#Acceleration due to Gravity

[golzar66]

অভিকর্ষজ বা মাধ্যাকর্ষণজনিত ত্বরণ

অভিকর্ষজ বা মাধ্যাকর্ষণজনিত ত্বরণ, অভিকর্ষজ ত্বরণ, উল্লম্ব গতির ক্ষেত্রে গতিসূত্রসমূহ, পতনশীল বস্তুকণার গতি, উত্থানশীল বস্তুকণার গতি, সর্বাধিক উচ্চতা, সর্বাধিক উচ্চতা হতে পতনকাল, বিচরণকাল, নির্দিষ্ট কোনো উচ্চতায় বস্তুকণার সময়, নির্দিষ্ট কোনো উচ্চতায় বস্তুকণার বেগ, প্রয়োজনীয় সূত্রাবলী, Acceleration due to Gravity, gravitational acceleration, Equations of motion in terms of vertical motion, Motion of a falling particle, Motion of a rising particle, Maximum height, Time of flight, Time of a particle at a given height, Velocity of a particle at a given height

[engineeringmath]

Problem 6-17: The acceleration due to gravity at the position of a satellite located above the Earth

What percentage of the acceleration at Earth’s surface is the acceleration due to gravity at the position of a satellite located 300 km above Earth?

What percentage of the acceleration at Earth’s surface is the acceleration due to gravity at the position of a satellite located 300 km above Earth? Solution: The acceleration due to gravity of a body and the Earth is given by the formula g= G \frac{M}{r^2} where is the gravitational constant, is the mass of the Earth, and is the distance of the object to the center of the Earth. We know that…

[clarabowmp3]

call me charli xcx the way i speed drive beep beep

[quiclycasual]

Also, keep in mind that the weapons (on the left) may feel heavier when held by the handle/when swung, as a lot of the mass is away from the point of rotation (usually the elbow, rist, or shoulder).

In case you writers ever wondered. Made by Carrie Patrick on Facebook.

[235uranium]

ford pines is the guy who corrects the doctor on weight vs mass

[yuzujjn]

𝑓 . . ﹙ ✉️ ﹚ ATTRACTED TO YOU, loser jake ────𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝗆𝗒 𝗋𝗂𝖽𝖾 𝗈𝗋 𝖽𝗂𝖾, 𝗂 𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍 𝗀𝗈𝗍 𝗌𝗈 𝗆𝗎𝖼𝗁 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾 𝖿𝗈𝗋 𝗒𝗈𝗎

( 𝑓𝗍) ㅤ 𓈒 심재윤 & fem!rea 5OO ── dis skinship, kissing, petnames, loser au fluff, non idol au ୨୧ established relationship + C𝑙𝑖CK

다니 ⠀⦂⠀happy @yuons day (> <) we were talking about loser enhypen today so i was trying so hard not to spoil this . ㅠㅠ anyways LOVE YOU JUNIPONI

JAKE PUSHES HIS GLASSES UP AGAIN, fingers brushing against the bridge of his nose as he glances down at the textbook between you. he’s been explaining the same physics problem for the past five minutes, voice animated, hands gesturing in excitement as he scribbles equations onto the paper.

you, however, haven’t been paying attention.

not even a little bit.

"—so when you account for external forces, the net force is—"

you stare at him, chin propped up on your palm, watching the way he bites his lip in concentration. the way his eyes light up when he gets lost in thought. the way he occasionally pushes his glasses up when they slip down his nose.

he's so into it, so completely in love with explaining physics to you, and god, it’s cute.

"are you even listening?" he suddenly asks, turning to you with a frown.

"mhm," you hum, offering him an easy smile.

he squints. “then what’s the formula for force?”

“...love?”

jake sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “this is why you’re failing physics.”

“this is why you’re my tutor,” you shoot back, straightening up. “but you know, i was just thinking. what if we make this more fun?”

jake raises a brow. "like what?"

you grin, shifting closer to him. "one correct answer, one kiss."

he freezes.

his ears immediately turn red, his fingers tightening around his pen as he stares at you like you’ve just suggested something illegal.

"what."

"one correct answer, one kiss," you repeat, nudging his knee with yours. "i think it'll help me focus."

he blinks at you, "that… theoretically wouldn’t work."

"oh?" you tilt your head. "why not?"

"well," he starts, pushing his glasses up again—stalling. "if we consider the concept of positive reinforcement, then yes, a reward system could enhance learning, but in this case, the variable is flawed because—"

you stare.

"—the stimulus, being, um, a kiss, is too subjective to quantify in terms of effective learning patterns, and if the goal is information retention, then—"

"jake."

"—introducing an external factor like physical affection could actually act as a distraction rather than a reinforcement, so theoretically—"

you kiss him.

his glasses bump against your cheek, and he makes a small, surprised noise in the back of his throat, instantly going still.

when you pull away, he’s frozen in place, eyes wide, lips parted.

"see?" you murmur, smiling. "works just fine."

jake blinks once. then twice. his fingers twitch where they rest on the textbook, and his lips part slightly, like he's about to say something, but nothing comes out.

you bite back a laugh. "you okay there, einstein?"

he swallows, clearing his throat. "yeah.. i think,"

you grin. "so. next question?"

his ears are still red as he glances at the book, voice slightly hoarse when he says, "what’s the acceleration due to gravity on earth?"

you shrug. "no clue."

jake exhales sharply, tilting his head back like he’s trying to gather what’s left of his dignity. “i can’t believe this,” he mutters.

you grin. “come on, next question.”

[answeringeverything]

What’s the heat death of the universe? (Besides being a random phrase living rent free in my head)

We don’t really know for sure how the universe will end. What we do know is that it’s expanding, and that that expansion is accelerating faster than our current model of physics would predict. Physicists chalk that up to a so-called “dark energy,” at least until we can figure out for sure what’s actually causing it.

But, factoring in the rate of the acceleration due to dark energy (which, again, we don’t understand), and assuming that rate won’t decrease or increase too much in the future (kind of a big assumption but whatever), we expect that the expansion of the universe will eventually overcome the force of gravity, pulling galaxies apart and making most of the visible universe essentially unreachable without faster-than-light-travel (which is impossible under our current model of physics).

Some time after galaxies are pulled apart from each other, the spatial expansion will start to pull them apart from themselves, essentially tearing them apart. Then vast nebulae will be pulled apart. Then solar systems. Then stars. Then planets. Then molecules. Until every particle is infinitely far apart from every other molecule, separate by an ever-increasing ocean of empty space, incapable of ever again gaining energy or interacting with anything else, for eternity.

As this is happening, all the energy in the universe will be dissipating, too. Thanks to entropy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics, every interaction between molecules sheds some energy in the form of heat, and every particle on its lonesome will eventually stop vibrating, shedding photons as its electrons collapse into lower and lower energy states.

There will be no interactions. No movement. No difference between here or there. Every particle will be silent. There will be nothing but emptiness, and the very concept of “difference,” of one area being cold and another hot, will cease to exist. Even in areas that haven’t yet been torn apart by dark energy, there won’t be any energy to cause anything interesting to happen. Just grey, floating husks of planets and dead stars. No life, not even the potential for life. And this will go on for lengths of time so vast that they will make the lifespan of the universe up until this point be like less than a blink in the eye of a mayfly—be as though nothing at all had ever happened. Not even a memory.

That’s the heat death of the universe.

[techtuv]

In this experiment, a "bowling ball and a feather" fall to the ground simultaneously.

Although it seems like an illusion, this is a simple physical phenomenon.

This fascinating experiment, conducted in the world's largest vacuum chamber, is also known as the Galileo experiment.

