - CC BY 3.0

gills By Chris 73, CC BY-SA 3.0

frog claws from Barej et al 2010

sonic boom By I, Melamed katz, CC BY-SA 3.0

graphene By U.S. Army Materiel Command, CC BY 2.0

lightsail 2 By Josh Spradling / The Planetary Society CC BY-SA 3.0

ice by Ian Mackenzie CC BY 2.0

[duality-deactivated]

Name: Violet 'Vi/Vi-Vi' Carmelia

Alias: Stitched

Age: 26

Gender: Female

Affiliation: Neither; Was once a part of Overwatch's Blackwatch program but now she works with Satya in the Vishkar Corporation.

Backstory: Violet lived a rather peaceful life before the Omnic Crisis. She grew up in southern Texas, her homeland being one of the many cities that developed in poverty and by Violet's recreation, it was not a good place to live in. Violet is also a person with very heightened anxiety, she prefers her environments to be tidy, quiet and free of distractions. Seeing the potential in her, one of Vishkar's leading members took her in under the command of the gonverment of the area in exchange for money. Isolated and forbidden to return to her home, Violet busied herself with both the classes and the training of the new equipment that the company gaver her access to. Unlike the rest of her peers who used the equipment in a construction manor, Violet used it much like the old habits she formed at her home, the act of knitting and sewing. Hench her given name, 'Stitched.' She quicky grew in ranks and her classes before she ened up joining Satya at the Rio de Janeiro field mission.

Weapon of Choice: A submachine gun. It is a gun similar to Symmerta's Photon Projecter yet uses the power of Electrons to create hard-light bullets. The gun is known as a 'Electron Enforcer.' It holds 90 Bullets and used a 'clip' to recharge. All shots fired from this gun have a small knock back effect from the electrons repelling whatever it happens to come in contact with.

Appearance/Face Claim: Amy Nelson.

Nationality: American/Indian

Health: 250; 150 Health, 100 Shields.

Abilities:

Primary Fire- Right Trigger- Electron Enforcer.

Stitched rapid fires small needle shaped bullets from three chambers in her gun, each chamber holding 30 bullets with each bullet doing around 4 damage each. After each chamber is emptied (The chambers empty out one at a time) the gun repels enemies within a one meter radius until the gun in fired again.

Secondary Fire- Left Trigger- Electron Enforcer

The gun charges up a large needle shaped bullet to shoot and repel enemies at the cost of ten ammo, meaning the gun would have to be reloaded after nine shots from the secondary fire; very useful for long range in comparison to the short range of the primary fire.

Switch Weapons- D-Pad- Darting

Stitched exchanges her gun for duel wielding sewing needles called Dartings. These needles are made out of hard light snd are msotly used for melee damage yet can be thrown during one of her abilities. They do roughly 50 damage per strike.

Ability 1- Right Bumper- Yarn-Ball

Stitched uses a capsule filled with the same Electron bullets to throw at her enemies. If the Balling directly hit an enemy, it locks them in place while repeling all other enemies within a two meter radius.

Ability 2- Left Bumper- Threading

Stitched throws one of her sewing needles at an enemy and if it lands on the enemy, it brings the enemy closer, if it doesn't land on an enemy and instead lands on an object, it brings Stitched to the object.

Ultimate- Triangle- Patchwork

Stitched takes her two sewing needles and attatchs yarn to them before trowing them at nearby walls. The two needles connect and blocks off the enemy team with damage if they try to enter through it. The patched wall has holes in it that both teams can see through. Since the needles don't reach all the way up, the ally players could walk across the tops of the needles if they wanted to. This last for 12 seconds.

Era: Petras

Class: Damage

Love Interest: Symmerta

Difficulty: 3 Stars (***)

Other: Along with her heightened anxiety, she also suffers from paranoia.

Name: Void Hanagan

Alias: None. He just goes by Void.

Age: Around 42

Gender: Transgender from Female to Male.

Affiliation: Overwatch (Formally) Talon (Current)

Backstory: Physically abused and abandoned by his father at around age 5. Void was stranded within the busy sector of Kings Row. He was taken in by a young Ana Amari and raised as her own. After being taken in by Ana, he was also partially 'raised' by Zenyatta starting when he was around age 18, the monk helped Void control his anger and frustration as well as gave him coping mechanisms for his schizophrenia. He was taught and trained by what was his family at the Overwatch HQ. Once Overwatch was disbanded due to the Petras Act, Void fell into hiding, becoming a guns for hire until Overwatch was recalled. During several missions before the Petras act, Void was forced to gain several prosthetics due to a lack of safety on his regard. He is currently residing with Talon due to the Blackwatch controversay

Weapon of Choice: A semi-automatic gun nicknamed 'Cosmic' The gun has two scythe heads located on the top of it.

