Toa Of Virtues

I just thought of a way intangibility could exist; quantum tunneling. Because particles can act like waves, they have the possibility to pass through barriers they shouldn't be able to pass through classically. The reason why we don't see humans walk through walls is that the chances of it happening are astronomically small, but still just barely possible. If you could manipulate the wave-function of every particle in your body, you might be able to increase your chances of passing through said barrier. Granted, I'm not sure exactly how you would go about doing that...

I always imagined that protodermis was very similar to steel, probably because Ta-Metru was based off of a steel mill, but you do have a point. I guess I need to ask another question first. If we were to build Mata Nui in real life (given unlimited resources), how would we build him? Given his size, it would be easier to assemble him in outer-space, but that's not what happened in the story. They did it very inefficiently by doing things like building his entire head separately, dragging it across the desert, lifting it all the way up and finally connecting it. Also, the energy it would take to lift him off of the planet would be incredible, it might have left quite a large crater in the ground. Finally, he should have his own gravitational pull. If SM had Earth-like gravity, at some point you could probably walk sideways on Mata Nui. As for how much protodermis was used, I imagine the bulk of it being used in the skin, shells for the inner domes, and the four rockets (hands and feet). The rest would probably be very small in comparison.

Well, I was thinking that you could estimate the mass of the MU by estimating his volume, estimating the density of protodermis (probably similar to steel), and estimating how much of his body is hollow. Granted, that a lot of estimating, but we might get close to a realistic mass. If you tried to tried to analyze the falling Mata Nui picture, the mass would probably be very far off since the artist didn't try to make it scientifically accurate. Also, I believe stones have to spin to skip across water. Still, once we find that, we could find out how powerful MN's engines must be to lift him off of a planet with Earth-like gravity.

Well, no. Hydrogen gas has an incredibly low density, but it can't pass through walls. You would need to decrease the density of both objects, and do that you need to heat it up very fast, and it would probably be easier to just light a stick of dynamite next to whatever you wanted to go through. Also, you's be a gas, so that might cause some problems on its own.

Gravity may have been the same if EP has a way to control the density of the planet. That would probably be the simplest explanation. To make the shattering seem more natural, EP probably made the aerogel look like a naturally occurring mineral. Now that I think of it... Those rocks they used as kohlii balls looked way too light to be made of regular stone...

You have a point, but aerogel is probably the only way you could even think of doing it in real life. In story, though, we can just adjust the gravitational constant to make it fit, or as you said, introduce a new force. You can maybe make the aerogel explanation work by thinking that EP can change it back and forth. EP was responsible for the explosion, so it could have made a shell for the moons before the explosion, and constantly be pushing the heavier rocks to the surface (so they don't sink below the gel).

Haha the more I learn about aerogel, the cooler it sounds! Apparently, it is also used as a super insulator, since most of it is air. It almost seems like mystery material straight from Bionicle world. I'm glad this planet can actually work in real life, this is my new headcannon.

We have to keep in mind, though, that protodermis can transform any material that touches it. Perhaps it changed the surrounding rock into an aerogel-like substance. Why would it do this? Maybe it was the destiny of the planet to support life. So, it may have been a gravity-crushing giant in the past, but the EP could have been changing the planet from the inside out.

Negative mass is a clever idea, but I think using a lightweight material is much more plausible. After some research, we might have already made a material that can do this; aerogel. Aerogel has a density of 4.98 kg/m^3 (lower than what we need!), and can support many times its own weight. So, Spherus Magna is probably made out of an aerogel, very similar to those we have now.

I'll tell the scientists at Fermilab to start looking for the Greg Boson next time I go there (which is actually pretty soon!) Of course, we can invent a new super lightweight and strong material just for this, but creating it would be a miracle of science. Imagine, a solid that would float on air, that would be pretty cool. Granted, the air would sink below this solid and go into the core, but I don't think it ever specified that their air is mostly composed of nitrogen and oxygen, like ours, so perhaps they breathe an even lighter atmosphere.

Hey, you got all your calculations correct, and that was pretty impressive. It would have taken me ages to figure all that out. What is the lowest average density a rocky planet can have? Perhaps we can find a non-lethal compromise, even if the gravity is much higher. And what if it did have the same average density of Earth, just how lethal would that be?

Ok, so what does this mean for SM? With that density, would it be a gas giant? Jupiter's avg density is 1320 kg/m^3, and your SM is less than that. Because of how large it is, it would probably have to spin very slowly as to not tear itself apart. Regular day/nighr cycles would be near impossible.

Edit; didn't read. My bad. However, average density of your SM is not the same as Earth. Earth is 5520 kg/m^3 while your SM is only 50 kg/m^3. Perhaps I am simply overlooking something. It's 2:30 here, so i may just be too tired to get it right now. Ill look at this tomorrow.