In a vacuum chamber without air resistance, objects fall solely due to gravity. Despite their different masses, both the feather and the bowling ball accelerate at the same rate.

This is because gravity affects all objects equally, regardless of their mass, causing them to hit the ground simultaneously.

For more, don't forget to like the video and follow us. ♥️

[billy-cockblock]

SWTD Theory

Still Wakes the Deep has been a huge brainworm for me the past few weeks, so I wanted to make a post with one of my takes. Someone’s probably thought of this already, but I can’t find anything about it, so here I go. 

I’m gonna take this time to shout out a little sub theory of mine that plays a bit of a part in my main point. 

For a little background, in populations of organisms, there are limiting factors on their growth and spread. Think of it as a series of funnels of different sizes: the rate of liquid that can flow through is going to be determined by the narrowest funnel. For example. if there’s a population that has ample food, space, and whatever else it needs, but has a restricted access to water, that water is going to limit how large that population could grow.

Before the Shape was dug up by the drill, it was probably dormant in the sea bed, doing its best to survive, the same as any other organism. Down where it was dark, wet, and cold, I think it had one main limiting factor: oxygen.

I don’t think the Shape can efficiently exchange gas underwater. Most of the untouched bodies Caz sees are only underwater, where an organism that thrives in air would struggle to access. Once it gets dug up and brought to air with plenty of organic matter to consume and grow with, its population explodes. When a limiting factor is removed, there’s nothing holding the population back any more until they hit a new limit. The Shape’s old limiting factor was removed, and it would only stop reproducing by running out of space to grow on the rig, running out of organic matter to use, or being killed (like, say, in a giant fiery explosion).

(I could go on and on about how the Shape potentially works, please feel free to ask me about it)

Now, I’ll get to my main theory:

I think Caz was dead the whole time.

Now, I don’t mean that in a “the whole game is in his head, none of it was real” way; I mean it in a “this man got Ethan Winters’ed” way. 

So, I started to do a little research into how tall oil rigs are to know how far Caz would have fallen off the helipad. I quickly learned there are many types of oil rigs and not every oil rig of the same type is the same size. I’m studying marine biology, not petroleum engineering like my brother, so I got tired of trying to guesstimate how tall the Bierra D’s helipad would be and attacked the problem with some simple math. 

Watching a video, I saw he fell for between 4-5 seconds; the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8m/s^2. Plugging that in a calculator while not accounting for air resistance to solve for distance gets me ~80-120m, depending on if I used the 4 or 5 second count, so I’ll guess around 100m. I’ve found many conflicting sources on what the tallest heights you can safely fall into water are, but I can safely tell you that 100m is much higher than any of them. 

Now, maybe the devs weren’t going with the mathematical exact timing it would take for a guy to fall off an oil rig, and didn’t mean for it to be implied that he fell from THAT high. Still, we can agree he fell from very high up, high enough to have likely ended in injury. Maybe he’d just fall on and break a leg? Maybe an arm or some ribs?

After falling off the rig, the last frame before Caz blacks out shows the water at the top of the screen, meaning he hits the water head-first. He may be wearing a hard hat (that somehow stays on his head through the whole ordeal since he clips his flashlight to it), but he still should have cracked his skull open or broken his neck. 

When they pull him out of the water, he’s cold and not breathing, which wouldn’t be unusual for a drowning victim in the North Sea in the dead of winter, but it would usually be a death sentence. They never explain how they dragged Caz out of the water, but it would presumably have taken a long time to get him out, and time is key when dealing with someone who isn’t breathing. The fact that he’s able to cough up water and start breathing on his own is a miracle, since it doesn’t sound like Brodie or Douglas do CPR when they bring him inside.

So, fall damage, head and/or spine injury, drowning, and hypothermia. By several different factors, Caz should be a very, very dead man. So why isn’t he?

My theory is that, somehow, somewhy, the infection from The Shape healed and brought him back to life. We know for a fact it has amazing generative properties, basically able to double, triple, quadruple the amount of tissue and organic matter in the crew’s bodies with no regard for conservation of mass, so what’s just a little regeneration of damaged tissues in a single body? Once Caz’s body gets someplace with better conditions suited to life (inside where it’s warm and there’s air), it just jumpstarts his body functions. The Shape’s presumably been dormant in the seafloor for a long time, so it could be able to go dormant and kinda “come back to life” as conditions change, similar to a tardigrade, and potentially pass this ability onto its hosts.

And Caz mentions how his head hurts a lot, especially when he gets close to the Shape. 

Now, this might seem like baseless conjecture, and y’all might say “That’s a good headcanon, but there’s no evidence that The Shape could bring people back to life!” to which I would say “Oh, but there might be!"

After the helicopter on the starboard side, we get a call from Bruce, who is actively drowning. Through his gasps, he tells us that O’Connor hurt his leg and couldn’t swim, presumably drowning. And guess who we see still kicking as we’re passing through the pontoon? My thought is that O’Connor couldn’t swim, drowned, and drifted to the bottom, landing on a part of the shape. Once Caz and Brodie start working in the legs and they drain, it exposes him to air and allows the shape to start growing again, assimilating him and bringing him back to life. 

Obviously, he’s not doing as well as Caz is. My thought was that, if Caz died as he was infected, the infection would’ve had to put a lot of its energy into bringing him back, not leaving much for itself to begin assimilating him into the Shape. Since O’Connor was in direct contact with the Shape, it could hook him up to its network to help supplement that loss. Caz, meanwhile, stays as far away from the stuff as he can and doesn’t even get anything to eat all day; guy's running on empty. He has small things where the Shape affects him, like the colors at the edge of his vision, but most of his hallucinations only happen after the Shape attacks him through O’Connor. Before, I’m pretty sure the largest incident (other than when he’s blacked out) is when we can barely hear Suze’s voice over the speakers when moving through the pontoon. It’s really only after getting attacked that he starts to hear her when he’s awake, near the Shape, or over phone calls. He only hears her clearly over the speakers in administration after he runs into the shape many times when he gets swept away in the flooding.

With my main evidence out of the way, I’ll also mention that Caz sees the “light at the end of the tunnel” from the end of the game in the oil flashes when he blacks out.

But hey, that’s just a theory. 

A GAME TH- I have received a cease and desist.

Man, this became a long read. Thanks for getting this far, and I hope you enjoyed!

[cyber-dump-171]

Chapter 1: Roadside Help

The End is Near (Gravity Falls x Reader)

← Prologue | Masterlist | Chapter 2 →

Word count: 6.9k.

WARNING: mentions of violence, nausea, blood, injuries, weapon and gun usage, a monster, and body horror.

Note: thank you for the likes and reblogs! Btw, this is the first time I write a character with a country accent, I apologize if it's horrible xdd

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‘Good evening, folks! Or is it morning? Well, either way, fantabulous of you to tune in at The New Wave Network, where we’re grooving no matter the time of day! It’s the 2nd of October and the clock strikes at 1:15 a.m. Hoo boy! We’re just a few weeks away from Halloween, so, let’s set the mood with Shadowplay’s new wicked song “The Graveyard Shift”. Have a listen, folks!’

As you step on the accelerator, pine and cedar trees zoom past your window and the outside world becomes a blur. You've been surrounded by greenery and nature for two hours now, and while it's been a pleasant sight at first, you're quickly becoming concerned as the scenery repeats itself. Your destination seems completely unreachable, almost non-existent.

When you woke up two days ago, you didn't expect to uproot your entire life and move halfway across the country for your job. It started when you arrived at the precinct that morning; a week earlier, rumors of a possible promotion in your unit had spread like wildfire, leaving your colleagues and friends suddenly on top of their game.

