Comic for Thursday, November 9th
Nov09
As the field commander notes, the mechanics of Tyler’s power are peculiar if you think of his power as “makes ice”. Simply making bullets be icy bullets would mean you would just be riddled with frosty holes, not make them stop and fall out of the air. So, as the clever readers have probably already deduced, Tyler’s power is not necessarily “makes ice”. I mean… it does that, but that’s more side effect.
It’s just the worst when minions have a sense of self-preservation.
Who are these two fellows at the end? I think we shall likely see more of them…
Not making great strides on buffer and stuff. Work got unexpectedly really quite busy. I haven’t forgotten stuff though, just running slow.
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Yay, Minions with self preservation instinct! This makes me so happy!
“Yeah, how about YOU go out there. Take a winter coat.”
Tyler’s ability is the neutralization of energy. Taking away kinetic energy makes objects stop in mid motion. Taking away thermal energy causes freezing temperatures. There is a limit to how much he can stop though but we have yet to see that limit (he is one person after all). From the last time he was in battle (against Rovak) he can also reverse damage on inorganic objects. I don’t know if he can do that to organic structures as well but that would probably be doable if he had sufficient information on the anatomy of what he is trying to repair.
I think lifting a ceiling counts as more than neutralization of energy. Also neutralization of energy would be totally OP… you wouldn’t be able to one shot him with ANYTHING, and he could simply disable ALL your weapons etc etc by simply neutralizing the energy that makes them work.
Also, you are forgetting that the temperature of a gas is (mostly) determined by the movement of the molecules of the gas: so taking away their kinetic energy would cool the gas.
The usual way you overcome someone able to stop attacks is attack him with everything all at once… because at some stage you go beyond his ability to stop them (you can’t stop everything)… but in this comic there is also HVW strikes… which are probably too fast to stop. Of course, then you use Mium’s solution, and jump into the ground (Ha! The ground CAN stop everything!)
Mium only had time to react because he could hear Kor’s World com traffic. He knew they were going to fire it, but not where it was. Peter said that with perfect triangulation, Mium might have been able to stop the shot, but Mium’s power and reaction speed are a lot different then Tyler’s (Mium just disintegrates matter, it would probably cause an explosion if he used it against an HVW as the velocity would dump an insane amount of energy into the air as the dust would have ridiculous air drag, causing it to ignite).
That said, the fact the Tyler is wearing armor suggests that his power is not perfect even against mundane bullets and shrapnel.
The best weapon vs. Tyler would probably be the pure information disassemble kind, like Rovak was shot with, or like Mione used. Actually, the kind used vs Rovak probably would not work as I think they had a physical delivery vector, but Mione’s power might work. Or, depending on how Kally’s dragon works, that might work.
These are IDS installations that are refusing to pull out, and Weber is attacking one of them as a Maltan Family Mage, right? Making sure I understand the situation clearly here.
That is my read, though I do not think this makes Tyler a Malsa Families Mage. He is working for the Consul/Military, and so are the Family Mages, but the Families (as I understand it) are mage bloodlines local to Malsa, and Tyler is a foreigner.
Also, this is probably a PACT facility, though the difference between that an IDS facility is semantic (according to Malsa, anyway).
From this page, there are at least three facilities that refused to evacuate or accept Malsan authority, and that Malsa has sent just one mage to each, likely three of their strongest mages to sort of show “you cannot win a magic fight”. Presumably, the other two mages are Family Mages. They seem to have their special forces on standby in case plan “Our Mages Are Very Badass” fails.
Of course, there is Arron and Peter’s deal, which means that the mages Arron wanted to deploy are likely being deployed somewhere as “contractors”.
Hmm, wondering which Kepler he’s talking about in the last panel. Probably Aaron, but it could be Peter. Either way, it’s nice to see some people recognizing just how dangerous that family is.
Well played!!! (On Tyler’s power that is.)
I’ll take it then the ice effect is artistic license then if Tyler’s power is not “makes ice”… because “makes ice” by kinetic energy (KE) manipulation relies on water being present. The last time we saw him do his thing, it was raining, so 100% humidity, oh and rain turning to snow… so ice everywhere made sense. It is not raining this time so… artistic license??
For those of you who didn’t pay attention in physics: temperature can be explained in terms of internal energy of a system: for gases and liquids the movement of the molecules is (in most cases) where most of the energy is stored. The removing kinetic energy from gas (or liquid) molecules is effective removing internal energy from the system… so it gets colder. Remove too much energy, and the gas will liquefy (lets assume Tyler is NOT liquefying the air: he needs air to breathe right!). As for air pressure effects: well Tyler is probably going to create something similar to in effect to the polar vortex (low-pressure surface-temperature-driven polar cell) just on a smaller scale.
