Dodging bullets?

[Clya Brown]

This thing about retrometabolism never really got defined in unequivocal terms in the original series, and it seems to me that it isn't going to be defined any better in the new one. Doctor Gold's statement that he's been "doing some tests", the outcome of which is that Scarlet is deemed to be virtually indestructible is very much on a par with Doctor Fawn's treatment of the same situation way back in 1967, and it leaves the same basic question unanswered, namely how does he know this? I'd guess that he's been observing with interest the regenerative capacity of some of Scarlet's body tissue, and come to the conclusion that it is capable of recreating itself. Getting from there to concluding that Scarlet is "virtually indestructible" seems to be a rather long leap, it seems to me though.

However this still leaves unanswered the question of what would happen to Scarlet if he were for example to be dismembered, eaten alive or vaporized in an explosion - all scenarios that we've considered in the past and consistently failed adequately to address. The type of regeneration capability needed to accomodate the first of the above three scenarios doesn't imply any form of temporal regression - at least not necessarily - but the other two certainly do. It's not impossible to imagine a body growing another hand, leg or whatever, but if there's no body from which he can be brought back to life, what is actually going to happen to him? Does he magically rematerialize out of thin air as we assume they did in the original series, and as we saw Black's first victim do in the first episode of the new one? We're already talking about two different kinds of retrometabolism here, it seems to me.

On the subject of reversing time, this takes us right to the crux of the matter, doesn't it - as in, what really IS time? In some of my own fan-fic I've tried to characterize time simply as the human brain's interpretation of a state of entropy, with more ordered states being interpreted as having happened in the past, and more disordered states being anticipated in the future. I've also tried to envisage a view of the universe in which the Second Law of Thermodynamics isn't a law as such at all*, but just an attempt by mankind to describe something that he doesn't actually understand - after all, most so-called physical "laws" are nothing more than observations based on a miniscule fraction of the universe that are then (often with a level of confidence that is wholly unjustified) extrapolated to cover all of it. When an observation is made that contradicts the so-called "law", that law is thrown away and replaced by another one: it's happened any number of times throughout history, and there's no reason to suppose that it won't continue to happen for as long as we're around to speculate about what the universe really is.

So presumably the Mysterons have found a way to circumvent what we regard as an immutable law of our universe, i.e. the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And why not? If the Mysterons are truly extradimensional entities as has been speculated on this forum several times, then their concept of spacetime - if indeed they have a concept of spacetime as we perceive it - could and probably would be radically different from ours, incorporating a totally different view of the requirement that an effect should always have a cause, and that that effect should necessarily result from an increase in entropy. From our point of view, the Mysterons are able to effect a localised "rewinding" of cause and effect to duplicate a region of spacetime in a lower entropy state, and then to amalgamate that region of spacetime into our universe in such a way that we're unable to tell the difference between the duplicate and the original. This raises the question of why it should be necessary to destroy the original at all, and if so, to what extent - something I had Major Gravener (of "Treble Cross" fame) speculating about in The Riddle of the Osirians, Chapter 5. In the event, I answered it by suggesting that the original and the construct would be expected to "resonate" in spacetime with unfortunate consequences - an explanation that arose from a number of conversations with Doc Denim on the subject.

The question that then has to be answered is why the construct should be answerable to the Mysterons, as opposed to being a perfect copy. My own view is that the change of allegiance is a condition that is imposed by the Mysterons themselves after the duplication process has been completed, and that Scarlet is therefore the only example that mankind has seen to date of a "true" construct, i.e. one that has been freed from the conditioning normally imposed by the Mysterons. I invented an explanation for that based on Scarlet's rapid passage through a virtual electromagnetic coil incorporated into the London Car-Vu because of its helical structure, but I suppose I'm going to have to dream up a new one now that's in some way connected with people falling through plasma beams. What a pain...

[* If you go to the first part of "Tina Palamac" and do a word search on "entropy" you'll find a section near the end of the story in which Mat Matic is trying to describe the consequences of violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics to 'S', the head of the Universal Secret Service. Not that the poor guy understands it, mind!]

[shaqui]

On the subject of reversing time, this takes us right to the crux of the matter, doesn't it - as in, what really IS time?

Well, exactly. I threw some physicist into a right tizzy years ago by trying to explain my view of time and higher dimensions to him, to the point where he congratulated me on producing a theory he couldn't actually get his head around!

Of course, I'm not a physicist, and have to work by analogy, and I think this threw him...

[Doc Denim]

Hello all!

And to Shaqui: I think you've come to the right site!

I am not going to be longwinded today - as I've been over this ground a few times hereabouts - for an in-depth discussion on some of the points you've raised, and which Doc Brown has responded to above, please visit the Mysterons section, and specifically the threads: Origins of the Mysterons; Mysteron Parlour Tricks and A Hawking Perspective on the Mysterons.

Some of us (to the dismay of some others - quantum is an unpopular word, I've found) are Physics Groupies! and the Mysterons won't be escaping us too soon....

Doc Denim

[chrisbishop]

NOT THE Q WORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Runs away screaming*

[shaqui]

Some of us (to the dismay of some others - quantum is an unpopular word, I've found) are Physics Groupies! and the Mysterons won't be escaping us too soon....

That's funny DD, as quantum displacement is almost exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to be behind Mysteron 'reconstruction' - molecular duplication/transportation across space and time...

[Clya Brown]

Speaking personally, I've been trying to get my head around what time actually is ever since the first episode of Doctor Who was aired in late 1963. I've just about got to grips - I think - with Relativity and the inseparability of space and time that it implies, but that doesn't make it any easier to accept it. I read somewhere that Relativity isn't difficult to understand; it's just difficult to believe - and I can empathise with that view without any difficulty whatsoever.

