Kid Supernova Notes

[Dr. Anomaly]

I'm putting these notes here, instead of Super Squirrel's "12 Days" project thread, because if any rampaging science-types want to roast me over the coals about the liberties I took or the things I did wrong (and worse yet, knew it when I did it) when writing up "Kid Supernova", I'd rather that discussion took place here, instead of cluttering up SS's thread.

 

If you don't know what I'm talking about, or don't care, simply ignore this thread.

 

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Notes

 

Yes, I'm fully aware it takes a very massive star to collapse and cause a supernova, and that not just any old random star will do. I'm taking considerable liberties here because I'm assuming Kid Supernova's power is somehow forcing even low-mass stars to collapse such that they explode into a supernova. Maybe he creates an artificial gravity source at their core to make up for not having enough mass, or maybe he alters the strength of gravity within them. Who knows?

 

Yes, I'm aware that what I put down for the Side Effects greatly simplifies, handwaves, and leaves out a lot of things. I'm going for flavor, not a textbook.

 

Yes, I know that even if you could somehow end up with a fragment of a neutron star, (a) it would 'balloon' back into normal matter once it was outside of the hellish gravitational field keeping it compacted; ( if a piece somehow remained in the compacted state, its own self-gravitation would pull it into a perfect sphere and not let it have an irregular form; © if it hit earth still in its compacted state, not only would there be no way Philip could pick it up, but it would sink through solid rock and metal like water due to its density. Obviously what Philip has isn't neutronium!

 

Yes, I know that even if Philip somehow, in realtime (i.e. instantly) caused a distant star to go supernova, we wouldn't see the effects for years (possibly hundreds or thousands of them) due to the energy from the blast propogating at the speed of light, and in any case unless it were our own sun that went supernova, there's no way astronomers here on Earth could see it just a few hours later so it could be reported in the morning paper. Well, since there'd be no proof of his power without being able to observe the stellar explosion, and Philip himself wouldn't know that he could cause stars to supernova because the light from the first one wouldn't reach Earth until well after his death, I'm taking a bit of dramatic license here. Or maybe the beam of energy he sends out is a "tachyon stream" that moves back in time as it travels faster than light, so the star did explode because of Philip, but it did it years ago and the light is only now reaching the Earth.

 

And yes, I know the existence of tachyons had, last time I checked, largely been steamrollered out of the math; but as they're used all the time in comic book and SF technobabble, I feel free to use 'em as a possible explaination of why astronomers on Earth might be able to see a supernova caused by Philip just a few hours after he triggered it.