The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Samuel]

Well, given the amount the climate has been screwed up, we will probably have to evacuate Bangladesh. Oh well- it was just a matter of time. You can't live forever on a delta.

And the greens will probably love nukes as an alternative to the really dirty oil that we get from hell.

[Junghalli]

Also this whole telepathy thing implies a certain philosophical concept to be true - reality is absolute. If reality is formed by perception than there would have been no way to ensure what I perceive as blue would be the same with another person. If I stand correct in this universe this is not true. There is only one blue, no matter how I perceive it. That is an interesting and in my opinion frightening and exhilarating thought all the same.

Two humans can reliably see the same color as blue because they have the same eye and brain structures that percieve color, and we all learn what blue is by having people indicate to us that objects of that color are blue. On the other hand a hypothetical creature that has a differently structured eye from us might see blue as, say, light grey. Things can be dependent on perception while still allowing for broad common ground.

[Ryan Thunder]

Also this whole telepathy thing implies a certain philosophical concept to be true - reality is absolute. If reality is formed by perception than there would have been no way to ensure what I perceive as blue would be the same with another person. If I stand correct in this universe this is not true. There is only one blue, no matter how I perceive it. That is an interesting and in my opinion frightening and exhilarating thought all the same.

Two humans can reliably see the same color as blue because they have the same eye and brain structures that percieve color, and we all learn what blue is by having people indicate to us that objects of that color are blue. On the other hand a hypothetical creature that has a differently structured eye from us might see blue as, say, light grey. Things can be dependent on perception while still allowing for broad common ground.

No, two humans can reliably see the same colour as blue because regardless of what they may see in their head, the object has been described to them as blue. It doesn't matter that what I see as blue might appear to another guy the same way that I see red. He's still going to be referring to it as blue.

Unless you were trying to say something else.

[Junghalli]

No, two humans can reliably see the same colour as blue because regardless of what they may see in their head, the object has been described to them as blue. It doesn't matter that what I see as blue might appear to another guy the same way that I see red. He's still going to be referring to it as blue.

Depends. That only works if the same number of colors are percieved, just with the spectrum shifted. Red-green colorblind people realize there's something "wrong" with their vision, because what other people keep referring to as "red" and "green" they see as the same color.

[Simon_Jester]

It was nice to read a more laid back chapter.

I'm weeping for our environment. By the end of the war we will have an as of yet immeasurable but by all means endless supply of oil. Just thinking of the effects this will have on air pollution, global warming et al. makes me feel guilty.

Shifting heavy industry to Hell might be a good idea where possible; that would take some of the load off. If you have to have coal-fired power plants, you might as well have them somewhere where the air quality already stinks.

The puny pink creatures may not necessarily have been pink at all - after all that adaptation evolved later in H. Sapiens. And I still want to talk to Adam.

If I got the details right, he probably got killed in the B-1 strike on Satan's palace. Which is a real pity.

Hm. I doubt it works that way, at least completely. Both bubble universes have significant less energy compared to our universe. Why? If our universe had the size of Heaven or Hell it would be rather hot in general, probably in terms of breaking atomic bonds hot.

This is true partly because our universe has vastly more particles than Heaven or Hell. The density of matter in the bubble universes is much higher than in the sidereal universe (ours). But if you tried to take all the particles in the observed sidereal universe and cram them into a bubble universe, it wouldn't be easy. The universe hasn't been that small since at most a few minutes* after the Big Bang, and trying to pack so many particles into so little space requires you to heat them up if you don't want them to collapse.

But today, the universe has expanded enormously compared to that initial high density plasma. The mean temperature of particles in our universe is 3 K, except where something freakish like a fusion reaction is going on to generate extra heat. Whereas in the bubble universes, the mean temperature is around 300 K- average particle energies are something like a hundred times higher, not counting specific local heat sources such as stars and boiling lava pits.

So the bubble universes have a much higher density of matter and a much higher mean temperature.

