Quick Fire Questions (A Place to Ask and Answer)

[Abernovo]

There's not that much over the ribs, so there wouldn't be that much depth available anyway (and, yes I know people come in different sizes, but unless it's pectoral region (front) or latissimus dorsi (back) the ribs are not that far below the skin). Where exactly is the fictional wound and how serious?

From my knowledge of receiving stitches, they use a curved needle, a bit like a fish hook without the barb, that never goes that deep. The wounded flesh underneath should bond again so long as the skin is tight. It would be different matter if there was major trauma, tearing or larger blood vessels involved. I've never actually done the stitching, though, only first aid procedures - more than once on myself.

 

[Hex]

Yuck to the fish hook.
Hmm.
I think I need to rethink the wound. It needs to be serious enough to be panic-inducing (and I seem to have developed a tendency to wound characters in the chest rather than elsewhere).

 

[Jo Zebedee]

What are they doing when they get injured, Hex?

 

[Arkose]

Thanks Hex, I really appreciate the in depth answer! Working on a fantasy that one nation is based on the union in 1870.

 

[Hex]

What are they doing when they get injured, Hex?

Um. As the answer always seems to be when I'm talking about my wip -- 'twas magik wot did it. The guy who gets injured is lying on the floor.

Thanks Hex, I really appreciate the in depth answer! Working on a fantasy that one nation is based on the union in 1870.

Sounds like fun. I really enjoyed finding out (could you tell?)

 

[Abernovo]

Hex, you said an injury that could be panic-inducing and leaving bone exposed. Have you considered a flaying/flap of flesh injury? Believe me, it causes panic in those viewing it and does look terrible, but can be less serious than it looks. Needs careful stitching though, or can leave nasty scars.

 

[Hex]

Oh that's a horribly brilliant thought. Or do I mean brilliantly horrible?

You'd lose a fair amount of blood, I assume?

 

[Abernovo]

Can do. Again, much worse than it appears, but (ahem) I managed to half cover the front of a T-shirt from neck to waist with blood. Thankfully, I don't scar easily.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Aber, you live such an interesting life, between tree chopping in lumberjack shirts and blood splattered t shirts. And full internet disconnection for weeks. I gotta move.

 

[Abernovo]

Sorry to disappoint, Springs, but in the Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, the definition for Boring has a picture of me.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Oh, hey mine's beside Very boring.

 

[alchemist]

Abernovo's right. Theres little muscle over the lower ribs. There are muscles between them -- the intercostal muscles. I saw a knife wound once where the ICs were sloced through allowing me to see a working lung.

Its generally a good idea to sew up the lower layer first e.g. muscle, and work your way out. If the muscle doesnt knit, scar tissue will form in the gap (or nothing e.g. An Achilles rupture) and greatly reduce the muscle's strength.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

This might be a bit more specialized than "quick fire", but if you were going to tamper with the workings of an atomic clock (cesium-133) and the clock in question was in an asteroidal habitat (mining operations), would you think it would be easier to somehow set it up so that it switched to using a crystal of a different frequency or to somehow allow the asteroid's magnetic field through the shielding? Or something else entirely? It is only for a temporary period of time, not a permanent change. And this is assuming that you were the expert whose job it was to keep the clocks doing their business properly.

 

[AlcubierreWarp]

Hey TDZ!

Regarding Atomic Clocks, I did some reasearch (via Wikipedia,) and according to the article, the actual timekeeping piece of the clock is an electronic oscillator which is tuned in resonance with the frequency which the electrons of the atoms in the cesium are jumping and falling through energy levels.

To explain it more simply, all electrons are limited to certain energy levels around an atom. They CANNOT exist in between these energy levels - instead they jump and fall from one to another by absorbing or releasing quanta of energy.

Just a note, the cesium used is a gas, not crystal. The gas is prepared to a certain energy level before entering the atomic clock, and so what is being measured is the radiation being emitted from the cesium, as the electrons fall from one energy level to the next lower one and emit a quantum of radiation.

How "off" do you need the clock to be? My guess is the easiest method of tampering would be to change the initial energy level of the cesium - by either depleting the atoms of energy so fewer cycles of radiation are measured, or by energizing them even more so more cycles of radiation are registered - would either speed up or slow down the clock. While it may work, again my educated guess would be that the amount of change in the clock would be very small.

If you need a method of energizing them, exposing them to the asteriod field's magnetic field could be plausible. Electricity and magnetism are interconnected, and metal exposed to changing magnetic fields generate moving electrons (electrical current).

