Go home unknown worlds, your drunk (now the science thread)
phantomfinch
West Philadelphia , born and raised on the playground is where I spent most of my days. Join Date: 2016-09-06 Member: 222128Members
West Philadelphia , born and raised on the playground is where I spent most of my days. Join Date: 2016-09-06 Member: 222128Members
So I've been taking a science level 3 course in collage for almost a year now, and one thing I've leant is lithium is used in batteries. I then played subnautica and found lithium being used as mainly a construction tool. And I was all like "whaaaaaaaattttt".
I'm not really asking for lithium batteries in game since there are already "ion batteries" which is a whole other can of worms, but it's just food for thought.
I'm not really asking for lithium batteries in game since there are already "ion batteries" which is a whole other can of worms, but it's just food for thought.
Comments
No is just ion, Which makes no science in scientific terms as you can't just have ions, when a element is ionised it loses an electron to be positively charged.
The ion battery has a nuclear waste symbol on it, which also makes no sense unless the fabricator is using a uranium battery or nuclear waste casing to hold the battery innards,
It makes no sense because from what I could gather from precursor crystals. There are energy in a solid form, this comes from enstines formula (E = m (C X C)) in this the precursors rearranged the formula so m is the subject (m = e / (C x C) from this they created a pure form of energy if the total energy conversion is 100% (which it is not as the ion battery produces a green glow) this has nothing to do with radioactivity.
Beyond that though, just because lithium is used in batteries doesn't mean it couldn't be used in construction.
You do have a point with the whole "Ion" thing, though that's a very very very common mistake. I'm actually a bit more ok with the radioactive symbol. I just assume that they must be using an element that is radioactive for their "Ion".
Not quite. An "Ion" of an molecule means that it has a different number of electrons than the normal balanced molecule does. It can gain an electron as well and be negatively charged.
And, if you also did your research, lithium batteries are just a type of battery.
I hated science with a BURNING passion, but I can remember every last bit of the classes when it came to science experiments in both grade school and high school.
Though I still wonder if Lithium can be found in like a raw form, underwater, without reacting. Ionized lithium is soluble, IIRC.
It likely isn't pure lithium considering it's presented as pink crystals, presumably lithium quartz. That, to my understanding, is stable. Real-life lithium quartz doesn't hold that much lithium, but lithium is a small atom so I reckon it can theoretically hold a good amount. Either way, I feel it's fair for realism to take backseat on this one.
Heck, I work at a place where they use exotic stuff for semiconductor research. They were using arsenic for a while (not lately, though, I know because it's of course dangerous and needs special handling, and none of that stuff seems to be moving around anymore) and they regularly experiment with other stuff. It's easy to know generally what when you can run TXRF tests and see what the idiot engineers are contaminating the tools with.
The Ion Batteries just use some method discovered to extract the energy stored in Ion Crystals in a controlled manner and even recharge them again.
That is not the nuclear waste symbol, but the radiation warning symbol. At work I use a nuclear density gauge to determine the density of the ground for construction. It contains a radioactive source and requires the radiation warning symbol even though the amount of radioactive material is extremely limited. The radioactive source has absolutely nothing to do with Uranium or nuclear waste.
If the radiation warning symbol is on the Ion Power Cell and Ion Battery, then they release some form of radiation or can release some form of radiation if things go wrong. It doesn't have to be any type of radiation that we are familiar with. After all, Ion Crystals are capable of containing massive amounts of energy equivalent to a small nuclear detonation in a stable state. Then there is the fact that a relatively primitive society is using Ion Crystals to power its equipment based on the data from a far more advanced society. Even if Ion Crystals are completely stable and will never release some form of radiation, doesn't mean that Ion Power Cells and Ion Batteries won't release radiation over time.
Beyond that, the world's leading use for lithium is for blending with silica to improve glaze properties - tailoring thermal expansion and viscosity among others - and is used all the time in cookware. (Lithium also makes a damn fine grease for precision instruments. Expensive as hell for high-purity blends, but there's really no substitute.) Plus, you can do some pretty cool stuff with lithium compounds. Lithium hydroxide has been used for decades as a carbon dioxide "scrubber" in subs and spacecraft, and lithium fluoride crystal and lithium niobate can be used to make high-precision, ultra-low-refraction optics. It's pretty cool stuff.
As for its form in our little aquaworld, I'd place my money on kunzite. It's a pyroxine compound of lithium, aluminium, and inosilicate: LiAl(SiO3)2. Kunzite specifically is a strikingly vibrant lilac/purple (owing to trace manganese impurity), and kunzite crystals nearly 50ft long have been found in natural formations. (Give it a splash of hard rads and the color intensifies.) It's really very pretty, and you can even cut and shape it as a gemstone if you have that kind of time.
