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Author Topic: "High" Power Level vs. "Low" Power Level  (Read 50378 times)
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RedSunOfKrypton
Last Son of Krypton
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« Reply #80 on: September 27, 2005, 10:49:54 AM »

Quote
The planet is moving all the time, though -- rotating, revolving, etc.
To further expand on what I said, moving a planet would kill everthing on it if you did something like moving it away from its main source of light and heat. :wink:
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"...and as the fledgeling Man of Steel looks for the first time over the skyline of this city, this, Metropolis, he utters the syllables with which history is made and legends are forged: This, looks like a job...for Superman."
Uncle Mxy
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« Reply #81 on: September 27, 2005, 11:43:04 AM »

Quote from: "RedSunOfKrypton"
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The planet is moving all the time, though -- rotating, revolving, etc.
To further expand on what I said, moving a planet would kill everthing on it if you did something like moving it away from its main source of light and heat. :wink:

Point taken.  I tend to think that if the goal is to have the Earth dodge some asteroid or something, you move it a little forward or backward within its revolution, not significantly closer to or further from the Sun.  My favorite amusing treatment of this is where the Superfriends Green Lantern moved the Earth:  http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/greenlc.htm
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Captain Kal
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« Reply #82 on: September 27, 2005, 02:45:30 PM »

I'm not saying that extensive research automatically leads to great writing.  But it certainly helps.  And on any list of great authors, the researchers will tend to top the list and the screw-ups will place high but not as high.

Busiek is at least educated in the ways of philosophy, religion, and myth, as is Simonson.

Even the much-vaunted Elliot S! Maggin is clearly a highly educated man in the Renaissance sense if one reads his novels and his interviews.  He clearly has spent much time learning about law, philosophy, religion, science, and just about anything else that might show up in his fiction.  He even took the trouble to give excrutiating detail to the plausibility of the dual gravity/sun bases for Kryptonian super-powers in Last Son of Krypton.  IOW, the generally accepted 'god' of Superman writers in this forum is a case in point for the educated writer.
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Captain Kal

"When you lose, don't lose the lesson."
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JulianPerez
Council of Wisdom
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« Reply #83 on: September 27, 2005, 08:04:41 PM »

Quote from: "Uncle Mxy"
It'd be interesting to show Superman moving the Earth by means that go beyond "pushing on it".  As an example, Superman could grab the biggest asteroid he could push without breaking it up, and loop it near the Earth repeatedly to cause a gravitational sling-shot effect.


In SCIENCE OF SUPERMAN, Wolverton mentions that there may be limits to Superman's powers, simply because it's very hard to imagine a human sized being wielding that kind of force. He mentions, though, that it may be possible for Superman to use some sort of device to make his work easier. Most people cannot, for instance, pick up a car, but nearly anyone can with a jack.

My question is this: what sort of "jack" would Superman use to push the earth around?

Quote from: "Captain Kal"
I'm not saying that extensive research automatically leads to great writing. But it certainly helps. And on any list of great authors, the researchers will tend to top the list and the screw-ups will place high but not as high.  


No arguments here. When it comes to writing, you get what you put in.
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Uncle Mxy
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« Reply #84 on: September 27, 2005, 08:28:15 PM »

Quote from: "JulianPerez"
My question is this: what sort of "jack" would Superman use to push the earth around?

A 100km asteroid looped many times would be sufficient:
http://es.ucsc.edu/~kory//abstracts.html

Quote
"Astronomical engineering: A strategy for modifying planetary orbits" D. G. Korycansky, G. Laughlin, F. C. Adams, Astrophysics and Space Science 275, 349-366.

The Sun's gradual brightening will seriously compromise the Earth's biosphere within ~ 109 years. If Earth's orbit migrates outward, however, the biosphere could remain intact over the entire main-sequence lifetime of the Sun. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of engineering such a migration over a long time period. The basic mechanism uses gravitational assists to (in effect) transfer orbital energy from Jupiter to the Earth, and thereby enlarges the orbital radius of Earth. This transfer is accomplished by a suitable intermediate body, either a Kuiper Belt object or a main belt asteroid. The object first encounters Earth during an inward pass on its initial highly elliptical orbit of large (~ to 300 AU) semimajor axis. The encounter transfers energy from the object to the Earth in standard gravity-assist fashion by passing close to the leading limb of the planet. The resulting outbound trajectory of the object must cross the orbit of Jupiter; with proper timing, the outbound object encounters Jupiter and picks up the energy it lost to Earth. With small corrections to the trajectory, or additional planetary encounters (e.g., with Saturn), the object can repeat this process over many encounters. To maintain its present flux of solar energy, the Earth must experience roughly one encounter every 6000 years (for an object mass of 1022 g). We develop the details of this scheme and discuss its ramifications.
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