OOTS #1201 - The Discussion Thread

[factotum]

You can still get turbulence in an entirely liquid environment, though.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Not like they showed, though. A liquid is too dense for that. Actually, Trekian inertial compensators should block out any turbulence in any case.

[mjasghar]

Maybe they were flying through the ‘steam’ layer where there’s a bunch of molecules switching between liquid and gas

[Peelee]

Yes, but I'm not following what point you're making by that in this context.

I'm reminded of a bit of nonsense in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Sleeping Dogs", in which a shuttle pod experienced turbulence while flying through a liquid-helium layer in a planet's atmosphere. Broadly speaking, if you have liquid helium, you don't have an atmosphere... at least, not a gaseous one involving more than small amounts of anything other than more helium. Everything else liquefies or freezes first.

Phsaw, you can have liquid Helium as high as 5 Kelvin if you don't mind a 4-digit kPa. That's downright warm for liquid Helium!

I'm not ashamed to say I looked up a phase diagram to make this incredibly silly argument.

[Fyraltari]

Phsaw, you can have liquid Helium as high as 5 Kelvin if you don't mind a 4-digit kPa. That's downright warm for liquid Helium!

I'm not ashamed to say I looked up a phase diagram to make this incredibly silly argument.

Well, I find that you timed your Kelvin line really well.

[Jasdoif]

Phsaw, you can have liquid Helium as high as 5 Kelvin if you don't mind a 4-digit kPa.

And it was a gas giant, after all.

[Rockphed]

Unless I completely messed up my units, you only need about 800 extra calories per day to turn -20 degree C snow into internal water. The problem is in survival situations where you don't have an extra 800 calories of extra food.

[Peelee]

Unless I completely messed up my units, you only need about 800 extra calories per day to turn -20 degree C snow into internal water. The problem is in survival situations where you don't have an extra 800 calories of extra food.

I see one issue with your units already; there's no unit for the amount of snow/water.

[Quizatzhaderac]

I'm reminded of a bit of nonsense in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Sleeping Dogs", in which a shuttle pod experienced turbulence while flying through a liquid-helium layer in a planet's atmosphere. Broadly speaking, if you have liquid helium, you don't have an atmosphere... at least, not a gaseous one involving more than small amounts of anything other than more helium. Everything else liquefies or freezes first.

But you can have a layer of supercitical helium under a deep (2.3 atm) atmosphere of helium, in the gravity and hill sphere of a gas giant that's not much of a stretch at all. If fact, gas giants consist mostly of supercritical fluids.

I don't know if supercritical hydrogen and helium form different layers. Maybe that's the one part of the universe that doesn't have much hydrogen?

As to weather of not a sci-fi show should call a supercritical fluid "liquid" or "atmosphere" I imagine there's room to argue, but IMHO that's fairly reasonable dumbing down.

[Peelee]

I don't know if supercritical hydrogen and helium form different layers. Maybe that's the one part of the universe that doesn't have much hydrogen?

All elements are Hydrogen smushed together, they just have more and more Hydrogen as they get farther up the periodic table.

I wonder how bad I can science until I make the chemists on this forum raise torches and pitchforks against me.

[Jasdoif]

All elements are Hydrogen smushed together, they just have more and more Hydrogen as they get farther up the periodic table.

I wonder how bad I can science until I make the chemists on this forum raise torches and pitchforks against me.

It's all a question of whether they can handle the pressure.

Don't worry, we're talking about Enterprise; just point to Similitude's critical plot point being that Trip's life memories were duplicated directly from his DNA, wait for the biologists' pitchforks to collide with the chemist's pitchforks, and then run from the pitched battle.

[Fyraltari]

All elements are Hydrogen smushed together, they just have more and more Hydrogen as they get farther up the periodic table.

I wonder how bad I can science until I make the chemists on this forum raise torches and pitchforks against me.

[Peelee]

Don't worry, we're talking about Enterprise; just point to Similitude's critical plot point being that Trip's life memories were duplicated directly from his DNA, wait for the biologists' pitchforks to collide with the chemist's pitchforks, and then run from the pitched battle.

You're forgetting the physicists once they discover that Enterprise delcared that Warp 4.5 is both the 83 times speed of light and 8,218 times the speed of light, and also that Warp 4.4 was 100 times the speed of light, making Warp 4.4 20% faster than one of the Warp 4.5s, and slower than the other Warp 4.5 by an order of magnitude...all in the same episode.

[Jasdoif]

You're forgetting the physicists once they discover that Enterprise delcared that Warp 4.5 is both the 83 times speed of light and 8,218 times the speed of light, and also that Warp 4.4 was 100 times the speed of light, making Warp 4.4 20% faster than one of the Warp 4.5s, and slower than the other Warp 4.5 by an order of magnitude...all in the same episode.