*cries in corner*
EDIT:
By the way - The radiation symbol simply means radiation danger. In case of the ion battery comparing to samsung's battery desaster: That means that when an ion battery explodes, all the ion crystal energy will be set free, resulting in an extreme high energy radiation burst, hurting the player. It could also mean that the permanent radition from the ion crystals exceeds the hull shielding and you would have to wear a rad suit near an ion energy source. But that's up to the devs.
You're not a moron, @phantomfinch! You've just had no reason to know or even think about this stuff before now. Some of us have, like @EvilSmoo, have jobs where we've worked with things you haven't, or have had training or schooling that covered fields you haven't. Nobody's born knowing this stuff, and I'd say 90% of people - easily 90% - never even think of these things, let alone follow up on it. You, though, now know more than all of those folks. Are you ever going to need this stuff? Eh...probably not.
The science is sharper than I think you're giving it credit for being. Much of the game hangs together quite nicely from a scientific perspective, with necessary artistic license taken to skirt currently-impossible or unstudied subjects. But even if the science is a total whiff, does that really matter if someone wants to have a scientific discussion on the matter? No; of course not. Hell, Star Trek built an empire on babbling BS for years, and yet people keep coming up with the actual science to help explain core concepts that the writers and creator just gloss over. It's also why we have tech today that so strongly mimics what has appeared in sci-fi gone by; someone figured out the reality behind the sci-fi, and ultimately was able to knock "fiction" off because it just became "science."
So what if it's "only a game?" Doesn't mean we can't learn something along the way, maybe open lines of inquiry. Everybody learns best when they're being entertained at the same time.
Tl;dr: People ask questions to learn. You don't have to answer, but don't decry them for asking.
^ The ACOG uses a small amount of radioactive material to illuminate the reticle, even in the dark. It's pretty faint in the datytime, though, so they use that red strip along the side to channel daylight into the reticle for daytime use. Sometimes it's too bright, so you'll see people using black electrical tape to tape off part of the red stripe for less brightness.
Radiation source is H3 (Tritium)
Radiation warning PDF: http://stevespages.com/pdf/trijicon_ta-338-3x30.pdf
Reticle:
Another radiation source I'm familiar with that requires a warning label, that everyone else uses as well: (this one uses Americum-241)
So, radiation warnings don't mean "run for the hills, death lurks just around the corner", it means, put your thinking cap on and treat this piece of equipment with the proper respect, as it can be hazardous in certain situations. Hence other warnings we have, like this one:
Not too dangerous, right?
Or this one, a bit more on-topic for Subnautica (pressurized oxygen tank):
Results in this:
http://www.scubaengineer.com/tank_servicingx.htm
EDIT: I guess the point is, radiation warnings don't have to mean nuclear powered, or lethal doses of radiation (although they are obviously used in those circumstances, as radiation is present). It just represents a hazard you should be aware of.
maybe it sounds cool from game designers perspective, but for someone who is at least remotely familiar with the subject...
Come on! There are real science articles about space-time warping and FTL travel, like this one: https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0202021.pdf
A causally connected superluminal Warp Drive spacetime∗
F. Loup† R. Held‡ D. Waite§ E. Halerewicz, Jr.¶ M. Stabnok M. Kuntzman∗∗ R. Sims††
January 28, 2002
In later works it would be pointed out however that exotic matter used to create warp bubble must be tachyonic as well.
PS. As for dark matter, heck I'd bet that this stuff doesn't exist and it is simply our theory of gravity that is wrong. Sounds more logical to me.
It's only a game or movie means that the science inside the science fiction gets artificially reduced to make it understandable and fun to the audience. And in a way that maximizes the audience to enjoy or minimize the number of people turning away from the product because the science feels not good for them or oversized. Usually it ends with a "cartoony" science that is bent beyond recognition and laws for those people who have a high scientific education. Also usually movies tend to be most stupid, games less and books usually have the highest scientific level, due to the scientifc difference background of the different audiences of the appropriate media. Although books simply have an extreme range going from stupid for the masses to very scientific for those who like that.
In any case it's marketing that kills the science out of fiction and dreams or visions that blow up the fiction to gigantic bubbles. Most innovations lead to dead ends and those that succeed are only predictable after their success. Unfortunately pseudoscience or babbling BS is omnipresent in society leading to incosistent SF like a "magic" replicator and people happily working with their hands on large mechanic objects. Add to it, that marketing dictates that characters in SF only mirror our social present reality, because otherwise the audience is unable to feel for the product.