Appearance/Face Claim: He wears a deep navy blue jacket that holds a galaxy pattern with the hood appearing like a black hole. He makes use of a protruding black, diamond shaped helmet that has a shaded visor to protect his eyes. He wears reinforced blue jeans as well as calf high, black combat boots that have white stars near the bottom. His face claim is Matthew Patrick/MatPat. His hair is a deep brunette with his eyes being a hazel color. If you were to look closely, his right arm, from his shoulder downwards, is robotic. His spine was also replaced as was his left leg. Both replacements being synthetic and/or robotic. He is 5'4" and weighs 162 pounds, being a bit on the chubby side.

Nationality: Arabic/American

Abilities:

Primary Fire- Cosmic:

His Primary Fire is a semi automatic gun that has a maximum number of bullets, that being 85. The bullets are easily depleted within a five second period and use a clip to reload, each bullet does about 7 damage, meaning it would take you about two-three clips to kill a Roadhog or a Winston.

Health: 350. (200 Health, 150 Armor, affecred by Torb's Molten Core bonus on armored enemies)

Ability 1- Right Bumper- Hyperspace

Void charges forward with his head lowered to inflict 75 damage and stun a target directly in front of him. It, in turn, will stun Void if he hits an object instead (This includes any Shields, Orisa's Supercharger, Torb's Turret or Symmerta's Teleporter (All Enemy items)) This has a six second cooldown.

Ability 2- Left Bumper- Supernova

Depending on the number of allies nearby, Void will gain shields to himself to held guard against enemies, with no allies around, the base amount of shields given is 100. This has an eight second cooldown.

Ability 3- Left Trigger- Blackhole

Void sprints to the nearest high platform at the cost of 50 Armor, once his 150 Armor has been depleted, this ability has a twn secons cooldown in order to let the armor recharge. (Does not affect armor given from Brigette's Rally or Repair Pack)

Ability 4- D-Pad- Comet

Void shoots off one/both of the scythe head(s) from off of the top of his gun to give a 'Shutdown' effect to an enemy, this effect shuts down an enemies passive ability, if they do not have a passive, it inflicts 50 damage. This also reveals the location of the enemy to Void and can be placed like a Widowmaker Venom mine.

Ultimate- Triangle- Extrasensory

Void makes use of his adaptive shields by spreading it to his teammates within a ten meter range: This act allows him to absorb the damage they are delt and return it two-fold, this lasts for 8 seconds.

Era: Founder

Class: Damage-Tank Hybrid

Love Intrest: Siberian Du Kuiplr

Difficulty: 3 Stars (***)

Other: He suffers from heavy schizophrenia, having many reoccurring nightmares as well as visual and auditory hallucinations. He is known to disassociate and he had a long history with anger issues.

Other 2: He is good friends with Xavier.

Heroes/Quotes:

Void/Quotes

Hero Selected

"Don't need a big name to break the mold"

(This is a reference to how planets are named after their discovery)

During Set Up

"Is it possible to reach space from here?"

"The stars are aligning tonight."

"Bright night. Good fight."

"Entertain yourself with the idea of creation."

"Lets' make this space something worth while!"

Respawn

"Look at the stars"

"Well, That wasn't supposed to happen."

"Get into the fight!"

"Entertain the cosmos."

"Reach into the void."

"Let's try that again."

"A cosmic shutdown."

"The cycle will continue on."

On Fire

"I am on fire!"

"The stars align with me! Stay out of my way!"

"The universe is on fire!"

Damage Boosted

"This power? A gift from above."

"Rain down upon our enemies"

"Strike like a black hole."

Nano boosted

"I feel unstoppable!"

"I'm Unstoppable!"

"The multiverse has empowered me!"

Discord Orb Recieved/Northstar Destroyed

"Crap!"

"Damn!"

Voted Epic (5 votes)

"The universe thanks you."

"I knew I could help!"

Voted Legendary (10 votes)

"The universe has chosen me."

"Aw! Thank you!"

Enemy Resurrection

"They rise like the stars*

Resurrected

"I return"

Heroes/Communications

Void/Communications

Hello

"Heya!"

"Hi!"

Need Healing

"Need Healing!"

"I gotta get some healing!"

"Hey Doc!"

(When hidden interaction with Zenyatta) "I need Harmony!"

Group Up

"Group up with me!"

"Group up!"

"Yo! Group up here!"

Ultimate Status

(0-90%) "Extrasensory is charging"

(0-90%) "My ultimate is charging"

(91-99%) "Extrasensory is almost ready!"

(91-99%) "Almost ready with Extrasensory!"

(100%) "Heads Up! Exteasensory is ready!"

(100%) "Hey! Extrasensory is ready to pop!"

Voicelines

Void's Guide "Void's Guide to the Galaxy" (Default Voice Line)

Planets  "Some planets are much smaller than you would think"

A New Discovery "A New Discovery is always exciting!"

You stared "You stared into the void, and it stared back"

Fun Fact "Fun Fact, Blackholes are actually invisible"

Watch Out! "احترس"

Follow Me! "اتبعني"

Gathering Shadows? "What's this about gathering shadows?"

I love stars "I love the bright stars"

I couldn't "I couldn't stand you if I tried"

Acknowledge

"I got you"

"Understood"

Thanks

"Thank you!"

