In my quest to understand the source of power for psionics and super powers and magic (oh my!) I have stumbled across a fairly interesting hypothesis. When I first got into RPGs (a mix of Traveller and Megatraveller being my first), one of the things we had was a guy who loved psi powers. He always had to have them. One of his favorite was teleporting.
Well, we found out because of that that teleporting up will cause your body temp to go up, and teleporting down will cause it to drop. It's in the rules somewhere. Conservation of energy.
Conservation of energy should also mean that a telekinetic person who lifts a human-sized object and tries to move it should feel the momentum of the person he is moving. Leads one to think that in order to fly, one must simply try to move the planet. Be careful though... considering the planet is so huge, you will throw yourself off it with even the tiniest of nudges! Ridiculous, of course. One cannot grab hold of a whole planet, and must instead grab as much ground as one can. It works kind of like grav-displacement in FFS; your mass-footprint is spread over the area you are grabbing and pushing away from. You fly not because you will yourself to fly, but because of the momentum of the ground is imparted to you in the opposite direction.
And then some further thoughts occurred to me recently, like how would a pyrokinetic raise the temperature of something? How much energy does it take to rasie a person's body temperature 4 degrees Celcius, the point at which brain damage becomes possible? What is the source of power for this?
Though some of the above is probably pure fantasy, the source of power need not be a total mystery. There is energy in your body. Whenever you exert yourself in some way, you spend energy and your mass decreases. It is NOT the simple E=MC^2 formula, but rather the one that tells you how much you are eating.
1 Calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celcius. Humans are mostly water. A heavy person might weigh 100 kg (220 pounds). It is known by nutritionists that if you reduce your caloric intake by 3500 calories, you will lose 1 pound of weight. Converting to metric, this is 7700 calories per kg. Once final note: a nutritionist's calorie is equal to the physicist's kilocalorie, so that 7700 calorie to kg ratio is actually 7,700,000 calories in 1 kg.
Ok, so if we have a 100 kg person, and we want to raise his body temperature by 1 degree, it will cost us 100 kCal. A pyrokinetic will lose 1/77 kg of his mass to perform this trick, assuming perfect efficiency. However, perfect, 100% efficiency is a pipedream. 50% is far more realistic (and actually quite efficient), and it will make some of our numbers easier.
So let us say our pyro also weighs 100 kg. That means every degree he raises his target, he also raises himself the same amount. He will kill himself at about the same time he kills his target. If the pyro weighs less, the problem gets worse. If the target weighs less, the problem gets easier. And with 50% efficiency, our pyro now loses 2/77 kg of his mass, which does not change with what he actually weighs.
Say our pyro focuses on a ream of paper. Let us imagine this paper weighs 0.1 kg. He will be able to raise the temperature of the paper to 1000 degrees in the same amount of time it takes him to raise a person's temp. (1000 C x 0.1 kg = 100 kCal.) This is more than enough to ignite the paper, and probably will incinerate it in short order.
The same concept can be used to power teleportation. How much work is performed by moving soemthing from one location to another? Work is defined as distance times weight, so if we moved a 310 pound object a distance of 1000 feet, this would equal 310,000 ft-lbs of work. This equates to about 420,000 joules (a LOT of energy!) or 43,000 kg-m. (kg-m is not the "true" unit, but if we equate kg to weight in the same way pounds is equated to weight, then this simplification will serve a purpose.*)
* Better a simple falsehood than an overcomplicated truth.
This value was chosen because it equates to our magical 100 kCal value. For the price of a candy bar, a child could teleport a km away.
Now since Work doesn't specify how exactly an object gets where it's going, we could theoretically use this for telekinetically moving an object using the same numbers. However, I suspect there is a lot more involved than simple Work, when it comes to TK, and this is one of the questions I have.
My next question would be about cryokinesis. Since it is pyro in reverse, we should get the same kind of results. However, it is currently my opinion that for every 100 kCal you expend cooling something, you will take on yourself 300 kCal of excess heat. You have your 50% waste heat, plus the 100% heat taken from the object - it has to go somewhere! So my question is: am I right? A sub part is, at what point does a human become endangered by lowered temp? There are documented cases of people surviving with body temps down to 72F or thereabouts (25C).
Thirdly would be, what is the rate at which this would take effect? Most fiction has these powers taking effect in rather rapid order, like on the order of a second or so. If this were GURPS, that would jive pretty well with their psionics rules, but this is Traveller, and combat rounds take 5 or 6 seconds apiece. I think it is fair to allow non-psi actions to take precidence over psi actions though. Still, in absolute terms (seconds, minutes, not rounds), how long does it take to generate this energy and impart it to your target?
Fourth, how long does it take you to cool down? Using your powers is going to heat you up if you use them a lot, as I already discussed. (4 uses by my reckoning, and you risk brain damage.) So how long does it take to cool down? Smaller bodies would have smaller surface areas as well as smaller masses, so I think some kind of square-cube law is in effect, but don't know how it applies.