Before anyone over-thinks it: molecules can ALSO hold energy in vibration and rotational states… and solids can hold energy within it’s framework (in kinetic theory it translates to the atoms in the lattice jiggling about)… obviously if you want to super-rigorous, then ANY part of the system that has energy states (i.e. can hold energy) needs to be considered… e.g. electrons have energy states. Now, I doubt Tyler is sucking lattice energy out of solids… but solids in contact with the air are going to cool (by transferring their energy to the air (as KE of the molecules), which Tyler can then remove (assuming KE manipulation!). Now how cold can the air get without liquefying? Well oxygen boils at −182.962°C, and nitrogen −195.795°C, so very cold. So solids in contact with the air are going to get cold very quickly! I get a feeling a winter coat is NOT going to cut it. (Tyler, if he is using KE manipulation to cool the air, can simply wrap himself in a blanket of warm air… so no problems there).
Based on the fact we’ve seen him stop a ceiling collapse & in fact reverse its effects enough so that it is now safe to continue standing under said ceiling… and also the fact we’ve now seen him stop bullets, then KE manipulation (slow down & speed up) is the simplest of explanations. I’m going for a KE cutoff field… you simply remove the KE of anything above a certain speed… this would protect you from projectiles, cool the air (not liquefy it), but let humans standing nearby move normally (assuming they can survive the cold). A KE reduction field would make everything around you move in slow motion… so maybe not. I note the rate at which you remove KE would depend on the strength of the field: so you can probably overcome it with a HVW strike (or running up to him with a knife… but only if he’s got no other mage skills… but we have seen Tyler make a green ethereal form to crush a green ethereal construct… so no running up to him with a knife then).
Actually, “Pretty sure it was magic, sir” is THE BEST explaination!!
Could be partially dry ice as well as water, since that also freezes out before LN2 (I think?).
I am not a physics person, so I can not contribute much on the details of the science, but there are a few wrinkles we know about how the magic system works that might also explain parts of it.
Remember when Tyler was entering the Avon building, we learned two things. First, his power has a “soft release” which just starts freezing basically everything near him. This could be a partial “wind down” of kinetic energy, it just starts sapping energy from the environment causing it to freeze. We know that magic “cheats” conservation of energy by creating energy in some cases, it seems likely that it can just easily have a negative energy total.
We can see it here when he is leaving a trail of ice up to the gate that the passive part of his magic is active. At Avon, it was freezing the rain as it fell around him. I think the reason this does not directly just freeze other humans is due to their magic resistance inherent in having an Eidos key. Tyler was only willing to take Mione and Marc with him because anyone else would just get caught in his magic and be frozen (or he just did not want to risk anyone else). We also saw that it was fairly easy for Mione to shrug off (she just complained about the freezing rain) and not as easy for Marc to ignore.
Once the passive version is active, he can much more actively target various things and attempt to freeze them. We saw this against the unnamed Rovak minion and then against Rovak, and against Rovak we saw the magic resistance in action. From that we learned that DtT (Distance to Tyler) is a highly relevant feature, as the closer Tyler got, the more the power started to effect Rovak until he decided to play the “Rocks fall everyone dies” card (which ultimately failed as well, but bought him some time).
I do not think the passive part is actually “required”, since we have seen him skip that step, but if we keep in mind another rule of magic we know from Ila, it makes a lot of sense. Ila uses sequential movement spells to fully accelerate her “railgun” attack because total change to information is the hard part. So if Tyler keeps the world around him at say -5(units) kinetic energy (if that is what it is doing, just taking your word for it here as I do not know the physics behind that), he can much more easily raise the environmental effect to -10(units) kinetic energy.
To wrap up, two more observations. Frequently we do see Tyler breathing after using his power (or before using it). This would indicate that quite possibly it does somehow effect the air for the moments where it is being used full blast (though maybe not, it could just be a exhaustion or dramatization).
I would suspect that the telekinesis we saw from repairing the room is at least partially a secondary power. Kally can also do fairly impressive feats of telekinesis, so I think it is safe to assume that is a fairly standard secondary power of natural mages (Tyler being both natural and innate, Kally being likely just a nature mage).
Lastly… hot damn, that was pretty badass, Tyler.
You say telekinesis, I say KE manipulation… its the same thing: one sounds like magic, the other sound like science fiction… (or rocket boosters… lol, physics).
I agree that an Eidos key probably provides interference to magic… similar to the way conductors interfere with electric fields… makes me wonder whether magic users in this universe have a source of magical energy, or act as channel for it.
I don’t think there is a need for magic to cheat conservation of energy: there is no reason why MAGIC should not be a form of energy: so magic users must have some innate link to a source of magical energy: the more you have, the more magical power you have: I’ve always felt that Naomi has a huge magical reservoir: which means her natural ability to boost herself makes her one tough cookie (and because she’s one tough cookie, she’s never really applied herself at actually learn magic (I kind of agree with her: if you’re nigh invulnerable, just go beat whatever it is over the head, no need for fancy magics)). Alternatively the universe contains magic, and the magic user is able to channel this magic to do their thing: the more you can channel, the more powerful you are.
Tyler’s ability could very well work by using magic as the power source to pump KE away: much in the same way an air conditioner uses electricity to pump heat away… but of course you can run an air conditioner in reverse… so Tyler can use magic to add KE just as easily (thus if his power is KE manipulation, then reversing a ceiling collapse, while difficult for most mages, is actually trivial for him: just add enough KE to lift it back up to where it should be). Of course I haven’t specified where he pumps the KE to… details, details!