For example, Craig, who always had food stains on his shirt and an unshaven face, wore immaculate button-downs and slicked-back hair. Jack, who had always flipped the bird at your boss whenever the old man wanted something, now happily made his coffee and showered him with sickly sweet compliments.

You, on the other hand, were content with your position as a forensic scientist. That's not to say that the possibility of a better salary and even having your own office away from the row of wall-to-wall cubicles wasn't tempting, but you weren't exactly desperate for a change within the precinct. You were planning on moving sometime soon.

But that thought flew out the window as your boss immediately dragged you into his office and offered you the opportunity. But what the rumors didn't tell you was that it wasn't a promotion... you were being transferred to another precinct to fill an empty position and it offered better benefits, like a new house and a higher salary... though it was in the middle of nowhere.

It was a tempting offer, and you almost gave in when you were shown a picture of the beautiful house. But something kept nagging at you: the town. Gravity Falls? Never heard of it. Sure, you don't know every single place in the United States, but something about it told you to not take that chance.

When asked why you were chosen, your boss simply replied: “You’re the perfect candidate for this.” He didn't let you probe further into his answer but fervently insisted on hearing your verdict. He almost checked the "yes" box on the form until you physically stopped him.

“I’ll think about it,” that didn’t last long, because as soon as you exited the office and made a beeline to your cubicle, you ran into Jackson Murdock, an asshole who thought he was more important than the moon and who worriedly took far too much pleasure in pestering you, leaning against your desk and sneering that he would love to take said “opportunity”. 

So, without a moment’s thought, you turned right back around and shook your boss's clammy, wrinkled hand. His smile was rather off-putting as he handed you the paperwork.

And that's how you found yourself here, your entire life packed into a myriad of cardboard boxes shoved into your car as you drive through a darkly lit, foggy forest. You were supposed to arrive five hours earlier but ended up getting stuck in traffic due to a massive accident. 

The soft rock tune from the radio fills the quiet space as you tighten your grip on the steering wheel, desperate to stretch your legs. “Fucking hell, where are you, Gravity Falls?” as if on cue to your annoyed tone, you finally drive past a massive weathered billboard with the town's name accompanied by a: ‘Nothing to see here!’. 

“Finally,” you murmur in relief as exhaustion tugs at your eyes, the coffee from earlier did nothing to keep the sluggishness at bay. You lean forward, eyes squinting as your foot deftly shifts to gently press against the brakes, slowly decreasing the car's speed. The last thing you want right now is to miss a possible exit into town and end up deeper in the woods.

Speaking of which, you knew that Oregon was famous for its breathtaking scenery and gorgeous natural landscapes, but where the hell were you driving? Outside your window, the forest looked like something straight out of those recently popular horror movies that everyone in the precinct was talking about.

Tall, monster-like trees stretched far into the sky, their dense foliage and branches so intertwined that it was almost impossible for any of the moon's rays to penetrate through and illuminate the dirt road. Past the bare nature that forms a pathway, there is nothing to see, not even other trees, rocks, or signs of wildlife. It's completely pitch dark and dead.

Your stomach is in knots, perhaps from the lack of food or the scenery outside. Whatever it is, you need to get through this as soon as possible, because you're exhausted, and the less you're near this road, the better. You crank up the heat a little more and take a sip of the now-cold coffee that sits on the cup holder, as the engine of your car hums quietly climbing over a dirt hill, its dim headlights breaking through the thick fog.

But before you get very far, you come across a peculiar sight. Down the small hill, parked on the right between some large rocks, is an old, somewhat battered red pickup truck. Exaggerated clouds of thick smoke billow from the raised hood, and through your window you notice a pair of hands clutching some tools in a desperate attempt to repair the car.

Curious, you approach the vehicle and catch a glimpse of what you assume to be its owner, blowing away the gray clouds while coughing furiously, his small round glasses barely hanging from the tip of his nose and his green patterned shirt stained with grime. Your headlights cast a shadow on the car, and when the man hears the sound of your car’s engine, he lifts his head excitedly, but accidentally smacks his forehead against the hood.

You cringe at the image and watch as the poor man stumbles away from the truck, holding his head in pain as he almost falls to his knees. You feel sorry for the guy, not only did his car break down in the most eerie place possible, but it also happened in the middle of the night. Still, you remain cautious, silently reaching for the police-issued Taser tucked in the left pocket of your coat, which is haphazardly lying on the passenger seat on top of your purse.

Even though the man looks scrawny, and you assume that if he were to throw a punch it would only leave a nasty bruise, you can't help but think that he might want to inflict some harm on you. You've read countless files, back in the archival rooms of your old precinct, of victims who kindly stop to aid others only to be robbed or even murdered in return. 

Dazed, the man looks up in the distance at your car, and his eyes light up in pure relief at the sight but are quickly replaced with desperation as he furiously wails his arms around, silently begging you to stop. Meanwhile, you maneuver the vehicle to the side of the dirt road, harshly pulling on the hand brake as you swiftly attach the taser’s holster to your belt before quickly lowering your sweater to cover it. 

Cold, harsh air bites at your warm skin as you lower your window, making sure to keep your feet near the accelerator and your left hand on the hand brake to book it as soon as this man tries to do anything remotely suspicious. Soon, two shivering hands cling to your windowsill and you’re finally able to get a better look. You noticed that he clumsily cleaned his face and glasses using his sleeve. ‘He’s rather cute.’ 

“Yer a lifesaver! I’ve been sittin’ here for what feels like a whole eternity!” he exclaims in a thick country accent, giving you a closed-eyed smile as he shivers from the freezing wind. You make a small note of his fast speech and silently wonder if it’s the temperature or an underlying anxious habit. 

“No problem, what can I do to help?” you don't mean for your voice to sound so monotonous, but you're exhausted from the long drive and the eerie atmosphere isn't helping. The man removes his hands from your car, opting to shove them into his pants pockets as a puff of condensed breath escapes from his mouth, his back hunched at an awkward angle. “Do ya happen to have a lantern or somethin’ to light up this here mess? I just wanna see how bad this damage is.”

You decide not to blurt out that his car might be beyond repair, as you swear the thing will burst into flames in a matter of minutes. Instead, you wordlessly reach for the open cardboard box on the floor of the passenger seat, silently thanking yourself for putting your work stuff in the front, as you quickly find the lantern and hand it to him. “Careful, it’s an industrial flashlight so it might be a bit heavy.”

The man beams at your actions, his cold fingers gently brushing against yours as he takes the lantern from your grasp. “Thanks a bunch! Could ya give me a hand here and hold this light for me?” he asks rather cheerfully as you mull over your answer. Well, the faster he gets his car fixed the sooner you’ll be able to get home and sleep. 

After a few seconds of silence, you wordlessly nod before rolling up the window to preserve the little heat left inside and then turning the key on its side, your car ceasing its small vibrations as the motor shuts down. You don’t waste any more time as you grab your coat and kick the door open, immediately slipping on the warm attire as your teeth slightly chatter. ‘Fucking wind, why is it so cold? It’s not even winter, yet.’

The man has already made his way back to the pickup, and your tired eyes notice that the amount of smoke coming from under the hood has, thankfully, decreased. Taking wide strides, the dry leaves crunch underneath your boots as you quickly approach the man and gingerly slide your hand out of your pocket, your index pointing to the flashlight. 

He perks up at your presence, but when his gaze lands on your face, you notice in the dim light that a small blush adorns his pale cheeks.

He stares at you for a few seconds with a dumbfounded expression, and it's only when you clear your throat and jab your finger forward that he seems to snap out of it, clumsily handing you the lantern as he focuses on the car's motor. A rather awkward silence ensues as you simply shine the light on the battered machine and he quietly tinkers with it. You should ask him his name.