Hopefully that helps. As a disclaimer, my educational background is a (complete in May) BSc in Space Science and Computer Science. The Space Science part is mostly physics, orbital mechanics, instrumentation, etc. So although I'm not an expert in Atomic Clocks I have some experience with the physics behind them.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Re: Atomic clocks

What sort of period of time are we talking about here? Or perhaps the question is what sort of effect are you trying to get the protagonist to achieve?

The Caesium standard for example states that the second is defined as ~9.2 billion cycles of radiation between two hyperfine transistions, and depends essentially on internal magnetic and electric considerations in the atom. i.e. extremely small and difficult to influence. I'm not sure that any external magnetic field would have any impact, or at least it would have to resonate at or near that high freqency that the clock operates on - which is why no doubt they picked hyperfine transistions in the first place. But I may be wrong, as I'm not an atomic clock specialist.

The problem here is that the definition of standards here - is erm... that are defined. GPS for example requires a very good time measurement and will hardwire that definition into the basic assumption of how the system runs (and there will probably be a large number of checks and tests to ensure that it is indeed correct). If that goes wrong, then users could find that they are not in the place that their navigation system tells they are. Hence easily indicating that something is wrong.

Finally, atomic clocks, pah! old hat . I seem to remember that the next generation of ultra sensitive clocks will use energy transistion in the enegy levels of protons and neutrons in the atom nuclei, which will give even much shorter periods of radiation - therefore increased accuracy (and be even harder to tamper with).

 

[Vertigo]

If you are wanting to tamper with such devices (either atomic or VB's more futuristic version) the weakest point to go for would be software. There will inevitably be software in there doing the sensing counting etc. tamper with that and you could get the clock to say almost anything you wanted. Also easy to remove all trace. Though if you wanted someone to actually discover it later the protagionist might have missed a automatic backup that runs whist his software is running.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Sorry, I forgot to mention the desired result! I'm aiming to make every second a quarter longer than it's supposed to be, thus adding 6 hours to a 24-hour day. It would become obvious later on, when they synch up with something from the outside world, but for this short period it would just be some very long (and tiring) days.

The software might well be the trick -- if it was told to skip counting every fifth second (or fourth? must stop and do math here), that would be easier than trying to tamper with the actual atomic parts.

And if they're likely to have something beyond those types of clocks by then, it would probably still work because there would still be software involved.

Oops, missed AW's post before answering! As to that, my impression (via Wikipedia and the scholarly papers I could find in the last few days, and I could have mixed something up in there somewhere) was that the end result of the cesium bouncing around would act upon a crystal, quartz or otherwise, at some point. Did I misinterpret something? It's quite likely. I seized upon that as a possible weak point, anyway. It doesn't seem as reasonable that the magnetic field could be used for such a precise tampering -- although it doesn't have to be an exact amount of time added to each day, just a close approximation. The software still seems like a good possibility.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Not sure if this should be here or ask a scientist, but here goes. I have a character who's a computer expert and he needs to come up with a system that transforms a futuristic army's capacity.

I have it that he enhances communications across the fleet and army using the space ships to link to each other so they're close to real time; configuration is complex, but I don't have to detail it.

I just need to know on a theoretical basis if this sounds at least slightly plausible.

The outcome of the idea is they can then be commanded from a central base rather than remotely, thus enhancing the strategic planning.

 

[Abernovo]

Springs, have you ever come across an author named E E 'Doc' Smith? He's sometimes referred to as the father of Space Opera, I believe. He wrote the Lensman stories, which featured a spaceship, the Directix, basically a command centre (as the name suggests) directing others.

It was so impressive at the time (1930s) that the US Navy incorporated the idea into their main ships, other countries followed and it became the modern Operations Room - which can also be seen in Battlestar Galactica.

Two immediate issues come to mind:

The distances involved. So long as you're not talking long delays caused by Speed of Light communication, you're fine.

Autonomy. Although you want a central command post, remember to let individual units on the ground, so to speak, use initiative. An rigid Command and Control system has damaged fighting ability in the past. However, you're probably aware of that.

Hope that's helpful in some way.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Perfect, thanks, Aber; I thought it should probably be okay, in fact I worried was it too simplistic, but they're a rebel group so they may not have the money to just do these things (hey, I'm the author, remind myself, they DON'T have the money). Yep, the strategic elements, I can handle those; that falls under what I kind of have a grasp of. The rest, urggh. Never again.