Lone Courier 6
Devilish Fool
- Location
- United States of Quests
Because Speed Force.
With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Twelve)
- Thread starter Mr Zoat
- Start date
- Status
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You'd think that if anybody knew about the Speed Force, it'd be Barry Allen or Bart Allen, given that the former is the best scientist out of the various Flashes and the latter is from far enough in the future that he can be assumed to have any knowledge that the others picked up. So as far as I can tell, there is no Speed Force in this universe, which means that Flash should have to follow the laws of physics when he moves at superspeed.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
The main thing I remember is that the comic book Speed Force does a lot of work insulating its users from being killed by the laws of physics. The "default setting" for speedsters who use it is essentially having all of those safeties turned up to max, which means they don't have to worry about causing massive collateral damage (or getting horribly killed), but comes with the tradeoff that they can't exert force beyond what they'd normally be capable of; all of the friction/air pressure/inertia/etc produced by moving at super-speed just bleeds off into the Speed Force harmlessly, leaving the user with only their own muscle mass and combat knowledge to fight with.
In that system, things like sucking the oxygen from a room by windmilling your arms or run-around-the-world punches are possible because the person doing it has gotten good enough at channeling the Speed Force that they can safely tap into some of that excess energy and use it for themselves. In a similar vein, Barry vibrates through solid matter by fiddling with the mechanism the Speed Force uses to keep him from getting bugs splattered all over the front of his body when he goes running outside - the "default" setting automatically lets you phase through tiny bits of matter like that, so once you have a handle on the power you can adjust the settings to let you phase through other things as well.
Wally's issue in YJ is that he goofed up the formula, so he doesn't get the full benefits of that protective physics-proofing; instead of having 100% insulation from things like inertia and metabolic requirements, it's more like 80%, so he ends up needing to coast to a stop instead of just halting in place & has to eat all the time.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
The answer, as is so often the case, lies within the question.
Superpowers are more-or-less explicitly an opt-out of physics. The things that happen in the boundary between real physics and superpowers are complex. Superspeed is closer to magic than physics, in that it appears to function somewhat more at a conceptual level than at an interacting-forces level. My personal interpretation is that superspeed puts you and your equipment in a different timestream, limiting your ability to interact with the world. Doing things that affect objects outside of what you brought into superspeed with you is a poorly-understood effect, but it takes dramatically more energy than a naive interpretation of physics would suggest would be necessary.
Supporting this theory is the fact that speedsters can still see normally despite moving at velocities that ought to be redshifting everything, and they can still breathe normally despite moving faster than the speed at which kinetic forces are capable of propagating through air (that is, the speed of sound).
Re: Speed Force: Mr Zoat has established that he's not explicitly using the Speed Force in Earth 16. You can call the effects observed in the fic "Speed Force" if you want but the existence of a unified Speed Force is not necessary and will not be explored in-universe.
Last edited:
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
...*sigh* I hate superheroes sometimes.
- Location
- Hampden Park
You're a good enough physicist to know bad things?
Show me on this doll where the fermion touched you.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Why, exactly? Surely the Psions would have had preparations and countermeasures ready for containing an experiment whose success they were actively trying to achieve?
- Location
- United states
Well if the SI ever ends up on an altenate world where Starfire got her powers he could just scan her to help with the whole Tamaranian empowerment thing. That or as other people pointed just give them tech to make up for their lack of powers since that wouldn't actually be even hard.
Dude most of fiction has stuff that makes no sense or even follows conventional physics. And truth is the majority of people could care less about that. I mean go to a screening of a movie like Pacific Rim and see how long someone could go on a rant about why giant robots and kaiju shouln't work before pissing off most of the people there.
- Location
- Hampden Park
Thank you, corrected.
The Si isn't aware of the significance of the distinction.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh, trust me, I'm well aware. I kinda wish I could stop being aware for a while... but usually I can handle it, except when someone crosses the streams. In this case, a fanfiction meant to make sense of Young Justice canon making even less sense than the original is what gets to me.
...also, you mean couldn't care less.
- Location
- Hampden Park
Last time the Psions powered up a Tamaranian, X'Hal blasted their species back to the industrial age. Their countermeasures aren't intended to leave the target alive. Or leave recoverable parts.
The Admiral knows that. If he found out they'd done more than simple exploratory work with tissue samples he'd put a stop to it.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
Pacific Rim at least tried to pay attention to the physics of giant robots. Obviously they didn't get it completely right but they did at least acknowledge that falling down in a giant robot is BAD.
- Location
- Hampden Park
Basically, the reason the Flash doesn't run off the planet when he reaches escape velocity or... Do any of the others things that ought to happen at very high speed is that the universe mostly treats him as moving at normal speed. A bit faster that normal -can you imagine running around the world at what seemed like normal running speed?- but not all that much. At really high speed this starts to break down; I mentioned his poor turning circle and peripheral vision earlier.