"Thanks!"

[ansu-gurleht]

let's talk metaphysics, friends and countrymen. i should preface this by saying it's my interpretation of the lore, and that im borrowing a good bit from other theories before me. but my goal here is to make what i believe as clear as possible.

first, to set the scene, allow me to present an appropriate frankensteined quote:

"In heaven as it is on earth ... the whole of the law is do as thou wilt." - Matthew 6:10 and Aleister Crowley

and finally, before the readmore, here's the essence of what i believe about the metaphysics of the elder scrolls universe:

in this universe, the driving forces aren't any laws of physics, but the desires, wants, wills, hopes, dreams, and ideas of its inhabitants, from ancient deities to mortal men and mer to the meekest beasts to the world itself. everything is made from what people want, think, and believe, both individually and collaboratively.

that said, i do NOT consider the world to be the "dream" of some sort of "godhead" or "amaranth." it is all very real, and the fact that its existence is determined by desires is real, too. i don't adhere to the meta theory that the setting's core is inherently fictional - in our world, it is, but in theirs, it is very real.

with that out of the way, it's important i establish one of the most important bits of terminology i'll be using here: AE. AE is what you might could call a "soul" or similar unique essence that every being possesses, but it's more than that, really. it's the desire to exist as a separate, unique being, as well as the desires that being possesses.

AE is also its own power source in this universe. in our world, we can want something to be done, or imagine it, but that doesn't make it so without putting in effort to make it reality. in the world of the elder scrolls, the simple desire for something to happen greatly influences its possibility of happening. the stronger the AE, the more power it holds, meaning it has greater sway over the outcomes of reality.

the way that the universe (what we would call the aurbis) began was that the First AE (capitalized to distinguish it from other AEs, as it’ll be important later) willed itself to exist. that’s a very primal sort of AE. you see, back then, there wasn’t anything except the Void, which also wasn’t anything, either. it’s a bit confusing, but think of it as the concept of “nothingness” but completely stripped of all of our ideas and connotations. true “nothingness” in this way is actually quite a bit different from, say, empty space.

if you know anything about quantum physics, i might have another way to describe it. (if you know a lot about quantum physics, i’m sorry that i’m probably wrong.) the absolutely most basic, smallest level of the universe (our real life one, that is) is these things we call “strings” that “float” in a quantum “foam.” those strings are sort of like how you always see waveforms drawn in physics classes or whatever, except instead of a drawing, they’re actually millions of times smaller than atoms, and they make up the fabric of our reality.

the particular wavelength and form of a quantum string determines what exists “at that point” in space. so some strings say, “this is a quark,” or “this is a neutrino,” or “this is just a photon with a red wavelength.” what i’ve called “quantum foam” is basically the somewhat chaotic nature of these strings at that smallest level. some strings just do whatever and don’t care. they change back and forth from zero energy to being an electron and back again, but the overall difference is basically cancelled out, so you can’t really say anything was ever there at all.

that is what the Void in the elder scrolls is like. it’s an infinitely empty space carrying unfulfilled potential for existence. things could happen there, and sometimes do, but just as often things don’t, and the things that happen are so minimal, or get cancelled out by their opposite thing, that it doesn’t really mean anything to say something happened at all.

so what’s the First AE, the thing that created the Aurbis? the first thing that was ever “desired” in that universe was for something to exist separately from the Void. due to the chaotic nature of the void, this sorta necessitated that the Aurbis would be a bit less chaotic. it was absolutely chaotic at the beginning, with a lot going on all at once. but you could actually ascribe meaning to things, even though it may be convoluted or difficult to understand.

to speak in terms of in-universe sources, you could call the First AE “Anu” and the Void “Padomay.” however, i’m not going to be mentioning them much, especially not as sentient entities of their own. they’re really just the purest cosmic essence of order and chaos, meaning and meaninglessness. kinda.

but, essentially, the First AE is something like, “i wanna be Anu and you can be Padomay.” so a zero becomes ... either one or two, depending on how you look at it. do you count padomay? or is padomay still a zero?

i’d say both! as soon as anu is “born,” padomay is also born. you could say anu = 1, and padomay = 0, but padomay does NOT equal the same 0 as it did before. before, padomay was that “primordial” zero, the one without any meaning. but by anu Willing itself to exist, it gives padomay the meaning Not-Anu. before, padomay had no defining characteristics. now, its single defining characteristic is that it is separate from anu.

anyways, the aurbis, in its own weird way, is also infinite like padomay/the Void is. it’s a lesser infinity, but comparing the sizes of infinities is confusing, so i’m not going to dwell on that. suffice to say, it’s also infinite. and it’s packed full of something similar to what the Void is filled of, but also very different. it’s got stuff happening, but a lot of stuff doesn’t immediately get undone. what it’s filled with is what we call “creatia,” which is the Stuff that everything is made of. an important distinction: it’s Stuff, not Things. it’s got this limitless potential to Exist as Things, but it has to be MADE into particular Things. otherwise, it’s just random stuff. kinda like legos that haven’t been built into anything, except the legos can take on basically any shape they want.

