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Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Feisty-Pants
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Quick question. How powerful are her swords? It's not defined really in your character sheet @Feisty-Pants just that you could probably harden them past normal swords. That's neat and all but Devil's shields can stop most mortal ammunition. I say most because other than a small explosion would break through. I don't see swords, however hardened, piercing them. So before I finish up this post, I was just looking to get some clarification.


It's not just hardness that you should be worried about. It's raw, hardened light, which means it's compressed to a degree far greater than a laser or something relatively similar, putting it under an immense degree of pressure.

What happens when something under massive pressure is abruptly fractured?

Explosions. White, blinding, fiery explosions. Probably equivalent to a mortar or a hand grenade.

That is if she chooses to. Which is only rare, since it would cause extensive collateral damage. She's self limiting by that degree.
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by thewizardguy
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@Feisty-Pants
I am working very hard not to judge the physics behind that concept >.>
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by AtomicNut
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<Snipped quote by Override>

It's not just hardness that you should be worried about. It's raw, hardened light, which means it's compressed to a degree far greater than a laser or something relatively similar, putting it under an immense degree of pressure.

What happens when something under massive pressure is abruptly fractured?

Explosions. White, blinding, fiery explosions. Probably equivalent to a mortar or a hand grenade.

That is if she chooses to. Which is only rare, since it would cause extensive collateral damage. She's self limiting by that degree.


Actually light doesn't hold that much pressure. Being massless particles and all. Plus light is not bound to the Exclusion principle so you can technically compress as much as you want. It'd only glow brighter. :P
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by thewizardguy
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@AtomicNut
It's actually even more complicated than that.

Technically speaking light does have 'mass'. Sometimes. When it feels like it. Photons as a particle have mass, but photons as a wave don't. But even when they have mass they don't have electromagnetism due to a lack of electrons. They don't interact with other substances in the normal way. Instead light is absorbed and reflected by other molecules, depending on a bunch of factors.

In order to get light to act anything like a physical object you would need to somehow force them to continuously act as particles, and then force them into such close proximity that they would physically touch. This would create a material so astoundingly dense than an orb the size of a marble would have a mass of thousands of tons. Of course if you did somehow create and control this material it would be semi-invisible as it does not give off light, and also cause any 'normal' material it touched to disintegrate.

And the sheer energy contained in that many photons would be horrifying. I mean, you'd have to gather all the light that touched the Earth in order to get anything like that solid mass. And that's enough energy to blow cities off the map. You could cause entire buildings to just disintegrate.

And this is why physics and superpowers don't mix.
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by AtomicNut
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@AtomicNut
It's actually even more complicated than that.

Technically speaking light does have 'mass'. Sometimes. When it feels like it. Photons as a particle have mass, but photons as a wave don't. But even when they have mass they don't have electromagnetism due to a lack of electrons. They don't interact with other substances in the normal way. Instead light is absorbed and reflected by other molecules, depending on a bunch of factors.

In order to get light to act anything like a physical object you would need to somehow force them to continuously act as particles, and then force them into such close proximity that they would physically touch. This would create a material so astoundingly dense than an orb the size of a marble would have a mass of thousands of tons. Of course if you did somehow create and control this material it would be semi-invisible as it does not give off light, and also cause any 'normal' material it touched to disintegrate.

And the sheer energy contained in that many photons would be horrifying. I mean, you'd have to gather all the light that touched the Earth in order to get anything like that solid mass. And that's enough energy to blow cities off the map. You could cause entire buildings to just disintegrate.

And this is why physics and superpowers don't mix.


Photons DO NOT HAVE MASS. They have momentum.
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Feisty-Pants
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This is waaaay over my head now.

Light doesn't have mass, bit it does have energy, right?
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Feisty-Pants
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@Feisty-Pants
I am working very hard not to judge the physics behind that concept >.>


All of this is making my brain hurt. XD
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by thewizardguy
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@AtomicNut
In all technicality Photons do have mass. To call the a massless particle is not entirely correct. After all, momentum can only exist when there is mass, however miniscule.

Have you ever read up on the driving principles behind the Lightsail?
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This is waaaay over my head now.

Light doesn't have mass, bit it does have energy, right?


You are correct. And it has momentum, and thus it can exert pressure.

Depending of whether you take it as a particle or a wave it's either E=h*ν or E=p*c

@AtomicNut
In all technicality Photons do have mass. To call the a massless particle is not entirely correct. After all, momentum can only exist when there is mass, however miniscule.

Have you ever read up on the driving principles behind the Lightsail?


No they do not. Radiation Pressure is expressed in terms of momentum. Second law of newton can also be expressed as derivative of momentum. You can do all the maths for that without using mass even once. So hence it can be a massless particle with momentum. But not mass.

If it had mass, it would be impossible to travel at c.
Hidden 7 yrs ago 7 yrs ago Post by Obscurus
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Hey guys, this looks great. Got space for one more?

Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by thewizardguy
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@AtomicNut

Having done some more reading you are correct, photos do not have mass. However, they can contribute to the mass of an object.

