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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Twelve)

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Empiricist2 said:
Freeze Rays could be used to make energy production more efficient. Engines that convert heat into work, which includes virtually all power sources except for solar panels, are limited by the theoretical maximum efficiency called Carnot Efficiency, which increases with the difference in temperature between your heat source and the environment your are dumping heat into. Freeze rays drop the temperature of whatever you are pointing them at to 0, so you could increase energy efficiency by a substantial amount with a little retrofitting. The SI may not be a fan of coal or oil power generation, but this would work for nuclear power as well.
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This assumes that freeze rays are, themselves, sufficiently energy efficient to beat break-even. This isn't a thermodynamic impossibility on the surface, of course, as the actual power generation still comes from converting mass into energy, so it's not a perpetual motion machine. (Even non-nuclear power generation works this way: relativity tells us that the atomic bonds inside of molecules themselves have mass, and we derive power from breaking these bonds.) The real question is if the increased Carnot efficiency results in the power plant generating enough additional energy to power the freeze ray.

In the real world, a modestly large coal power plant might produce 2 billion joules of energy per second with its heat source running at around 675K and its cooling source sitting somewhere around 295K. The hypothetical Carnot efficiency of such a plant is somewhere around 56%, but even the most efficient (and most expensive) designs in the real world only get around 48%, meaning around 15% of the energy is lost to various inefficiencies. If we trade out the cooling tower for a freeze ray, that goes from 295K to 0K. Assuming the rest of the system remains at around the same efficiency, our upgraded plant will have an efficiency of around 85%, an impressive 1.78x increase in power generation relative to the original plant.

But can you operate the freeze ray for less than 1.56 GW?

I'm not going to show my math here on the forums for how I worked out the rest, but... If the freeze ray is somehow operating within standard physics... the answer is... no. It's close, though. If the freeze ray is a 100% efficient refrigerant, it would need around 1.8 GW.

That said, after I spent as long as I did on the math, I had a bit of a facepalm moment. OF COURSE that's the answer. If the power plant were already 100% efficient, it would be EXACTLY break-even, because the work necessary to reduce the temperature of something is exactly the same as the amount of work you can extract from it by heating it up.

Now, at the scale of freezing a human, the amount of energy that a freeze ray requires might actually be feasible for a superhero/villain to operate. Using it as a weapon doesn't require super-unity efficiency. But it won't work for a power plant, unless it violates the laws of thermodynamics.
 
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Avernus said:
Replace the fans in a computer with a small, low powered cold ray and no more overheating problems.
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If you also seal all the electronics, that might be ok, but otherwise you're replacing overheating problems with condensation problems. Which is really not an improvement.
Coda said:
But it won't work for a power plant, unless it violates the laws of thermodynamics.
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Or unless the use of it somehow helps reduce some of the other inefficiencies in the system.
 
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Coda said:
Now, at the scale of freezing a human, the amount of energy that a freeze ray requires might actually be feasible for a superhero/villain to operate. Using it as a weapon doesn't require super-unity efficiency. But it won't work for a power plant, unless it violates the laws of thermodynamics.
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"Are you aware that your cold ray violates the laws of thermodynamics?"

"Supervillains have no respect for the law. Including natural ones!"
 
Coda said:
This assumes that freeze rays are, themselves, sufficiently energy efficient to beat break-even. This isn't a thermodynamic impossibility on the surface, of course, as the actual power generation still comes from converting mass into energy, so it's not a perpetual motion machine. (Even non-nuclear power generation works this way: relativity tells us that the atomic bonds inside of molecules themselves have mass, and we derive power from breaking these bonds.) The real question is if the increased Carnot efficiency results in the power plant generating enough additional energy to power the freeze ray.

In the real world, a modestly large coal power plant might produce 2 billion joules of energy per second with its heat source running at around 675K and its cooling source sitting somewhere around 295K. The hypothetical Carnot efficiency of such a plant is somewhere around 56%, but even the most efficient (and most expensive) designs in the real world only get around 48%, meaning around 15% of the energy is lost to various inefficiencies. If we trade out the cooling tower for a freeze ray, that goes from 295K to 0K. Assuming the rest of the system remains at around the same efficiency, our upgraded plant will have an efficiency of around 85%, an impressive 1.78x increase in power generation relative to the original plant.

But can you operate the freeze ray for less than 1.56 GW?