“So, what are you doing out here at such an hour?” you ask, holding back a yawn. The man doesn't look up from his work, but you notice a small, rather endearing smile on his lips. “Oh! Well, my college buddy moved out here about a month ago and was lookin' for a research partner. Asked if I'd help him out and here I am!” he remembers enthusiastically as he looks at you for a moment, quietly inquiring about your reasons for being here.

“I’m the new Chief of Police in Gravity Falls,” if he was about to try something, then perhaps mentioning your work would dissuade him from that thought. Instead, however, his eyes twinkle with what you assume is excitement as he gives you a broad smile. What a bizarre man. “Well, I reckon we'll be seein' each other a whole lot!”

Suddenly, as if processing his words, he pales at the implications of his sentence and stares at you, eyes wide. “N-Not like that! I’m a law abidin’ citizen, I-I swear! We ain’t doin’ anythin’ illegal!” his panicked reaction gets you to laugh out loud, the light slightly shaking in your grasp. “It’s fine, don’t worry. I get what you were trying to say,” as the laughter dies down, the two of you fall back into silence, but this time it is more comfortable.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take long for the man to let out a frustrated sigh as he runs a dirty hand through his caramel blond hair. “Darn it… radiator’s busted,” he mutters under his breath. He won't be able to start the truck tonight; he'll have to look for a spare part. But your conscience won’t allow you to leave him here, especially when you feel as if something might jump out of the bushes and attack you.

Yes, the forest is creepy, but you doubt it is plagued by cryptids. At most, some predators are lurking around.

You lean over to take a look at what's in his truck; there aren't many boxes or luggage stuffed in the back seats, and it seems like everything fits perfectly inside your car. “Hey, how far’s your friend’s house? I’ll take you there,” he perks up, a hopeful expression washing away the worries and stress of the broken car. “Really!? Oh, bless your soul! It should be ‘bout ten minutes from here.”

The man scurries off to put his tools away and pushes the hood shut before getting his luggage out. Meanwhile, you leave the right-hand door of the back seat open as you start to take some things from his hands, wanting to hurry the process as the cold has now seeped into your bones and you can't stop shivering. You think the cold will kill you before any imaginary monster can.

Soon, the man's truck is empty and locked, but just as you're about to climb into the driver's seat, he lets out a small gasp and rubs his hands roughly against his trousers before extending one to you with a polite smile. “My mama would give me a piece of her mind for bein’ so poorly mannered. I'm Fiddleford H. McGucket, pleased to meet ya.”

You return the greeting firmly, noting that his hand is calloused and freezing, as you reply curtly with your name. Fiddleford repeats it under his breath, testing to feel how it rolls off his tongue, but a strong gust of wind causes you both to rapidly let go of each other's hands as you hurry to get into your car.

You waste no time turning on the heater, both of you breathing a sigh of relief as the warmth relaxes your muscles and soothes your frozen skin. Soon the wheels are turning and the sight of Fiddleford's truck grows smaller and smaller as you make your way along the foggy road.

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The ride is peaceful as Fiddleford leads the conversation, telling you a few facts about himself before turning his attention to you, his dark eyes full of curiosity. You cringe a little, not meaning for your voice to be so flat and your responses to be curt, but you're still getting used to socializing and you're tired. You also don’t understand what’s so interesting about yourself. 

But Fiddleford doesn't seem to mind, enjoying the brief silences and conversations he has with you as he stares out the window. You also finally start to see some signs of civilization in the form of crude wooden signs haphazardly nailed into the trunks of trees, indicating how far the town is. After a few bumps in the road, Fiddleford pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolds it.

“Ok… so, when ya see that sign sayin’ we’re three kilometers from the entrance to Gravity Falls, turn left,” from your peripheral vision, you watch as he extends a finger and motions to the side. “Your friend lives quite far away from town,” as the words leave your mouth, you’re made painfully aware of the taser still strapped to your belt. You hope that Fiddleford didn’t trick you… you were starting to like him.

Thankfully, your comment seems to resonate with him as he turns to look at you with an excited expression. “Right!? Told’im the same thing! But he said the place was perfect ‘cause there’s a ‘large concentration of specimens’ or somethin’ like that. Gosh, what a pain s’going to be to go to the market every week,” you can help but quietly chuckle as he huffs in frustration, relief coursing through your body.

Soon the two of you return to your normal routine, and before you know it, you're turning your blinker on and maneuvering the steering wheel as the car begins to enter the man-made driveway. A few meters ahead, you see a bizarre A-shaped house with the lights on, and Fiddleford exclaims happily, "That's the house!" 

But just as you're about to step on the gas to start driving up the hill, a figure suddenly dashes out of the trees and you instantly hit the brakes, stopping the car just in time to avoid hitting the person standing a few inches from the hood. You and Fiddleford lurch forward as you gasp in shock, staring with wide eyes and fast-beating hearts at the scene ahead of you. 

You grip the steering wheel tightly, your knuckles turning white as you hold your breath from the momentary fear that quickly turns to worry. In front of you, a young boy, no more than 16 years old, stares blankly at the window like a deer caught in the headlights. His face is deathly pale, his cheeks sunken as his chest rises and falls at an increasingly rapid pace, puffs of white steam quickly condensing against the cold air. It’s almost invisible, but you notice he’s trembling either from the cold or fear.

But what makes your stomach fall is the state he’s in. Three long cuts decorate the lower part of his jaw, the blood around the wound is dried, he has a busted lip and a large bruise surrounds his left eye, you can see that he is having trouble keeping it open, perhaps it is already starting to swell. 

His blond hair is disheveled, mixed with twigs, leaves, and dirt. There are several cuts and other wounds on his neck and near his stomach, his shirt has four large gashes, although he does not appear to be bleeding in that area. But that does not explain the fact that his hands and part of his forearms are covered in dirt, moss, and a combination of fresh and dried blood.

From what you can see, he's wearing pajamas and doesn't appear to be armed or carrying any kind of weapon. Nevertheless, he appears to be in a state of hysteria and shock so any sort of rapid or sudden movement could lead to a violent reaction or you could scare him away. You must approach him with caution.

You get out of the car, taking care to open the door gently but quickly, not hearing Fiddleford's warning to wait. The sound of the door seems to wake the boy from his stupor, and as you expected, his face falls swiftly and he begins to back away, his body shaking uncontrollably. “Please… don’t hurt me,” his voice trembles, filled with panic as his eyes become crystalline, tears threatening to spill.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just worried, are you okay?” you stay put, making sure your tone is as gentle as possible to not alarm or scare him away. You notice that the atmosphere outside is deadly quiet, you can’t hear the singing of the crickets, much less the howling of the wind. ‘What the hell is going on!?’

“I need to know you’re human,” the boy demands in a shaky tone, having put a good distance between you and him. You raise an eyebrow at his request, but he seems deadly serious as his forehead furrows and his jaw clenches, his fists balling up as if ready to fight if you don't comply. “How do you want me to prove I’m human?”

For some reason, the question seems to put him at ease, as he relaxes his posture though he remains rather hostile. “I… I don’t know but… I-I just don’t know who to trust,” through whispers, tears spill from his eyes as he holds a hand out, terrified. You stand still for a moment, completely confused as to what to do, but it seems the best way to calm him down is to tell him about yourself.