*I think; I'm too lazy to go digging through my copy of Hartle to find the equations that would let me nail down the point at which the volume that now makes up the observable universe was on the order of 10 to 20 thousand kilometers across. I very much doubt it took more than a few minutes after the Big Bang for this threshold to be passed.
_________

Another thing - how did kitten establish contact with Tucker and the other cells? Was he a sensible? Or are otherwise sensibles only required on the other side for portals?
Furthermore kitten (and I assume most other sensibles as well) was able to hone in on persons without knowing their location. Was there any need to mention the location of the sensible in Thailand for her? I had the impression once she had a feel/soul signature for the person she contacted she could contact them whenever she felt like it (given both were in different universes).
Or are all Zombies sensible by default? (There certainly is need for an official or in-universe term for the undead. The yellow press probably provided one already.)

The undead are sensitive by default; this was confirmed when kitten tried to contact Stephen Jay Gould. I suggest you check the relevant chapters of Armageddon if you want more details.
__________

Also this whole telepathy thing implies a certain philosophical concept to be true - reality is absolute. If reality is formed by perception than there would have been no way to ensure what I perceive as blue would be the same with another person. If I stand correct in this universe this is not true. There is only one blue, no matter how I perceive it. That is an interesting and in my opinion frightening and exhilarating thought all the same.

Well of course there's only one blue; it's the light between ~440 to 490 nanometers...
__________

Well, given the amount the climate has been screwed up, we will probably have to evacuate Bangladesh. Oh well- it was just a matter of time. You can't live forever on a delta.

And the greens will probably love nukes as an alternative to the really dirty oil that we get from hell.

I wonder if uranium and/or thorium are available in quantity in Hell. Having a higher proportion of radioactives deep underground might explain why geological activity in Hell is supercharged (and why the place stays warm).

[Ryan Thunder]

No, two humans can reliably see the same colour as blue because regardless of what they may see in their head, the object has been described to them as blue. It doesn't matter that what I see as blue might appear to another guy the same way that I see red. He's still going to be referring to it as blue.

Depends. That only works if the same number of colors are percieved, just with the spectrum shifted. Red-green colorblind people realize there's something "wrong" with their vision, because what other people keep referring to as "red" and "green" they see as the same color.

Ah, now I see what you were getting at.

[bcoogler]

"I'm Coogler, one of the geologists working in Hell. Do you all recognize this?"

Woo Hoo! I've gone to Hell and back!

LOL! Hey Stuart, you totally freaked out my son. I'm at work, and I receive a text message. "Part 22 is up. You're now a geologist." Coogler is unusual enough that we just don't ever expect to run across it, unless you live in South Carolina I suppose.

~ Non sequitur ~

Is Walter Cronkite going to begin reporting from Hell on the war effort? Seems like it's just the sort of thing he would do.

[Samuel]

Is Walter Cronkite going to begin reporting from Hell on the war effort? Seems like it's just the sort of thing he would do.

He isn't dead yet in universe.

I wonder if uranium and/or thorium are available in quantity in Hell. Having a higher proportion of radioactives deep underground might explain why geological activity in Hell is supercharged (and why the place stays warm).

Probably not. For starters there is the problem of what "deep underground" means in Hell. Dig deep enough and you come out the otherside... somewhere. Also, the bubble universe aspect takes care of the temperature. I don't see any supercharged activity besides the volcanoes, but Earth has those and they aren't caused by the isotopes near the surface.

[Beowulf]

No, two humans can reliably see the same colour as blue because regardless of what they may see in their head, the object has been described to them as blue. It doesn't matter that what I see as blue might appear to another guy the same way that I see red. He's still going to be referring to it as blue.

Depends. That only works if the same number of colors are percieved, just with the spectrum shifted. Red-green colorblind people realize there's something "wrong" with their vision, because what other people keep referring to as "red" and "green" they see as the same color.

Well, depends on the severity of the color blindness. I'm red green color blind, and can fairly reliably distinguish betweeen most red and green objects. I can reliably tell my boss's Mustang is red, and the grass is green (except when it's dead). On the other hand, I can reliably fail a plate test.

[Junghalli]

Also, the bubble universe aspect takes care of the temperature.

If the heat is a result of the contraction of the universe shouldn't it be evenly distributed throughout Hell, instead of being mostly concentrated in the "interior"?

