Chrono Compendium
Enhasa Halls - Chrono Series Analysis => Magic, Elements, and Technology => Topic started by: 4th Triforce piece on December 10, 2008, 04:42:33 pm
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Maybe this is really corny as I am not usually good at anylasis but I'll give my idea a shot with Lucca's wondershot. :O
I've made it to where you get the Wings of Time in the video game so I wonder if they ever explain how the Island of Zeal stayed afloat?
I bet it's some sort of anti-gravity machine that is hidden from view. There is probably an engine room somewhere that turns it on/off. Perhaps one of the Nu's made it?
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Probably magic... Who knows with all the crazy stuff they made there.
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According to the game, the kingdom was relatively young... or at least it's time airborne was. Zeal once was on the ground, until magic (presumably, see Sun Stone) was used to suspend it in the air.
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I just assumed it was crazy ass videogame magic.
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Probably similarly to how Magus floats.
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Magic, antigravity, magnetism, pockets of hydrogen gas, very dense air, etc. Take your pick.
Now the real conundrum is... how does the main island of Zeal still have water? It is falling off the island at a noticeable rate!
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Floating continents/islands exist in various games/anims... I'm just curious who got this idea first?
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I wouldn't be surprised if the concept was ancient.
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Jesus makes it float.
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Now the real conundrum is... how does the main island of Zeal still have water? It is falling off the island at a noticeable rate!
Recondensed (using magic!) from the surrounding clouds.
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Lots of Water element magic users constantly using the "Springs of Recovery" to regain MP and recast lots of Water 2 spells.
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Doesn't Nu mean "Water" or something? That might have something to do with it.
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Those anyone noticed how the water falls down to the surface, yet while being there you don't see the water falling? Doesn't it means that they have a method to have that falling water return to the deposit somehow?
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Well, isn't it, like...snowing on the surface...?
Hey, maybe the Ice Age ended long ago & Zeal is just bein bitches with the atmosphere & creating a new one! >_>
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I was going in that direction with this thread.
"Those anyone noticed how the water falls down to the surface, yet while being there you don't see the water falling? Doesn't it means that they have a method to have that falling water return to the deposit somehow?"
quoted by Thought.
Where did zelda get it's Technolgoy from? Ayla's tribe couldn't have done it nor the tribe up north. (can't think of their name) Look how they were trying to surive the ice-age if you even call it trying.
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Sorry, Triforce, what is quoted by me?
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When did Zelda become part of the thread?
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On second thought, I may have something valuable to contribute to this thread besides my previous "Jesus makes it float" statement.
I once wondered how the water in Terra Tower was continually replenished since it is always falling to the sea below. Well in the room with the 6 massive element crystals, you can actually see water being produced by them and falling below. Then, when the Fused Dragon God/Time Devourer takes off through the tower, they seem to begin to make more water and the water level begins to rise.
So the whole "how does Zeal still have water" question may simply just have the answer - "Magic makes it!".
Which is pretty much saying the same thing as "jesus makes it float".
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Probably due to some invention of the Gurus.
Probably similarly to how Magus floats.
Rule of Cool?
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Zeal is pretty proficient with spatial gates(and spatial barriers; e.g. energy pyramid, Schala sealing of the time gate in 12000BC, etc.), no? Then why not postulate that Zeal could circulate water between the main island and the surface vis á vis spatial gates in the ocean? Perhaps further their islands are floating due to a sort of 'spatial displacement engine'.
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So, basically you're kinda saying they're summoning the water up there...?
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So, basically you're kinda saying they're summoning the water up there...?
Well, if they can transfer people from the ground to the floating islands and back thanks to those Sky/Land Bridges, then why not do the same for the water?
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I can't believe no one thought of this. Ocean Palace?!?!?! There is a portal that leads back to Zeal Palace! It then trickles into the lake, off the continent, and freezes in the lower atmosphere. It then falls a snow, sleet, or hail.
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Maybe no one has thought it since the portal in the Ocean Palace is for entering and leaving the building, not the transport of water.
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The island of Zeal has grass growing on it.
Grass gets you high.
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Ah, but that depends on the type of grass. The plot thickens!
