#batcave physics

Research: Borax is Na2H4B4O9•nH2O, so it contains a lot of boring common stuff (sodium, hydrogen, and oxygen) and also more interestingly boron.

The naturally occurring isotopes of boron are B-10 (19.9%) and B-11 (80.1%). B-10 has a really high capture cross-section for low-energy neutrons.

In fission reactors, the burn is being kept up by a chain reaction. A neutron hits a fuel nucleus, which absorbs the neutron, splits into smaller nuclei and releases energy and more neutrons, which in turn can hit other fuel nuclei. To control this process, neutron moderators (which slow down neutrons) and “neutron poisons” (which absorb neutrons) are used. They adjust the amount of free neutrons which can cause further chain reactions. The neutron poisons are also used for emergency shut-down procedures.

Boron (in some cases even household borax) is used as neutron poison.

Conclusion: Leviathans run on fission.

Other explanation: Borax is an insecticide, but not very harmful (lethal dose is quite a lot) to humans. Leviathans being old as balls have an ancient metabolism that is more akin to insects than humans.

@messier51

Oh wow, thanks! It's not super sensitive or anything it's just.... the passage of time and other assorted life-related such things. Most of those posts were about Supernatural, which isn't airing new episodes, so I don't really write essays about science-adjacent stuff for it anymore.

I also finished my PhD, then there was a pandemic, and now I have a Real Job (doing Telescope Things! which I love a lot) so I haven't found myself doing a whole lot of fun writing for uh. A longer time than I realized lol...which is sort of a shame? I'm not even sure what I would write about though. Lately @themanfromnantucket and I have been talking about omegaverse biology things but biology is not in my wheelhouse as much (and my personal relationship with omegaverse is partially antagonistic, kinktomato or whatever) so I am proooobably not the right person to be writing those essays.

I do reblog fandom-science related stuff to my batcave physics tag when I see cool stuff that other people are posting/writing about! Maybe someday I will get suckered into some inspiration for something. The original posts I started making for spn were because I was chatting with another fan on tumblr and they asked a question, sometimes that's all it takes. Having another long vaguely-fantastical series that's fun to think too hard about would probably help too though!

GIsHwhES item #61: Create a short "Supernatural"-related horror story out of the abbreviations of the elements of the Periodic Table. You may only use each letter from each abbreviation once (so you'd have roughly - 225 letters to use). The more coherent the story, the better.  

IT IS THE THING! *SQU3EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

so i made a rambly post (+ sara’s response) here 

but like also 

do you think maybe if ghosts ping EM meters 

and they’re basically the psyches of people

then whatever wavelength (range) that is on (pun intended) is the frequency (range) the psychic is tuning into? 

and that whatever sort of wavelengths angels are operating on, the bit that gets through the human vessel/psyche wavelength (range) ends up getting translated as colors because there’s some weird information transformation, or are we assuming that the psychic is just picking up raw angel wavelengths and that “colors” are just the part of the angel spectrum that the psychic could see?

Based on Shadows of an Angel’s Share and the one I linked to in it while discussing Lucifer’s grace, Thermodynamics of the Devil, it would follow quite nicely that the Mark would need to be powered with an external power source. 

To reiterate, those metas suggest that a) the MoC is a grace-brand mark from a deal made with Lucifer, and b) that Lucifer “burns” cold because he has been cut off from the power supply of souls in heaven, and so absorbs power from an alternate source: everything around him. Heat = energy, so by pulling it from his surroundings he’s replacing some of that heavenly glory he’s missing. 

(See also section 2 of ceeainthereforthat’s meta here on heaven and hell as battery packs of soul power.)

Long story short: souls are power, so it makes sense that energy could be acquired from killing/souls somehow, instead of just through general violence. The violence would be likely the Mark/Blade’s effect on the bearer in a not-so-subtle attempt to acquire more energy. The two options I see for that are through power absorption, or through a fission-like process.

Since we don’t know what happens to the souls of those killed by the First Blade, it’s possible that they (and the grace of angels/monster souls) get taken in by the Blade to power the Mark. This would be similar to how the horsemen ate souls, or how Cas swallowed all of the souls of purgatory. 