keyword: want. there’s room in this aurbis for other AEs, too! the first one after the First AE is basically, “well, i wanna be separate from anu too” and becomes separate, but in a .... very particular way. as i said, the aurbis is infinite, which means that there’s endless possibilities in the way AEs can manifest. it’s sort of like, anu wanted to exist just so something existed. all the AEs that come after want to exist for a reason, and each one has a different reason.

anyways, after that second AE, a bunch more start cropping up really fast, and a lot of them are VERY different from each other. think of it like this: if the aurbis is infinite, and you randomly pick out a chunk (represented as a number), you could get like, a 41. or a 291196283494. or a 6290. you can get a bunch of wildly different Things. an infinite bunch, actually.

unfortunately, because just about all of these brand new Things that exist are very different, their AEs don’t get along. one will say “i want to exist as a banana,” and another will say, “well, i want to exist as a fast-breeding animal that only eats bananas, and is really, really good at it.” (that’s a probably bad, and admittedly weird/random example, but hopefully it illustrates my point.)

let’s look at this from a real-world astrophysics lens again: at the beginning of our universe, the first things that existed were either matter or antimatter. except they really didn’t get along, and if they met each other they’d get into a fight and both die. explosively. and also, the universe wasn’t too big, so there wasn’t a lot of room, and they ran into each other a lot. 

you could say the tes universe is similar. a lot of Things existing that don’t get along, and fighting all the time. except if one wins, it either absorbs the other into itself, or the loser just ... stops existing. there’s an infinite amount of aurbis to go around, for sure. but this particular period of its “history” went on (and might still be going on) for an infinite amount of time. Things and Ideas and Stories and People and Places all fighting over who gets to be Real, or really, who gets to be the Realest. it all depends on which one has the strongest AE, which one wants it the most. and all these Things are developing as they fight and absorb each other, becoming even more unique, becoming even more sure in their AE.

so what we end up with, in tes, is basically a bunch of these spirits we call the et’ada. it’s just a loose conglomerate of entities that were basically the strongest of the bunch.

one of the most well known of them, lorkhan, had a really strong AE. but he didn’t really feel like fighting anybody, or hanging out with the cool kids, so to speak. he’d been around for a long time, and felt kinda disenchanted with the whole thing. so he just kinda wandered around the aurbis, looking for stuff to do, or see, or talk to, hoping to try and justify his existence. because his AE to exist was strong, but he wasn’t sure why.

at some point he somehow finds the “edge” of the aurbis, the boundary between anu and padomay. and he walks out into the Void, and then turns around. and he sees the 1, the whole, completely separate from everything else and containing multitudes within itself. and lorkhan realizes .... something. something utterly transcendental, as i imagine what looking at all of existence would do to you. and with that realization, he also realized why he wanted to exist.

he went to his friends, the other spirits, and said, “good news, guys! i found something really cool and special, and i want to show you all!”

and they said, “ok, uh, what’s your name again?” a lot of them had heard about him, but didn’t know too much about him.

“oh, lorkhan,” he said. they asked him where it was, and he said, “oh, we have to go out into the Void to see it.”

some folks didn’t even know what he was on about. what’s the Void anyway? but there was one guy who was old enough to know. he was some cranky old dragon guy obsessed with clocks. and he said, “uh, hell no, are you crazy? if you go out into the void you’ll stop existing and probably die.”

dragon dude, aka akatosh, was pretty popular, almost the most popular probably, so everyone was immediately on his side. but lorkhan said, “well, i went out and i was fine! trust me guys it’s REALLY cool.”

and akatosh said, “it’s probably because you’re a freak, some kinda mutant that barely exists anyway.” and lorkhan didn’t really know how to respond, and everybody left him, whispering to each other about how he was a freak.

so lorkhan thought about this. he thought long and hard. how do i make them believe me? how do i make them understand that they need to see this? he talked with some of his other, kinda outcasty friends. eventually, he came up with an idea. he went to who was probably his most popular friend and told her about his plan. her name was kynareth, and he wanted to know if she would vouch for him if he presented this to some of the other big guys in town. she was absolutely delighted and promised that she would kick up a hurricane if she had to to get his plan going.

so everybody gets together and lorkhan tells them his plan. since everybody was being chicken and wouldn’t go see it themselves, lorkhan figured the next best thing was to make a miniature model of what he wanted to show them. the best way he figured to do this was by making a world.

now, the aurbis wasn’t a stranger to worlds at this point. the thing is, saying “this point” doesn’t hold a lot of meaning, because back then, time was a mess. it wasn’t a linear line like we understand it. it was chaotic, with effects happening without anything causing it, and weird loops of effects, just a lot of time nonsense, really. but every now and again somebody would have the idea “let me make a place of my own and try to make some sense of it,” and so they would. these were usually pretty small scale worlds created only by one spirit. 