[Baughn]

Yes; yes, it should. That's one of my major issues with the idea; the only way you get temperature differences is when the system starts out with energy differences, and they haven't gotten around to going away yet.

For that reason, the bubble universe simply cannot be an extremely old universe; considering its tiny size and apparent lack of fusion reactions, in fact, it must be considerably younger than ours.

But that same lack poses further problems. The bubble universe is too small to have a sun, much less multiple stars; we know that. So where the heck did all the complex atoms come from?

Lacking fusion reactions, you never get beyond hydrogen. Lacking stars (or the equivalent), you never get beyond helium, and you can only get to helium if the local equivalent of a big bang has high enough energy density to permit fusion; again, that's a size problem, since if it did it'd still be that hot. And, oh yeah, lacking supernovas you never get atoms heavier than iron; normal stellar fusion simply doesn't permit that.

So where did all the dirt come from? ;_;

[Samuel]

It screams intentional design. I wonder where they got a terrestrial world to chew up or the bubble. I know that if it had any former inhabitants they are probably going to end up dead from the process mostly due to being in the way of whoever is making the change.

[Pelranius]

Minor nitpick: Isn't the designation YW-551H instead of "YWH-551"?

I just wonder how much oil there has to be in the pits so that it hasn't all burned out already (at least the more flammable portions, such as the 'light' compositions)?

[Brovane]

One that had an international collection of medals in it, topped by a simple strip of pale blue silk with five stars. Dani had told her that getting The Medal implied she was in the armed services,

Ok This originally had me confused. I assume this is referring to the medal of honor. The actual medal has 13 stars on it. However the ribbon has 5-stars on it. From the sentence it seemed to refer to her having the Medals on display and not the actual ribbons however for the MOH it switches to ribbon, just found the description a little confusing. Does kitten actually have a military rank? I would also assume that she would be the first female to be awarded the medal of honor.

[Pelranius]

One that had an international collection of medals in it, topped by a simple strip of pale blue silk with five stars. Dani had told her that getting The Medal implied she was in the armed services,

Ok This originally had me confused. I assume this is referring to the medal of honor. The actual medal has 13 stars on it. However the ribbon has 5-stars on it. From the sentence it seemed to refer to her having the Medals on display and not the actual ribbons however for the MOH it switches to ribbon, just found the description a little confusing. Does kitten actually have a military rank? I would also assume that she would be the first female to be awarded the medal of honor.

Charles Lindbergh was awarded a MoH as a civilian, despite being the Reserve at the time of his flights. Mary Edwards Walker technically didn't hold a rank in the Civil War Army either.

I don't know why Kitty's status in the military is unclear. Whatever happened Don't Ask Don't Tell, incidentally?

[Samuel]

I don't know why Kitty's status in the military is unclear. Whatever happened Don't Ask Don't Tell, incidentally?

Stuart is a communitarian militist (he likes his countries unifed, stable and with 140 mile per hour freeways). They probably had it tossed due to manpower requirements.

[Baughn]

It screams intentional design. I wonder where they got a terrestrial world to chew up or the bubble. I know that if it had any former inhabitants they are probably going to end up dead from the process mostly due to being in the way of whoever is making the change.

I was going to say something like that, yes.

Fortunately, I don't think we need to worry about any previous inhabitants of the bubble; it seems very unlikely that there were any. The lack of complex atoms would pretty much rule them out, and also, I doubt something like this bubble would have a natural usable lifetime long enough to allow the development of life; it took six billion years in this universe, and that was with a truly staggeringly massive parallelism.

(10^22 stars in the visible universe, and near as we can tell this is the only one with life. Granted, we wouldn't necessarily be able to tell for life that's very far off, but anything within this galaxy would become quite visible when its first engineering probes reach us; anything in nearby galaxies would become visible simply due to the inevitable effects of dismantling and/or encapsulating most of the stars. With a probable head start of several million to billion years, you really think that wouldn't happen if they existed?

Personally, I suspect the chance of technological societies developing is so low that you have to bring in multiple, possibly very large numbers of everett (MWI) branches just to get one. The number of unlikely coincidences stacked up in our past is huge even before you consider that our solar system is apparently inside-out, and similar facts we can't quite put a probability on yet.)