I'm not going to show my math here on the forums for how I worked out the rest, but... If the freeze ray is somehow operating within standard physics... the answer is... no. It's close, though. If the freeze ray is a 100% efficient refrigerant, it would need around 1.8 GW.

That said, after I spent as long as I did on the math, I had a bit of a facepalm moment. OF COURSE that's the answer. If the power plant were already 100% efficient, it would be EXACTLY break-even, because the work necessary to reduce the temperature of something is exactly the same as the amount of work you can extract from it by heating it up.

Now, at the scale of freezing a human, the amount of energy that a freeze ray requires might actually be feasible for a superhero/villain to operate. Using it as a weapon doesn't require super-unity efficiency. But it won't work for a power plant, unless it violates the laws of thermodynamics.
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Eh, when talking about cooling, unusually what you're actually talking about is how expensive it is to move the heat somewhere else. Sort of. A refrigerator does doesn't cool things off. It heats things up outside itelf efficantly by moving heat in addition to creating heat from the work it does.

This clearly isn't the case with a freeze ray. In fact, feats such as freezing much of the United States in a super-blizard, and not creating massive firestorms from where the heat is moved...

That they do break theormodynamics. They're a heat go away ray. At best they're something like a Cryo-arithmetic engine that decreases entropy. At worst, it's removing energy from the system and decreasing entropy. At worst worst, it's removing energy from the system in the form of heat, adding energy to the system in the form of water (ice from nowhere), and decreasing entropy.
 
TheLastOne said:
That they do break theormodynamics. They're a heat go away ray. At best they're something like a Cryo-arithmetic engine that decreases entropy. At worst, it's removing energy from the system and decreasing entropy. At worst worst, it's removing energy from the system in the form of heat, adding energy to the system in the form of water (ice from nowhere), and decreasing entropy.
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I'm assuming the energy gets re-radiated in some other form with ridiculously good efficiency. There are, after all, blue-white visual effects that accompany the freezing process, so the thermal energy could be getting converted to high-visible/low-ultraviolet light. Or perhaps the energy is being converted to mass of some sort. (This would be a particularly effective way of sequestering energy.) There are sufficiently plausible handwaves for where the energy GOES.

The question that I'm attempting to answer is how much energy it takes to DO that.

And the answer is that if you accept that you CAN do it, then even in a hypothetically perfect scenario where there's 100% efficiency and 100% energy sequestration, it wouldn't be useful for power generation. It might still be useful for a weapon or for industrial application, but not for power generation.

The only other possible answer is that it's an exotic effect that breaks the laws of physics as we know them. And of course in a world where superpowers are a thing, that's an entirely reasonable answer, but it makes it a lot harder to talk about using in combination with things that DO use real-world physics.

(Also another problem occurs to me: You COULDN'T use a freeze ray on a standard power plant design, at least not at full power, because the water still has to be FLUID in order to flow through the system.)
 
Coda said:
I'm assuming the energy gets re-radiated in some other form with ridiculously good efficiency. There are, after all, blue-white visual effects that accompany the freezing process, so the thermal energy could be getting converted to high-visible/low-ultraviolet light. Or perhaps the energy is being converted to mass of some sort. (This would be a particularly effective way of sequestering energy.) There are sufficiently plausible handwaves for where the energy GOES.

The question that I'm attempting to answer is how much energy it takes to DO that.
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It might well have a net gain of energy; radiating energy is a standard part of many forms of power generation after all.

As far as the danger of a freeze ray overcooling things, assuming they can't be dialed down an alternative is to run them in some "flicker" mode where they fire intermittently to slow down the cooling rate.
 
Avernus said:
It might well have a net gain of energy; radiating energy is a standard part of many forms of power generation after all.

As far as the danger of a freeze ray overcooling things, assuming they can't be dialed down an alternative is to run them in some "flicker" mode where they fire intermittently to slow down the cooling rate.
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Ooh, that's a good idea -- recapture some of the waste energy. Obviously that's not particularly EFFICIENT but when the alternative is not doing anything at all with it, it's almost certainly worth it.

The problem with not using the freeze ray to actually FREEZE things is that it defeats the purpose. The efficiency of a coolant at 275 Kelvin isn't really all that much better than a coolant at 295 Kelvin. I'm sure there are other coolants you could use that would help, but it's still not that big of a change to get down to 235 Kelvin.