i don’t have much to support this particularly theory, but i believe that the act of “establishing linear time” isn’t something just limited to akatosh. he’s responsible for it on nirn, but on other worlds, that may have just fallen to whoever their creator was. so what we end up with is a sort of time stew, where the “water” is all the crazy time nonsense without any order happening, and the chunks of meat and vegetables or whatever are the timelines of these worlds. those pocket timelines are what you could call “kalpas.”

we know very little about other kalpas. we know of only one by name: lyg, which was an ocean world ruled by the dreugh, which are kinda like lobster people, and it was ruled (and possibly created by) molag bal. whether or not he was an asshole at the time, like he is now, isn’t certain. all we know is that it’s said the “magna-ge” (who i don’t think technically existed yet, so this probably refers to simply other et’ada in the aurbis) “created” mehrunes dagon to destroy lyg and defeat molag bal, which he did. there’s also good reason to suspect that the hist trees that argonians worship, as well as perhaps yokuda or akavir, come from other kalpas. also, apparently the ayleid king umaril’s dad was from another kalpa, but that’s all we really know.

anyways, back to the main story. lorkhan tells everybody this idea, and with a little strong-arming from kynareth, everybody agrees to contribute and help out. some people were really enthusiastic, like this guy named magnus, who offered to be the world’s architect and help design it.

first things first: they needed to make room for the world. so in the “middle” of the aurbis (the aurbis is kinda infinite, so there’s technically no middle. you could call it maybe the “metaphysical” center of the aurbis, perhaps a place with the strongest concentration of creatia), they made a big “bubble” that kept the aurbis out, and the “mundus,” as it came to be called, in. 

then, they started the real work. they took the creatia they had sectioned off and started building in earnest. some folks even offered up some of the scraps from their own personal world projects to help. (this is how those other kalpas intersect with ours, and why nirn has dreugh, and umaril’s dad, and maybe yokuda, akavir, and hist.) it was all going pretty well, and most folks were getting into it. maybe even that akatosh guy, but he’s just a grumpy asshole, so who cares.

but uh, people started getting sick. and weak. and uh. dead. it was weird and so they talked to lorkhan about it. he said, “oh, uh, yeah. about that. you see, uh. that kinda has to happen for this to work, because this thing’s gonna need a lot of creatia and divine energy and stuff, so-” 

but most people stopped listening after hearing he knew people would die for this, and started yelling and grabbing torches and pitchforks and stuff. even magnus and kynareth were upset. and akatosh jumped on all this hating-lorkhan energy, because he really hates lorkhan, and decided they should all get together and talk about this somewhere. maybe some place fancy, and kinda powerful. magnus said, “i got you, my man,” and built a fancy tower, that was also powerful, from some of his building notes he’d made with lorkhan.

so what happened on the top of that tower was Convention. akatosh convinced everybody to kill lorkhan, except he wouldnt die, not even when he made his loyal knight trinimac literally rip his heart out. so akatosh said “fuck it” and stuck it on an arrow and shot it across the world.

so lorkhan’s dealt with, and now everybody had to decide what to do. magnus was feeling really betrayed and sad and kinda guilty so he said, “i’m just gonna leave.” and a bunch of his friends and family left with him, just kinda shooting through the bubble from mundus to aurbis, like slamming open a door and not even bothering to close it behind you, to show how mad they were. that’s magnus, the sun, and the magna ge, the stars.

then some folks said, “yeah, i’m not really feeling this anymore, either, but we might as well see what happens to it, now that it’s almost done,” and they ran off to the empty space around the world, which they called oblivion, and made some little personal worlds to chill in, and occasionally screw with nirn from. those are the daedra.

some folks still wanted to see this work out, though. some, who had already given so much of themselves for this, decided to go all the way, and gave the rest of their divine essence to help stabilize the world. some of them decided to just stay and live there. these are the earthbones and the ehlnofey respectively.

akatosh and approximately seven of his friends (the aedra) were like, “i guess we’ll look like assholes if we don’t give a little more to help too....” so they did, but then they also hightailed it out of there. they also poked holes in the bubble, but they kinda just.....stood in the doorway? mundus in front, aurbis in the back kinda deal. but one of the most important things akatosh did before he left was straighten out time on nirn so that effect usually always followed the cause, so we have linear time. (he’s an asshole, and not very competent, and fucks up a lot, sometimes for like, a thousand years at a time, but, i guess he tried.)

okay, that’s sort of the history stuff out of the way. let’s talk about whatever the hell CHIM is, and what Towers are, and all that.

so, basically, what lorkhan saw when he looked at the aurbis from the void was The Tower, which is also the First AE. now, it’s not a literal tower. that’s mostly metaphor. but in this world, ideas are reality, so the metaphor is real, too. 

that’s important because it means that even though it’s this huge, nearly incomprehensible thing, you can use different ideas and metaphors to represent it to make it easier to understand. 

in essence, what The Tower represents is power and the pure essence of will. it’s the first thing to exist, so it has to be very powerful, and be very strong in its desire to exist. that power and desire sort of colors everything that exists within it - so everything within anu/the First AE is in some way always going to be similar to it. if anu contains every thing that exists within it, that means anu always has at least one relationship with them: that they exist within it and because of it. in this way it has a sort of power over everything that is derived from it.