Star Trek's sense of warp has always been warped; you're not likely to get ablative pitchfork defenses from having a beef with a sacred cow.

[Rogar Demonblud]

No, he gets ablative pitchfork defense from being better armored than most battleships.

[Jasdoif]

No, he gets ablative pitchfork defense from being better armored than most battleships.

Ablative? Peelee's scales provide temporary hit points instead of AC?

[Peelee]

Star Trek's sense of warp has always been warped; you're not likely to get ablative pitchfork defenses from having a beef with a sacred cow.

Fair, but usually they at least they usually space it out between episodes and series. All those were in the same dang episode.

And if that's not bad enough, it was the pilot!

Ablative? Peelee's scales provide temporary hit points instead of AC?

I like temporary HP better than just losing the scales as they get hit.

[Jasdoif]

And if that's not bad enough, it was the pilot!

Pilot episodes tend to be bad, in my experience...and that's even with series that leveled out in the good quality department after getting a few episodes' experience; Enterprise was all over the place throughout its entire run.

[Rockphed]

I see one issue with your units already; there's no unit for the amount of snow/water.

Ice takes about .5 calories per gram to raise 1 degree, it takes about 80 calories per gram to melt ice, and it takes about 1 calorie per gram to raise water 1 degree. The average male needs about 3.7 litres of water per day, call it 4 for easy math. Food calories are 1000 energy calories. So, for 4 litres, which mass about 4 kg, of -20 degree ice we need 40 calories to get to freezing, 320 to melt, and 160 to come up to body temperature, for 520 calories per day of extra energy needed to get your water from -20 degree snow instead of from body temperature water.

[mjasghar]

Oh dear
Firstly that isn’t distributed throughout the body evenly - imagine 4 litres of slushpuppies
You would do massive damage to your brain as all that snow melted in your mouth
You would find it difficult to swallow it while and likely cause frostbite damage to the lining of your digestive tract
And then where would you get that much energy? Animal meat and fat? In that case add in the extra energy, time and loss of water due to exertion during the hunt and subsequent rendering of the carcass.
It’s not a simple equation
This reminds me of an infamous murder case where a man was convicted of arsenic poisoning because the copper gauze used in the autopsy of bodily fluids was corroded. The copper gauze was not pure copper of course and one of the impurities released was arsenic. When they used an older, more cumbersome, test they found no trace of arsenic in the samples.

[Lord Torath]

That's why you don't eat the snow, you fill your canteen with it, then wear it under your shirt until the snow melts and warms.

[Rockphed]

That's why you don't eat the snow, you fill your canteen with it, then wear it under your shirt until the snow melts and warms.

And depending on what you are doing and the exact weather, you might even be able to melt it with waste heat.

[Mox]

I wasn't expecting to learn that much when I posted my joke about Belkar dying in the snow.
Huh.

[Rogar Demonblud]

It's one of the great things about this place. Unfortunately, it doesn't count towards your Continuing Education requirements.

[Jasdoif]

It's one of the great things about this place. Unfortunately, it doesn't count towards your Continuing Education requirements.

I think that depends on whether your expectations are biased towards accredited institutions.

[bunsen_h]

I think that depends on whether your expectations are biased towards accredited institutions.

Should the Giant start selling degrees and diplomas? "Yeah, I got my BA from Warthog's, then an M.B.A. from Bash U. Yeah, I multi-classed."

[Peelee]

I wasn't expecting to learn that much when I posted my joke about Belkar dying in the snow.
Huh.

Oh just wait and see what happens if you make a Star Wars joke.

Should the Giant start selling degrees and diplomas? "Yeah, I got my BA from Warthog's, then an M.B.A. from Bash U. Yeah, I multi-classed."

Wouldn't Wathogs only give out STEM degrees? Science, Technology, Engineering, and Magic?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

"Yeah, I got my BA from Warthog's, then an M.B.A. from Bash U. Yeah, I multi-classed."

Wouldn't Wathogs only give out STEM degrees? Science, Technology, Engineering, and Magic?

Business Administration: say a bunch of words that don't actually mean anything in any language, wave hands at people, and suddenly things change around you without you doing any work. Sounds like magic to me.

Grey Wolf

[TaiLiu]

Wouldn't Wathogs only give out STEM degrees? Science, Technology, Engineering, and Magic?

No, no. The "Arts" stand for the arcane arts. Everyone knows this, Peelee.

[Kantaki]

I wasn't expecting to learn that much when I posted my joke about Belkar dying in the snow.
Huh.

Believe me, this is nothing.
Let a thread run long enough and you get tangents and off-topic discussions and drifts so epic they somehow end up on the original topic again.

By the way, should I worry that one of the first words my phone suggested when I wrote off-topic was off-world?