I'm no physicist either, and for higher dimensions than the familiar four I usually go running for help to my friend Doc Denim, who I see has arrived in the time it's taken me to assemble this reply (Hi Doc! ). Funnily enough, I'm perfectly happy with the idea of there being any number of wrapped up spatial ones as dictated by Kaluza-Klein theory, but I really can't see any obvious reason why there should only be one temporal one - especially since Relativity presents the spatial and the temporal as being just different facets of the same overall whole. Perhaps there are several temporal dimensions, but we just can't perceive them because we're locked into the one we're familiar with, in the same way that a railway engine can't cross the fields to either side of the track upon which it's travelling.

It seems to me that part of the problem is that we tend to think of dimensions as being the building blocks of the universe, whereas they aren't: they're just a convenient mathematical abstraction that helps us to describe the universe. There aren't really any dimensions at all, are there - just the physical universe that is, of which time is just one perspective, and space another. Perhaps if we stopped thinking of time as a distinct entity it would help us to understand it - I don't know.

[shaqui]

I'm no physicist either, and for higher dimensions than the familiar four I usually go running for help to my friend Doc Denim...

Ah, well I can work in six or seven of those things....

Funnily enough, I'm perfectly happy with the idea of there being any number of wrapped up spatial ones as dictated by Kaluza-Klein theory...

Oh, you're one of them, are you? Seriously though, I'm probably there with you...

...but I really can't see any obvious reason why there should only be one temporal one - especially since Relativity presents the spatial and the temporal as being just different facets of the same overall whole. Perhaps there are several temporal dimensions, but we just can't perceive them because we're locked into the one we're familiar with, in the same way that a railway engine can't cross the fields to either side of the track upon which it's travelling.

I'll try and explain my temporal lattice to you one day... my equivilant of the 'three dimensions' are: linear time (which we experience), lateral time and absolute time.

It seems to me that part of the problem is that we tend to think of dimensions as being the building blocks of the universe, whereas they aren't: they're just a convenient mathematical abstraction that helps us to describe the universe. There aren't really any dimensions at all, are there - just the physical universe that is, of which time is just one perspective, and space another. Perhaps if we stopped thinking of time as a distinct entity it would help us to understand it - I don't know.

Maybe, but analogy can be the best way to get your head round concepts, even if they are only simplified (and not wholly accurate) models...

[Doc Denim]

(I'm all for String Theory and Branes, myself.)

Doc Denim

[Captain Indigo]

As much as I like to provide a scientific explaination, and Lord knows, this lot will tell you that I'm a scientist through and through, I'm just going to go and cry now...

I can't believe the two Docs have found another one...



P.S. Shaqui, we've already covered shaving. There's a thread in this section called 'Shaving'. This is the link.http://spectrum-headquarters.com/v-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=133.

[shaqui]

Scientist? Moi? No no no, I just read 'New Scientist' for fun. It has Kim in hysterics...

[Captain Indigo]

I always took bullets, other foreign bodies and small organisms to be dealt with rather like the way a human would. When a foreign body enters the human body, the immune system reacts by forming a membrane around the object and attempting to break the object down into it's component parts. This is what I always assumed would be the case with Retrometabolism too, although it couldn't hurt to remove the offending articles, which would certainally conserve energy during the healing process.

Look, I know I'm potentially opening a can of worms here, reviving an old thread (and so far back - please don't kill me), but I had a sudden thought earlier in the week:

Breaking down bullets into component atoms is fine, but where does all the lead go after that? Would he end up dying of lead poisoning every now and then?

Sorry . My brain is working overtime again...

I'm going to see if I can find anything on lead toxicity now.

[Doc Denim]

Mornin' All;

Breaking down bullets into component atoms is fine, but where does all the lead go after that? Would he end up dying of lead poisoning every now and then?

Actually, I don't think this is such a problem, depending on your mechanism for breaking the bullet down (and I also don't think they use lead for bullets much anymore either, I think it's mostly steel nowadays.)

However, if we assume that Scarlet's body possesses some sort of ability to tear something such as a bullet down into it's constituent atoms, why not just extend that a step further and allow his retrometabolism to break it down into its most basic consituent sub-atomic particles (electrons and quarks) instead. These very elementary bits could then be 're-assembled' into pretty much any necessary and more locally useful substance.

But again, it really does depend entirely on how you think retrometabolism works.....

Doc Denim

[Intensity Angel]

I believe that sometimes Scarlet just doesn't bother telling Dr Fawn that he's got a bullet in him if he's been shot at and survives.
It'd been interesting if a mtal detector got swept over him.

I suppose that Fawn removes any bullets just to play it safe, even if it is against Scarlet's wishes.

Prehaps there is an sedative or something (what is that "a" word again?!) that Fawn uses to knock Scarlet out or to make him sleepy enough not to feel pain while he removes any bullets.

[Marion]

Intensity Angel said: Prehaps there is an sedative or something (what is that "a" word again?!)

You mean 'analgesic'?

[hazel]

Anaesthetic, I think. Which also raises a point - do conventional drugs work on Scarlet?

I'm inclined to think that they would, but only for a very short time. So for surgery, for instance, the anaesthetist would have to keep topping up whatever was being used to keep Scarlet unconcious, resulting in a massive overdose. He could cope with that with relative ease, I think - see http://www.spectrum-headquarters.com/fanfic/the_secret.htm by Chris Bishop, for a good example. Or, failing drugs, they could make sure he was dead before loading him onto the operating table.

This raises another question: what happens to the Hippocratic Oath ("First, do no harm", I think it is) when your patient is resistant to all known pharmaceuticals, and killing him is the only sure way of ensuring he's not in any pain?