I liked the suggestion of using the freeze ray to make OTHER things more efficient. Supercooling the conductors might make the actual electrical generation part more efficient if it doesn't take too much energy to maintain THAT, and that's a MUCH smaller mass than the amount of coolant that gets circulated through the plant.
 
Coda said:
Supercooling the conductors might make the actual electrical generation part more efficient if it doesn't take too much energy to maintain THAT, and that's a MUCH smaller mass than the amount of coolant that gets circulated through the plant.
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Also, the resistance in a lot of parts and materials will reduce significantly at lower temperatures, and you can potentially use high temperature superconductors (ie ones that work at above -150 degrees Celcius) that aren't made from metamaterials (eg Jovium). This will obviously be a great deal less useful than making transmission lines (where most line losses would presumably occur) superconductive, but if you're drastically cooling large sections of the power plant anyway, it may not cost more than it gains you.

Note that all of this would need at least some degree of cost/benefit analysis to see what's actually worth doing.
 
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Rampage (part 4)
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    • 9th November
    10:09 GMT -6

    "Uuuuuuuuugh."

    Ms Thal wheezes, her right hand grasping spasmodically for the Nth metal mace I've sensibly moved out of arm's reach. Since I regard this whole thing as stupid, I haven't been using the sort of high-lethality ordnance which Thanagarian duelling custom would allow me to. I've -I sigh as I think it- been using… Giant… Orange… Boxing gloves. Of course, at this point they're pretty powerful boxing gloves, because… While she isn't the only Justice League member to severely irritate me where Nabu is concerned, at least the others were prepared to discuss the matter without challenging me to a duel.

    But… This is a bit much.

    I look over towards Mr Hol. "Is that it? Can you call it now?"

    He makes eye contact with me, then gives his head a small shake.

    "Oh, for goodness-." Ms Thal staggers to her feet, using her wide spread wings to maintain her balance. "You're clearly in no condition to fight and I don't like you well enough to heal you. Why don't you stay down this time?"

    "Nrgh."

    She.. either weaves, or narrowly avoids collapsing, then begins a staggering run towards me. I shoot her in the face with a construct bean bag round, forcing her to stop, staggering back to maintain her balance. A construct circular saw cuts through her helmet's strap and a construct hand hurls her battered helmet aside. It appears to have protected her face reasonably well, but the lower part of her face is already swelling from bruises and I can see a dozen cuts from where I slammed her into the desert.

    "Please. Give up."

    Out of the corner of my eye I see Alan say something to Mr Hol, who waves him off.

    Another stagger, then she squares up to me again.

    "Okay, can I yield? I literally-" I create a flimsy boxing glove construct, then let it evaporate. "-don't want to hurt you sufficiently strongly to make a construct. You win, well done. Honour is uphel-."

    "No." She takes a step closer. "Fight me."

    I fall back slightly. "Alright, you've convinced me that you'd have fought against Nabu. I doubt it would have been much more one sided than this."

    "Not… Not convincing you."

    "Look, if you're willing to get your face beaten in pointlessly-" She takes three hurried steps closer and swings her right fist. I turn it aside with my right hand and punch her hard in the face. She takes it.. pretty well. Stupid extra tough skeletal structure. "-I'm sure-" She tries to hit me with her left wing, but I counter with a construct shield. "-that you'd do it where it-" I step right as she pulls her wing back and swing a fist at the unprotected underside. That gets a wince. "-it actually mattered."

    "I'm not-" She manages a clumsy hit on my faceplate. "-doing this for you!"

    "Fine." I create a construct covering her mouth and nose, then start replacing her air with Thanagarian-safe-ish knock out gas. Another pair of constructs bind her arms and wings. "I hope you've impressed yourself, then."

    She struggles, but Thanagar knows its people and this stuff is designed to weaken them fast. As her eyes roll back I remove the construct feeding her the stuff and create a stretcher construct for her. Then I wheel toward Mr Hol. "Is that enough?! Or do I need to hit her a few more times?"

    He flaps his wings once to leave the ground and a second time to enter the combat area, gliding towards his wife. I move the stretcher towards him as he lands, his helmet staring at her as he uses the sensors to check her condition. "She is unable to continue. You are victorious."

    "Wooowh. Is she going to try this again when she gets up? Am I going to need to give her a power ring just so I don't feel so-?"

