Author Topic: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing  (Read 2802 times)

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Offline Acalio-Laron-Jaham

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Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« on: December 25, 2009, 06:52:31 PM »
If you were able to morph, how screwed would you be if you were sucked into zero-space due to some ship dragging your extended mass in its weight?

I use to think it would be so cool to morph, especially morphing something small and sneak into places/spy of people. But now, after rereading #18 again, its got me thinking - 'oh sh*t, what if this happens?'

We won't happen have Ax there to hail any andalite or other ships with his thought-speech. It would terrible to just be stranded there in Zero-space, slowly suffocating.

We know that according to Ax, it is supposedly and apparently an extremely, extremely, extremely rare and unlikely event/occurrence - but it did happen. And in the words of Ax himself, I quote -

"Once, some time ago, I explained to my
human friends about excess mass being pushed
into Zero-space. They asked whether some ship
traveling through Zero-space might not hit these
matter bubbles.
I'd laughed. After all, the odds were ...
Well, obviously it now seemed the odds were
pretty good. The Andalite ship had come too
close and had pulled us into its magnetic
field. It was now dragging us in its wake as it
blasted through Z-space."


So, in light of this, if morphing was possible and I was given the power, I would refrain from morphing small creatures. (btw, was it just because of morphing small creatures that they could get sucked into z-space? or can it be any morph, no matter how large of small? cuz if you morph something bigger than yourself, your human organs would still be sent to z-space for storage anyway, waiting to return to you when you demorph - so it could still be dragged off by some ships magnetic field. yes/no?)
« Last Edit: December 25, 2009, 06:55:04 PM by Acalio-Laron-Jaham »

Offline anijen21

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #1 on: December 25, 2009, 10:49:23 PM »
I honestly think that could happen with any morph of a mass smaller than yours--she just picked mosquitoes so we got full complete Animorphs rather than scary half-complete Animorphs.

And I think he first talked about it in #5, and said the chances of that happening were pretty remote. We're never explicitly told how "big" Zero-Space is but it really didn't seem like much of an issue, just a really compelling plot. More on par with getting killed by a falling asteroid than getting into a car crash, you know? It was the first time the Andalites themselves had heard about it, after all, and morphing had been around for a good 30 years by that point.
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Offline morfowt

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #2 on: December 25, 2009, 11:11:57 PM »
We're never explicitly told how "big" Zero-Space is but it really didn't seem like much of an issue
well z-space is antimatter. nothing at all, according to marco's dad. so how would you even be able to call it any size?

Offline anijen21

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #3 on: December 25, 2009, 11:20:08 PM »
lol right?

and how could you "travel through it"?

lol if you wanted to start a thread about exactly how Zero-Space works, or if it was just a faster-than-light plot device that didn't actually break any physical laws of the universe, I'd be down with that.
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Offline morfowt

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #4 on: December 26, 2009, 11:16:11 AM »
no thanks. I'm sure I'd get a headache from that discussion...

Offline DinosaurNothlit

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #5 on: December 27, 2009, 05:09:23 PM »
Here's the thing, though.

If your extra matter gets killed in Z-space, wouldn't you 'come back to life' when you demorphed, or at least when the giant-space-rubber-band snapped you back to your own time?  I wouldn't think it would matter whether your extra matter was 'alive' or not, since it all gets re-shuffled every time you morph, anyway.

Otherwise, wouldn't they die every time they morphed something smaller than they are?  Nearby space-ships or not, their extra matter is still hanging out in the utter vacuum of z-space, still suffocating, whether or not your consciousness happens to be inhabiting it at that moment.

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #6 on: December 27, 2009, 09:16:25 PM »
I honestly think that could happen with any morph of a mass smaller than yours--she just picked mosquitoes so we got full complete Animorphs rather than scary half-complete Animorphs.

And I think he first talked about it in #5, and said the chances of that happening were pretty remote. We're never explicitly told how "big" Zero-Space is but it really didn't seem like much of an issue, just a really compelling plot. More on par with getting killed by a falling asteroid than getting into a car crash, you know? It was the first time the Andalites themselves had heard about it, after all, and morphing had been around for a good 30 years by that point.

I believe it was first brought up in #10.

Yeah I think it's safe to say we aren't truly supposed to understand how Z-space works. Anyone capable of understanding it probably wouldn't be able to put it into words we could understand, at least not without an advanced degree in astrophysics or something. :P
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Offline anijen21

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #7 on: December 27, 2009, 10:49:15 PM »
There was that thing in 45, where Marco's dad describes it as the tip of a conic section, which would imply that z-space isn't space so much as an intersection of space, kind of in the Einsteinian sense, or like Hawking with his wormholes.