Fifth, what kinds of things happen to you when you use powers? To help me answer this, I figured out a fairly simple way of handling it. Take the mass of the powered individual in kg. This is the maximum number of kCal he can affect in one second. For soemthing like pyrokinesis, this equates to a 1:1 value of kg-degrees. That is, a 50 kg person can raise a 4 kg object's temp by 12.5 degrees, because 12.5 x 4 = 50. I don't have a similar simplification (yet) for teleporting or TK, since I am not that sure of my numbers.
One full-power usage within a minute gives you a (say) 1/20 chance of having a negative reaction. 1 degree increase in your temp is like a slight fever, so this may be similar. 2 uses is 2 degrees, and a 3/20 chance of a negative effect (1+2=3). 3 uses is 6/20 chance. 4 uses is 10/20 chance, but 1 of those is a chance at critical injury to self. Internal bleeding, brain hemorage, brain damage, death, that kind of thing. Both scales continue to go up in the same way the more you use your power, until at some point you have a 20/20 chance of critical damage to yourself and you automatically coma or die.
The time period I am using now is 1 minute. It takes 1 minute to lose 1 degree of temp increase. Temp increases also will cause you to be weary. Your place on the initiative table will slowly slip, and if you have a negative result, you may be incapacitated for a turn or two. (Vomiting generally precludes anything else.)
Considering that a mere 4 degrees can kill you, I think this progressive table is just about right. Some one lucky could avoid problems until they've reached about 6 degrees, and then they are going to feel sick, no way around it, and at about 8 degrees, they have a 50% chance of critical effect (possible loss of intelligence point, or much worse).
This, I feel, keeps powers from gaining TOO much power. One other thing I thought of was, if I cannot raise a person's temp without also killing myself, why not jut focus on the head, which is maybe 10%? A single power use will not hurt me (19/20 chance), but will assuredly kill the target (he takes 10 degrees to his head!). Obviously, this is way too powerful, so I say you must use the power on the whole person. You could concentrate on an article of clothing (like jacket or helmet), but not on a body part; that's just way too powerful.
And of course, what if two pyros work in concert? Each is raising his own temp half as much as the target is being raised, so it should be safe. One cannot simply say you can't combine powers like that, but this is physics, not an episode of Star Trek. Either you must allow it, or MAYBE there is some kind of feedback, such that each person who is cooperating will actually heat the target AND his friend, which cancels out their idea.... until they agree to not work at the same exact time.
The final question is, is there any way to accelerate the shedding of the excess heat a body would generate by using their powers, basically allowing a person to use them more often? And how much more often would this be?
My apologies for the ultra-long post, but I thought this would interest you fair people.
Well, we found out because of that that teleporting up will cause your body temp to go up, and teleporting down will cause it to drop. It's in the rules somewhere. Conservation of energy.
Conservation of energy should also mean that a telekinetic person who lifts a human-sized object and tries to move it should feel the momentum of the person he is moving. Leads one to think that in order to fly, one must simply try to move the planet. Be careful though... considering the planet is so huge, you will throw yourself off it with even the tiniest of nudges! Ridiculous, of course. One cannot grab hold of a whole planet, and must instead grab as much ground as one can. It works kind of like grav-displacement in FFS; your mass-footprint is spread over the area you are grabbing and pushing away from. You fly not because you will yourself to fly, but because of the momentum of the ground is imparted to you in the opposite direction.
And then some further thoughts occurred to me recently, like how would a pyrokinetic raise the temperature of something? How much energy does it take to rasie a person's body temperature 4 degrees Celcius, the point at which brain damage becomes possible? What is the source of power for this?
Though some of the above is probably pure fantasy, the source of power need not be a total mystery. There is energy in your body. Whenever you exert yourself in some way, you spend energy and your mass decreases. It is NOT the simple E=MC^2 formula, but rather the one that tells you how much you are eating.
1 Calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celcius. Humans are mostly water. A heavy person might weigh 100 kg (220 pounds). It is known by nutritionists that if you reduce your caloric intake by 3500 calories, you will lose 1 pound of weight. Converting to metric, this is 7700 calories per kg. Once final note: a nutritionist's calorie is equal to the physicist's kilocalorie, so that 7700 calorie to kg ratio is actually 7,700,000 calories in 1 kg.
Ok, so if we have a 100 kg person, and we want to raise his body temperature by 1 degree, it will cost us 100 kCal. A pyrokinetic will lose 1/77 kg of his mass to perform this trick, assuming perfect efficiency. However, perfect, 100% efficiency is a pipedream. 50% is far more realistic (and actually quite efficient), and it will make some of our numbers easier.
So let us say our pyro also weighs 100 kg. That means every degree he raises his target, he also raises himself the same amount. He will kill himself at about the same time he kills his target. If the pyro weighs less, the problem gets worse. If the target weighs less, the problem gets easier. And with 50% efficiency, our pyro now loses 2/77 kg of his mass, which does not change with what he actually weighs.