    Alan follows Mr Hol, and I pass Ms Thal to him. There aren't any medical facilities around here… There isn't anything around here, that's why we started doing this here. The Hawks' ship has basic medical equipment… Ugh.

    "Why did you offer to surrender?"

    "Because it was pointless! She's going to be recovering for… Two weeks?"

    "I doubt that I'll be able to make her stay still for that long."

    "Which means that no one gains anything from this. If it meant I didn't have to beat her unconscious, why wouldn't I surrender?"

    "Pride in your abilities as a warrior?"

    "I'm not doing this to win a flipping contest! I wear this ring to make the universe a better place. That did nothing!" I grimace. "The last Thanagarians I met weren't this mental. At least I don't think they were, maybe they were just hiding it better."

    "Some.. parts of the military take.. certain parts of Thanagar's military traditions more seriously than wider society. Were these Thanagarians civilians?"

    "No. Mercenaries. Nice bunch. Met them in Vega. Had a few drinks, helped them with a riot and got them a job training the Tamaranian military up while they rebuild."

    "I'm not aware of any Thanagarians being in that region of space. What is the company called?"

    "The Blades of Alstair." Who-. Oh.

    "I see." I can't tell whether Mr Hol's frowning or not, but I suspect that he is. "No. They wouldn't have adopted that tradition unless Hyathis ordered them to. Excuse me." A downbeat of his wings and he's flying back towards his ship.

    Yeah, probably shouldn't have mentioned that I was on good terms with them to an agent of the Thanagarian government.

    Lantern Jordan drifts down. "Well. That was a… Thing."

    "And let's hope that really is it."

    He looks mildly curious. "What, you never felt like challenging someone to a fight?"

    "Not for honour-related reasons. But while we're all taking five, and you're actually on Earth, do you?"

    "With Guy once or twice, sure."

    "No, not-. Batman's got me talking to every League member about Nabu."

    He shrugs. "Why? You got a way to bring him back you're not sharing?"

    "No."

    "Then what's the point? However I feel about it, you did it, it happened."

    "That's what I said. But are you sure? Nothing you want to ask, nothing you want to get off your chest?"

    "I still don't think you should have killed him."

    "Okay, what should I have done?"

    "Kept working at it until you had a way to take him down without killing him."

    I shrug. "Diana took the chains off at New Year. Given how powerful and skilled Lords of Order are, I would have to have been very lucky to get another opening like that."

    He raises his eyebrows. "You're saying you couldn't do it?"

    "I'm saying I don't know how to do it and I don't know if it could be done."

    "Because if Zatara was alive after eight months, he wasn't in danger of dying. Look, I wanted to fly for the US Air Force. And if.. things had gone differently, I'd probably have killed plenty of people by now. But I'm not. I'm a space cop with a fancy ring. Superheroes aren't military, they're police. The Justice League isn't a military."

    "The Orange Lantern Corps is a military."

    "Maybe that's the problem. The US military doesn't do policing outside of disaster zones, because that's not what it's for. The rules of engagement are different, for good reasons. I don't have a problem with you wanting to be a soldier. But if that's what you want?" He drifts back slightly. "Then this is the wrong organisation for you."
     
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    • Mr Zoat said:
    "Maybe that's the problem. The US military doesn't do policing outside of disaster zones, because that's not what it's for. The rules of engagement are different, for good reasons. I don't have a problem with you wanting to be a soldier. But if that's what you want?" He drifts back slightly. "Then this is the wrong organisation for you."
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    This... actually makes perfect sense to me as an argument. Huh.
     
    Ashaeron said:
    Then they should actually do their policing evenhandedly and address the issue instead of letting the Space National Guard do it for them.
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    And start arresting governments. Aye. Except that the greenies aren't allowed to do that. Damned bobbleheads, giving them operating conditions, requirements, and restrictions that all impede their duties.
     
    An actual reasonable comment, there. Although the other side of it is that both the GLs and JL tend to insist that everything has to be done by police rules and not military ones. In reality both sets of rules of engagement are important, just for different circumstances; you shouldn't try to arrest an invading army, and you shouldn't drop a mortar round on shoplifters.