“My name is (Y/N),” you begin and gently close the car door as you take a step forward. The boy perks up, teary eyes staring at you in confusion. You continue, slightly shivering as a gust of wind passes by, yet you don’t hear anything but your voice. “I’m 27. I graduated from Backupsmore as a forensic scientist… um… I hate bees and my favorite color is-”

Before you can finish, the boy suddenly bolts from his spot, his frail arms quickly wrapping around your torso and hugging you as tightly as he can. Unfortunately, due to the force, you come tumbling down, your back harshly scratching against the dirt. You're shocked for a moment, but then you feel his tears rapidly soaking your sweater and his bloody hands tightly clutching the material as he wails loudly, the sound reverberating through the dead ambient.

Somewhat stiffly, your arms embrace the boy, one hand gently rubbing circles on his back, which is shaking as he sobs. His skin is frozen, he's been out for a long time. Fiddleford quickly gets out of the car and crouches down beside you with a worried look on his face, quietly asking you if everything is alright. You just give him a small smile in return, hoping to reassure him.

"M-Miss, please help me, I'm so scared," he mumbles between loud cries, hiding his face in your shoulder. You just nod and guide him through some breathing exercises to help him think more clearly and calm down. When the crying ceases, you take off your jacket and drape it over his shoulders hoping it will warm him up a bit, while Fiddleford gently places a hand on his head.

"Let's start at the beginning, what's your name?" your question in a soft tone. The boy lifts his face from your shoulder and two red-rimmed eyes look at you sadly. "M-My name is L-Lawrence W-Woodworth," he replies scared, the words barely leaving his mouth as he shivers. "Nice to meet you, Lawrence. This is Fiddleford, my friend," the brown-haired man gives the boy a slight smile as he nods.

"You have to tell me what happened, how did you get here?" Lawrence shudders at your words but dryly swallows, as if to gather courage, and begins "W-We were coming back from my house, Dylan, Kyle and I... we were working on a s-school project. And out of nowhere, I don't know what it was, but s-something came out of the trees and..."

His palms harshly wipe away at his eyes, though he winces as he grazes the injured one. Fiddleford silently encourages him to continue as he rubs his shoulders. “I-It ripped Kyle’s s-stomach out… D-Dylan called 911 and t-then in the woods something that looked like Kyle but wasn’t Kyle… it even talked like him… it was just standing t-there and i-it started to chase us… w-we got separated and somehow I ended up here…”

You can't believe what you're hearing. If it weren't for the fact that Lawrence looks completely paralyzed with fear, you'd think this story was taken from a horror book. Could the monster be a product of the possible trauma of seeing his friend badly hurt? Or did they mistake the killer, who was standing at a long distance from them, for a more twisted version of a friend? Those are the only explanations you can currently come up with.

You look up and notice that Fiddleford has a much more serious look on his face, he seems to believe everything the boy says. But before you can question him, a bloodcurdling scream followed by a distorted roar echoes through the forest and Lawrence looks up, what little color he had regained in his face drained away. "DYLAN! OH GOD IT'S DYLAN! I HAVE TO GO GET HIM!"

Lawrence is about to run off into the woods when you grab his wrist to stop him from moving, causing the boy to yelp in pain. "Sorry, but you're not going, you're injured and putting yourself in more danger. Fiddleford, take Lawrence to your friend’s and call the police. I'll look for the other boy," you order firmly, before getting up and going to your car, opening it forcefully and diving between all the boxes.

Behind you, you hear Fiddleford gasp in surprise, his boots breaking several branches as he quickly approaches your figure. “(Y/N), be extremely careful, please. Whatever it is, it's dangerous. Please tell me you're carrying a weapon or somethin’,” the man exclaims worriedly. You quietly nod before you notice a small, thin, black briefcase, unfamiliar to you tucked between some cardboard boxes labeled “kitchen”.

Quickly, you unlock the clasp and open the lid, revealing a Smith & Wesson Model 4506 stored in the middle. Your stomach twists, this would be your first time using this thing. But you swallow that fear, a kid is in danger. Fiddleford gasps as he watches over your shoulder as you quickly load the gun with nine rounds and strap the holster to your belt, right next to the Taser. "Don't worry, it's police-issued, I've got a license and I know how to shoot."

You quickly head over to your driver’s seat, shut the car off, and grab the lantern that you stored in the glovebox. As you turn around, you quickly shove your car keys in Fiddleford’s unexpecting hands and turn over to look at Lawrence, who’s now standing up, still trembling. “What does your friend look like?” you walk over to the car, momentarily covering one of the headlights.

“D-Dylan’s tall, has short curly black hair, dark skin, and glasses. H-He was wearing… I-I think I white T-shirt,” you nod, creating the mental picture of his friends as you begin to sprint over to the forest. “BE CAREFUL,” Fiddleford’s voice filled with concern sounds distant as you book it, the cold wind cutting at your skin.

The forest is deadly quiet, the only sounds you can hear are your rapid breathing and the crunching of dried leaves and twigs as your boots stomp over them. Your stomach curls into a knot and your mouth goes dry as the faster you run, the darker your surroundings seem to get.

"DYLAN!?" your voice echoes through the trees as you flash the light around you. There are only trees, trees, and more trees! They are all starting to look the same. And the fog makes it worse as you can barely see past a few feet in front of you. You exhale exhaustedly, pausing for a moment as you try to regain your sense of direction. Your muscles ache from the sudden movement, you were more used to a life behind a desk than running in the field.

"OVER HERE! PLEASE! HELP ME!" your head whips to the right as you hear the distant screams of a young boy. There was no time to waste, as the force you used to push yourself forward caused the soles of your feet to kick up a patch of dirt and moss. You call his name again, trying to locate him more easily, and he answers, his voice much clearer now. 

Soon you come to a clearing illuminated by the moonlight, and sitting against the trunk of one of the trees, his head tucked between his head and a hand on his left shoulder, is the boy who fits Lawrence's description.

"Dylan? My name is (Y/N), I met your friend, Lawrence, I'm here to take you to safety," you say breathlessly, watching as the boy slowly lifts his head, tears streaming down his face as he quietly holds back a sniffle. "L-Lawrence is okay? H-He's not hurt?" you nod softly and quickly walk over, kneeling in front of him and as you give him a warm smile.

"Yes, he's with my friend now, and help is on the way. Are you hurt?" now that you're closer, you notice that there's a deep cut on his left cheek and that his glasses are nowhere to be found, most likely lost while running through the woods. As you gently encourage him to roll over, Dylan hiccups, having cried the last of his tears, before carefully removing the hand that was holding his shoulder.

Underneath his bloody palm are two deep, heavily bleeding cuts that look very similar to the ones on Lawrence's shirt. Up close, the injury looks unnatural, and you can't put your finger on what could have done this; you assume it could be something like a hook, but the width of the gash is much wider than a butcher's hook or something heavier. "I-It got me when I tripped on a corner. I managed to f-fight it off though," he admits sheepishly, dropping his head back to his knees as he recalls the encounter. So that was the scream.

"You were incredibly brave, don't be ashamed, Dylan," you whisper comfortingly, focusing your attention on treating the wound. Placing the lantern on the ground, you grab the bottom of the sweater with both hands and pull in different directions with enough force that the threads begin to snap. Ripping the fabric until it reaches above your belt, you pull so that it goes around your waist, gathering enough to make a makeshift tourniquet.

Dylan watches quietly as you successfully separate the torn piece from your sweater. "Okay, this is going to hurt, but I'm going to wrap this around your wound, okay?" he nods shakily at your instructions, lowering his knees and stretching his injured arm out to the side. You quietly guide him to take deep breaths as you slip the fabric underneath the armpit and tightly twist and turn the cloth, softly apologizing when he winces or gasps for air.