I don't doubt that Spherus Magna must be solid, or that its surface gravity is equal to Earth, but they might be mutually exclusive. I bring up my point with Jupiter again, it has a much lower average density than Earth, but the surface gravity is much greater. I simply don't see a planet many times the size of Jupiter, with an even higher average density, having the same surface gravity as Earth. You seem to be implying that surface gravity is only dependant on average density, which makes no sense to me.

Woah, I love it! Those are some pretty big planets! However, it doesn't make sense that they will have the same average density as Earth, seeing that Jupiter's average density is much lower than Earth, even though it's surface gravity is many times higher. I would think that Spherus Magna would have to be made of a very thin gas. Seeing that the largest planet discovered is only 13 times the mass of Jupiter, I don't think we'll be stumbling across the Solis Magna system any time soon. I really want to calculate the energy it would take to launch MN, but I'm studying for finals this week, and this is not in my curriculum. So until then, I call dibs! Debate the mass of MN until then.

Love the math! A bit busy to check it all now, but I think there is even a simpler way to find the size of Aqua Magna. You'll have to estimate what Mata Nui's height would be if he was standing on the horizon, since he appears bigger as he fell towards the "camera." And I think that we all know that it can't possibly be cannon, as the gravity might even crush the planet into a black hole by this point (which I also want to find out), but it's just fun speculating all of this. I wonder how massive Solis Magna would have to be...

I'd still like to see just how much energy it would take to get Mata Nui off of Spherus Magna, even if the gravity isn't cannon, kinda. We know the size of Mata Nui, so we can estimate his mass pretty well. With Spherus Magna, maybe we can find the size of Aqua Magna using Mata Nui as a scale with this image and then use Aqua Magna as a scale with this image.

I am happy to announce that I will be going to ACen this year! Also, I'll begin watching Tokyo Ghoul after my semester finals are over, and I loved the run of Psycho Pass 2. I recommend the Psycho Pass series to anyone wanting a psychological thriller similar to Death Note and the like.

Relax, no one is grounding up any face creatures. Boxors are just the mechanical parts and probably paint. They dumped any krana into that well, remember? Then again, that was only seen at the end of the animations. What did they do with the krana they got from defeated bohrok?

Can we stop with the chain quotes? I can hardly read this on mobile. EDIT ninjad

Can anyone estimate the mass of spherus magna and the MU? I want to do a few calculations to see how plausible it would be to launch a rocket of that size on such a large planet.

I was thinking that he worked as a telescope under the assumption that the planets he wanted to study were too far away to visit, but there could be an area of closely placed planets with life, it's just very unlikely. But yes, faster than light travel is somewhat of a swear word in the scientific community. It also gives historians nightmares.

Hm, the warp theory doesn't sit well with me. I suppose it is similar to using a wormhole, but there are problems with that too. When you combine it with relativity, you can cheat a way to travel into the past by sending the wormhole on a fast moving rocket so time slows down, return to Earth (where the other opening is), and walking through it. Reading up on it more, it seems like there is a way to use the Alcubierre Drive to cheat yourself into the past as well. Space does not like to be cheated, and it seems to do anything to prevent information from traveling faster than light. Also, both wormholes and warping require negative mass, something that may not even exist. It's a clever theory, though. And if faster than light travel isn't possible, then he's stuck with being a giant telescope, which isn't really a problem. It doesn't really matter if he is looking at them in the past, since he would never travel to them in the first place. It's like an alien reading a history book, they can still learn a lot, even if they don't know what we are like now or what we will be in the future.

Firstly, faster-than-light travel is impossible in real life. This is a core principle when understanding Einstein's theory of special relativity. Here is an example of proof: The Large Hadron Collider accelerates particles around in a large underground circle. With each revolution, very powerful magnets increase the speed of the particle more and more. Once the particle nears the speed of light, something very strange happens: the particle gets heavier. Because the energy being put into it can't make it go faster than light, the excess energy is converted into mass. It's an asymptotic relationship, you can get closer and closer to the speed of light, but you can never reach it. The only way you could even reach the speed of light is if you are massless, like photons or gluons. Imagine you are on a train, and you shine a flashlight in front of you. From your point of view, the light is moving at the speed of light, but what if you were looking at it from outside the train? You would think that you would see the light going at the speed of light, plus the velocity of the train, but this is not what happens. In reality, both points of view would see the light moving at the exact same speed. The only way this could work is if time was running slower on the train, and the train looked slightly shortened. This effect is known as space and time dilation, and it has been proven to exist many times. Basically, Einstein's theory of special relativity states that light travels at the same speed regardless of your reference frame, and that nothing can move through space faster than light. As for the telescope, Mata Nui could observe distant worlds the way a space telescope does. This way, he wouldn't have to travel that far to get a good view of a world, just really good optics.

I always assumed he worked as a giant telescope, sort of like Voyager 1 but... really big. That would seem a lot more reasonable to me, traveling faster than light would be very inefficient in comparison, never mind all the problems with relativity and causality and such. Actually, I just asked Greg this, seeing how it's not really explained in-cannon either.