It could also be a matter of fission, in this case, separating the soul and/or the self from mortality, or the grace and the self from the immortal being. In any case, whatever it is that causes death to happen, it’s possible that energy is released as a byproduct of the destruction.

In order to sate the Mark, in the first case, it could parallel to the question of how one re-connects an angel to heaven (more like Cas in s5 than now, but possibly still relevant). If the Mark isn’t hungry for energy, it stands to reason that it wouldn’t give the bearer cravings. Plug it into the wall instead of having to change out the batteries every once in a while, if you will. (There’s probably a deeper issue of addiction though, which isn’t something that gets cured so much as managed. See also: Dean’s alcoholism. So satiation might not be possible in that sense, if the violence and sensation of the kills are part of the addiction… but I’m sorta swinging wildly on this one, and I’m not coming up with links to any good Dean + addiction metas to link to but I might have to look harder because I don’t know enough about this to draw any conclusions.) 

This also somewhat supports the theory that Crowley is a fallen angel, who while he was human sold his soul.

If Lucifer’s grace is red, then that might explain why when we see it here, Crowley’s demon smoke is red, rather than the black that every single other demon we have seen is. 

When he died, his angelic past mixed with hell’s corruption causing his smoke to be red rather than the normal black.

Hmmm. Bit-by-bit:

This also somewhat supports the theory that Crowley is a fallen angel, who while he was human sold his soul.

That's an hypothesis (a guess), not a theory (a complete idea explaining a system, which doesn't have anything to do with getting proven).

Also, we've got no textual evidence that fallen angels have souls. (Better argument would be the proof that Crowley hasn't got a soul from 8.02 but, still, Demons don't have souls because they are souls--that have been twisted and broken.)

There seems to be a false assumption going around that when an angel loses their grace, they become human. An angel though, is not human+grace, so that when you take away the grace they are just human. An angel without grace is still an angel, just a graceless one. Humans and angels are completely different species.

If Lucifer’s grace is red, then that might explain why when we see it here, Crowley’s demon smoke is red, rather than the black that every single other demon we have seen is.

Except that it doesn't at all--color is only an indicator of energy in light. Smoke is, pretty decidedly, not grace. And a soul can't be turned into grace, and grace doesn't get turned into a soul. (see: Anna, whose grace wasn't even there when she was fallen, and it was still blue. So grace degradation would have nothing to do with Crowley's smoke, it just doesn't follow no matter which assumptions you make.)

Another way to look at it: a demon (a twisted soul, a "ghost with an ego") is the smoke, all exposed when it's in that form, and when it enters a new vessel the demon is in there. Angel grace is completely different because there is no consciousness/being of the angel in their grace. An angel can't possess a human just by transferring their grace to the human. (Although that'd probably kill the human; but they still have to transfer their angel-self along with the grace.)

One of the keys here is that Lucifer is not a demon. He's still an angel.

It's textually implied that the smoke is what's left of a soul that's become a demon. Pretty big difference from those shiny blue balls of glowing soul, right?

(oops that was a tangent) 

So you reduce a soul from contained cosmic ray particle analogs to a dusty smoke thing when you turn it into a demon. Still, very different than a “multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent” and also very different than anything we’ve seen grace to be. The hypothesis I posed was that wavelength increases with loss of energy. (Blue light is higher energy than red, effectively.) A light-analog (angels and their grace) isn’t going to ever end up looking like smoke (a matter particle-analog).

When he died, his angelic past mixed with hell’s corruption causing his smoke to be red rather than the normal black.

How even? A “past” is not a thing, this makes so very little sense.

I’d love to see a well-written argument for fallen angel!Crowley, but my meta argument is a terrible first assumption to base it on.

Here’s a counter-hypothesis for you: We know that all crossroads demons have red eyes, although we’ve never seen any other demon smoke out in a different color. We didn’t see Crowley smoke out until he became King of Hell, and had quite a bit of power at his disposal. We also know that he’s quite fond of dressing well (he had a personal tailor). Perhaps with all that power, he decided he wanted the curtains to match the drapes. Tah-dah, red Crowley.

Scorn: he exactly estimates them

AJ: crowley has smaller error bars