#science meta

[meeresfem]

An Indigenous Critique of the Green New Deal

Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson explains why "green growth" isn't enough to save the planet.

"We should be thinking of climate change as part of a much longer series of ecological catastrophes caused by colonialism and accumulation-based society." says Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, an activist/scholar from the Nishnaabeg nation and author most recently of the book As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance.

[…] Our whole way of life has to change.

[niennavalier]

Speedforce Science Meta

Hey guys I’m bored so have some science meta.

You know the scene in the latest Flash episode? The bit in the courthouse when Barry whisks Iris away and they have a superspeed conversation that no one else is aware of? Well, I’ll admit I didn’t actually watch it, but I saw the gifset. Enough to know they explained it away with Barry just admitting he didn’t know what he was doing either.

Airtight writing. Clearly. (Why @nitori-swims-rinstyle actually had a conversation that TV shows should get science consultants of some sort. Because they should. For soooo many reasons.)

Apologies for the salt. I’m in a snarky mood.

But anyway, have my meta on how the Speedforce works, and why this scene makes sense. (Also if the comic books directly contradict me, feel free to call me out. I’m not claiming great knowledge on comic canon - I haven’t read enough of them. This is all just me science musing).

The basic premise of my idea? Don’t think of Barry as a speedster. Or maybe, open up your idea of what a ‘speedster’ is. Because it’s not as simple as ‘someone who moves fast’. And the Speedforce is pretty much the key to it all.

Imagine the Speedforce as this...alternate plane of existence, of sorts. Not a parallel universe, but another portion of reality that intersects with our own. Hell, maybe it’s honestly just a part of this big thing we call Reality. Point is, its this slightly altered plane, weaved together with out world, and not everyone has access to it. But speedsters do.

The Speedforce makes speedsters move fast because, in this plane, time flows differently. More specifically, time flows more slowly. While in this plane, you perceive, move, act, react the same as you would, except with time in the Speedforce existing more slowly, you essentially can perceive everything more quickly in comparison. Same goes for movement and action. Physical objects, people - those all can be affected across this barrier that closes off the Speedforce to most people (hence why Barry still interacts with stuff while being the Flash), so it doesn’t seem like this alternate plane of existence exists at all. Except it does, and moving through the plane of the Speedforce is what allows Barry (and speedsters) to move faster by comparison.

What’s this have to do with the scene? (Both scenes, really, because the comparison is nice, if you check the gifset).

In the first one (somewhere in season 1, Barry pouring his heart out to Iris too quickly for her to hear) Barry steps into the Speedforce, crosses that barrier, alone. With time moving more slowly, he’s able to act more quickly, at a rate that’s too fast for human perception at normal time to understand. He’s there just for the brief period he needs to say what he does, then he steps out of the Speedforce, back into a normal frame of reference.

The second one (the recent courthouse scene) is where things get confusing. Because, if we assumed Barry just moved fast, him grabbing Iris shouldn’t have meant a damn thing. He can talk fast and tell her anything, and nothing should have gone any different from his lightning fast confession. Maybe she’d get this moment of vertigo, and that’s it. Because the normal human brain just can’t process that - it’s impossible. But if all they did was step into this new temporal frame of reference, well...then it would work out. They’re both experiencing time move more slowly, because they’re both in the Speedforce. Compared to each other, time passes the same for the two of them, so they can act and perceive at equal rates, and their interaction is basically normal. But everyone else is where Iris was during Barry’s season 1 confession: locked out of the Speedforce, too slow to realize they’ve just borne witness to some really crazy physics. How exactly Barry got Iris across that barrier, I don’t know; whether or not physical touch is the key to crossing planes of existence isn’t really something I can even guess. Slightly above my pay grade, you know? But point being, Barry has the key to unlocking that door, and this time he was able to bring someone with him.

Also, I feel like this can explain Barry’s general behavior with the Speedforce? And his powers. Because he’s not always moving fast. He seems to go about his day as normal except for when he specifically needs his speed. Doesn’t seem like he’s always moving a million miles an hour and constantly thinking about slowing down. Could work if he’s just not in the Speedforce at that time, so he honestly is just a regular human (albeit with the ability to access another dimension, basically). His lack of control over his powers at the start would then also be explained by essentially just not knowing which side of that barrier he was on at the time; the physical world is still the physical world, after all.