After a few seconds, you tie a knot with the remaining cloth, successfully stopping the bleeding for the moment. Dylan tests his arms by stretching and moving the limb before standing up and grabbing the lantern left on the grass. "Where did the attacker go?" your eyes scan the area around you, but the overwhelming darkness and fog make it impossible for you to see what is beyond the clearing. The area is so quiet, so devoid of life, that you can hear your heartbeat, which begins to pick up as you hear the crunch of leaves and twigs.

Dylan and you have not moved an inch.

"Mooooooom," a distorted and crooked voice wails sadly from the trees, shaking you to your core. Its pitch goes up and down as it gets closer and closer to where you're standing, calling out in pain, searching for its mother. It doesn't even sound like a human, let alone an animal, it's as if something is painfully trying to imitate human speech.

Then you remember what Lawrence said: something that had the appearance of his friends yet it wasn’t him. There's no way... there's no way that things like that exist… Those are just myths, right? You feel Dylan tense up next to you and the light source emitting from the lantern begins to shake in his grip. The creature is determined to find you, it keeps calling out, and whatever it is, it is big, as the ground beneath it shakes and rumbles slightly whenever it takes a step. 

"When I tell you to run, keep going straight until you find a hut. Don't stop and don't look back," you command in a hushed whisper, feeling your heart pounding loudly against your chest as your nimble fingers quietly unlock the holster and grab the handle of your gun. “O-Ok, please be careful, ma’am,” he replies, holding the lantern tighter.

Soon the footsteps are shaking the pebbles scattered across the ground and the mushrooms growing in the trunks of the nearby trees, and you can feel the vibrations in your ears. Beside you, Dylan slowly begins to back away from the noise, inching closer to where you first entered, while you stare at the source of the sound. "Mooooom... I want my mom," it cries again, this time louder, and you shudder at the disgusting tone in which it speaks.

"I hate it... why does it sound so much like Kyle?" Dylan whispers through clenched teeth, this time further away from you. So you were right, it's trying to imitate human speech, but you wonder why it's calling to its mother. You don't have time to answer as a massive figure begins to break through the mist, and you hold your gun tightly, raising it so that the barrel points straight at what you assume is the creature's head.

But you freeze up as soon as the thing reveals itself. The monster is incredibly tall, it reaches to the middle of one of the pine trees and you estimate it to be about two meters in height. It is dragging its arms on the ground, massive hands with dirty nails pointing up towards its pale and bony palms, and its head is tilted to the side, in a childlike manner. 

Sunken and completely hollow eyes with a single silver dot are staring directly at you, the toothless mouth is open wide, creating an oval shape in which you can’t see anything other than an empty void, while distorted boyish cries are coming from the deepest parts of its throat. 

Worst of all, you finally understand what Lawrence and Dylan were saying. It has copied the appearance of a young ginger boy, but because its body is so large and deformed, it looks as if it has stretched an image of what you assume to be Kyle and plastered it onto its body. 

The skin is ghostly pale and looks pulled and torn, its hair is a mangled mess with various bald spots revealing a fleshy black interior, and its "clothes" look painted over and reveal a thin torso with paper-thin skin that closely exposes a skeleton with way too many bones for you to count. It twitches unnaturally as it just stands there, looking at you while begging for his mother without moving.

You can't begin to comprehend what the hell is in front of you. It doesn't feel real, the lack of sound around you, the intense fog, and the imagery make it feel like you're in a lucid nightmare. But you're brought back to reality when you realize that Dylan is still behind you, crying softly as he stares at the mockery of his friend's image. "Run on the count of three, okay?" you don't take your eyes off the creature.

"One," your body's facing forward, you move your dominant leg a step back, both feet planted firmly on the ground as you aim the barrel to hit right between the monster's eyes. It doesn't move, only keeps twitching and wailing in a deep tone.

"Two," you steady your body and take a deep breath as your finger hugs the trigger. Behind you, Dylan prepares to run. Once he's gone, the moonlight will be your only guide during the fight. Your heart beats faster as you take one last breath...just get this over and you’ll go home…

"THREE!" without wasting a second, you squeeze the trigger and fire, a flash of bright light shooting from the barrel and the bullet lodging deep inside the creature's head. The sound of the gun being fired echoes through the forest and you swear you can hear birds flying from the trees and some of the sound comes back. Dylan has already started to run, straight ahead as you instructed.

The shot sends the monster reeling a few steps back, but in retaliation, it lets out a distorted roar so loud it makes your eyes vibrate with pain. You don't let that deter you, though, as you load the second bullet into the chamber and prepare to fire at the creature's chest, right where you think its heart is. Unfortunately, it recovers rather quickly and stands up shakily before charging at you like a bull, swinging one of its gigantic arms in your direction.

You're able to dodge the attack, but the limb is so heavy that as soon as it hits the ground, the force knocks you to the ground and the weapon almost slips from your grasp. Luckily, you hold on tight, but the creature is relentless, one of its clawed hands grabs your right ankle, its sharp, bone-like claws digging easily into your flesh, tearing some of the skin. You grunt loudly, your teeth clenched as tears sting your eyes, but you aim the gun at the creature's shoulder and fire.

As the bullet connects with the skin, the monster screeches and painfully removes its claws from your ankle, nursing its new injury instead. You back away as fast as you can, grunting in pain and after a considerable distance, you do your best to stand up, limping slightly as you plant your feet firmly on the ground and load another bullet.

And you fire the third one.

And the fourth.

And the fifth.

“Won’t you just die already!?” you scream in frustration, fear and paranoia seeping into your mind as you watch the monster rise from the ground once more, five small holes in different parts of its body spilling a tar-like liquid onto the grass, staining it. It's almost invincible, no matter how many bullets you fire, it seems to do nothing but temporarily stun it and make it scream horribly.

You jump to the side as the monster charges forward again, but it miscalculates and runs straight through the tree instead. The impact is so powerful that it leaves a massive hole in the trunk, but it is temporarily stuck there; as it struggles to free itself, you waste no time finding its ankle and stomping down as hard as you can.

You almost fall forward...you did not expect its bones to be so fragile. But you almost rejoice in pure happiness as you've found its weak spot; it seems that physical actions are more effective. So you don't stop, kicking and punching with all your might as your limbs easily leave dents and holes in the monster's body. Your hands and boots are covered in the slimy dark substance, but you don't care, you're not going to die here.

In your angry tirade, you fail to notice that the creature is now free of the trunk. It turns, an arm swinging violently, making contact with the side of your torso, sending you flying to the other side of the clearing, where you crash hard into another tree, the air escaping your body as your lungs burn from the pain and your back cracks loudly.

Tears cloud your vision as the monster walks toward you, its actions mimicking a predator that has finally caught its meal. Your hands desperately search your surroundings for your weapon, but as you cough violently, you realize that the weapon has been crushed under the creature's weight on the other side of the clearing. “Oh fuck,” you mutter as the creature stands before you and wastes no time reaching down, its claws digging into your neck as it lifts you into the air.

You struggle to free yourself, your throat slowly crushed under the monster's grip, as something cold and plastic digs into the side of your hip. The Taser! As dark spots begin to fill your vision and your lungs burn, your hand reaches for your belt, unlatches the holster, and shakily pulls the device out.

Your scratched thumb quickly locates the switch and flips it on, and with all your might you jam the probes against the monster's skin and squeeze the trigger. As the volt of electricity coursed through the thing's insides, it let out a blood-curdling scream before dropping you to the ground. The pain is so great for the creature that it falls to the ground, rolling on its wrist.

But even though your world is spinning and you want nothing more than to throw up and fall asleep, you push through the pain and stand up shakily as you sprint to the monster and mercilessly stomp on its head, its skull cracking against your sole and the grass. You keep going, even when there's nothing left but a messy pile of mush and the tar-like substance, you don't stop.