Thus, I stand by my original assertion that:
Jesus makes it float.
Occam's Razor, bitches.
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Ah, but that depends on the type of grass. The plot thickens!
Thus, I stand by my original assertion that:
Jesus makes it float.
Occam's Razor, bitches.
BC = Before Christ.
Debunked!
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It is Zeality, which neutralized the Gravity, made the island float.
:picardno
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The anti gravity device from Starky Corp.
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A couple of theories:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMpTqa8iICs
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IMO, either it was magic, somekind of dimensional/spacial altering effect, or something among the lines of a "Levistone" á lá FFI
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Absent a canonical explanation, the mechanism for Zeal's levitation would most conveniently begin with a lodestone of some kind--i.e., a magnet--since that's what Laputa used in Gulliver's Travels. This simple premise is undoubtedly then given the Chrono touch by recasting the magnet as some other power source. This was done in the game: Thus, the floating power of Zeal came from the Sun Stone, and later the Mammon Machine.
The question of water is one that has intrigued me for years. Zeal is evidently above the major precipitating layer of the atmosphere, at least part of the time. We do not know if it ever passes underneath the clouds to replenish its reserves--although that is one of the most plausible explanations.
The issue here is one of scale: If we presume the water is teleported, as some of you have suggested, the energy costs of doing so become enormous to the point of prohibition. Given the very high rate at which water simply falls off the sides of the island, and also considering evaporative losses (which will increase at high elevations), it seems plausible that Zeal's entire water supply is replaced every few days or weeks. That would seem to rule out teleportation, or at the very minimum it would make the use of teleportation as a water delivery mechanism exorbitantly expensive from an energy standpoint. If you think of what it must take to teleport even a single person, and then imagine the amount of water on Zeal, you would quickly realize that, if the water were delivered by teleportation, then well in excess of 99.999 percent of all teleportation activity at Zeal would be devoted exclusively to water transfer. There would have to be enormous skygates at one or more lakes across the planet, constantly engaged in water replenishment. In short, if teleportation is the answer, then Zeal is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than we gave it credit for. I find it hard to accept that such a nation could have been credibly challenged by Lavos.
Thought's notion of atmospheric condensation visibly does not hold up. There is no way to condense enough water to make up for what is seen falling from Zeal. Now, it is an assumption that those waterfalls are consistent; it could be that Zeal had recently received a good dousing, and that ordinarily not so much water is falling off the sides. But if that were the case, then we're back to square one: What mechanism caused the dousing? No amount of condensation could do it, given Zeal's size versus its water loss--especially when considering the much lower absolute humidity present at very high elevations.
Another possibility raised is one of portal-type teleportation, whereby a portal is opened underwater and some of the water "falls" through it. A corresponding portal opens up in Zeal, and the water is pushed out of it by the weight of the water body. This solution, while elegant, is impossible, given that doing so would present a gross violation of the laws of thermodynamics, and would have the practical consequence of supplying Zeal with an infinite energy supply--thus contradicting Zeal's stated energy problems.
As improbable as it seems, I do find the most plausible solution to be that Zeal itself descends below the cloud layer at regular intervals, receiving copious amounts of precipitation which are then stored as liquid water from Zeal's own heat and the heat produced by the melting of frozen water. Perhaps Zeal itself does not descend; perhaps the cloud layer rises. This could be done by moving Zeal laterally to a location where the precipitating cloud layer is higher, either by the geometry of a given storm system, or by the geography of the planet.
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Ah, yes; the water springing up from the islands of Zeal. Amazing how it’s able to constantly replenish itself. Numerous theories have abounded, and so far, they all either a) require the suspension of the laws of thermodynamics in favor of magical implementation, or b) require incredible amounts of energy dedicated to the sustaining of the presence of flowing water. I’m at a loss as to how to explain where the water comes from. I’m also at a loss as to explain away the problems associated with how the islands of Zeal float.
