05-14-2011, 02:02 PM | #31 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
Quote:
|
|
05-14-2011, 03:15 PM | #32 |
Join Date: Jan 2010
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
The Atoms of Democritus: All the world is made of exactly one kind of substance, possibly water, that can be arranged in an infinite variety of ways to produce everything we see. Seems like a good justification for how alchemy works.
|
05-14-2011, 03:18 PM | #33 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
The problem is "atoms" are an expression that has an active scientific meaning. I noted that "quintessence" is the "fifth element" of European alchemy though. Then there's red mercury.
|
05-14-2011, 03:21 PM | #34 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
I'm not saying that it is. You can have both. I'm running a TL4+2^ game right now in fact. What I'm saying is you can't have a non-divergent TL based on obsolete science. TL6+ physics can't have a TL5 understanding of EM fields.
|
05-14-2011, 03:34 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
Well, take the example of "atoms". That was an idea that was held quite far back, discredited, and then taken up again in a slightly modified new form which became stranger and stranger to Democritus's original conception as we learned more.
|
05-14-2011, 08:08 PM | #36 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
Only to have the singular, indivisible component of the universe, arranged in various ways to create everything, come back named as the "string".
|
05-15-2011, 11:26 AM | #37 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
Yo-yo Theory's gonna blow String Theory outta the water.
__________________
Doc Thunder Drinks Free |
05-15-2011, 12:43 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
Oh right! Vril! Mysterious woo-woo energy from a science fiction novel that some people thought was actually a warning about something real.
Comic books like "cosmic energy", which is actually kind of like zero point energy. Or vice versa. Last edited by David Johnston2; 05-16-2011 at 07:06 PM. |
05-15-2011, 02:59 PM | #39 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
Quote:
|
|
05-16-2011, 07:20 PM | #40 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: Them TL^ words [Superscience] . . .
There was a steampunk novel in which the steam was supplied by something called an "ether furnace" which essentially produced heat with no need for fuel and no byproducts except steam.
Unobtainium didn't originate with Avatar. It was already being used to refer to materials with any arbitrary properties needed like "negative mass" or "being a room-temperature superconductor" Smart matter. I have no idea what that is, but I'm sure someone could come up with something. Apeiron is the hypothetical primordial substance everything else came from in Anaximander's cosmology. It means "boundless". |
Tags |
glossary, superscience, tl^, words |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|