so technically, The Tower, a.k.a. anu, is the “First Tower,” but we don’t usually call it that, mostly because while time itself begins with its creation, linear time doesn’t. so it’s hard to say what comes first. but literally the first thing that happens on nirn is the creation and establishment of the first Tower, the adamantine tower, on the top of which Convention was held, lorkhan killed, etc. the one who was in control of Convention, akatosh, is therefore the “ruler” of that tower.

remember that i said a metaphor actually embodies what it represents. so the adamantine tower is in a way THE Tower, or at the very least a very potent reflection of it. it embodies the same, or a very similar power, which is to say it holds a great amount of sway of what’s within it. now, in this case, it’s not necessarily what’s within adamantine tower - it’s what surrounds it, and what it represents. it is surrounded by much of the continent tamriel, and it represents the establishment of linear time by akatosh. it essentially amplifies and solidifies the AE of its “ruler” and gives it much more control over reality than it would otherwise. it can turn an ant into a god, if an ant somehow became “ruler” of a tower like that.

you may notice i keep saying “ruler” in quotation marks. it’s a bit of a strange concept. sometimes “ruler” means a towers’ creator or commissioner, sometimes it means the person who “owns” the tower, sometimes it simply represents the will of the people within its “jurisdiction.” in the case of adamantine tower, its “ruler” is not magnus, who made it, but almost exclusively akatosh. it’s his will that it guarantees, his AE that it amplifies. generally, one who wishes to be “ruler” of a tower must already have a great deal of power, either physical, magical, ideological, political, etc. akatosh had a lot of basically every kind, but mostly political, i think.

the et’ada made the first tower, and inadvertently the second (red mountain), but it was mortals who made the rest. each tower has a “stone,” which is sort of like the thing that really holds it together, a way to properly attune to The Tower. adamantine tower has some kinda unknown stone; red mountain’s stone is literally lorkhan’s heart. one of the most significant and well-known towers, the white-gold tower in cyrodiil, has as its stone the chim-el adabal, the great big red stone in the amulet of kings, which is said to be the crystallized blood of lorkhan’s heart as it passed over cyrodiil on its way to vvardenfell. 

there are other towers: the orichalc tower of yokuda, about which little is known except that it’s probably no longer active; snow-throat, which is the throat of the world mountain in skyrim, with a stone said to be a “cave”; green-sap, which is not one tree but many trees in valenwood, whose stone is the “perchance acorn” that grew it; crystal-like-law in summerset isle, with a stone called “transparent law” that fell in and likely deactivated during the oblivion crisis at the end of the 3rd era; and most notably, walk-brass.

walk-brass tower was created by the dwemer to be a perfect god. also called numidium, anumidium, akulakhan, etc., it has had a profound influence on the history of tamriel. its heart has changed a couple of times: first, it was also the heart of lorkhan, but this was later replaced by the mantella, an extremely powerful soulgem which contained the soul of the underking ysmir, and the imperial battlemage zurin arctus. numidium is associated with several “un-time events,” also known as “dragon breaks” because it’s basically when akatosh fucks up keeping time. it made its creators, the dwemer, disappear in the 1st era; something happened when it was activated after being rebuilt in rimmen, elsweyr; and it’s responsible for the mess that is the warp in the west, which is how daggerfall made all of its many endings canon.

really, the only major towers, at least in game so far, have been numidium, red mountain, and white-gold. numidium, as well as its recreation as akulakhan, feature heavily in daggerfall and morrowind; red mountain also serves as a major plot point and set piece in morrowind; and white-gold is a set piece in oblivion, as well as a perennial prize that has been fought over throughout history. also - all of these towers are no longer active. most towers are no longer active, if any. the ramifications of this isn’t really known, but are probably bad.

red mountain is of special note because its stone, the heart of lorkhan, was able to be tapped into via special dwemer tools to grant individuals godlike powers. this is how the tribunal - vivec, almalexia, and sotha sil - as well as their enemy dagoth ur, achieved their godhood. it’s not really known if this is a potential property of any tower, or if the stone of red tower being the literal heart of a god made it unique.

but godlike power is not the only kind of power these towers provide. they are a way for powerful people to manipulate the surrounding reality as they see fit, merely by willing it so. for instance, the white-gold tower, being one of the most powerful, has helped solidify the various empires that have obtained it, from the first empire of alessia to the most recent of the septims. (since it was deactivated at the end of the 3rd era, it’s unlikely the mede empire enjoys its benefits.)

the tribunal used the power of red mountain (and specifically, its heart) to establish their divine rule over morrowind; the dwemer wished to become perfect and divine; dagoth ur tried to do the same with akulakhan; green sap of valenwood binds its people to the green pact; white-gold has served as the empire’s capital and seat of power for millennia; and you could perhaps say that snow throat of skyrim gives the greybeards their power and isolation, as well. a tower is a political power as much as it is a metaphysical one. in fact, since ideas shape reality in the elder scrolls, those two powers are the same!