[Gogyra]

I don't know why Kitty's status in the military is unclear. Whatever happened Don't Ask Don't Tell, incidentally?

Stuart is a communitarian militist (he likes his countries unifed, stable and with 140 mile per hour freeways). They probably had it tossed due to manpower requirements.

At this point kitty is physically and (probably) legally female, and thus would be considered heterosexual, so I believe that DADT wouldn't apply to her anyways.

[CaptainChewbacca]

At the time Kitten was working for the portal program, all portal-capable nephelim were, by executive order, under the authority of the US military. She would have been some sort of noncommissioned specialist at the time, and eligible for military citations.

[Samuel]

I don't know why Kitty's status in the military is unclear. Whatever happened Don't Ask Don't Tell, incidentally?

Stuart is a communitarian militist (he likes his countries unifed, stable and with 140 mile per hour freeways). They probably had it tossed due to manpower requirements.

At this point kitty is physically and (probably) legally female, and thus would be considered heterosexual, so I believe that DADT wouldn't apply to her anyways.

They don't let transgendered personal serve in the military.

[starslayer]

Hm. I doubt it works that way, at least completely. Both bubble universes have significant less energy compared to our universe. Why? If our universe had the size of Heaven or Hell it would be rather hot in general, probably in terms of breaking atomic bonds hot. Again, I'm no astrophysicist, I hardly know anything about the matter (no pun intended). The Big Bang pressure from their universe would hardly leave an impression on ours (now it was ). If there is, however, a sufficient amount of bubble universes "at the rim" of our universe I have no complaints.

You are correct. When our universe was approximately Earth-sized (Hell's about this big, isn't it?), it was literally less than two seconds old. If the two universes are exact mirrors of each other, expansion wise, Hell should have disappeared a long time ago. However, I believe Stuart implied or outright stated that there were many, many bubble universes, so that resolves that little problem, but another remains: why does the background radiation present not behave as a blackbody, like the CMB does? Hell and Heaven are most certainly not blackbodies because the background is primarily visible light, and it merely illuminates the universes. If the H/H backgrounds were blackbodies, humans could not survive (or function, for dead ones) there, because it would heat the bubbles to ~1000 K (dull red) in the case of Hell, and ~5500 K (white) in the case of Heaven.

[Darth Wong]

Dude, you're talking about bubble universes where an electrical discharge can be hurled like an arrow, and parallel lines meet. It goes without saying that some of the natural laws there are different.

This reminds me of the guy who complained that there's no way the laws governing electromagnetism could be different in Hell. I can't help but think "Have you bothered reading any of this story?"

The laws of physics are definitely quite different in Hell. That is really beyond dispute at this point. However, these universes are still rational, ie- they seem to obey some kind of rules, and while many laws of physics vary, certain fundamental principles still appear to be in play, like the first law of thermodynamics.

[Stuart]

You are correct. When our universe was approximately Earth-sized (Hell's about this big, isn't it?), it was literally less than two seconds old. If the two universes are exact mirrors of each other, expansion wise, Hell should have disappeared a long time ago. However, I believe Stuart implied or outright stated that there were many, many bubble universes, so that resolves that little problem, but another remains: why does the background radiation present not behave as a blackbody, like the CMB does? Hell and Heaven are most certainly not blackbodies because the background is primarily visible light, and it merely illuminates the universes. If the H/H backgrounds were blackbodies, humans could not survive (or function, for dead ones) there, because it would heat the bubbles to ~1000 K (dull red) in the case of Hell, and ~5500 K (white) in the case of Heaven.

To clarify this, Hell and heaven are not "universes" per se; they are parts of a single universe whose characteristics are an almost mirror-image of ours. The best way to think about it is to imagine the Hell/Heaven universe as a glass of soda with hell and Heaven being two bubbles within that soda and the inhabitants living on the inside of the bubble. They can't get out of the bubble because any attempt to do so simply brings them back to another point on the inner surface of the bubble. We can push the analogy further. The whole Hell/Heaven universe is roughly the same size as ours but is shrinking at roughly the same rate as ours is expanding. So, in 14 billion years or so, its going to collapse to a singularity. This implies that each phase of the expand/collapse cycle takes around 28 billion years for a total cycle time of 56 billion years.