Well said.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
For as common of a complaint as this is, it should be noted that the phrase "could care less" is ironic. As a rhetorical device, invoking irony is meant to highlight the incongruity between the literal meaning of the statement and the understood truth of the matter, meaning that saying "I could care less" is in fact NOT incorrect per se.
EDIT: To be more specific, the ironic use of the phrase is often more correct, as it is a suggestion that you COULD in fact care less about the matter if you chose to, but it would take effort, as your current level of caring is already quite low. It could also be interpreted as a suggestion that given the choice of caring more or caring less, the speaker would select the latter. Regardless, as a rhetorical device the intent of the phrase is clear: the matter at hand is of very low import.
Last edited:
- Location
- USA
Idle thought: Paul still has the memories of Red!Paul having sex with Komand'r, doesn't he. That's a little bit awkward...
- Location
- Hampden Park
Depends on how 'Bill Clinton' you're being about it. His memories stop at the end of the segment, so he remembers her taking hold of his penis but nothing after that.
Yarudazuigu
Frostbyte's overlord.
- Location
- Poland
For current Paul it is hardcore enough to feel responsible, possibly for the misdeeds of his alternate?
And, @Mr Zoat, replying to your earlier "Paul doesn't know, doesn't remember" ... I believe that if you as Author states so it is so. Personally speaking? I believe that if Paul wants to remember, he can. Yes he can. Power Ring is a very useful tool that is used as blunt instrument in comixes all the time, and even Paul's more clever applications are still somewhat blunt instrument approach. If he can perfect his own physique using Power Ring? He can use Power Ring to check his "forgotten" memories.
Also, Power Ring have AI assist. So if Paul would be willing to "Ring, painlessly check the bodies of the girls and simulate/medscan how to give them such and such powerset. Based on my fuzzy memory of this and that. Show me results." then Ring's AI would do all the legwork, as always, while all Paul would have to do is to want it to happen.
Just stating my opinion to be contrary.
- Location
- Ashtabula
I'm confused as well. A punch at the speed of sound is still a projectile hitting at the speed of sound so...
It must have been truly tramatic for young Orange Lantern 2814, given his behavior towards every other person who has shown interest in him.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
...so, essentially, you have the Speed Force, but nerfed.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
The problem is mostly the "equal and opposite reaction" bit. It's obvious that the world does not exert forces upon the speedster that would be proportional to the speedster's momentum. Otherwise, the speedster would punch potholes into the streets when accelerating from a stop, create a spray of debris every time he stops, and hit shockwaves trying to run through air that won't get out of the way fast enough... Given that those things DON'T happen, it suggests that while the speedster can throw punches at the speed of sound, they don't have force behind them as if they had been thrown normally.
Mathematically, this suggests that the speedster's effective mass is significantly reduced when interacting with normal matter. By F=ma, reducing the effective mass means that it requires less force to achieve the same acceleration, and conversely it means a fist suddenly decelerating from Mach 1 to a complete stop (due to the kinetic energy being transmitted to the target) transmits less force.
Which is consistent with everything else seen in the Earth 16 setting, no? This is a comparatively low-powered setting relative to other DC universes.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Consistent with Earth-16? Yes. Consistent with Earth-16-Zoat? No.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
... oh geez. I think I just figured out how to write speedster effects into the equations of an Einsteinian model of physics. It isn't exactly PRETTY, especially since the effects operate at human scales instead of particle scales or cosmic scales, and I'm still going to have to figure out the necessary fudge factors to keep the speedster from disintegrating or spaghettifying, but... I could at the very least write out Newtonian approximations.
That said, the nature of FTL in the comics suggests that it's not an Einsteinian model in the first place. It'll take some tinkering to reconcile the relativistic effects we've seen ARE present with the relativistic effects we've seen AREN'T present. Time dilation is a thing but it doesn't appear to hit a singularity like in the real world, because consecutive FTL jumps into different reference frames doesn't imply time travel.
Earth-16-Zoat has WoZ stating it's a lower-powered setting.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
He's also said that the Speed Force is not a thing. Consequently, if the universe treats the Flashes differently because they go fast, he is, in fact, using a version of the Speed Force despite his protests to the contrary.
- Location
- Ashtabula
Aren't speedsters naturally (well post transformation) much more durable than baselines in order to help bolster them against the forces acting against them? Flash and Superman can both move at faster then sound speeds easily, but if Flash's body is basically baseline then Superman is hitting with much more force at the same speed even if you don't factor in his strength.
So we have a world where Batman somehow strikes with more force then the Flash. Wonderful. As I highly doubt either Barry or Wally train as obsessively as Bruce.
Super speed seems a whole lot less impressive, and drops the speedsters down several notches. Of course, it also makes me wonder how Wally manages to knock out anyone. If he's only hitting as hard as your average teenager who kinda works out and trains.
stormturmoil
CALChemist
Well, There Is a Time Factor in the inertia Equations, so I could see that.
or it's like the Alcubierre drive -the Flash Isn't Actually Moving - they're warping space around themselves.
- Status