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Okay. Other than the (what I consider to be) sloppy [DATA EXPUNGED] I like it. It's executed a lot differently than you've told me beforehand and it's lost some of its magic, but it's still pretty cool
Seriously though the [DATA EXPUNGED] bothers the crud out of me.
Tentative upvote.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
adjusted based on feedback.
*edit*
For image team purposes: the image used for SCP-1350 is a modified/photoshopped version of the following image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pole-from-air.jpg which is in the public domain.
Very extensive containment procedures-almost too long. Otherwise very interesting. Upvoted.
i actually agree with you, and that was my primary concern while posting it. but i couldn't figure anything else i could really trim out of the containment procedures while still covering everything that needed covering.
This SCP is very hard for my brain to wrap around, but it sounds very cool none the less. This is the kind of article I will need to re-read a few times before I can pass judgement.
It makes me think of Diablo II and having to outrun those damned Bone Spirit attacks, or whatever it was. Except this one just keeps going and going and going…
Heh. The containment procedures do sound like a complex raid boss in World of Warcraft.
haha. oddly enough, though i never have played WoW, i just realized i know exactly what you are talking about. and yeah, i suppose it would be a bit like that - except constantly moving faster the more targets it reaches.
i want to note that the main idea to this object isnt about it killing people….
it's that you can always see it if you're facing toward it. even if there's stuff in the way. even in a dark enclosed room. even with your eyes closed.
After the part about its light shining through all material, I started thinking, "Wait… even people?"
That's kind of scary, to be honest.
My one question is about the Kappa event. It doesn't sound like a bad thing. Let it eat enough brains and then it stops moving; what's so bad about that?
Doesn't stop moving. It stops going after the closest organism looking at it and instead only goes after the closest organism until it has contacted three. After that it goes after the closest one observing it again. It's a matter of losing one D-class a month instead of three, and also not endangering containment due to the temporary imbalance.
Kappa events are mostly just a nuisance but they have the potential to make things much worse if they happen at an inopportune time. They basically happen because it starts to get "hungry" enough not to care.
Was the Kappa event ever explicitly defined?
Regardless, this comes across as one of those objects whose sole punchline is that it's difficult to contain (the fallen star implication notwithstanding). That would only bother me a little on its own, but there are so many failure points in the containment scheme as to be ridiculous. With that many moving parts, the maintenance required would rival most theme parks. Moreover, unless intelligence or mass is a factor, why are we using D-class instead of some smaller animal with a long lifespan? I'll give some thought to how containment could be simplified. In the mean time, it just bugs me.
yes.
If it remains in this state for more than 24.2 days, it will cease to be influenced by the direct observation criteria until a minimum of three Delta events have occurred - this is classified as a Kappa event.
i agree on the moving parts thing, but when thinking up containment procedures these were the only ones that came to mind as viable for keeping it contained properly. this doesnt mean it's impossible for there to be a better system though.
…why must it be kept away from the oceans?
Please, have pity or this will drive me nuts for days.
I really, really like this. But I have two quibbles, and it might just be me misundertanding.
First, If the light doesn't reflect and is visible through anything, doesn't that mean that it can be seen from anywhere on Earth? People in China see this tiny little beam of light shining straight up through the ground and moving in a circle. I don't think that it would be possible to contain knowledge of this thing, as-is. Maybe add something about the light atenuating over distance despite its lack of refraction/reflection?
Second, the worst case scenario containment procedure seems to be to launch it into space. This seems like a terrible idea to me. It would be like shooting a flare that never burns out, it's pretty much gauranteed to be seen and paid attention to by a vast number of civilians, and then all hope of knowing where it will go is out the window.
Still, well done.
because if it neared the ocean it would have no end of possible targets and would approach the speed of light very quickly. where it is, there's no life to interfere, and containment can proceed normally.
and yes. it is potentially visible from anywhere on earth. however, it is not bright enough at the levels currently maintained by containment to be seen from more than a few miles away. allowed to progress past a certain point…this would eventually cease to be the case.
worst case scenario containment procedure is intended to get it away from earth until it returns to a manageable speed. it is, however, guaranteed to eventually return to earth, due to that being the closest source of life massing greater than 2488 grams, and the inevitability of it catching up to the individuals that were launched into space.
Okay, ocean makes sense, lots of fish in the sea and all that. Don't know why that wasn't clicking in my head for some reason.
