Ballos antagonist or not?

That makes sense WoC.

Well, If you look into it in a more physical sense (assuming the laws of physics still exist but with a few major twists to it, such as magic), the Core keeps the Island afloat by manipulating the Island's electric field one way or another. That's how it worked in Lost, at least. Then again this can be regarded as a large sack full of dicks, since a much simpler explanation would be magic.

 

Well, If you look into it in a more physical sense (assuming the laws of physics still exist but with a few major twists to it, such as magic), the Core keeps the Island afloat by manipulating the Island's electric field one way or another. That's how it worked in Lost, at least.

An electric field can't keep something floating, since the Earth's pretty close to neutrality (as is practically every body of sufficient size). I don't believe that using the Earth's magnetic field to push against would work either, because even presuming you could get a magnetic field strong enough to hold the island up (note: the field strengths involved would probably fry everyone's brains) the Island isn't anchored to anything, so it would just flip around and smash into the ground.

The only real explanations I can think of:

1) The Core actually negates gravity somehow.

2) The Core is a neutrino rocket (ie, shooting ridiculous quantities of neutrinos downward to propel the island upward). It has to be neutrinos, or some other particle that doesn't interact much, because there's no mention of an exhaust plume or anything.

Of course, the amount of energy required to do that... is scary.

 

Of course, the amount of energy required to do that... is scary.

Well, not necessarily.

Suppose the Island has mass M (kg),
the particles each have mass m (kg),
the average total number of particles in the rockets at any point in time is n,
the rockets push particles through at a rate of r (1/s),
and the rockets have length l (m).

The force required to keep the Island afloat would be M*g, and that same total force would have to be exerted on all the particles in the rockets.
The force exerted on each individual particle would be M*g/n.
The energy gain of each particle would be M*g*l/n.
The power used by the rockets (P, measured in W) would be M*g*l*r/n.

We'll call the cross sectional area of the rockets A, so their volume (V) is A*l.
n = V*d = A*l*d
l/n = 1/(A*d)
P = M*g*r/(A*d)

The "flux" of particles in the rocket (f, measured in 1/(s*m^2), the number of particles that pass through one square meter per second) is equal to r/A.

P = M*g*f/d

If you knew the number of neutrinos in a typical cubic meter on earth (d), and how fast neutrinos typically travel (v, measured in m/s), you could calculate the flux of neutrinos (f) by multiplying them:
f = d*v
v = f/d
P = M*g*v

Of course you have no control over M and g, but I was initially thinking you might have control over some other aspect. With neutrinos, this would not be the case, however. Just for fun, I want to try to estimate what the power usage would be if you did use neutrinos


Mass of the Island (M):
The largest known chain of caves on the Island is Labyrinth-Core-Waterway-Artery-Reservoir-Mimiga Village-First Cave. I'm going to guess that they go almost around the perimeter of the Island, and the part that they don't cover would be covered by the Egg Corridor, Plantation, Last Cave, Balcony, and Sacred Grounds. Grasstown and the Sand Zone would be somewhere in the middle, so we'll ignore them. I estimate the circumference of this ring of caves would be about 10-11 times the width of the Mimiga Village (this may seem too small, but remember that many of the caves are stacked vertically (i.e. the Core is probably just above the Artery)). Assuming Quote is about the size of a typical human, the Mimiga Village is probably about 50 meters wide. I'm imagining the Island to be approximately hemisphere shaped, so the circumference of the entire Island would be closer to 20 times the width of the Mimiga Village, or 1000 meters. The volume of the Island would then be (4/3)*pi*(1000/(2*pi))^3 ~=~ 17,000,000 cubic meters. I'm guessing the Island would be about 80% rock and rock typically has a density of around 2.5 g/cm^3 or 2500 kg/m^3, so the mass of the Island would be about 40,000,000,000 kg (4*10^10)


Acceleration of gravity (g):
9.8 m/s^2 ~=~ 10 m/s^2


Speed of neutrinos:
Close to the speed of light, we'll say about 250,000,000 m/s (2.5*10^8)


Multiplying these together, we have 4*10^10 * 10 * 2.5*10^8 = 10^20 Watts = 100,000,000,000,000 Megawatts = 100,000,000 Terawatts = 100 Exawatts

To put that in perspective, according to Wikipedia, the average total worldwide power consumption during the year 2008 was only about 15 Terawatts.



