Changing Radiations

[Goliathe Dark]

(this has to do with werewolves, if I gather all the info it should help make one basic explaination of a were to the fullest extent of my knowledge)


Is it possible for one radiation (Radiation A) to bounce off of a certain reflective surface and make an entirely or partially different radiation (Radiation B)?




(If anyone guesses where this is going, they get a FREE DUCKY!!!!)

[Wingman]

As for reflective surfaces, my limited experience in this field says no. Refractive things, on the other hand, just might do the trick. I'm guessing you're talking about the moon. If you are, it would be less of a strain to just say that the moon itself is giving off the radiation, and thus it's blocked during the day(by virtue of the earth being between the werewolf and the moon). That's also a bit more logical than saying it's the sight of the moon that causes them to transform, or mumbo jumbo radiation from the center of the universe reflecting off the moon.

If this is the case, and moon rock is radioactive, then very little is preventing a werewolf from stealing a moon rock from a museum, and thus always staying in animal form. Likewise, once people figure it out, people can just wave a moon rock near others to see who transforms.

[Lupin]

Is it possible for one radiation (Radiation A) to bounce off of a certain reflective surface and make an entirely or partially different radiation (Radiation B)?

It's called Fluorescence, but but it only happens with shorter -> longer wavelengths.

[Goliathe Dark]

As for reflective surfaces, my limited experience in this field says no. Refractive things, on the other hand, just might do the trick. I'm guessing you're talking about the moon. If you are, it would be less of a strain to just say that the moon itself is giving off the radiation, and thus it's blocked during the day(by virtue of the earth being between the werewolf and the moon). That's also a bit more logical than saying it's the sight of the moon that causes them to transform, or mumbo jumbo radiation from the center of the universe reflecting off the moon.

If this is the case, and moon rock is radioactive, then very little is preventing a werewolf from stealing a moon rock from a museum, and thus always staying in animal form. Likewise, once people figure it out, people can just wave a moon rock near others to see who transforms.

Well, no offense, but i don't see how the moon would even have radiation. Is there some form of radioactivity in the moon? I'm pretty sure there is none on it.


By the way Wingman, here's your FREE DUCKIE!!!! .
And here's your free duckie helmet when you find out you have a rabid ducky.

[RedEye]

There are two differences between Sunlight and Moonlight:
First: Moonlight is deficient in the higher wavelengths of light, such as Ultraviolet and beyond. Infra-red is low as well.
Second: Moonlight is polarized in two different planes. You can test this with a set of polaroid sunglasses and a full moon. As you rotate the sunglasses, the relative brightness of the moon will change at about a 120 degree angle to the first changing of intensity.

While that does make the reflected light of the Sun, coming to us from the Moon "Different"; I doubt it would cause a Shift that was uncontrollable in nature.

[Aki]

Well, no offense, but i don't see how the moon would even have radiation. Is there some form of radioactivity in the moon? I'm pretty sure there is none on it.


By the way Wingman, here's your FREE DUCKIE!!!! .
And here's your free duckie helmet when you find out you have a rabid ducky.

Radiation is energy that is radiated or transmitted in the form of rays or waves or particles or the general emission of something from a source. Light coming off the sun or moon is radiation. Heat coming out of your furnace? Radiation too. The UV light from your TV screen? Radiation!

What I think you're thinking of is nuclear radiation. Which, to answer your question, doesn't change "Type" when it bounces off something. I don't think anything even reflects that sort of radiation.

[Goliathe Dark]

Well, if you change the wavelengths of the radiation, no matter what kind of radiation it is, aren't you changing the radiation itself?

[Scott Gardener]

You might want to look up "electromagnetic radiation" on a site like Wikipedia before you go any further, to avoid getting caught up in comic book physics--spending a lot of time putting a perfectly good imagination to use, but intermixing it with a bad understanding of science.

Radiation "frequency" is simply the number of "zig-zags" of peaks and crests that pass per second within a given beam or pulse. Visible light has a frequency of between 400 and 700 billion wave cycles per second (400-700 billion Hertz). (Since radiation moves at the speed of light, then visible light itself therefore has "zig-zags" that are about 700 to 400 nanometers apart from each other. Blue and purple light has higher energy, with a frequency around 700 billion Hz and a wavelength around 400 nm, with red being lower in energy--fewer "zig-zags" per second, only 400 billion instead of 700 billion, with each one being 700 nanometers apart.)