One theory I had was that the foundations of the floating islands of Zeal are supposedly to be made of some magnetic material which allows them to hover via (what I believe to be) the Meissner Effect. However, the islands are also composed of dirt, rock, plants, and water, which would negate the floating effect of the islands to a large degree. Since the magnetic properties require a powerful material (e.g. superconductor), it would require that the surface under the floating islands would contain a lot of that material. Obtaining and powering a superconductor material, however, poses a problem in itself:
A superconductor at room temperature is a scientific dream that will probably never be realized, since the "warmest" superconductor produced by scientists requires a temperature of -183° C. Since all rocky planets form under conditions similar to earth's solar system (which the world of Zeal seems to emulate to a near perfect extent), it seems unlikely that such a mineral exists anywhere in the universe. But let’s suppose for a minute that the Zealian scientists DID produce such a superconductor. I’ll say this much: it wouldn't be derived from a naturally occurring mineral.
But what if the material was something other than a superconductor? Lord J mentioned lodestone, a naturally occurring magnet. If the lodestone were the most prevalent material embedded in the foundations of the islands, then it should be as simple as both the islands and the planet beneath them to have the same magnetic charge so that they repel each, and presto! Instant floating islands!
This, however, presents a problem: the required electric field would be so large it would ionize the surrounding air between the islands and the planet beneath them. The ionized air along with the conductive ground would rapidly dissipate the charge. Maintaining the charge would require an impossibly large amount of energy. One could suppose that the energy would come from first the Sun Stone and then the Mammon Machine (Lord J, everyone), but if that’s the case, I’m surprised that the Mammon Machine hadn’t broken down earlier under the entropy to supply such energy demands.
Anyways, that’s my take on it. What says you?
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You may well be right that magnetizing the base of an entire island would be impractical; however, I doubt that magnetism would actually be the stated force if we got an answer out of Kato. "Magic" would much more likely be the word of the day. In Swift's time, magnetism was as wormholes are today: far more useful as a plot device than as a commercial application.
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magnetism was as wormholes are today: far more useful as a plot device than as a commercial application.
Hey, if a Japanese physics professor can discover a practical means for building a working lightsaber (on Sci Fi Science of The Science Channel), I'm sure we can a way to explain how the islands float without using the M-word.
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Oh, certainly. By using the S-word. Style, baby! :franky
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Thought's notion of atmospheric condensation visibly does not hold up...
Sorry, that wasn't me. First Triforce, now you! I'm just getting misquoted all over the place in this thread (well, twice).
Another possibility raised is one of portal-type teleportation, whereby a portal is opened underwater and some of the water "falls" through it. A corresponding portal opens up in Zeal, and the water is pushed out of it by the weight of the water body. This solution, while elegant, is impossible, given that doing so would present a gross violation of the laws of thermodynamics, and would have the practical consequence of supplying Zeal with an infinite energy supply--thus contradicting Zeal's stated energy problems.
Since the laws of thermodynamics aren't shown to exist in the Chronoverse, I see no logical reason to worry about them. For your second objection, it depends on what Zeal's energy needs were. That is to say, this portal system could be nicely used to turn a turbine to generate electricity. But that doesn't mean that such could provide for Zeal's energy needs. Consider an analogy; Zeal is really the starship enterprise (which makes Queen Zeal Captain Picard, but let’s ignore that for a moment). The Enterprise sort of runs on electricity, but electricity generated by a matter/anti-matter reaction in the warp core. Hook this proposed system up to the Enterprise and you might get basic functions, but it won’t be going to warp speed anytime soon.
Thus, possibly so with zeal. Indeed, the basis behind the Sun Stone is that Zeal was using Earth's power (well, the Sun's, but...). It makes sense that they might have been using hydroelectric power as well. That might indeed even be why there were waterfalls in the first place; clearly Zeal would have had to go through a lot of work to keep their land flush with water, I thus find it hard to believe that it was just to look pretty.
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Today, it just hit on me like a "Eureka" moment! I think I may know where the islands of Zeal gets all their water from (I'm crossing my fingers on this one).