If anything, then, you shouldn't really have to travel through it at all. We know it shifts, so maybe the pieces of space that intersect shuffle in and out? If that's the case, then staying in it seems kind of pointless, just send a probe that records what parts of space are currently accessible and wait till the one you want pops up to use it.

And of course we can't accurately decipher it, because IT'S NOT REAL but I think it's fun to try anyway :)

and damn, I think you're right. I knew it was an early Marco book, I just didn't know which one.

As far as your thing, Dino...I think that's actually a plot hole. Because you're right, as far as I can tell the discovery made in #18 was not the whole rubber band thing but that extruded mass in z-space is not fundamental and incoherent, but the actual tissues and organs of the base body. If that's the case, it should die whether the morpher is conscious of it or not, unless the mass became specialized when the consciousness shifted, because of how the technology works, or...something...yo u know what I am just confusing myself so I am going to stop.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2009, 02:06:22 AM by anijen21 »
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Offline morfowt

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #8 on: December 27, 2009, 11:20:38 PM »
marco's dad didn't it was the tip of a cone. he said it was the middle of the cone or something; basically where all the lines meet.

in normal space, we travel on the edge of the cone. in z-space, we travel through the cone.

Offline goom

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #9 on: December 28, 2009, 01:06:11 AM »
I honestly think that could happen with any morph of a mass smaller than yours--she just picked mosquitoes so we got full complete Animorphs rather than scary half-complete Animorphs.

i've always wondered that when the extra matter is sent to z-space (as in the mosquito incident), even when morphing something way smaller than yourself, what's the reason for it being a perfectly-formed human?
morphing isn't exactly pretty, i'd assume that the matter would just be sent to z-space in random parts. why would it be assembled as it was on earth?

...or am i completely missing something?

Offline anijen21

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #10 on: December 28, 2009, 01:47:20 AM »
marco's dad didn't it was the tip of a cone. he said it was the middle of the cone or something; basically where all the lines meet.

in normal space, we travel on the edge of the cone. in z-space, we travel through the cone.

Okay, I'm not going to lie his whole description was half sci-fi mumbo jumbo and half...actual maybe something real. I'll just post the important parts:

Quote from: #45, The Revelation, excerpts from pages 5 through 7
We've discovered what could be thought of as a whole new dimension, yet not a dimension at all. It's sort of like...Marco, you've studied conic sections, haven't you?

...You know what a cone looks like, right? Well, the surface of a cone is the two-dimensional analogue to the five-dimensional space we inhabit.

...While the surface of the cone is two-dimensional, the surface exists in three dimensions.

...The cone contains a singularity...a place where all lines intersect. The place where you can head out in any direction, or in all directions at once. Where you can move in any direction without moving anywhere at all.

...We live our lives on just one line on the cone, in a mere four dimensions, including time

...We've been stuck on the surface of the cone all this time. When we want to go anywhere, we have to travel on the line. But now, imagine someone notices the singularity. A point with no size, no breadth, no extent. The physical representation of nothingness. By itself, it's nothing. Yet it's the starting and ending place of everything! A multiplier of real space!

...What could you call it? Zero, I suppose. Zero-Space.

All right, so all of that jazz about five dimensions and the two-dimensional surface of the cone somehow adding with the three-dimensional space the cone inhabits makes no sense to me. But the stuff about the "singularity" does.

Here's my interpretation, and feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong:

[img width= height=]http://i49.tinypic.com/2whmolu.png[/img]

All right, so like Marco's dad said, we live our lives on just one line of the cone. I've indicated that by the dotted line, Earth. Earth inhabits one specific vector on the cone. In real space, if you wanted to travel to another vector, say, the moon, you'd have to travel on the outside of the cone. Now, how far down from the tip of the cone you'd have to travel, and the width of the angle between vectors, I mean, ****, I don't know. This is a children's book series. Maybe the distance from the tip is real-space distance, the angle...ugh idk. But what it LOOKS like he's saying is that at the tip, all lines converge. That is the "nothing" point, where both nothing and everything exists simultaneously. And that, as I take it, is Zero-Space.

Now, like I said, if this was how it worked, then you could get anywhere in the galaxy instantaneously, assuming everything in our galaxy is part of the same "cone." But it really seems, through the series, the time it takes to get somewhere is still dependent on how far away you are from that place. So either that's inconsistent or I'm not understanding this right. Or this is a vast simplification of a *very advanced* scientific principle, much like Schrodinger's cat.