At energy levels higher than visible light, you get ultraviolet radiation, so named because it's like a color just past violet, that we can't quite see. Near ultraviolet is harmless, but as one gets higher in energy, the shorter wavelengths can actually be damaging. Higher energy wavelengths like X-ray radiation and gamma radiation, as featured horribly inaccurately in The Hulk, can do damage a lot more quickly; toxic radiation is basically a high energy color that you can't see, that can kill you. At the other end of the spectrum, below visible red wavelengths is infrared radiation, and below that are lower frequencies like radio and TV broadcast waves. A radio broadcast tower is basically "shining a light" that is bright but low energy, and pulsing it in such a way as to transmit data that can be read by a radio receiver.

Reflecting radiation off of a surface does not change its frequency. But, radiation does change frequency when it's refracted through a different medium--that is, when you shine a light through a lens, you can get color distortion rainbow effects. However, this may be moot, since I suspect we may have killed your original premise.

If you do want to use a "radiation" model, here's an idea to toss around. Rather than focusing on the idea that it's radiation in and of itself, how about what the content of that radiation is? Radio towers send out radiation, but by slight changes in either frequency or "brightness," one gets instead of a steady tone a stream of information...

Edit: OK, I'm on a roll. Suppose the lycanthrope's internal shifting regulatory mechanisms include not only the usual hormones and neurotransmitters, but also by some bizarre quirk of evolution or engineering a reliance on an electromagnetic pulse to initiate or regulate shapeshifting. Now, I'm still left with the problem of our so far not finding any one specific frequency of radiation unique to full moons--the moon simply reflects sunlight off a large array of pulvarized rock and sand. But, it does give hackers the ability to make a home-made "full moon on a keychain" device.

[Goliathe Dark]

Well, I don't know what to say except....wow! You really did your research. Though wouldn't the speed of the UV radiation slow down because the moon is very opaque? It wouldn't be like the moon was made of glass (I should hope not, lest it turn into a magnifying glass affect). And maybe there's a certain frequency we just can't see even with all the equipment to see other frequencies.

Just a couple of ideas. Sorry if this is making me sound blatently stupid.

[RedEye]

Hmmm...
Given that Moonlight has a very specific and limited spectrum, and is specifically polarized;
A set of filters and specific color LED's (there are quite a few now, and they are quite narrow-spectrum in their emissions) could allow a hacker or hunter to make a "Trigger" flashlight to "flush out" any Werewolves who are Lunarly affected.
Actually, this isn't so Sci-Fi as it seems.
And for the off-topic Vampires out there, there are several different Ultra-Violet LED's available (thanks to anti-counterfeit devices) that would act like the Sun's light and probably either decompose them or make them freckle like crazy.
(That's why Vampires avoid the Sun and its Ultra-Violet: They freckle all over and lose every bit of their "cool" looks and sexiness. Instead of looking "Hawt" they look like they've been spattered with brown paint.)

[Scott Gardener]

It's never stupid to use one's imagination to postulate ideas--indeed, very much the opposite. Intellectuals typically are known for their abundant creativity. One just has to be willing to accept that some ideas, once tested or researched, can look bad afterwards. In my first version of my pet werewolf story, started way back in 1987, Wisteria plants were toxic to werewolves; a stray virus that was airborne infected a kid with pneumonia; and evil scientists could force a shapeshift using a hand-held gravity emitter. Seventy versions and a quarter of a century later, and my story is a lot better-written. But, I've found myself going back to the early versions and paying tribute to them in subtle ways, even if the story is otherwise almost unrecognizable.

Getting back to the question, though...

Moonlight and moon rocks:

Moon rocks are exhorbiently expensive and quite rare on Earth, since one has to go to the moon to get them. The moon's surface seems relatively uniform, so rocks from different parts of the moon are likely to have fairly similar properties, unlike Earth rocks, which are so widely varied as to have their own whole field of science dedicated to them. Note, however, that moon rocks are not particularly radioactive, and if there is a strange and unusual radiation coming from the moon, we haven't so far detected it. If it were a higher frequency than anything we were scanning, then it would likely have prevented life on Earth from ever evolving. If it were a very low frequency, then it would have to be so low as to be pretty much inconsequential; the lowest frequency radiation of which we do know is cosmic background radiation, which is basically light from the Big Bang, reaching us from 13.6 billion light years away, red-shifted beyond belief, because it's passed through 13.6 billion light-years worth of rapidly expanding universe between there and here. It's pretty darned low frequency.