Say our pyro focuses on a ream of paper. Let us imagine this paper weighs 0.1 kg. He will be able to raise the temperature of the paper to 1000 degrees in the same amount of time it takes him to raise a person's temp. (1000 C x 0.1 kg = 100 kCal.) This is more than enough to ignite the paper, and probably will incinerate it in short order.
The same concept can be used to power teleportation. How much work is performed by moving soemthing from one location to another? Work is defined as distance times weight, so if we moved a 310 pound object a distance of 1000 feet, this would equal 310,000 ft-lbs of work. This equates to about 420,000 joules (a LOT of energy!) or 43,000 kg-m. (kg-m is not the "true" unit, but if we equate kg to weight in the same way pounds is equated to weight, then this simplification will serve a purpose.*)
* Better a simple falsehood than an overcomplicated truth.
This value was chosen because it equates to our magical 100 kCal value. For the price of a candy bar, a child could teleport a km away.
Now since Work doesn't specify how exactly an object gets where it's going, we could theoretically use this for telekinetically moving an object using the same numbers. However, I suspect there is a lot more involved than simple Work, when it comes to TK, and this is one of the questions I have.
My next question would be about cryokinesis. Since it is pyro in reverse, we should get the same kind of results. However, it is currently my opinion that for every 100 kCal you expend cooling something, you will take on yourself 300 kCal of excess heat. You have your 50% waste heat, plus the 100% heat taken from the object - it has to go somewhere! So my question is: am I right? A sub part is, at what point does a human become endangered by lowered temp? There are documented cases of people surviving with body temps down to 72F or thereabouts (25C).
Thirdly would be, what is the rate at which this would take effect? Most fiction has these powers taking effect in rather rapid order, like on the order of a second or so. If this were GURPS, that would jive pretty well with their psionics rules, but this is Traveller, and combat rounds take 5 or 6 seconds apiece. I think it is fair to allow non-psi actions to take precidence over psi actions though. Still, in absolute terms (seconds, minutes, not rounds), how long does it take to generate this energy and impart it to your target?
Fourth, how long does it take you to cool down? Using your powers is going to heat you up if you use them a lot, as I already discussed. (4 uses by my reckoning, and you risk brain damage.) So how long does it take to cool down? Smaller bodies would have smaller surface areas as well as smaller masses, so I think some kind of square-cube law is in effect, but don't know how it applies.
Fifth, what kinds of things happen to you when you use powers? To help me answer this, I figured out a fairly simple way of handling it. Take the mass of the powered individual in kg. This is the maximum number of kCal he can affect in one second. For soemthing like pyrokinesis, this equates to a 1:1 value of kg-degrees. That is, a 50 kg person can raise a 4 kg object's temp by 12.5 degrees, because 12.5 x 4 = 50. I don't have a similar simplification (yet) for teleporting or TK, since I am not that sure of my numbers.
One full-power usage within a minute gives you a (say) 1/20 chance of having a negative reaction. 1 degree increase in your temp is like a slight fever, so this may be similar. 2 uses is 2 degrees, and a 3/20 chance of a negative effect (1+2=3). 3 uses is 6/20 chance. 4 uses is 10/20 chance, but 1 of those is a chance at critical injury to self. Internal bleeding, brain hemorage, brain damage, death, that kind of thing. Both scales continue to go up in the same way the more you use your power, until at some point you have a 20/20 chance of critical damage to yourself and you automatically coma or die.
The time period I am using now is 1 minute. It takes 1 minute to lose 1 degree of temp increase. Temp increases also will cause you to be weary. Your place on the initiative table will slowly slip, and if you have a negative result, you may be incapacitated for a turn or two. (Vomiting generally precludes anything else.)
Considering that a mere 4 degrees can kill you, I think this progressive table is just about right. Some one lucky could avoid problems until they've reached about 6 degrees, and then they are going to feel sick, no way around it, and at about 8 degrees, they have a 50% chance of critical effect (possible loss of intelligence point, or much worse).
This, I feel, keeps powers from gaining TOO much power. One other thing I thought of was, if I cannot raise a person's temp without also killing myself, why not jut focus on the head, which is maybe 10%? A single power use will not hurt me (19/20 chance), but will assuredly kill the target (he takes 10 degrees to his head!). Obviously, this is way too powerful, so I say you must use the power on the whole person. You could concentrate on an article of clothing (like jacket or helmet), but not on a body part; that's just way too powerful.
And of course, what if two pyros work in concert? Each is raising his own temp half as much as the target is being raised, so it should be safe. One cannot simply say you can't combine powers like that, but this is physics, not an episode of Star Trek. Either you must allow it, or MAYBE there is some kind of feedback, such that each person who is cooperating will actually heat the target AND his friend, which cancels out their idea.... until they agree to not work at the same exact time.
The final question is, is there any way to accelerate the shedding of the excess heat a body would generate by using their powers, basically allowing a person to use them more often? And how much more often would this be?
My apologies for the ultra-long post, but I thought this would interest you fair people.
, but so stupid