If Tyler is making the air around him cold, then we would see him breathing… you’re seeing the moisture in his breath liquefying to become fog.
And while it is possible that carbon dioxide might be freezing out (at warm −56.6°C), there is only 0.04% in the atmosphere… so there wouldn’t be much. Water on the other hand varies in concentration in the atmosphere: apparently from 0% to 4%. So maybe it’s a humid day?!? Is Malsa in the tropics?
Well, Malsa is a coastal country where it has rained every day we have seen so far I think.
I think Naomi is going to have to start learning magic. While it’s heavily implied she is one of the strongest magic users (i.e. she does not even seem to be particularly aware of how humans work normally), she has actually come out fairly poorly in most of the fights.
Prior to interacting with Peter, probably pretty much everything she could do as basically a student (which seemed be mostly magic sports and picking fights) was trivial. Against a world mages, demons, AI, etc, she is going to have to up her game. She does not heal instantly like Rovak, so, while she seems really hard to actually hurt, presumably she could die or become incapacitated if she facetanks too much damage.
I love this comment. This comment is why I love this comic, and this comic is why I love these comments. I go “cool, magic”. Scroll down the comments, learn more about physics then I did in a year of high school. I just love when fantasy interacts with science instead of ignores it.
They have a term for “ice age” so they must know of ice ages in the recent geological past. But which world? Or do the worlds all have such similar geologies that they go into ice ages at the same time? Either way, it’s an interesting world-building tidbit.
Palindra (the world Malsa is on) seems pretty earth-like. I would guess any planet that Earth-like would share the basic geological history of ice ages, but that is a good point. I really hope that we find another Earth like planet soon so he can have a better idea how likely that is.
Ice ages are rare but long. Our society first noticed ice ages because one of them was very recent (technically ongoing). But conditions on earth are only suitable for ice ages about 1/3 of the time (based on the last ~1 billion years) and the rest of the time there’s very little long term ice even at the poles.
Ice ages are common and regular. It can be likened to the earth breathing. We are entering an ice age now. (See solar minimum)
Unfortunately, half of what is classified as iceage created, was actually catastrophe created. This false teaching, permeated throughout the colleges makes it hard to see the regularity. (because of all the misplaced shit in the way)
Uh. What?
The solar cycle is 7 years long and not related to ice ages in any way.
I think Builder was talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum
tl;dr: There was a period in the 17th century with very few sunspots even at the peak of the 11-year cycle. Earth was unusually cold then. We’re also seeing unusually low full-cycle sunspot counts right now.
It depends on the time scale you’re looking at. They’ve been regular in the last ~3 million years. As far as we know, there were no ice ages in the ~250 million years before that.
The new information here is that at least one of the worlds is in the earth-right-now, ice age prone mode rather than the earth-100-million-years-ago ice age free mode.
On Aldnoah Zero, there was a mech that sucked up the entropy of everything in a 30 meter radius. A side effect of that was dropping the radiant temperature to absolute zero. Bullets swerved around it because it was now super-conducting and repelled magnetic fields. The damn thing had to be shot in the face at point-blank range, and to get close enough, the shooter had to use bombs as ambient sources of heat.
Or perhaps Tyler can suppress (no red squiggly line but that doesn’t look right) motion, er kinetic energy (??) the vibration that all matter is undergoing. I vaguely remember reading somewhere if you stop all atomic movement you get absolute zero.
Hmm I think it has to do with compressing gas molecules. I guess a hard wall of air. He doesn’t get affected by the kinetic strike of the bullet because it’s now embedded in a solid object. Once the solid air vanishes, the projectiles just fall to the ground. Tyler would probably have a problem with A continuous rate of fire say from a machine gun. However all of the people that attacked him believe in one shot one kill.
If applied in an expanding bubble it would probably cool the air dramatically. that would explain the quick breath he took right afterwards since he can’t breathe solid air. Then it sublimes immediately. The moisture in the air condenses out as ice when the air no longer can hold it during the compression stage.
I’m wondering if Tyler would be more or less dangerous in a jungle or the artic. In the artic he would probably have to use less energy to do the compression because the air is already partially compressed however he wouldn’t get the wonderful ice side effect that he uses to attack his opponents with. On the other hand in the jungle there is an extremely high quantity of moisture in the air, but the air is also much less dense before he starts. Also Tyler would be excellent at fighting forest fires.
Remember heat is just interior motion of an object. So his innate magic could simply be slowing everything the *beep* down as well.
I think even gas compression would be a side effect of Tyler’s power.
I think he’s simply removing all the kinetic energy of molecules around him. He removes the kinetic energy of projectiles, they stop and he lets gravity takes hold.
Thermal energy is kinetic energy plus molecular bonds, so reducing the kinetic energy of the air and ground around him drastically reduces the temperature. Then water molecules start linking up and making ice.
That would also make a zone of very low pressure air around him, so there would probably be some wind. Might not be safe to breathe either. Or not, because magic.
Pretty sure it was magic, sir.
Rotflol!
That is right up there with the right lift engine screaming,
“Its a trap! Every engine for themselves! I’m outta here!”