    Typos:

    Mr Zoat said:
    Ms Thal wheezes, her right hand grasping spasmodically for the Nth metal mace I've sensibly moves out of arm's reach. Since I regard this whole things as stupid, I haven't been using the sort of high-lethality ordnance which Thanagarian duelling custom would allow me to.
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    "moved", "thing"

    Mr Zoat said:
    She tries to hit he with her left wing, but I counter with a construct shield.
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    "me"
     
    Mr Zoat said:
    "Maybe that's the problem. The US military doesn't do policing outside of disaster zones, because that's not what it's for. The rules of engagement are different, for good reasons. I don't have a problem with you wanting to be a soldier. But if that's what you want?" He drifts back slightly. "Then this is the wrong organisation for you."
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    that's a devastatingly good point.
     
    Mr Zoat said:
    *snip*
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    Lantern Jordan makes a good point, my rebuttal? A POLICE ORGANIZATION should not be all that stands between the world and absolute destruction. Police are not expected to fight paramilitary organizations, or a rampaging psychopath wearing a literal tank, nor are they expected to repel an invasion force from a hostile foreign nation. Police exist to protect and serve the public, or more specifically, the public good. Do you know who usually takes those kinds of jobs? Military, special forces, etc. You are literally complaining about OL acting like a soldier pretending to be a cop when you are a cop pretending to be a soldier. Pot? Meet kettle, you're both black.
     
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    Mr Zoat said:
    "Maybe that's the problem. The US military doesn't do policing outside of disaster zones, because that's not what it's for. The rules of engagement are different, for good reasons. I don't have a problem with you wanting to be a soldier. But if that's what you want?" He drifts back slightly. "Then this is the wrong organisation for you."
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    I can see his point, but policing doesn't exclut the use of leathel force.
    He did kill Nabu after he tried to arrest him and Nabu resisted.
     
    backgroundnoise said:
    Lantern Jordan makes a good point, my rebuttal? A POLICE ORGANIZATION should not be all that stands between the world and absolute destruction. Police are not expected to fight paramilitary organizations, or a rampaging psychopath wearing a literal tank, nor are they expected to repel an invasion force from a hostile foreign nation. Police exist to protect and serve the public, or more specifically, the public good. Do you know who usually takes those kinds of jobs? Military, special forces, etc. You are literally complaining about OL acting like a soldier pretending to be a cop when you are a cop pretending to be a soldier. Pot? Meet kettle, you're both black.
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    And there's the reasonable follow up argument.
     
    Wasn't the Justice League formed with the permission of the UN in part to defend against extraterrestrial threats? In the aftermath of an invasion? Sounds like a military mindset to me.
     
    backgroundnoise said:
    Lantern Jordan makes a good point, my rebuttal? A POLICE ORGANIZATION should not be all that stands between the world and absolute destruction. Police are not expected to fight paramilitary organizations, or a rampaging psychopath wearing a literal tank, nor are they expected to repel an invasion force from a hostile foreign nation. Police exist to protect and serve the public, or more specifically, the public good. Do you know who usually takes those kinds of jobs? Military, special forces, etc. You are literally complaining about OL acting like a soldier pretending to be a cop when you are a cop pretending to be a soldier. Pot? Meet kettle, you're both black.
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    No, he's not saying OL should stop helping, he's saying that joining the justice league isn't a good way for OL to help the way he wants to.
     
    backgroundnoise said:
    Lantern Jordan makes a good point, my rebuttal? A POLICE ORGANIZATION should not be all that stands between the world and absolute destruction. Police are not expected to fight paramilitary organizations, or a rampaging psychopath wearing a literal tank, nor are they expected to repel an invasion force from a hostile foreign nation. Police exist to protect and serve the public, or more specifically, the public good. Do you know who usually takes those kinds of jobs? Military, special forces, etc. You are literally complaining about OL acting like a soldier pretending to be a cop when you are a cop pretending to be a soldier. Pot? Meet kettle, you're both black.
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    On the other hand, mandating that an organization of people who joined a non-paying organization with the explicit intent of nonlethal means go kill people... really isn't going to work. This is the kind of thing where you really need a separate organization for that if you want it.
     
    doug89 said:
    Wasn't the Justice League formed with the permission of the UN in part to defend against extraterrestrial threats? In the aftermath of an invasion? Sounds like a military mindset to me.
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    The League itself being formed to assist a military matter does lend to a military mindset, but almost all the members of the league use their abilities to fight crime at varying levels of severity and keep the peace while also assisting to deal with natural disasters and other threats that militaries and governments are not currently equipped to handle. So the League is on a bit of a blurred line with Police vs. Military.
     
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