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[spazyak]

hey if my design works maybe we can start mass producing that too, for once I'll do something good, productive, useful (well maybe cuthukan was worth it I mean look at them stats), and/or intelligent.

[syvarris]

...But Blue was made of plasma, right?  Plasma can be contained by magnetic fields relatively easily.  I... feel like lightning can't, but I really don't know, to be honest.

[Lenglon]

electricity generates and is generated by magnetic fields. put a compass against a wire sometime. you can use magnets to affect electricity, it's just tricky, and it's usually easier to simply adjust the electrical conductors than bother with it.

[Ozarck]

 I feel like I had a dozen really good IC questions that I could ask the Doctor, but every time I shine a light on them in order to post, they run like cockroaches into the dark recesses of my mind and leave me going: So, how about the thingy? What's up with that? Srsly, lol wtf?

[syvarris]

@Lenglon
Yeah, I know electricity and magnetism are closely related; I'm asking whether outright lightning is controllable in the way that the tesla saber is controlled.  I was under the impression that Blue just used magnetic fields to trap plasma (Then again, how could it have been prevented from just going forwards?), and I don't how you could create a cylinder using the same technique.  But, hey, we have quantum entanglement communicators, which are impossible IRL.  I'm still gonna guess the answer is "Tesla Saber uses automanips, because they're cheaper than mundane methods", like most everything else that uses automanips, but we can't know until PW is asked.

@Ozark
Write down notes.  I have like three different excessively long notes on my phone, mostly containing various tinker ideas that I just randomly come up with.  Soon, you'll have so many questions that your problem is figuring out which ones to use.

[AoshimaMichio]

Okay, first question is whether we have the option of staying on Heph (or on a ship), and using QEC-bots to operate things in the apocalypse lab, so we aren't there ourselves.  We obviously can't do that when we start exploring in-person, but it should keep us safe in case we accidentally drag back some small monster, or a portion of a black hole.

You and your safety fetish. Grow a spine and stick your penis into alien death dimensions like Maurice did.

[syvarris]

I would, but my safety fetish is so bad I can't get it up for anything else.

[Unholy_Pariah]

Who are you to say what's impossible?

Go back 200 years and tell someone it was possible to fly to the moon and you'd be treated like a crazy man.

[syvarris]

I... I'm not traveling back in time two hundred years just to tell people about my impotence.

Ohhh, that was in reference to the QECs.  My counter argument is that quantum entanglement was actually verified to not allow information transfer.  Then again, I suppose you can say that lunar travel was also verified to be impossible because people couldn't jump.

At which point I will say that yes, since ER allows QECs, they obviously have better tech than us, and therefore might be able to make the magnetic containment required for a tesla saber, despite said containment being impossible by our current understanding of physics.  What's your point?

[Lenglon]

Still waiting for why the hell you think it's lightning. it's electricity. it's visible because it's arcing through the air. it's still electricity. unless you're going to argue that it's upscaled, at which point i just have to point out the tools can simply be upscaled to match.

you aren't making sense.

[Unholy_Pariah]

my point is that you are saying quantum entanglement communicators are impossible because humans said so.

Humans also said that evolution was impossible.
Just because someone want's to deny it or simply can't understand how it works does not mean its impossible.

[Radio Controlled]

Still waiting for why the hell you think it's lightning. it's electricity. it's visible because it's arcing through the air. it's still electricity. unless you're going to argue that it's upscaled, at which point i just have to point out the tools can simply be upscaled to match.

you aren't making sense.

Well, that description I linked does literally say "we've made a sword out of lightning", so that's something.

Original tesla saber description:

5   Tesla Sabre
   Ammo: Battery good for 1 minute. Extra batteries are 3 token each.
   Stat Requirement: 8 Dexterity
   Range: melee:+2
   Description: For copyright reasons we're not allowed to give you any sort of “Laser sword”, but we've done one better; we've made a sword out of lightning. Basically a miniaturized Tesla Arc, firing arcs a few thousand times a ser a , with the arcs contained within a protective field. It doesn't so much cut as burn, electrocute, melt and generally vaporize  anything it touches. Try not to trip while carrying it.

As far as I know, the 'protective field' is made/maintained with an automanip.

not a safe assumption, protective fields were a key part of my "Blue" design, were approved by PW, and were generatorpowered and only a minor issue price-wise compared to the one auto-manip I was thinking of using in the design. So there are clearly non-automanip protective fields.

I'm not assuming anything, just saying what I thought it was (while making clear that I wasn't even sure, just that it was what I seemed to remember) while providing the admittedly little evidence I could quickly find. I mean, do you have any pw quotes to prove your stance?

Either way, this is one of those cases where just asking the gm is the quickest path to the truth of the mattter. So I'll just add the question to my action and we'll have first hand confirmation!

[Parisbre56]

Isn't lightning just electrons going from the clouds to the earth (a.k.a. an electric current) created by extremely high positive charges in the sky and negative charges in the ground (a.k.a. high voltage), creating a pathway made out of superheated air (a.k.a. plasma)? So if it is described as a lightning sword, it should be creating an area (a field, if you would) where there is an absurdly high voltage difference between the prongs at the hilt of the sabre. Probably by charging a capacitor and then discharging it, since the current is not continuous but appears several times per second. It should also create a pathway through which electric current prefers to go through so that it forms a sword shape, rather than just leaping from one prong to the other. That is consistent with the fact that the current is not restricted to the sword shape but merely prefers to be in it, allowing it to leap through conductors as if they were a lightning rod.

Edit:

aside from Aresteve, and he has no initiative or creativity.

I don't know if Saint is just saying that to make himself sound more important or if he genuinely believes that or if it's Syvarris who believes that, but Aresteve seems to have initiative and creativity to me.

[Egan_BW]

There are no failures, only new opportunities....for suffering.

IN unrelated news, if you had to be a scientist who examined and researched anomalous artifacts, what kind of tools and rooms would you want in your facility?

Fifteen meters of metal completely surrounding my braincase. Inside a bunker protected by automatic turrets, 1000 kilometers away from the thing being studied.

[Ozarck]

Isn't lightning just electrons going from the clouds to the earth (a.k.a. an electric current) created by extremely high positive charges in the sky and negative charges in the ground (a.k.a. high voltage), creating a pathway made out of superheated air (a.k.a. plasma)? So if it is described as a lightning sword, it should be creating an area (a field, if you would) where there is an absurdly high voltage difference between the prongs at the hilt of the sabre. Probably by charging a capacitor and then discharging it, since the current is not continuous but appears several times per second. It should also create a pathway through which electric current prefers to go through so that it forms a sword shape, rather than just leaping from one prong to the other. That is consistent with the fact that the current is not restricted to the sword shape but merely prefers to be in it, allowing it to leap through conductors as if they were a lightning rod.

Edit:

aside from Aresteve, and he has no initiative or creativity.

I don't know if Saint is just saying that to make himself sound more important or if he genuinely believes that or if it's Syvarris who believes that, but Aresteve seems to have initiative and creativity to me.

you are mostly right. But it is electricity going from the ground to the clouds, usually (or cloud to cloud, but never mind that). After all, the negatiev charge in the ground means extra electrons, and the positive charge in the sky means ions looking for love, and since it's easier for electrons to uproot from family, friends, and everything they hold dear on earth, to go galavanting about the atmosphere than it is for sky ions to become grounded, grow some sense and maybe a family, then that's what happens. electrons go up, air expands rapidly, and a nice explodey sound is made.