Re: Waterjammers

At 11:11 +0930 5/27/03, Tilaurin wrote:
>  > Why?  Doesn't SJ already posit that pressure doesn't increase with
>  > depth in water worlds?  Seems the same would work for this.
>
>It does?  woo missed that one lol ;)  I havent read my rulebooks for years,
>prolly plum forgot that one lol!!!

ok, just went and double-checked: i'm wrong.  Water worlds *do*
increase in pressure, just like in our world.  It's air worlds that
don't increase in pressure.  In fact, it makes the comment that air
worlds are weird: even the atmosphere around earth worlds gets denser
as you get lower, only with air worlds is this not the case.  It also
makes the comment that not all water worlds have an atmosphere.
Next, no mention is made of a gasseous atmosphere clinging to the
bubble of water surrounding a Great Dreamer.  Oh, and we know that
there is gravity both within and upon teh surface of a water world,
but it appears there is no gravity on the surface (that is, beyond
the edge) of an air world. Finally, we know that if you dive into a
water world, your air envelope is displaced.

So, my deductions from what little we have:
--> air is special
--> you can have a water envelope without having an air envelope around *that*
--> therefore, fluids in general don't generate gravity the way that
solids in general do
--> whatever causes air to cling around solid objects isn't more
powerful than the force that causes water to seek its level. Also,
there's no mention of a ship leaving a water world bringing any water
with it.

My conclusions/interpretations
--> so, a solid has a definite gravity well, extending out to a
finite range, and ending abruptly--thus the typical air envelope
around ships
--> a gasseous body has a less-definite gravity well, and the gravity
well doesn't extend beyond the gas itself.  That's why the air
envelope around a ship doesn't in turn increase the volume affected
by gravity, etc.  [yes, i'm aware that you could treat the air
envelope that occurs as the assymptotic limit of the air around a
ship generating gravity, which traps more air, which generates more
gravity, etc., if you got the numbers just right.  But even then,
you'd have to assume that air works differently than solid matter,
because solid matter traps 3x as much air, and if things continue in
that direction, it's never-ending and you end up with an
infinitely-large bubble.]
--> liquids are somewhere in between.  They don't necessarily
generate gravity beyond their surface, but they do generate gravity
at their surface.
--> Nonetheless, i'd probably just treat it as a different kind of
atmosphere, not penalizing the helm for the actual difference in
weight--it's not like the helm obeys even Newtonian physics in the
first place.  I think penalizing maneuverability, and
starting/stopping, however, would make sense.
--> You could assume that the same mass of water is trapped, as air
would be.  But this would be pretty ridiculous, as it'd be just a
thin film--about what's on a boat a couple of minutes after you take
it out of the water.  Also, this would imply that Great Dreamers have
strangely powerful gravity, since they seem to have a water envelope
at least as big as a typical air envelope--another point in favor of
just treating water as a different kind of atmosphere
--> Perhaps gravity is even more accomodating than we thought: it
only traps a fluid if it is the atmosphere that type of creature
needs.  This *is* fantasy space, so such a convenient solution, while
flying in the face of all science and logic, really appeals to me.


--
woodelf                <*>
woodelf@???.net
http://webpages.charter.net/woodelph/

stupid Unix tricks:
>  make fire
don't know how to make fire.
>  Why?
Why?: No match.