Posted by Mush on 10.11.2012, 08:22 PM:
Wild speculation about the technical details of science fiction is decidedly a good thing.
(Sincere apologies to the authors of the thread that I'm probably derailing and haven't even properly read.)
I think oxygenated liquid bath is probably a bad idea, not the least because free oxygen is a highly reactive, poisonous substance. We aerobic life-forms evolved to breathe it eventually, but even today many organisms will die when exposed to oxygen. And in high concentrations, it kills us too. Think bleach or strong hydrogen peroxide. Maybe that's why Ayanami has blue hair and red eyes? I see, it all makes sense now...
In the womb, gas exchange for the fetus is done through the placenta. The fetus breathes, but only to practice and strengthen its lung muscles (or so I've heard; I wasn't paying attention when I was a fetus).
But, it's quite possible that with the right compounds it would do the job without harm. The main idea behind gas exchange is swapping out O2 for CO2, so maybe an oxygen-loaded fluid that will only give up its oxygen in exchange for carbon dioxide could be brewed up, which would work fine in the lungs and also keep it from bleaching the victims *cough* I mean, pilots. Maybe someone's already found chemicals to do that and it's a solved problem, I don't know.
So, is it remotely possible? Probably yes. But is there something wrong with just filling the capsule with air instead? It seems simpler! And I imagine it would be hard to talk with your lungs filled with fluid, not to mention that movement would become awkward and sluggish. I can only conclude there's some reason it was absolutely necessary to fill the capsule up with liquid, and no simpler solution could be found. (Simple, practical, inexpensive, reliable solutions don't really seem to be NERV's problem-solving style, though).
Neural interface... Ethics aside, they definitely seem to have some bugs in their system. I really enjoyed the exchange in which the "Japan Heavy Chemical Industries" guy rips outrageously (in a Japanese indirect criticism way) into NERV's unreliable robot technology. Having to search for compatible pilots and finding only a few, indispensible, school-age children can serve the role would make most project managers think about running the robots on remote control instead. But I can only assume (NERV being NERV...) that, as in the other case, they already tried everything simpler and rejected all the sensible methods that sane people would think of. Or they have some darker, alternate scheme, and really the whole reason that the EVAs were designed this way is because Ikari Senior really did design the organization from the ground up for the sole purpose of tormenting his son. So far, this explains everything, including why the only other pilots are attractive females of his age.
Think about it.
More seriously on the topic of computing, saviour -- you must know that memory is a fundamental component of every system that can be called a "computer". (Turing himself proved that). But you're right that human memory is quite amazing... the limits of human memory capacity have stretched as far as researchers have ever had patience to search, although for most of us, accessing and indexing our memory is irritatingly difficult. It probably has something to do with combinatorial mathematics applied to the trillions of neural connections. That said, the exponential growth of computer memory has actually gone consistently faster than the (also exponential) growth of processing power, so some day technology may rival the brain. Software will continue to be a challenge.
But I should probably point out that quantum computing is fundamentally not the same as trinary computing (computing with 3 states: 0, 1, and 2). Trinary computing is fundamentally the same as binary computing, and as quaternary computing (4 states: 0, 1, 2, 3, which is how DNA does its computing). Turing proved this too. Quantum computing is different and can't be emulated by a binary computer. Neural computing is still an unknown but it's most likely not quantum, even though the architecture is very different than a silicon computer.
You've seen farther in the series than I have, so all I know about EVA's systems is that they interface with (that is, communicate with) the brain. I haven't seen them doing any reprogramming of it. Maybe that happens later on? So I can't comment much on that, but interfacing with the brain is a very different idea than rewiring it.
Now the less fluffy stuff.... Yeah! That concrete must weigh a lot, unless it isn't actually concrete but just looks like concrete. Tokyo 3 seems to employ enough parlour tricks already that I wouldn't put it past them to be making their buildings out of a sturdy lightweight foam. But assuming it is concrete... skyscrapers probably weigh between 50,000 to 200,000 tonnes (200,000 is a number I found for the Sears tower). The Sears tower is 440 m tall. Buildings in Tokyo 3 seem to be pretty tall too, and it's the future, so let's use the Sears tower as an estimate. So if we wanted to lift the Sears tower by 500m (its own height plus a little extra), it would take approximately one terajoule (10^12 J), if I did my calculation right.
In the show the buildings go up pretty quickly, but viewers are impatient, so let's say it takes about 16 minutes to elevate them the whole way, or 1000 seconds. Then it would take 1 gigawatt of power to lift the building, or the output of a large power plant. The world's largest nuclear power plant is 8 gigawatts and the Three Gorges Dam is 22 gigawatts.
They only need the power for less than an hour, so they don't necessarily need a plant that can generate all of the power all at once. But it's probably safe to assume that Tokyo-3 has a nuclear power plant underground, and for an hour a day it diverts its power output to lifting downtown. Either that, or they use counterweights.
I wonder how the pilot survives the g-forces being when the robot, catapulted up from underground, suddenly comes to a stop at the surface. Maybe the fluid bath in the cockpit was an attempt to address this problem?
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