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ClassicDrogn Wrote:I don't have any use to put it to per se, it's just a bunny. If no one else gets an idea too cool to pass up using it, it'll stay in the hutch. Limit per second, what I just said it would have. Where the heat goes is a better question, I'd forgotten that the 'wave doesn't do dimensional hijinx so there's no dithing it in hyperspace or an outerverse. Tesla's scalar waves maybe? Or it's just a superefficint transducer to hypergreen? Lasers and bullets, yes, no effect, but grapple, pry, or crushing work well. If it's essentially at 0K, then 'grappling, prying or crushing' it is a very bad idea. I won't bother mentioning the effects of flesh touching it directly.
Once your remote claw/vise/crowbar/whatever makes contact, it'll rapidly cool to down to at least near 0K itself, this will make the object brittle. At which point what ever is applying the force through the claw/ect will cause the material in contact with the Frigidium to shatter or break off depending the angle the force s being applied at.
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ClassicDrogn Wrote:When you input enough heat to make it destabilize, are you left with a silicon wafer, a cloud of vaporized dairy product, sweetener, and flavoring, and an explosion that sounds like a John Williams medley? Possibly a fireworks display of pew-pew lasers as well...
That's why I had Noah reference "Silence Please" (the first story in Tales from the White Hart). The story is about a device that silences an area. What happened to all the energy that went into making the sound waves? It went into the device... which exploded when it couldn't contain any more energy.
Hence Noah's reluctance to keep the frigidium sample on a populated station, and his willingness to give the sample to an explosives engineer.
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So... it's one of those things someone comes up with on a blue hair day, then decides is a little too difficult to handle for most purposes but might have some specialy applications, so they ship the samples off to a few BNFs known for vaguely responsible Science! when sanity returns?
(sarcasm)Wow, never seen that one...(/sarcasm)
So it gets filed under "Why?" in the Big Book o' Handwavium Hax with half the Professor's output and we know not to try to make 'super ice cream' in a 'waved cryogenic chiller.
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I tracked that story down and read it... as described it's the opposite of what actually happens (I've read about people getting popped eardrums from noise canceling headsets because the energy in the air is actually higher, they essentially work by filling in the troughs in the waveform) but I'll say it again, no max capacity, figuring out where the heat goes is why samples were passed out, max btu per second.
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I would suggest make it VERY cold (colder than space background radiation for example), but not 0 Kelvin... and give it a limit how much heat it can store per kg. That would still make it an interesting material without giving it all this "physics breaking/world destroying" capabilities.
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The 0k thing was just because if it absorbs all vibrations, well, heat is vibration. Hence the 'effectively' in front of that in the o.p., before everyone flipped over how dangerous ultracold would be.
New version - absorbs heat, deeply redshifts any emag that comes in contact, turns that energy into sound. John Williams symphonic score, theme music of the spheres style sound. Also damps out other sound (My themesong is the STRONGEST there is!) and as you approach the limit of btu/sec it starts to go out
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of tune, warning you that you'd better back off on the ol' afterburner or your heatsink is gonna go up in a cloud of cream, sugar, and mint flavored vapor. It doesn't work instantly, either, so while colder than the dark side of Pluto it's still possible to handle the stuff with appropriate precautions, and while highly resistant to impacts a big enough one or sustained force will have normal effects.
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ClassicDrogn Wrote:I tracked that story down and read it... as described it's the opposite of what actually happens (I've read about people getting popped eardrums from noise canceling headsets because the energy in the air is actually higher, they essentially work by filling in the troughs in the waveform) but I'll say it again, no max capacity, figuring out where the heat goes is why samples were passed out, max btu per second. Well, it was written before people actually started doing sound-dampening... but we all know what handwavium is like when old SF is involved.
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Might it be worthwhile writing up some specific application of this?
I could see it being used as a heat sink, with some other material (such as a liquid helium cooling system?) being used to buffer in-coming energy, or built-up heat, say from something you want to hide from IR detection.
If you are in a vacuum the sound output wouldn't be an issue, and you could build some nice stealth craft, or, a waved-up super conducting lattice and a cooling system would give you protection from laser or plasma attacks.
What happens when vacuum prevents it radiating off energy as sound?
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Sits there and vibrates more and more energetically until it hits a resonant frequency and shatters, I expect. That was the main reason I had the original dumping it into the zero point/superdimension/lifestream/??? and appearing to violate conservation of energy. Also because subverting the persistent FF meme of sucking the universe's blood for energy and actively increasing it by sucking heat/energy/entropy out instead was amusing, but everyone ignored that to shout "OMG NO BRAEK MA PHYSIKS!!!" instead.