The one thing that doesn’t fit is the enhanced metabolism. Speed healing is also a strange one (although maybe that’s just the instinct of the metahuman body to cross into the Speedforce for faster healing. That one’s still...sorta weird though. And would kinda imply that Barry’s muscle memory knows more than conscious him really does. Which is sorta trippy.)

Basically? Speedforce? Not a weird nebulous entity, but a parallel plane of existence with a different temporal frame of reference.

Alright, time to sleep soon.

[niennavalier]

Oh! Also!

I hope they weren’t implying that the Spear was being destroyed by the heat in that thing Stein made. Because the heat gun couldn’t destroy it. And per canon, it reaches Absolute Hot AKA 10^28 times hotter than the sun AKA the temperature of the goddamn Big Bang.

So yeah, no amount of heat was gonna destroy that thing. If heat was just a byproduct of something else that could destroy it, then fine (although TBH that sorta undoes all the LOTR esque stuff from last episode).

[impatient14]

Um, I slipped and fell down a space-time continuum wormhole and may be compiling a very detailed meta about how it relates to Sherlock and EMP and twin series/seasons...Um...Stay tuned.

[eukaryotetumbled]

Librarian Jeffrey Beall won’t say why he has unpublished his widely read blog.

Huh. This strikes me as bad news - that list was useful.

[ii-romana]

Dennis and Disease and Abilities

It was pointed out in this meta that Luke’s son, Dennis, likely has some sort of skin condition, since he is always covered pretty much head to toe by clothing. Given that Luke has an ability I have thoughts on this. Read them below the cut. Beware, science.

So Dennis obviously have some type of sun allergy. Skin allergies can be caused by: racial factors (white and native american people are at greater risk), medications the person is taking, things like perfume, and having a parent with a related skin condition/genetics. A sun allergy takes the form of redness, itching, pain, hives, and in general a pretty terrible time. You would rather be baking in the Texas heat in long sleeves in june than covered in hives, or at least I would.

That being said I’m going to vote that it is either caused by race or by genetics, since he is probably too young to be on the types of medication that cause extreme skin sensitivity. I find race a little less likely, even though Luke is white and that is considered a high risk group, Dennis has more melanin in his skin, making it a darker color (basically he’s darker than a pasty white kid who would roast in Texas trust me I am that pasty white kid).

So that leaves genetics. This is interesting, given that it looks like Luke’s ability has something to do with absorbing energy through his skin, and we know that he can absorb energy from the sun. Since it doesn’t look like Joanne has any skin/light sensitivity issues, and she even asks Luke if the sun is getting to him, it seems more likely that an issue with sun exposure runs in Luke’s family.

This is where things get interesting. Given that Luke’s ability involves the sun, it seems like he passed the genes for his ability on to his son. However, probably when his DNA was being combined with Joanne’s DNA to make a tiny person something went wrong. Probably something called recombination occurred. A piece of Joanne’s DNA crossed chromosomes over to Luke’s DNA and that tiny little chunk mixed together. This normally isn’t a bad thing. In fact it’s the main thing that drives evolution and it’s great because it creates change in a population!

In this case though it kinda sucks. This crossing over event must have happened in the middle of one of the genes that passed on the ability. This caused all of the genes to be passed on but not all of them functioned correctly, which instead of giving Dennis an ability gave him a pretty terrible genetic disease.

This is interesting because an ability stopped being an ability and went back to being human diseases which might suggest that a lot of diseases in the Heroes universe are actually abilities that were mutated and stopped working properly at some point. That would explain why specials have always been a small group of the population, there is probably a high mutation rate and the product of that mutation rate is some pretty bad diseases. So multiple generations with abilities and no bad side effects are probably fairly rare. This also supports that fact that specials are not a different species, but just a genetic subset of the population, since abilities can be mutated back into normal genes which makes specials very firmly human. This is interesting because an ability stopped being an ability and went back to being human diseases which might suggest that a lot of diseases in the Heroes universe are actually abilities that were mutated and stopped working properly at some point. That would explain why specials have always been a small group of the population, there is probably a high mutation rate and the product of that mutation rate is some pretty bad diseases. So multiple generations with abilities and no bad side effects are probably fairly rare. This also supports that fact that specials are not a different species, but just a genetic subset of the population, since abilities can be mutated back into normal genes which makes specials very firmly human.