It would make more sense then to work with any radiation that we already does know comes towards us from the moon. Offhand, the one that comes to mind is reflected sunlight, i.e., moonlight. The problem with moonlight is that it's just light. One can avoid it by going indoors, and it's blocked by cloudy nights. There's also the problem of it's not being blocked on clear sky nights in which the moon is visible but not full--crescent moons, half moons, and gibbous almost-but-not-quite-full moons would give off the same light, just not quite as much of it. Also, moonlight is easily reproduced; one need only match the right color, making a werewolf subject to shifting in bluish white light, such as whenever one is driving a two-lane road at night and a BMW passes by.

If the shift has to happen every full moon night, rain or shine, indoors or out, and not be forced any other time, the challenge is to figure out what is unique about those particular moments that would affect someone on the Earth's surface wherever they are--something from which one could not run away, but something that only applies at night. It can't be related to distance, because there's enough wobble in the Earth's and moon's orbits that the moon can be very slightly closer or more distant from one month to the next. Light can be blocked.

[Wingman]

Some sort of chemical buildup would probably be the easiest method, and allows for a large degree of modifications to how it works, such as "booster shots" of the stuff for some Hulk Raging, or inhibitors, and probably covers the tricky topic of when and why stuff happens.
For example, as for why they like raw meat so much? They need the proteins to produce the transformation chemical, and given the fact that we can become addicted to pretty much anything...makes sense the majority of them would go bananas for steaks, since it's their "fix", and unleashing the stuff into their brain, such as when transformed, would basically be them pumped full of their drug of choice. Which would explain why some of them don't remember anything, or why they might start raving about the Mother Gaia naming them her holy protectors. A gradual increase in tolerance would also explain why older werewolves would likely be able to keep their heads while transformed, why their regeneration and such might slow with age, why the old ones are borderline insane(The Ozzy Effect), and why they might eventually lose the ability to transform altogether. They need more and more of the stuff to achieve the same result, and if their bodies only produce a certain amount, which will eventually not be enough, then hello withdrawal symptoms.
Age would bring control, but they'd probably never be as strong as they were in those first few days. Or it could be the other way around, and their bodies could produce more of the stuff with age, and they could become increasingly powerful.
Yes, I just likened our precious werewolves to drug addicts. Deal with it.

The same general idea also works for vampires and zombies as well

[JoshuaMadoc]

Steroids/Anabolic Steroids, anyone?

[Wingman]

Steroids/Anabolic Steroids, anyone?

Yes, could I get mine with a side of ranch dip and a small Caesar salad?

But really, one mumbo-jumbo pseudoscientific explanation is good as any other, so it doesn't really make much of a difference to attach a different description to the same mechanic.

[Goliathe Dark]

Firstly,

If the shift has to happen every full moon night, rain or shine, indoors or out, and not be forced any other time, the challenge is to figure out what is unique about those particular moments that would affect someone on the Earth's surface wherever they are--something from which one could not run away, but something that only applies at night. It can't be related to distance, because there's enough wobble in the Earth's and moon's orbits that the moon can be very slightly closer or more distant from one month to the next. Light can be blocked.

Sorry to take this in a different direction but perhaps the phases of the moon slightly affect the gravity of the earth in varying amounts every different phase.Example:
Half moon=behavior like a wolf but no physical transformation
Or maybe werewolves are only affected when the full moon is active because thats the strongest (or weekest?) pressure exerted.

Second:

Some sort of chemical buildup would probably be the easiest method, and allows for a large degree of modifications to how it works, such as "booster shots" of the stuff for some Hulk Raging, or inhibitors, and probably covers the tricky topic of when and why stuff happens.
For example, as for why they like raw meat so much? They need the proteins to produce the transformation chemical, and given the fact that we can become addicted to pretty much anything...makes sense the majority of them would go bananas for steaks, since it's their "fix", and unleashing the stuff into their brain, such as when transformed, would basically be them pumped full of their drug of choice. Which would explain why some of them don't remember anything, or why they might start raving about the Mother Gaia naming them her holy protectors. A gradual increase in tolerance would also explain why older werewolves would likely be able to keep their heads while transformed, why their regeneration and such might slow with age, why the old ones are borderline insane(The Ozzy Effect), and why they might eventually lose the ability to transform altogether. They need more and more of the stuff to achieve the same result, and if their bodies only produce a certain amount, which will eventually not be enough, then hello withdrawal symptoms.
Age would bring control, but they'd probably never be as strong as they were in those first few days. Or it could be the other way around, and their bodies could produce more of the stuff with age, and they could become increasingly powerful. Yes, I just likened our precious werewolves to drug addicts. Deal with it.