Visibility- Keep in mind that I am no expert here. But it seems to me that a light which does not interact with matter would be exactly as visible from a few feet away as it would be from several thousand miles. If there is no scattering effect from refraction/reflection off of air, there is no reason for this light to ever disipate. It's like it is permanently in a vacumn, and in space astronauts can spot the blinking lights of other man-made objects from hundreds of miles away with the naked eye.
For the worst-case space-launch, I get that moving it away is the primary goal, and that it would come back down eventually makes sense. But what concerns me is that there would be no way to predict where it would come down. Once it gets up there, it becomes a moving, constantly shining light source against the blackness of space. That is going to turn some ehads in the astronomers guild, if not make the national new services. Once all these scientists and amateurs start observing the "newly discovered comet" or whatever they think it is, it gets pulled around like a tug-of-war with hundreds of players. On the other hand, I don't have any suggestions for a better "if all else fails" contingency, so it amounts to nothing.
Visibility - inverse square law. if it were a laser then yes, it'd be (nearly) just as visible. but the light is spreading out in an ever expanding sphere. the rule is that if you double the distance, you divide the amount of light hitting a certain area by 4. triple the distance, divide by 9, etc. the nearest possible observer(given where Containment Area-52 is) would be over 500 miles away. the point of light shines brightly, but measures only .5cm across. i argue that at its current brightness it would be visible from as much as 10 miles away, but 500 miles away only 1/2500 this amount of light would be striking the eye of the observer.
worst case space launch: you've summed up exactly what the foundation's problem is with the scenario, yes. the point is that this will have become the best option, as terrible as it is.
But doesn't inverse-square have to do with apparant size rather than intensity? We've left my real-world physics knowledge behind 2 posts ago, so if you say I'm way off base I'll consider it education, but to my sci-fi-oversaturated sensibilities, apparant size would diminish with distance but light intensity would not. So at ten feet it looks like a ball the size it is shining with a certain brightness, at ten thousand miles it looks like a tiny dot that shines at the exact same intensity, in Beijing it looks like the most miniscule speck that shines equally brightly and moves in a roughly circular pattern on the ground.
Something like an omni-directional laser.
not quite. let me explain it a bit better. only a certain amount of energy is emitted in any direction. in a laser, all the light is travelling in a straight line together, or at least as straight as the manufacturer is capable of making it. in light emitted in a sphere around an object, the further away from the object, the less light is present in any area of space. it's the same amount of light, but it's spread across a greater surface area.
surface area is A=4πr². a sphere that is, say, two feet wide will have a surface area of about 12.56 sq ft. a sphere that is four feet wide will have a surface area of 50.24 sq ft, exactly 4x as much surface area as the two foot ball. so light that traveled one foot from the light source would be spread across 1/4th as much area as light that traveled two feet from the light source.
if it's the same amount of light, then how can it illuminate four times as much area equally? it cant. thus 1/4th as much light falls on any equivalent area. and so on to infinity.
Firstly, let me say that I enjoy the concept of the object quite a bit. However, I have a few nitpicks about the physics and math involved.
You have the acceleration listed as 10 km/hr*min. To me, that seems like sloppy science on behalf of the foundation, considering how much conversion you have to go through to put that in a form that's typically used, and actually useful for calculations, such as m/s2. To me, it would make more sense for the foundation to put the measurement in a more scientific form, so the people calculating containment don't have to whip out their calculators and do five operations before they know that it's accelerating at around 170 m/s2.
Also, it seems you could simply use circular motion to contain this far more easily than currently. A monorail track of around 140 m radius would keep the object continuously accelerating at the rate specified without ever gaining on said monorail. Granted, you'd probably need at least two monorails set up, so you can have one stop for maintenance, but the general idea is there. Heck, you could probably keep it in orbit for an indefinite amount of time by setting up your orbit properly and figuring out how to feed and keep the attention of the D-Class up there.
i concede that m/s is probably a better choice, yes. however i wanted it clear that it does not always accelerate at the same rate, nor even a constant rate, but rather that that is the fastest it has been observed to accelerate. i could have given an average though i suppose.
second point, i actually considered that first. in fact, that is essentially the purpose of Containment Track A. but what do you do if, against your expectations, it catches it? plus, if it is only pursuing a single monorail it is constantly accelerating, meaning eventually it will travel faster than the monorail. basically in the end i felt that there was far more potential for things to go wrong in keeping it solely on tracks. this method requires maintenance, but has failsafes built in just in case things go wrong. if it unexpectedly catches a D-class, it is led to Track A until things are fixed up again. so long as no more than about 6 of the D-class are caught by it, containment can proceed as planned without interruption.