If you were to create a box lined with mirrors and light were to be reflected constantly back and forth within this box then the mass of the box would increase if light were to be added to it.

Photons possess a nonvariant mass of 0. However, they possess a nonzero relativistic mass.

TLDR: Light is weird.
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by AtomicNut
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@AtomicNut

Having done some more reading you are correct, photos do not have mass. However, they can contribute to the mass of an object.

If you were to create a box lined with mirrors and light were to be reflected constantly back and forth within this box then the mass of the box would increase if light were to be added to it.

Photons possess a nonvariant mass of 0. However, they possess a nonzero relativistic mass.

TLDR: Light is weird.


Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by ihinka
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Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Feisty-Pants
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THIS.

You nerds. :P
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by thewizardguy
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@AtomicNut

E=MC^2 declares that mass can be measured in energy, but also that the opposite applies. Effectively any particle that possesses energy must also possess mass. Energy in fact can be defined as mass measured in a different unit.

Photons are bent by gravity, but the effect of gravity on a particle is measured based on their mass. If photons truly possessed 0 mass then they would not be affected by gravity. However we know that light is bent by gravity ever since the effect of the sun's gravity well on the light of the stars was measured by Edward Eddington in 1919.

Invariant mass is measured as m = sqrt{E2/c4 - p2/c2} which returns that photons have no mass, and therefore light has no mass. However relativistic mass is defined by velocity.
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Obscurus
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Not that I'm in this RP or anything, but since I'm lurking here anyway, I thought I'd add a little to the photon discussion:
short version
physics forum discussion about whether photons have mass or not
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Override
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I'm going to wait for OA on that one, but I highly doubt he's going to let your swords do that much damage. It wasn't clear in your sheet and that is almost on the level of what Devils lasers could do before nerfed.
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Feisty-Pants
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I'm going to wait for OA on that one, but I highly doubt he's going to let your swords do that much damage. It wasn't clear in your sheet and that is almost on the level of what Devils lasers could do before nerfed.


Either way, the post I wrote was written without that in mind. The breaking is just them shattering against the barrier.
Hidden 7 yrs ago 7 yrs ago Post by AtomicNut
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@AtomicNut

E=MC^2 declares that mass can be measured in energy, but also that the opposite applies. Effectively any particle that possesses energy must also possess mass. Energy in fact can be defined as mass measured in a different unit.

Photons are bent by gravity, but the effect of gravity on a particle is measured based on their mass. If photons truly possessed 0 mass then they would not be affected by gravity. However we know that light is bent by gravity ever since the effect of the sun's gravity well on the light of the stars was measured by Edward Eddington in 1919.

Invariant mass is measured as m = sqrt{E2/c4 - p2/c2} which returns that photons have no mass, and therefore light has no mass. However relativistic mass is defined by velocity.


It doesn't apply to photons. Relativistic mass was essentially defined as an artifact to assimilate the changes in properties as objects drew closer to the speed of light by relating it to the rest mass. You have no reason to to apply it to photons, since all their phenomena can be expressed as massless.

And the effect of gravity on light can be summed as the distortion of the 4-space, rather than an intrinsic property of the photon. You're looking it the wrong way. Photons are NOT affected by gravity. The Space-Time IS.

Also, here's what good ol' Albert thought on the subject.

It is not good to introduce the concept of the mass of a moving body for which no clear definition can be given. It is better to introduce no other mass concept than the ’rest mass’ m. Instead of introducing M it is better to mention the expression for the momentum and energy of a body in motion.
"Albert Einstein in letter to Lincoln Barnett, 19 June 1948 (quote from L. B. Okun (1989), p. 42)


(Taken from the wiki)

Now for the love of, stop vandalizing my beloved Physics in such a way. I do have a degree in that and these things hurt.
Hidden 7 yrs ago Post by Feisty-Pants
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I've decided. Gungnir's old team would be called

<Snipped quote by thewizardguy>

It doesn't apply to photons. Relativistic mass was essentially defined as an artifact to assimilate the changes in properties as objects drew closer to the speed of light by relating it to the rest mass. You have no reason to to apply it to photons, since all their phenomena can be expressed as massless.

And the effect of gravity on light can be summed as the distortion of the 4-space, rather than an intrinsic property of the photon. You're looking it the wrong way. Photons are NOT affected by gravity. The Space-Time IS.

Also, here's what good ol' Albert thought on the subject.

It is not good to introduce the concept of the mass of a moving body for which no clear definition can be given. It is better to introduce no other mass concept than the ’rest mass’ m. Instead of introducing M it is better to mention the expression for the momentum and energy of a body in motion.
"Albert Einstein in letter to Lincoln Barnett, 19 June 1948 (quote from L. B. Okun (1989), p. 42)


(Taken from the wiki)

Now for the love of, stop vandalizing my beloved Physics in such a way. I do have a degree in that and these things hurt.


Well listen here, MR. SCIENTIST.

Every time you bring real physics into a fantasy world, God kills a puppy. Stop. Stop I say!!
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