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Author Topic: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns  (Read 16779 times)

wierd

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #60 on: April 02, 2012, 07:57:53 pm »

Quite right. However, this phenomenon only happens because of 2 things:

1) the junction is energized just to the conductance point, and no higher, so that thermal excitations can push electrons over the gap. (At rest state, they wouldn't be anywhere close.)

2) the electrons have a very orderly structure they are being managed by.

The idea for how this mechanism could be exploited by an organism was that chemical respiration creates a small electrical charge from ion concentration inside the organism's cells. This electrical charge drives the conductance band atoms of a special enzyme attached to the inside cell wall to just the right current flow. Thermal energy pushes the tipping point so that an electron on the enzyme becomes excited, and can perform a reaction.

The unidrectionality is enforced by unidirectional current flow through the enzyme. The enzyme is an organic semiconductor equivalent of a diode. The ion concentration of the cytoplasm creates a DC current flow.

Kofthefans:

Yes and no.  As far as I know, no realworld organism exploits heat this way. Heat is usally considered a waste product; an entropic form of energy that must be overcome to do work. The flow of this energy from high to low can be used to power machines, and is the foundational mechanism of a stirling engine, and also of the Thompson effect. (A heat gradient can induce a current gradient between dissimilar conductive materials.)

In realworld applications, this gradient needs to be fairly large to do anything remarkable.

« Last Edit: April 02, 2012, 08:06:18 pm by wierd »
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Kofthefens

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #61 on: April 02, 2012, 09:08:49 pm »

But couldn't the heat still be used by other organisms? If machines can do it why not plants? Sorry if I am being silly about this, I haven't yet taken Physics nor AP Chem.

By the way, it's Kofthefens, not fans
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NonconsensualSurgery

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #62 on: April 02, 2012, 09:20:27 pm »

Magic.

!!!SCIENCE!!!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


Yes and no.  As far as I know, no realworld organism exploits heat this way. Heat is usally considered a waste product; an entropic form of energy that must be overcome to do work. The flow of this energy from high to low can be used to power machines, and is the foundational mechanism of a stirling engine, and also of the Thompson effect. (A heat gradient can induce a current gradient between dissimilar conductive materials.)

In realworld applications, this gradient needs to be fairly large to do anything remarkable.

This still wouldn't make nether-caps cold though. A heat engine is nothing like a refrigerator. You can exploit the natural flow of heat from warm to cold but you cannot reverse it or make the cold side colder than it was before.

You need both hot and cold for this to work. Finding heat is easy if you can put your roots into magma, but cooling off for free isn't so easy in a cave. Convection can only carry heat as high as the roof of the caverns. A couple of meters of solid rock is a pretty good insulator, so heat will build up in cavern layer three until it's as hot as magma throughout.

A thermoelectric tree is certainly possible. Unfortunately, it would grow better on Mercury than it would on Earth. You'll need to find a razor-sharp and relatively stable thermal gradient.

Nether-caps are amazing things. Their wood stays cold even when it has been uprooted and made into barrels! Maxwell's demon and/or magic is involved, I'm telling you.
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wierd

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #63 on: April 02, 2012, 09:34:45 pm »

The organic semiconductor method would work to actually create a temperature gadient, because it is not powered by heat exclusively.  Similar to a peltier effect cooler, but much more like the heat powered LED, nether caps could use a very precise temperature range coupled with a low level DC charge made though ion concentrations to convert thermal energy into chemical bonds. This would sink small amounts of thermal energy into a metabolic process. (Eg, say we used it to make ADP into ATP without a mitochondrion)

The conversion of thermal energy into chemical bonds would result in a net flow of energy into the nethercap as it grows, which would also cool off the L3 cavern.

Here's a general thought experiment:

H20 + SO2 = H2SO4 (this occurs naturally, and gets pushed toward acid synthsis as pH increases)
H2SO4 + 6 CO2 + 5 H2O + (metallic catalyst enzyme) + heat + electrical current = C6H12O6 + 10 O2 + S

These reactions probably won't work, but are meant as a thought experiment only.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2012, 10:17:39 pm by wierd »
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Aviator CJ

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #64 on: April 02, 2012, 09:40:23 pm »

I love these forums. I put out a theory about an element of the game, a theory which has no bearing on actual game play, and get 5 pages worth of posts about the fine details of fungus metabolism and technology that plays fast and loose with thermodynamics. By the second page, you were already beyond my knowlege, but this is great, we're learning.

!!Science!! is awesome!
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Kofthefens

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #65 on: April 02, 2012, 09:58:50 pm »

I agree
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BigFatStupidHead

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #66 on: April 02, 2012, 10:24:46 pm »

This is science, we left the !!science!! behind pages ago.

On a related note, I must revise my theory on why Nether caps are cold. I failed to account for how they do not make anything in contact with them cold. (They do not, for instance, freeze water they are placed in. I still like to imagine they get a little frosty, though)
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psychologicalshock

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #67 on: April 02, 2012, 11:01:26 pm »

Quote

complimentary article

I have been thinking about this all day and I am mindfucked on the matter. There's two points of views I have developed -

The first one is simple, from a classical perspective light MUST always be pure work because you can focus  its direction at more or less no energy cost, for example the old kerosene lamp. From this perspective it seems like light must by necessity be identified as having no heat content.

On the other hand we have a system where heat enter and work leaves, this is by definition an entropy lowering activity meaning that somehow the rest of the universe must have an entropic increase. So naturally we get the researcher's conclusion that light must be considered in some way entropic.

The best explanation I can come up with then is since the light is going to illuminate radially it must increase multiplicity overall by causing heating in a larger volume than the LED itself. Can it be regarded as entropic in itself then, or causing entropy within the universe?

At any rate this effect must not be large since this is only caused by thermal energy being taken in which means that light's entropic "effect"  doesn't need to be large for this to be okay.



1) the junction is energized just to the conductance point, and no higher, so that thermal excitations can push electrons over the gap. (At rest state, they wouldn't be anywhere close.)

Right so the voltage is pulling just hard enough for thermal noise to knock the electron up. Thus why this only works at low voltages, makes sense.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2012, 11:17:50 pm by psychologicalshock »
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SRD

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #68 on: April 03, 2012, 07:46:38 am »

Wow, another science nerd!

I think that makes perfect sense.  It does leave unanswered why plump helmets (et al) seem to require no energy source though.

Um, back in my school they taught us this crap in grade 7... How does that make him a nerd?
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Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #69 on: April 03, 2012, 02:54:52 pm »

Wow, another science nerd!

I think that makes perfect sense.  It does leave unanswered why plump helmets (et al) seem to require no energy source though.

Um, back in my school they taught us this crap in grade 7... How does that make him a nerd?

It's okay, we've reclaimed the term 'nerd.'  It is now a term of respect.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Nether caps - chlorophyll of the caverns
« Reply #70 on: April 03, 2012, 03:12:53 pm »

I'm honestly less interested in the pseudo-science rationalizations that don't really play out nearly as well as people think, and more interested in trying to come up with a xenosynthetic
 Sufficiently Analyzed Magic system that gives players the ability to treat magic as if it were science.

Facing facts, amethyst men have absolutely no basis in real-world science, but if you just create another energy source upon which xenosynthesis takes place, the entire system becomes workable.  You just need to define and put limits upon the energy source that seemingly pervades the caverns that allows a living rock to become ambulatory, and how that energy source forms a self-sustaining ecosystem.
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