BUT IT'S FICTIONAL SO WHY SHOULDN'T THAT BE EXACTLY HOW IT IS?

i've always wondered that when the extra matter is sent to z-space (as in the mosquito incident), even when morphing something way smaller than yourself, what's the reason for it being a perfectly-formed human?
morphing isn't exactly pretty, i'd assume that the matter would just be sent to z-space in random parts. why would it be assembled as it was on earth?

...or am i completely missing something?

It's an *n-dimensional* human, all twisted and nasty and inside-out and right-side in, from what I remember. The Andalites reintegrated the bodies into 3-dimensional space when they brought them aboard their ship.
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Offline Acalio-Laron-Jaham

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #11 on: December 28, 2009, 02:41:15 AM »
who do u suppose would be the foremost expert on z-space? and do u think it is a concept which one day may be real?

would it be K.A? since she.......basically created it right? im curious, does she have any background in physics? or astro-physics?

Offline morfowt

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #12 on: December 28, 2009, 08:56:54 AM »
marco's dad didn't it was the tip of a cone. he said it was the middle of the cone or something; basically where all the lines meet.

in normal space, we travel on the edge of the cone. in z-space, we travel through the cone.

Okay, I'm not going to lie his whole description was half sci-fi mumbo jumbo and half...actual maybe something real. I'll just post the important parts:

Quote from: #45, The Revelation, excerpts from pages 5 through 7
We've discovered what could be thought of as a whole new dimension, yet not a dimension at all. It's sort of like...Marco, you've studied conic sections, haven't you?

...You know what a cone looks like, right? Well, the surface of a cone is the two-dimensional analogue to the five-dimensional space we inhabit.

...While the surface of the cone is two-dimensional, the surface exists in three dimensions.

...The cone contains a singularity...a place where all lines intersect. The place where you can head out in any direction, or in all directions at once. Where you can move in any direction without moving anywhere at all.

...We live our lives on just one line on the cone, in a mere four dimensions, including time

...We've been stuck on the surface of the cone all this time. When we want to go anywhere, we have to travel on the line. But now, imagine someone notices the singularity. A point with no size, no breadth, no extent. The physical representation of nothingness. By itself, it's nothing. Yet it's the starting and ending place of everything! A multiplier of real space!

...What could you call it? Zero, I suppose. Zero-Space.

All right, so all of that jazz about five dimensions and the two-dimensional surface of the cone somehow adding with the three-dimensional space the cone inhabits makes no sense to me. But the stuff about the "singularity" does.

Here's my interpretation, and feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong:

[img width= height=]http://i49.tinypic.com/2whmolu.png[/img]

All right, so like Marco's dad said, we live our lives on just one line of the cone. I've indicated that by the dotted line, Earth. Earth inhabits one specific vector on the cone. In real space, if you wanted to travel to another vector, say, the moon, you'd have to travel on the outside of the cone. Now, how far down from the tip of the cone you'd have to travel, and the width of the angle between vectors, I mean, ****, I don't know. This is a children's book series. Maybe the distance from the tip is real-space distance, the angle...ugh idk. But what it LOOKS like he's saying is that at the tip, all lines converge. That is the "nothing" point, where both nothing and everything exists simultaneously. And that, as I take it, is Zero-Space.

Now, like I said, if this was how it worked, then you could get anywhere in the galaxy instantaneously, assuming everything in our galaxy is part of the same "cone." But it really seems, through the series, the time it takes to get somewhere is still dependent on how far away you are from that place. So either that's inconsistent or I'm not understanding this right. Or this is a vast simplification of a *very advanced* scientific principle, much like Schrodinger's cat.

BUT IT'S FICTIONAL SO WHY SHOULDN'T THAT BE EXACTLY HOW IT IS?
huh my interpretation of what marco's dad said is a bit different from yours...

Offline anijen21

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #13 on: December 28, 2009, 10:44:41 AM »
how did you interpret it?
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Offline morfowt

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Re: Something that makes me have seconds thoughts about morphing
« Reply #14 on: December 28, 2009, 12:45:12 PM »
well I imagined it like the entire surface of the cone, base, side, even tip, was normal space, and everything inside the cone was z-space. traveling in normal space was traveling along the surface of the cone, and traveling through z-space was traveling, through the cone along the straight line between two points.