The same general idea also works for vampires and zombies as well

Couldn't the cause for werewolves just as likely be a genetic or viral creation (not exacly sure about this one, my friend explained it and I always forget everything he says)? In which case, it could be much more natural and the werewolf would just burn so many calories shifting (what with the almost-instantanious muscle buildup and all) that th werewolf would be so ravonous with hunger that it would become frenzy-like at the first smell of meat. Imagine a person not eating anything for ten or fiveteen days; I would imagine that they would eat all the scorpions in the Sahara if it meant food. If calorie-burning were indeed the case, besides the effects of old age, the older were shouldn't be any weeker than that of a younger one (and vice-versa) for any chemical reason.

Please correct any mistakes I've made.



I apologize, I'm probaby destroying the laws of physics with these questions (also sorry for my incessant apologies, it's my nature)

[Wingman]

The cause for werewolves could just as likely be anything.

[Goliathe Dark]

It very well could be; but remember, this is a forum thread under What should a werewolf be, not "What a werewolf is" so from my general (and most-likely limited) knowledge on the subject, I think it would (hypothetically)just be more likely that a werewolf's change were triggered by a gene than a chemical. Since I was under the impression that a chemical eventually "washed out" of the body it inhabitted after a certain number of years (days, months, etc...) so I doubt that the "werewolf chemical" would stay in until old age unless they were continuingly bitten.

But then again, maybe if the werewolf chemical made it to the brain and could manage to change one of the genes into a "werewolf gene" (most likely next or close to the Pituitary Gland) it would probably explain how a werewolf gene got there in the first place.

So basically, what I'm saying is we all very well could be right but none of us can know the exact science behind the werewolves because there are none to test. I never thought that Wingman's ideas were flat out wrong. I'm just saying that he voiced his opinion and I voiced mine. For all we know there might not be a scientific cause for werewolves and an old wizard goes around imbuing random (or destined) people with lycanthropy.

[Wingman]

Well, you do know that our bodies naturally produce chemicals, right? That's what I meant, and by "booster shots of the stuff" I meant something akin to a needle full of adrenaline, which we already produce in lesser amounts.

[Goliathe Dark]

Was adrenaline an example or is it the chemical you were, in fact, referring to?

[Wingman]

Just an example.

[Sharfan]

Everything I've seen pretty much tells it straight in the physics side of the spectrum. I'm going to go out on a limb here, and I don't know very much about biology in itself, but what if there was a certain kind of bacteria on the moon? This may be completely impossible, due to lack of oxygen, but what if? This bacteria would go into a hybernation-like state when on the dark side of the moon, and, when the light shines on it, it comes out of this hybernation. What if this bacteria also gave off a new type of ultraviolet radiation that mixed with the electromagnetic radiation being reflected. Not really sure if this is plausible, but it would be a different train of thought. . .

[Wingman]

Get out the tinfoil hats, it's time to ward off the moon radiation.

Well, there are actually types of bacteria that cannot survive in oxygen, and the ability to seek out or avoid light has been documented in both plants and animals. So, it's entirely possible that the moonflowers or whatever could alternate between being hidden underground and popping up to catch some sunlight. I suppose if there's enough of them they could even alter the perceived color of the light reflecting off the moon or similar. Maybe even something akin to bouncing a gravaton particle beam off the main deflector dish.
It's just as plausible as the spirit of Luna or whatnot controlling the transformations. Though, with this method there's always the chance that some other stimulus could trigger the transformation, maybe the sight of sunlight reflecting off a sattelite dish or tinted window, or viewing the moon through 3D glasses.

[Sharfan]

Yeah, I was just trying to do a little 'thinking outside of the box'. But, I would venture to guess that scientists would already know about this bacteria, if it existed, and probably have already studied it. Like I said, just trying a different train of thought.

[RedEye]

To point thigs out again:

1. The Moon as the cause of an involuntary Shift was invented by Hollywood. Historically, the People could Shift whenever they chose to do so.

2. A good reason for associating Werewolves with the Full moon is perhaps because they can see better when the moon is full. Since enhanced night sight is one of the supposed things they posess, One would imagine a full moon would be like an overcast day to the rest of us.
Perfect time to get together for a good Howl...

[Sharfan]

I was simply kicking around an idea that would be different than previous preconceptions. This was for solely fictional purposes, as I already know the origin of the myth. The point is that many people associate werewolves with the full moon, and I was trying to contemplate a way to include the full moon without the explanation being 'better lighting'.

I'm not saying the other way doesn't make sense. I actually think it would fit pretty well in any werewolf story. I was just making an attempt at being original.