You want this thing dead. Gone. Fuck whatever this thing is.

“(Y/N), STOP! It’s already dead!”

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Tag list:

@rotknox @devotee-of-bill

[singularscissor]

so uh. i don't really like the previous ref post i did for Bright Crown so. i made a new one that gets to the point and also actually looks good. it's still not really an art reference per se (consistency is for losers 😎), more like a general summary about them

much yapping and elaboration follows below

Bright Crown was initially designed by a member of the Assembly in Recognition of Ignorance. The Assembly was a scientific trancendentalist organization that believed the Solution could only be found through a deeper and more complete understanding of the world in general, in particular various natural laws and phenomena.

The Assembly conducted research in a variety of fields, astronomy/upper orbit conditions were only one branch of the organization. For much of the Assembly's existence, the work of Bright Crown's development and construction progressed slowly. Scientists built ground infrastructure (the Endless Sea Facility) and refined the superstructure's design in anticipation of its construction.

When the Great Equalization came, storms and flooding began to threaten the Assembly's complexes, and the leadership fell into agitation. The branch responsible for Bright Crown suddenly became politically powerful because of the infrastructure they had built -- the automated facilities were already designed to supply the superstructure, and it was not difficult to adapt them to also support the Assembly's general population. In particular, the half-constructed communications spire was modified to include a sizeable city, safely above cloud level.

With control of the Council, the Bright Crown branch was able to more fully commit the Assembly's resources to the project, and construction proceeded considerably faster (though, compared to other contemporary iterator projects, progress was slow. Building in space is difficult.)

During this time, all five launch rails were used to deliver components up the the station for assembly. The rails use a combination of gravity manipulators and magnets to accelerate the supply capsules past the cloud layer. The capsules are also equipped with their own thrusters for use once the rails are cleared.

After the structure's completion, the launch rails were used less -- though, as an mostly isolated and definitely not lossless system, Bright Crown requires regular shipments of fuel, replacement water, raw materials etc. All five rails were kept operational for the sake of redundancy, but only half of them were ever used at the same time.

Most communication receivers are designed to catch signals from other ground based sources, rather than from space. Even proper equipment (such as the specially designed ESF spire) can only pick up a signal when Bright Crown is at the proper point in orbit above it. This left Bright Crown socially isolated -- though they are assigned to a local group based off ESF's geographical location, they are more or less ignored by its members due to the infrequency of their transmissions.

Bright Crown also often worries about their long term survival. There are a lot of inherent complications with being in space -- damage that might be ignorable to a normal iterator would be crippling in such a precariously balanced system. A hull breach in the wrong place, or a breakdown in the groundside supply chain could spell disaster.

Relations with the Assembly eventually degraded. Bright Crown hated being dependent on Endless Sea Facility and the Council's goodwill, and also held a grudge against them for continuing with their own construction even after it was clear their longevity would be substandard.

[galaxymagitech]

Okay, but. Mavity. Mavity. Mavity.

I pity physics students in the Doctor Who universe. The universal gravitational constant? M. The acceleration due to gravity on earth? m. A big mass? M. A small mass? m.

And you get this *lovely* equation:

mm = MmM/r^2

Are we talking about millimeters? Candy? Trying to form bizarre emoticons?

But they’re different ms and Ms. So you resort to subscripts and it takes forever to type and you always forget them on exams. And you curse Isaac Newton because, like, couldn’t he have chosen a better letter to start it with? Zavity? Nah, the z-axis…Gravity. Gravity’s nice. And g and G aren’t taken! Why couldn’t he have named it gravity?

And when Shirley Anne Bingham discovers that this torture she suffered throughout uni, her PhD, while doing scientific equations necessary for the preservation of human life under immense time pressure…was the Doctor and Donna’s fault? Well, it’s a good thing she wasn’t ever big on hero worship, because the duo have made her mathematical life hell.

[exploding-salmon-heart]

Alien introductions pt. 1: Swamp Dogs

Swamp Dog is the common English name for the six-limbed amphibian-like aliens. Other English nicknames include Exosaurus, Astrosaurus, Floodmakers, Water Wolves, and the sometimes derogatory ‘small aliens’.

PLANET

Swamp dogs originate from the planet Cgorthae.

Cgor is 22% larger than Earth with slightly increased gravity. The planet has less open ocean area, leaving a significant amount of the planets water to the major wetland biomes including swamps, bogs, flooded forests, wide but shallow rivers, and floodplains. The planets high percentage of water-based biomes ultimately gave way for this sophont to become the most populous boned animal on the planet.

BIOLOGY

Swamp Dogs are underwater ambush predators that rely mostly on invertebrates and fish-like prey. They use their hindmost limbs to navigate and accelerate through the waters, as these back limbs have evolved to resemble paddles. Their middle set of limbs have wide, flattened muscles around the thigh that also aid in direction while swimming. The frontmost limbs are thin, but strong. This allows them to strike quickly to capture prey and pull it to their mouth.

Other notable physical features include:

-An average height of 1m tall at the shoulder, making them the shortest sophont.

-Intricately shaped teeth akin to leopard seals, as well as a tongue equipped with many barbs for stripping flesh off of prey.

-Salamander-like skin. Colors include but are not limited to: turquoise, emerald green, olive, lemon yellow, tan, and muddy brown.

-Purple blood that leads to magenta, indigo, or plum colored flesh underneath the initial green layers of skin.

-Large eyes with ivory-colored sclera. Iris colors include a range of dull pinks, purples, blues, yellows, and browns.

-Ear canals located directly behind the skull. Long, thin, cartilaginous ‘external ears’ emerge from around the ear canal. These do not significantly impact hearing, as they were primarily used by pre-sapient Swamp Dogs as lures while hunting underwater. These lures may have also aided in courting rituals.

-Nostrils located closely behind the ears. Both ears and nostrils positioned on the neck so the Swamp Dogs can breathe and hear the surface while keeping their eyes on the water below them.

-Ridges in the snout allow water to flow directly over the sensitive pores in and around the eyes and nostrils. This allows them to pick up on changes in the water such as oxygen, mineral, and algae levels.

-Four digits on each limb. On the front four limbs, two digits face forwards while the two longer digits face backwards. This gives them support in all directions while dealing with strong flow as they grip the ground underwater.

-When on land, they are able to stand upright on their midlegs. While doing so, they use their hind limbs as a prop, leaning back on them for balance. This stabilized upright posture gave way for the species to learn tool manipulation with their front limbs outside of water, a key step in their development as sapient beings.

CULTURE

‘Modern day’ (At least 200 years into the future) Swamp Dogs are stereotyped as being a treehugger society. This is despite the ongoing growth of global superpowers and major corporations actively destroying the delicate wetland structures that make up a majority of the planet. These similar problems are found on every sophont’s planet, but are most overlooked when it comes to Swamp Dogs. This mostly leads back to their initial introduction to other sophonts excluding most major industrial cities due to the remote location where first contact was initiated. (Swamp Dogs being the last out of five discovered sapient aliens). The global superpowers and large corporations of other alien planets often have to deal with the eyes of all five sophonts when making their major decisions, while people of the same influence on the Swamp Dog planet are able to pass under the radar easier, making it harder to make progress restoring the natural biomes despite the treehugger status given to them by others.

The most influential inventions of Swamp Dog societies include: High speed rail systems, soil-strengthening techniques allowing heavy construction on swampy land, vertical agriculture structures, space elevators, and much more.

Swamp Dog clothing is as diverse as our own, and varies just as much depending on culture. The most popular clothing choices include suits made of waterproof outer layers with reed-based inner layers meant to stay damp. This helps with retaining moisture in the skin during land travel.