now let’s wrap this up by talking about chim and mantling for a second. a lot has been said about chim, and i think probably too much. if we go by what i’ve outlined as the essential nature of reality (that ideas directly shape reality) and The Tower, a.k.a. the First AE (the first thing to ever exist that encompasses everything that exists), some of what vivec has said about chim, and smudge some of the lines here and there, we can simplify it a lot.

essentially, chim is the closest you can get to what lorkhan saw when he looked back on the First AE from the Void. it’s not actually possible for mere mortals to achieve that; the closest we can do is sort of like a training exercise, kind of like sparring, except we’re sparring with the nature of reality itself. 

let’s break this down really clean. say some bloke, let’s call them ceviv, wants to get enlightened, or something. ceviv has this thing in them that makes them exactly who they are, and no one else; they have an essential spiritual essence that clearly says, “this here is ceviv, and that there is the rest of the world, but that’s not me, and i’m not that.” 

now, we’ve already established that the sum of existence, “anu,” is very much the same. it possesses an intrinsic nature that says, “this here is anu, and that there is The Void, a.k.a. my brother padomay, but he’s not me, and i’m not him.”

now let’s say ceviv looks anu dead in the eye and says, “this here is ceviv, and that there is anu, but why is he not me, and why am i not him?” the intended revelation, of course, is that “oh, he is me, and i am him.” except, if you’re anu, and not ceviv, then ceviv doesn’t exist anymore. that’s what “zero-summing” is. it’s realizing you’re part of “capital-G God,” but in the process losing sight of what part. 

but let’s say ceviv has a really strong AE. they’ve really been hitting the spiritual-essence-of-existence gym. they look into anu’s eyes and say, “this here is ceviv, and that there is anu, and i am him, but he is not me.” anu contains ceviv, but isn’t ceviv; for anu to admit he was just ceviv would mean he’s not the hugely infinite thing he actually is. 

the result of that outcome is chim. it’s saying, “i’m God, but God isn’t me.” you’re placing yourself on the same playing field as anu, but you’re also separating yourself from him by retaining your AE, the borders of your being.

except.....not quite. like i said, in the mundus, that sort of ultimate achievement isn’t quite possible. within mundus there is something of a simulacrum of anu that you can do this to, and it puts you on even ground with that, meaning you blow your AE up to the size of mundus, but not the aurbis as a whole. lorkhan is literally the only person, as far as we know, who has done the latter. so vivec’s cool and all, pretty powerful metaphysically or whatever, but he’s still not the coolest.

ok, let me clarify mantling, because it’s a related concept. the saying “walk like them until they walk like you” is a pretty good summary. basically, it’s doing the chim thing, but instead of looking anu in the face, you look somebody else within anu in the face. you say, “this here is me, that there is you, and i am you, and you are me,” similar to the zero-sum. except since you’re not comparing yourself to the whole of existence, it’s possible to work it out without ceasing to exist. it’s basically a battle of AEs - whichever one wants to be “it” the most. 

just like we say that gods and daedra and what-have-you have “spheres of influence” or “dominions” or whatever, which is basically just whatever their particular thing is (hermaeus mora’s about that forbidden knowledge, clavicus vile’s about those deals, mara’s about lovey-dovey shit). technically, though, you don’t have to be a god or whatever to have a “sphere.” everybody sort of has their “thing,” which is usually just, you know, you doing you. but nobody wants to metaphysically become something that boring. no offense. 

so basically you just start copying them and doing what they do. naturally you can’t just all of a sudden BE them. you’re still you, you’re just doing what they do. but if you do it right, you might almost convince the other guy that you actually ARE them. then they’ll start copying you, too. and eventually, there’s not really any way to tell who’s who, and if it even matters, anyways. that’s mantling.

okay, i’ve been sitting on this post and working on it for too long, so if i missed anything, well, i never called this a masterpost. but absolutely feel free to add your own ideas or ask if you need anything explained better! i’m always willing to help!

[psyched2b]

These are great 😀 29 43 80? And how about Bruce Banner? The man has hulk smashed my heart 😩 ✏️

After forever and a day…HERE YOU GO! SOME BRUCIE BABY!!!!

Warnings: Like…two swear words and a very confused Bruce.

29. I’m not weird, you’re just basic.43. Are you trying to flirt? Because you’re just embarrassing yourself. 80. “I’m going to shower.” - “Pft. Don’t I get an invite?”

It was your typical Thursday night where you and your husband stayed in and got work done in the lab.

To clarify, Bruce worked on research and you surfed the web….doing your own research.

But really, your job was to make sure that Bruce didn’t get completely sucked into his work. If it weren’t for you, he would spend days and days behind his telescope. You kept him in the present.

Or at least, you tried.

It was going on for four days that he hasn’t kissed you. He hasn’t even touched you.

And you’ve had enough.