The TL;DR version: I thought magic9mushroom might have been wrong about needing an insane amount of power, but it turns out he/she was absolutely right.

 

That = What?

I don't remember if I posted in this thread before, but Ballos to me is not a bad guy, just insanity-driven, and stuff.

 

Well, not necessarily.

[...]

The TL;DR version: I thought magic9mushroom might have been wrong about needing an insane amount of power, but it turns out he/she was absolutely right.

You admitted it. There are a lot of people on the internet who backpedal furiously in this sort of situation. Kudos.

A "real-world" explanation of how much power that represents... hmm. Well, a kiloton's approximately 4 terajoules, so this is what, 25 gigatons per second?

Or a bit more than a million Little Boys every second.


No wonder the Core exploded...

 

That makes sense WoC.

Well, If you look into it in a more physical sense (assuming the laws of physics still exist but with a few major twists to it, such as magic), the Core keeps the Island afloat by manipulating the Island's electric field one way or another. That's how it worked in Lost, at least. Then again this can be regarded as a large sack full of dicks, since a much simpler explanation would be magic.

Cave Story: one of the few games where "A Wizard Did It" ISN'T a stupid hand wave, but likely what actually did happen

You admitted it. There are a lot of people on the internet who backpedal furiously in this sort of situation. Kudos.

A "real-world" explanation of how much power that represents... hmm. Well, a kiloton's approximately 4 terajoules, so this is what, 25 gigatons per second?

Or a bit more than a million Little Boys every second.


No wonder the Core exploded...

no, the core exploded because you blow the holy shit out of it. twice
but seriously, there must be some kind of antigravity magic using the core as a focus happening

 

no, the core exploded because you blow the holy shit out of it. twice
but seriously, there must be some kind of antigravity magic using the core as a focus happening

Smiley. You missed it.

 

definition of smiley according to Malpercio: a two to three letter piece of text at the end of a sentence, implying emotion or displaying the meaning of a sentence other than it's literal meaning.
i seriously do not even bother to look at image smilies. also, it's been sitting there for up to a thousand years completely normal, got attacked by a bunch of (fail) robots, killed them all and was virtually unaffected, and then Quote (and Curly) blast, shoot, stab, burn, laser, and blow it the fuck up twice, and THEN it goes boom.

 

The core, rather than keep the island afloat directly, likely restricts Ballos' magic, stopping him from combating the force that actually does keep the island afloat. With no core and no Ballos the island was able to float just fine. With both the core and Ballos alive the island had no trouble floating either. With no core and Ballos alive the ballance was lost the island started to fall. Ballos' big solution for his problems was to crash the island into the ground, effectively either freeing or killing himself, but he couldn't do so while the core was there.

 

I'm glad my theory got more discussion on this.

 

Although the problem with applying any scientific theory to cave story's world is that it runs under a somewhat different set of rules to our own, such as the existence of magic for instance.

 

and therein lies the fun of debating the relative merits of random people's theories until we find the one that the greatest number of us agree on, then keep discussing whatever we can about the topic to increase our post counts more.

 

I believe that Ballos is a victim.He was cooler than the king, so he was tortured.He even said that humans are terrible creatures.If you were tortured and locked in the Blood Stained Sanctuary, You'd be mad too.It took me probably 38 tries and 2 files just to beat him on easy mode.(guess I have a long way to go)But I forgive him (At least I did, until I saw that I'd have to beat him again on timeattack, I mean COME ON!!!)

 

he was locked in Hell BECAUSE he went mad.

 

To me it was the magic after all if he was mad why would he WANT quote to kill him.