But wouldn't it be easier to just state "the object has variable acceleration, but has not been observed to go faster than 170 m/s2"? It accomplishes the same goal, except in more scientific terminology. And makes it easier to parse, or would for me.
And I think you're misunderstanding the physics involved. If it's accelerating at 170 m/s2, then your biggest worry would actually be it falling behind the monorail, as 170 m/s2 would just be enough acceleration for it to keep up with the monorail. See, when an object is going in a circle, it has to apply acceleration inwards to maintain the circular motion. And if it catches up to the D-Class… well, that's why you have secondary, smaller tracks calculated against it's base speed + 22.7% (and that plus 22.7%, and that plus 22.7% and so on and so forth). Since its maximum acceleration doesn't change, you'd actually need to go in a smaller circle to maintain distance from it. Basically, by going in a circle of the appropriate radius, you'd be able to negate its acceleration easily, much the same way you are now by making it change direction, except instead of sending it back and forth like a ping pong ball, you'd be leading it in a circle.
ah, but there's where the misunderstanding lies in the nature of how i wanted this thing to be. the acceleration applies to its total speed. it only goes back to its base speed upon selecting a new target. traveling in a circle vs traveling in a straight line does not affect its total speed. say that the target boarded a vehicle and traveled straight toward the object at 200mph while the object was travelling 50 mph, passing within a few feet of the object. the object would not then slow to a halt and begin accelerating from its base speed toward the target - it would continue after them at 50mph, plus its additional speed it has gained from acceleration during that time, say 51mph now instead. it is not a physical object affected by the physical world in that way.
so in chasing after a monorail, regardless of it travelling in a circle, if it was initially travelling at 4kph, after about an hour of pursuit it will be travelling at about 130kph(the normal acceleration is closer to 30m/s²). it only resets to its current base speed upon a change in targets.
otherwise yes, containment would have been a breeze. this is why the foundation had so many casualties in their initial attempts at containing it. the whole trick lies in having to change targets every so often, and doing so effectively.
*edit* also we're both using the wrong speed there. accelerating at 170m/s² would mean that after an hour it was travelling 612 kilometers per second. it will EVENTUALLY reach that speed, but not quite that fast :P the proper highest acceleration then would be about .047m/s², with the average being around .008 - .009m/s², which would translate to around an additional 100 - 120 kph per hour.
…But what I'm saying is that that's not how physics works. Acceleration applies to both direction and distance, and there is no such thing as an object that can accelerate infinitely in direction but not in overall speed, which is what you're describing. If that is indeed how the object behaves, then you need to note that it increases its overall speed at the rate described, and then violates every law of math and physics if required to change direction. At which point, there shouldn't be any Containment Tracks involved at all, since changing direction would only slow down the vehicle being used to escape. Basically, it's not physical laws involved in the fact that it should be constrained by movement in a circle… it's mathematical ones. And if it violates those, then it's important to note that in the description.
actually at that point i figured that i had made the article complex enough already and that trying to explain that concept would go over people's heads and not improve the article. i just didnt realize that someone would raise this question quite that quickly.
Well, I guess I'm happy I could do that for you? Right now, the fact that it violates its own rules (namely, solely accelerating at a slow speed), solely so that it's harder to contain makes me dislike it, and downvote. That's just my opinion, though.
i understand, and that's fine.
this was an aspect of it that i envisioned before i even started writing the article(before i thought up containment procedures even), so i intend to retain it, and dont find it self contradictory.
.008m/s² on average IS a very slow acceleration, barely even noticeable. but it is cumulative to the object's total speed, not its speed in any given direction.
I understand the idea you're going for, but to me, it breaks tone entirely to have the containment protocols act as though acceleration and increase in speed are the same. What's actually happening with the object, as far as the scientists are concerned, is that it has a highly highly variable acceleration, ranging from .008 m/s2 to, to you the example you used earlier where the target drove by the object, 4.5e13 m/s2, or more (calculated using a picosecond, since that's the closest to instantaneous they'd probably feel comfortable measuring). There is no such thing as acceleration without being affected by direction, from a physics standpoint. Could the object do that? Certainly, but that's at least as much of an anomaly as the eating people's brains, and should be noted as such in the procedures. As written, someone's going to come up with the same idea as me, and try it, and end up feeding D-Class to the thing because nobody bothered to tell him that the procedures neglected to mention the most important part of the object when it comes to containment.