The water vapor which rises from underneath via the every-trusty Water Cycle eventually condenses into clouds, right? And the islands never seem to drift below cloud cover, right? So, here's where I believe the theory comes into place:
Any vapor that makes it past the clouds gets collected in the floating islands. It condenses into the soil, minerals, and rocks which composite the foundations of the islands, and it gets absorbed into under-ground springs. The lower air pressure and higher altitude will naturally bring it up and flow out like waterfalls. Most of the runoff from the islands' waterfalls will most likely hit the islands first either due to the gravitational influence of the islands' large mass and wind sheer due to the extreme height of the islands in relation to the planet. The water which escapes falling back to the planet will get absorbed again by the islands, and the process repeats.
And this isn't even accounting for the saline which is naturally occurring in most land masses, be they floating or earthbound. It was never implied that the water flowing off of Zeal was fresh water.
I think it works because a) the planet in the Trigger world seems mostly to be 2/3 water like Earth, b) the Water Cycle works, and c) it's based on real-life science. Hey, just because this is the Chronoverse doesn't mean we can't break EVERY law of physics.
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@Thought: We surely do see the laws of thermodynamics in operation throughout the course of all three games! The laws of thermodynamics aren't just some stuffy old propositions dreamed up by men in white coats. They describe a great deal of the behavior of phenomena.
@Genesis: There just isn't enough humidity at that altitude for condensation to work on a body as small as Zeal, given the amount of water we see coming off the sides. The condensation rates would have to be staggering. Zeal would be a humid dungeon. Also, there's almost no chance that that water would be bitter, given that salt does not evaporate anywhere near as cool as water does and the chemistry of saltwater does not permit the ionic bond to survive the water's phase transition to gas.
These mysteries mystify even those of Lordly mystique!
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Well, that early lasted a whole 1.5 hours before being dismantled... :oops:
Pressing on, then. :)
Another theory I had was that the water is produced via hydrogenation. It would involve an amazing machine (straight out of science fiction) which harvests oxygen molecules and bonds them with incoming hydrogen molecules in a spectacular fusion process and collects the deposits into a reservoir specifically made for oxyhydrogen, or "water" for the common man.
The new chemical called "water" would be filtered and sent via gravity to underground springs where the lower air pressure and higher altitude will naturally bring it up and flow out into waterfalls.
Let's see how long this one lasts. Mwa ha ha ha ha! :twisted:
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That's very common in nature. It's the other way around, hydrolysis, which is so difficult. So! I think you have made real progress toward finding a solution that doesn't involve the Zeal Swoop. But! The question now becomes where Zeal would produce so much hydrogen from. That's not an easy thing to do. Liberating bonded hydrogen is usually energy-intensive, and molecular hydrogen is comparatively rare in chemically "active" places such as a planetary atmosphere.
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Incidentally, your machine as described would introduce an unnecessary and extremely dangerous step into the process of the dehydrating reaction. Hydrogen in its molecular form is more than a little flammable. Remember the Hindenburg?
And oxygen in its molecular form makes molecular hydrogen seem veritably inert!
I still remember my first day of college chemistry. The professor had several balloons set up in a row. One was filled with air, one with hydrogen, and one with oxygen. She took a flame and put it beneath the air balloon. Tiny pop! It barely filled the lecture hall. For the hydrogen one she put on goggles, and it made a tremendous pop! For the oxygen one she put on industrial gloves. When that one popped, I felt it in my bones.
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*Giggles* You are NEVER going to believe where I found the most efficient method of hydrogen production, AND it would be very cost effective and far less energy-demanding than electrolysis of water.
I did a one-minute research spasm on Wikipedia, and apparently the most cost efficient means of producing hydrogen molecules for oxygen fusion is...
Electrolysis of urine. :shock:
I kid you not. Here's an article to prove it. (http://www.physorg.com/news165836803.html)
Considering the large population of Zeal and the number of people having to lighten the load on a daily basis, Zealian scientists can simply collect their samples in silos and pumped into electrolysis machines to separate the two components before going through the amazing hydrogenation machine I explained earlier.
Far-fetched? Yes.
Disgusting? Yes.
Practical? A resounding "Maybe".
Update: The college experiment with the balloons you described most likely took place near sea level. With Zeal's high altitude (at least 2,000 meters up, the lowest maximum height at which the lowest class of clouds form), the possibility of combustion is greatly reduced due to the thinning atmosphere.
