Author Topic: Nuclear Toys?  (Read 1881 times)

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Offline Blazing Angel

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Re: Nuclear Toys?
« Reply #15 on: November 22, 2011, 10:03:54 AM »
sure
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Offline Darth Zakryn

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Re: Nuclear Toys?
« Reply #16 on: November 22, 2011, 11:28:14 AM »

Ok. FYI, it might take a while for him to respond. He's busy with real life as a scientist/engineer, running a website, taking care of his family, and having to respond to probably hundreds of emails everyday. But we'll see if/when he gets back to me.

Offline wildweathel

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Re: Nuclear Toys?
« Reply #17 on: November 22, 2011, 08:02:39 PM »
Google 'fusor.'  You can do nuclear fusion in your garage.  Just, our species hasn't figured out how to get energy out of it.

It makes perfect sense to me that Andalites have safe, low-power fusion generators and never really developed fusion explosives.
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Offline DinosaurNothlit

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Re: Nuclear Toys?
« Reply #18 on: November 22, 2011, 11:42:56 PM »
First of all, I'd just like to agree with everyone who has thus far expressed the sentiment that Ax was probably not making a joke.  Not that early in the series, anyway.  Later on, when he had developed something akin to human humor?  Maybe.

Secondly, I'd like to make an analogy here.  When humans first discovered oil, it never occurred to anybody in their wildest dreams that they could power machinery with it.  The first uses of oil, for several thousand years after its discovery, consisted of dunking sticks in it and setting them on fire, and putting it in pots and setting them on fire and launching them at enemies.  Nowadays, of course, oil is everywhere you can think of doing pretty much everything you can think of (okay, so there's loads of things we use electricity for, but stick a gas-powered generator on it and you can substitute oil for electricity pretty easily).

Compared to Andalites, we are at the equivalent to the "sticks and pots" phase of nuclear fusion.  We don't have the technology to really make full use of it, so of course we can't really envision using it for anything.  Who's to say that it wouldn't be a perfectly feasible and cheap way to power toys for a more advanced civilization?  We can't really imagine technology that we don't have.  We can try, and in cases where the science is there we can come pretty close.  But that shouldn't stop us from thinking that anything is possible.

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Re: Nuclear Toys?
« Reply #19 on: November 26, 2011, 12:00:51 PM »
Also, lets take this into account.

You're talking about a species that has come up with a technology to allow a person to change their very anatomical structure at will to become another creature entirely. A technology that's compatible with any animal sentient or otherwise of any species from any planet to wield it, barring some very rare allergy.

Nuclear fission would be a plaything to me if I could cook something up nearly half that advanced.

Offline Darth Zakryn

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Re: Nuclear Toys?
« Reply #20 on: November 26, 2011, 12:33:48 PM »

Yes, but to use it in toys seems like it's stretching credulity a little bit too far. But let's wait and see what Mike Wong says. He's the guy I emailed. He knows all about this. ;D