“Hey, Bruce?” you call over from your beanbag chair. It was your idea. If the only way you were going to get time with your husband was to hang out in his lab, you sure as heck was going to do it comfortably. Even if Bruce grumbled about it.

Bruce makes a noise of acknowledgment but otherwise doesn’t react.

You suck on your teeth and remind yourself of your goal.

“You’re hotter than a Bunsen burner turned up all the way.”

Your flirtation causes the man to pause, his eyes flick in your direction for a half second before promptly returning back to the slide under the scope. “That sounds incredibly dangerous and is a fire hazard. Why would you turn a burner all the way up?”

You just blink in response. At least you got 19 words from him.

You let out a sigh and turn back to the tablet in your hands, contemplating your next move.

Bruce is able to work in silence for several minutes until your next idea comes to you.

You get up from your seat and move to stand next to the working man, close enough to feel the heat radiating off of him. You rest your hip against the edge of the table, cross your arms, and stare the man down.

“According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, you are supposed to share your hotness with me.”

Triumph surges through you when you see the blush cover his face and go down his neck.

He stops what he’s doing and looks up from his work and makes eye contact with you for the first time in what feels like forever.

You watch with amusement as he pulls his glasses off his face and fiddles with them. Hazel eyes meet yours and you see the confusion swimming in them.

Bruce clears his throat. “Why are you being so weird?”

You narrow your eyes and scoff. “I’m not being weird. You’re just basic.” Pain hits your heart for a moment, unable to keep from being disappointed that your chem flirtations weren’t working. Instead, you paste a flirtatious smile on your face. “Maybe I’m just trying to coerce you into my bed.”

Bruce blinks. “But…why? We’re already married. What more do you want?”

You can’t stop the gasp that spills from your lips, your body tense as you feel yourself go on the defense. “Okay, wow. I can take the hint. I know when I’m not wanted.” You let out a disappointed sigh and shake your head.

Turning away, you walk over your plush chair, gather your things, and head for the door.

You pause just before exiting. “I’m going to bed,” you say tersely.  “See you…next time, I guess.”

You look longingly at your husband one last time before departing, heading for your rooms.

This left Bruce alone and confused. Despite having multiple Ph.D.’s, one thing he knew for certain was that he would never fully understand was the mind of a woman.

“Banner is an idiot.” Hulk comments in the back of Bruce’s mind. “Hulk take good care of pretty lady.”

Bruce’s brow furrows. “What do you mean I’m an idiot?” he asks aloud.

Hulk brings up the harsh words the Bruce unwittingly said.

“Shit!”

You enter your room and throw your phone and tablet on the bed and head for your closet.

Logically, you know you should be as upset as you are, but dammit. Touch is important!

Huffing, you start to dig through the clothes to find your favorite “lazy” clothes.

A long soak in the tub with a bath bomb would soothe your soul.

You hear heavy footsteps outside in the hall leading up to your door followed by the squeak of a rusty hinge.

You force yourself to take a deep breath, eyes squeezed tight, the tips of your fingers pressing heavily to your temple, rubbing in circular motions.

A very deep part of you was glad that you were able to get your husband out of the lab, but the bigger part was miffed at how it happened. Why couldn’t he think before he spoke?

You keep your back to the closet door and resume your search for a specific pair of cotton shorts you sold your soul for. You ignored the presence of Bruce who was standing awkwardly behind you.

He was unsure of what to say.

You weren’t going to help him.

Locating the evasive shorts, you snatch them from their spot and turn to exit the closet, not even sparing a glance towards Bruce.

You don’t miss the wince he gives as he turns his body to follow your moving form.

He clears his throat. “Y/N?” You ignore him. “I want to stick to you like glucose.”

You scoff, but otherwise, don’t comment.

“Uh. Maybe….I. You are a photon quanta to my valence electron because you eh - excite me to a higher energy level.”

You bite your lip to hide the grin that threatens to take over. If he thought parroting back a few pickup lines were going to break you, he had another thing coming.

You turn your head to look at him from over your shoulder, an unimpressed look on your face. “Are you trying to flirt? Because you are just embarrassing yourself.”

He gives you an apologetic look. “What I said in the lab, that wasn’t okay and it wasn’t what I meant. As your husband and partner in life, it is my responsibility to make sure that you are always my number one priority. And I failed.” He looked down at his hands, twisting his wedding band on his finger. “I know that you put up with a lot from me and I think - no, I do take that for granted. But,” he meets your gaze, “I will try better. And give you…love.”

Your hard expression cracks, empathy breaking through. “Yeah? Well, you’re all talk right now.”

A sheepish look takes over his expression, but he gives you a small smile. “Forget hydrogen, you’re my number one element.”

You laugh, the last of your defenses crumbling. Grabbing a towel from on top of a dresser, you say, “Speaking of hydrogen, I’m gonna shower.”

You enter the en-suite bathroom, extra sway in your hips.

Bruce perks up at this, his dark eyes following your form. He licks his lips, hands rubbing together. “Um, don’t I get an invite?”

You peek your head back out and give him a salacious grin.

“Fucking duh.”

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