Case in point? La Paz, the capitol city of Bolivia. At 3,640 meters above sea level, the amount of oxygen in the air is barely able to sustain a flame.
Now imagine the islands of Zeal floating that high off the ground (I mean, don't they already?). Consider this: If the Zealian scientists can harness power to make islands the size of small countries float, they can surely find a way to prevent a freak combustion from taking place in a "water-making machine".
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I think that's awesome.
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Huh? :?
No paragraphs of explanation as to how I could very well be wrong?
Just the one line?
This isn't like you, J. What are you on that's making you praise my "Urine = Hydrogen" theory?
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I suppose I could subject you to that degree of criticism, if you wish. There isn't nearly enough urine in Zeal to account for the water loss. In this, your idea suffers from the same problem as the atmospheric condensation idea--insufficient input--and is toast.
Furthermore, a wax candle may not do well at the elevations under consideration, but when dealing with the large quantities of molecular oxygen presupposed by your machine description, the condition of thin atmosphere is superseded. Additionally, with molecular hydrogen nearby, the fire risks are even more enormous: You've got a highly combustible fuel gas (hydrogen) and one of nature's most powerful oxidizers (oxygen), sitting nearby each other. I misspoke earlier when talking about the balloons. I did mention that hydrogen is flammable, but I neglected to specify that oxygen is not, that it is, instead, the other half of a combustion. And there was a fourth balloon in that classroom, containing a hydrogen-oxygen mixture, and that was the one that shook my bones--not the pure oxygen balloon--but that is neither here nor there. The bottom line is that the fire risks are real in your design.
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*Sigh* :(
... so how would you go about oxidizing hydrogen molecules with running the minimal risk of blowing us up?
Slam on my brakes! I just came across this amazing device:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/manufacture-water1.htm (http://science.howstuffworks.com/manufacture-water1.htm)
Pulling water out of thin air? Sounds far-fetched, but these guys found a way to do it.
Also, the very next page tells about how dry ice, salt, and silver iodide can produce so much water that it can flood an entire town.
If THAT isn't water production, I don't what is (other than using the M-word).
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The link you provided goes to a webpage talking about water condensation from the atmosphere. We've already covered that. There isn't enough surface area at Zeal to produce the kind of water volumes or water losses we see in the game.
The cloud-seeding mentioned on the next page is a definite possibility, but to work it would create a precipitating cloud layer above the islands, and we never see that in game. I don't know what Zeal's levitation mechanism is (the actual mechanism, as opposed to the power source), so I don't know enough to be able to say whether cloud-seeding would be more or less practical than lowering the islands to collect water from the natural nimbostrati. But it's certainly a possibility--probably one of the better possibilities presented thus far in this thread.
To answer your question, it isn't necessary to go through the step of isolating molecular hydrogen and molecular oxygen. Water is a ready byproduct of all kinds of chemical reactions. The question, again, is one of input scale: Can enough reactants be harvested for your machine to produce a continental supply of water? I'm dubious, but I don't have enough knowledge to dismiss it outright.
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Well, I won't dismiss the Swooping Theory you proposed just yet. Here's the reason why:
To say that Zeal never descends below the clouds because we never see it happen in the game is a Converse Accident. Just something to think about.
On another note, I decided to employ Occam's Razor on this one (why I didn't before escapes me):
The water in the lakes and streams and the water coming off the top of the island is already there. It works like a giant ornamental fountain that one would see in large public parks.
Only a fraction of the water falls off the island while the vast bulk of it gets recycled and filtered on its way back to the top. How the lost water gets compensated for is a pending theory I'm still working on.
What says you?
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It doesn't really matter what the rest of the water is doing. The water falling off the sides is significant enough, at that rate, to account for Zeal's entire visible water supply in a matter of days or weeks. So either those waterfalls are not as active as the game suggests (which I think would be an affront to the developer's artistic intent in Zeal's design), or there's a whole lot of water coming from somewhere. The latter becomes even more likely when you consider the need for that water to be fresh. Estimating Zeal's population, there isn't enough water present at any one time on Zeal to sustain the population; without a large influx of fresh water, the existing water would become toxic with pollution in short order, absent the intervention of extraordinary filtration or waste extraction systems.