The general hypothesis at this point is that scientific laws governing natural phenomena and so on are accurate but the ones we're familiar with (from our universe) are particular cases of more general laws that we do not yet comprehend. The strange physics of Hell and Heaven represent a different particular case of these same laws. So, by studying the differences between the special cases of Earth and the Heaven/Hell universe, we should be able to deduce what the overriding natural law is.

By the way, there are as many bubble-worlds in the Heaven/Hell universe as there are planets in ours. That's the problem humans face, finding Heaven amongst all those options. By now it should be becoming apparent just how incredibly lucky humans were that Hell invaded the way it did. If Satan had just stood off and pounded Earth the way Michael-Lan is doing, we wouldn't have been able to do much about it.

They don't let transgendered personal serve in the military.

Wanna bet (grin). It's surprising just how blind the military can be if somebody has a talent that they really need right now. In this case, sensitive Nephilim are so rare and have a talent that is so utterly indispensible that the Military will throw every rule they have into the shredder if it means getting more into its service. And yes, DADT is dead. With a WW2-sized military to recruit, stupidity gets thrown out of the window.

[Simon_Jester]

Probably not. For starters there is the problem of what "deep underground" means in Hell. Dig deep enough and you come out the otherside... somewhere.

And this isn't true on Earth? We still have a core, and "deep underground" on Earth is still lava.

Also, the bubble universe aspect takes care of the temperature. I don't see any supercharged activity besides the volcanoes, but Earth has those and they aren't caused by the isotopes near the surface.

Here's what I'm getting at: Hell seems to have disproportionate geological activity, more than Earth-normal levels. There shouldn't be so much ash and crap in the air of an Earth-sized planet, even given that nothing escapes into space, unless that were true.

This suggests one of two possibilities:
1)It's a fluke and we should ignore it, or
2)It's not a fluke because some additional source(s) of energy are accelerating geological processes, causing more plate tectonics, more earthquakes, and more giant volcanoes than we'd expect to see on Earth.

Obviously, if (1) is true, then this is a moot point. But if (2) is true, then we have to ask where the energy source is. It could be bubble universe collapse distributing a constant supply of heat throughout the "planetary" core (and Hell will look sort of like a planet if you ignore the part of the sky more than a few miles overhead). And/or it could be an anomalous concentration of radioactives. That's not guaranteed, but it's at least possible.

Ok This originally had me confused. I assume this is referring to the medal of honor. The actual medal has 13 stars on it. However the ribbon has 5-stars on it. From the sentence it seemed to refer to her having the Medals on display and not the actual ribbons however for the MOH it switches to ribbon, just found the description a little confusing.

Given the sheer number of medals she'd be likely to collect from many nations, a drawer full of them would be rather overwhelming. She may very well just carry the ribbons around and keep the medals in a cardboard box that's still taped shut because she hasn't finished unpacking yet.

I don't know why Kitty's status in the military is unclear. Whatever happened Don't Ask Don't Tell, incidentally?

It died, went to Hell, and then got beaten to redeath by Aeanas the Spartan.

The laws of physics are definitely quite different in Hell. That is really beyond dispute at this point. However, these universes are still rational, ie- they seem to obey some kind of rules, and while many laws of physics vary, certain fundamental principles still appear to be in play, like the first law of thermodynamics.

The second ought to hold too; if statistics works in Hell, statistical mechanics works too.

[Samuel]

And this isn't true on Earth? We still have a core, and "deep underground" on Earth is still lava.

I was actually thinking more along the lines that the "outside" of the bubble is the equivalent o the Earth's core, but I don't think that would change anything. After all the end of the universe keeps it in.

Here's what I'm getting at: Hell seems to have disproportionate geological activity, more than Earth-normal levels. There shouldn't be so much ash and crap in the air of an Earth-sized planet, even given that nothing escapes into space, unless that were true.

Volcanic ash doesn't traditionally escape into space. It eventually settles down out of the atmosphere. Of course you don't need constant volcanic action to fill the air- Mars does quite well with just wind. Keeping the ash up in the air is the problem, but fine particles can stay up a long time.