As an example it's probably impossible to make a SF movie about a society of living AI spaceships struggling to find a new home after the heliosphere of the solar system got destroyed by a black hole passing by. Those spaceships have no faces and emotions for the audience to feel with them, so you could only write a story. But even then the social interactions would either be babbling BS or too technical for the readers to get in touch. So this story will never get told. That's where a possible future science must differ from science fiction - the need to emotionally connect to our present by pleasing us with something we can actually consume.
I think it's ok to lower scientific expectancies for an entertaining product and accept a reduced or cartoony science and even lots of loopholes as long as the system tries to be consistent (true to its own rules) and not too contradictory to basic reality laws or logic.
If a product stays close to science it's called hard SF and more a simulator when it's a game. Subnautica doesn't aim for that, so I don't care too much about the tech nonsense I see, like the inconsistency of bulkheads and stairs compaired to fabricators. The game neither simulates pressure physics nor does it try to be accurate for crafted tech. I would like a bit more tech consistency and logic, but as the game doesn't aim for that I can accept it as long as it doesn't get too weird (although the bulkheads give me a headache and I believe not much player use them).
What I'd expect from a scientific Subnautica version?:
What I wish from this Subnautica?:
Radiation isn't tied to nuclear power and is derived from submolecular particles radiating from a source at a level that's unhealthy for a human if exposed to it.
The submolecular particles range from simple elementary particles like photons (electromagnetic waves) up to big instable radionuclides like uranium. The particles must be able to penetrate the human body and have enough energy to ionize the molecules there.
The lowest end for a dangerous exposure is UV radiation. It certainly is already dangerous causing skin cancer if exposed too much, yet no radiation warnings are given, as the radiation isn't ionizing. But higher UV radiation as well as microwaves or xrays or beyond need a radiation warning. Any radionuclides in materials getting used will need a warning too.
Just the order of magnitude of power (even not 1 megaton TNT) is not enough for a radiation warning. The quantum energy, wave length or wave frequency is usually the measurement, as this is important for the process of ionizing other molecules. Thus ordinary explosives only get the explosive warning, while even the smallest object using only a few nanogram of plutonium would immediately need a radioactive warning.
Could it have been the recent explosion of the Aurora that's making the Lithium crystals glow so pink now?
Don't make bold statements if you can't face the scientific truth.
Well I shouldn't go into chemistry then, more of a biology fan.
But then I can't find anything that breaks the laws of biology (except the warper)
The warper is a cyborg creature, that's why.
Strangely enough, every time you see progress of your disease it happens in close proximity to those ion crystals, and the pustules are the same colour as the ion crystals. I have been developing a theory that the disease is actually a mutation of some common bacteria caused by proximity to ion crystals, a part of all technology of the Precursors. Because they were so ubiquitous, the Precursors couldn't conceive of them causing the disease, thus their failure to "cure" it, probably because it would require complete removal of the ion crystals from their entire culture.
I said much, not all, and that they definitely took artistic license.
Personally, I don't know why they went with the whole "dark matter" rigmarole anyway. I rolled my eyes hard enough when HL2 did it; this time, it hurt. Treknobabble strikes again, I guess.
Part A: Sure you can. Keith Laumer did it with Bolos, and they're just tanks. Hell, Pixar did it with WALL-E. A true, strong AI likely would have personality, and reactions which we ascribe to emotion. Tendencies, preferences, we resolve these things into the presence of "personality" as easily as we do a hill and shadows into a face. We contaminate everything we see with our perspective if we don't take great pains to avoid doing so.
Sure, it's legit to lower scientific expectations in entertainment; few people would enjoy it if you need a Master's in Physics to understand it. But that means there's plenty of room for a motivated fanbase to fill in the scientific blanks with plausible explanations. It's part of the fun.
Part B: @Zetachron is square on the money. What we frequently call the "radiation symbol" has a specific use. It's a warning symbol for ionizing radiation only. This means alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays, and neutron radiation. Period, full stop. Other forms of radiation, such as UV, microwave, IR, radio, visible light, et cetera are non-ionizing radiation, and therefore represent an incorrect use of the warning symbol (correctly called the "ionizing radiation trefoil"). Non-ionizing radiation can certainly be dangerous, even deadly, but it falls into other warning classifications, and they have their own symbols for warning - even visible light can be deadly (think lasers) and there's a proper warning symbol for that, too. So, assuming the radiation trefoil is being used correctly, that can is holding something that emits ionizing radiation, suggesting those "ion crystals" aren't radiostable at all.