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By all means, if you have some cool ideas for specific frigidium applications, lay 'em out, that's the point of a madbunny thread.
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Frigidium would make building an IR stealth system like the Normandy has very easy... and it would allow the stealth system to work without any time limit.
Not sure thats a good or a bad thing.
ClassicDrogn Wrote:Sits there and vibrates more and more energetically until it hits a resonant frequency and shatters, I expect. That was the main reason I had the original dumping it into the zero point/superdimension/lifestream/??? and appearing to violate conservation of energy. Also because subverting the persistent FF meme of sucking the universe's blood for energy and actively increasing it by sucking heat/energy/entropy out instead was amusing, but everyone ignored that to shout "OMG NO BRAEK MA PHYSIKS!!!" instead. I've no objection to breaking physics, as long as I know why it is a good idea...
FF = Final Fantasy?
If you want to really break things, just have the energy condense into equal masses of matter and anti-matter iron (Iron is in the middle of the fission-fusion curve), and keep them apart (magnetic suspension?) until you want to make things interesting.
Or, turn the energy into an invisible neutrino flux?
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If you want to really upset people, just turn the energy into Cuteness Radiation, and watch people's brains explode. [grin]
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Cooling system for a solar expedition a'la Sunprobe from the old Thunderbirds series? Heck, a really small lump might be useful to keep most spacecraft cooled. That's literally one of the issues out there, spacecraft literally have to be cooled, because there's nowhere to put the heat. Most cooling systems on Earth get to use conduction with the atmosphere to accomplish the task. There's nothing in space to conduct it to.
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Reverse Thermo-Scalar Transduction Material AKA Frigidium?
08-11-2012, 04:44 PM
Handwavium doesn't much like things that go boom, so getting it to produce actual antimatter should be a little trickier than that... Cuteness as a waste product of Cool seems somehow off as well, though. Seriously, my favorite was feeding scalar waves, or zero point energy, or superstring vibrations or something. Sound/music based fx are the standard go-to quirk.
Check out the RationalWiki article on Scalar Waves to see why labeling frigidium as a heat-to-scalar-wave transducer is my favorite one.
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ClassicDrogn Wrote:Cuteness as a waste product of Cool seems somehow off as well, though. Cue the "argument" between Tomo and Kaori in Azumanga Daioh:
"Cute is better!"
"No, cool is better!"
"No, cute is better!"
"No, cool is better!"
"No, cute is better!"
"No, cool is better!"
"No, cute is better!"
"No, cool is better!"
et cetera ad nauseum...
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ClassicDrogn Wrote:Handwavium doesn't much like things that go boom, so getting it to produce actual antimatter should be a little trickier than that... Cuteness as a waste product of Cool seems somehow off as well, though. Handwavium does seem much more fond of cute than boom...
Somehow safe anti-matter??? Lots of fizzle, no boom? Lots of blackened faces and frizzy hair?
(Honest, the anti-matter is nearly totally out-of-phase in meta space. Honest.)
Maybe a 'chill out' ray might be considered, or maybe an 'ubercute gun', that makes its targets, living or non-living, just stand around grinning, while little stars and hearts orbit their heads...
Possibly Off Topic, but does a (temporary) 'chibi-fication ray' sound feasible?
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Ace Dreamer Wrote:Possibly Off Topic, but does a (temporary) 'chibi-fication ray' sound feasible? A.C. and Kasumi did use some "Adorable Puppy" grenades in the http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... vitational]Second Annual Port Phobos Invitational, and Cobalt never did explain what their effect was.
And somebody tagged The Jason with a "Kawaii" grenade in the same match: Quote:I still reek of the thing...and it seems to make women view me as adorable. As in 'I will hug him and squeeze him and call him George!' adorable. I've been running from overgrown Elmyras for the last hour.
So there's precedent for the effect, if not for the delivery mechanism...
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If you re-read, you'll see that Kasumi (A.C. being on medical duty, and having R.S.V.P.'d the invite as not taking part. Not that it stopped some.) was targeting The Jason with the grenade, so I've taken them as being different names for the same thing.
Basically it hits the target with a synthetic pheromone analogue that make them seem unbelievably, adorably cute. Pretty much works as described in the story.
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Got it (on re-reading), yes...
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