It is popular to adorn the neck with hoards of intricate necklaces, weaves, and fabrics. Many wealthy individuals will wear their wealth like such, leaving the rest of their body in simple clothing as a contrast.

Sandals are a common shoe option, allowing the long toenails to be displayed often with bright and intricate disowns similar to our own nail art. Many go without shoes completely, as muddy feet is seen as a normal occurrence, with many building having dirt floors or cleaning stations at entrances.

In many cultures, the head is to be left unaltered. It is considered alternative to wear clothing on the head, and especially outgoing to acquire tattoos or other body modifications above the ears. Even Swamp Dogs with full body tattoos will usually leave their heads completely void of artwork.

SPACE

Swamp dogs made their way to space the slowest out of all sophonts, and had only thoroughly explored about half of the planets in their solar system before being contacted by a Wyrm-operated exploration ship.

As of now, Swamp Dogs are the vast minority when it comes to any space colony and even in total population. Even the few colonies within their own solar system have become majorly inhabited by Wyrm and/or Rabbit crews.

FIN

[ferronickel]

I wish people knew what terminal velocity means.

It's not a speed that kills you

It's the velocity at which drag cancels out the acceleration due to gravity, so you stop accelerating downwards, but continue falling at a fixed velocity. (The acceleration terminates)

Different objects have different wind resistances, and therefore different terminal velocities. If you open a parachute, you and the parachute will still reach a terminal velocity, it's just a lot slower than the terminal velocity you'd have without one.

[mysticstronomy]

IS TIME INFINITE IN BLACK HOLES??

Blog#365

Wednesday, January 10th, 2024.

Welcome back,

The singularity at the center of a black hole is the ultimate no man's land: a place where matter is compressed down to an infinitely tiny point, and all conceptions of time and space completely break down. And it doesn't really exist. Something has to replace the singularity, but we're not exactly sure what.

Let's explore some possibilities.

It could be that deep inside a black hole, matter doesn't get squished down to an infinitely tiny point. Instead, there could be a smallest possible configuration of matter, the tiniest possible pocket of volume.

This is called a Planck star, and it's a theoretical possibility envisioned by loop quantum gravity, which is itself a highly hypothetical proposal for creating a quantum version of gravity.

In the world of loop quantum gravity, space and time are quantized — the universe around us is composed of tiny discrete chunks, but at such an incredibly tiny scale that our movements appear smooth and continuous.

This theoretical chunkiness of space-time provides two benefits. One, it takes the dream of quantum mechanics to its ultimate conclusion, explaining gravity in a natural way.

And two, it makes it impossible for singularities to form inside black holes.

As matter squishes down under the immense gravitational weight of a collapsing star, it meets resistance. The discreteness of space-time prevents matter from reaching anything smaller than the Planck length (around 1.68 times 10^-35 meters). All the material that has ever fallen into the black hole gets compressed into a ball not much bigger than this.

Perfectly microscopic, but definitely not infinitely tiny.

This resistance to continued compression eventually forces the material to un-collapse (i.e., explode), making black holes only temporary objects. But because of the extreme time dilation effects around black holes, from our perspective in the outside universe it takes billions, even trillions, of years before they go boom. So we're all set for now.

Another attempt to eradicate the singularity — one that doesn't rely on untested theories of quantum gravity — is known as the gravastar. It's such a theoretical concept that my spell checker didn't even recognize the word.

The difference between a black hole and a gravastar is that, instead of a singularity, the gravastar is filled with dark energy. Dark energy is a substance that permeates space-time, causing it to expand outward. It sounds like sci-fi, but it's real: dark energy is currently in operation in the larger cosmos, causing our entire universe to accelerate in its expansion.

As matter falls onto a gravastar, it isn't able to actually penetrate the event horizon (due to all that dark energy on the inside) and therefore just hangs out on the surface. But outside that surface, gravastars look and act like normal black holes. (A black hole's event horizon is its point of no return — the boundary beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape.)

However, recent observations of merging black holes with gravitational wave detectors have potentially ruled out the existence of gravastars, because merging gravastars will give a different signal than merging black holes, and outfits like LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and Virgo are getting more and more examples by the day. While gravastars aren't exactly a no-go in our universe, they are definitely on thin ice.

Originally published https://www.space.com/

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, January 13th, 2024)

"JUPITER HAS A LARGE MAGNETIC FIELD THAN PREVIOUSLY EXPECTED??"

[cr4shdummy]

tech talk: ride height, road bikes, and entertainment

last week, we witnessed fabio quartararo relinquish a hard-fought race lead due to a unique type of mechanical error: the rear ride-height device of his Yamaha M1 was stuck in the low position. i was struck by the similarities of that incident to maverick viñales' DNF at sachsenring in 2022, the first real peek at the potential unreliability of rear ride-height devices.

the process is simple: the back end of the bike drops down when exiting a corner, improving acceleration and stability. lowering the bike's center of gravity reduces its chance to wheelie, meaning all that low-gear torque from the engine goes straight into the front wheel.

the ride-height device that MotoGP bikes use is, under the current rules, entirely mechanical. a sensor at the fork reads the front position as the bike corners, then starts a sort of rube goldberg machine-esque series of reactions to trigger the back to drop during corner exit.

the front ride-height devices that Ducati used briefly until they were banned in 2023 were a similar system, but were triggered by the rider instead of automatically. in this clip, you can see pecco disengage it coming out of the last corner at mugello.

when front ride-height devices were banned in 2023, it was with the support of 5 out of 6 manufacturers -- Ducati were the only ones opposing it. i'm conflicted; on one hand, ducati worked hard to develop and integrate the technology, and even if it gave them an advantage, that's just how improvement works in a machine-based sport. on the other hand, if one team can guarantee success by just pouring the most money into development, the sport becomes increasingly asymmetrical and frankly boring.

with all ride-height devices now set for elimination in 2027, i'm again split on the rationale for turning the clock back and regressing a lot of racing technology. in terms of making MotoGP more road-relevant and accurate to the average consumer, eradicating ride-height devices is supposedly an obvious solution. but consumer ride-height add-ons exist, and they're not mechanical, they're electronic! they're more reliable as well. in fact, when the ducati front ride-height device was banned, both romano albesiano of Aprilia (now Honda) and sebastian risse of KTM both raised that example.

albesiano said,

risse said,

it's the same argument that Dorna has used to justify the 2027 tech rollbacks, but in reverse: front ride-height tech wasn't road-relevant because it was behind what production motorcycles can do, not ahead.

this exposes a contradiction in Dorna's plan. if MotoGP should exist as a sport to help manufacturers test and develop technology specifically to improve production motorcycles, why eliminate tech that exists in better forms for the average consumer? why not simply mandate that ride-height devices be electronic, thus resolving the issue of unreliability and making the technology more accurate to something a normal person could buy?

Dorna has also been clear that the tech rollback is a response to negative reactions among fans and viewers, who feel that the sport has become uninteresting. i'm one of them. but i would point to World Superbike, which is significantly more road-relevant since the bikes used are (theoretically) actual road bikes: World Superbike is fucking boring. i'm sorry, it just is. and a lot of that is because the bikes are slower and more realistic, not in spite of it! now that BMW has lost its superconcessions for the current season, they're running a very stripped down machine that's on par with or worse than most others on the grid. and because of that, the only rider that can find any success on it is Toprak Razgatlioglu, who is leaving anyway.

i'm not saying Dorna should just allow teams to pour money into futuristic rocketship motorcycles that win a million championships. but if Dorna wants to make the sport more fun and more realistic, they need to make more specific, in-depth changes than just sweeping bans. an electronic ride-height system would be a great way to test that principle.