Gotenks FTL ?

[Bussani]

Plot Induced convenience.

That's pretty close to what I figured.

You just contradicted yourself when you said it can't be a large number like a few dozen.

I didn't say (or mean to say) that it couldn't be a large number, just that the word "dozen" or words like it weren't used. If you consider "many" to be a word like "dozen" then I can see why you might think I was saying something else, but to me they're slightly different things. "Many" is vague and depends a great deal on what's being counted. For example, if we're talking M&Ms, six of the colorful candy treats probably wouldn't be consider "many"; if we're talking about trips to the moon, on the other hand, then six times would be many. If someone had six children, or six cars, or six houses, or six heads, I'm sure they'd all be considered "many". But six beans isn't many beans.

Anyhoo, like I said, if you want to say something like "a few dozen" in Japanese, you'd probably say something like, "several tens of" rather than something vague that can be taken to mean either several or many depending on the context.

Vegeta stated Speed = Power against that Cui.

Well, no. He said that as his power rises, his speed rises, too. That's subtly different. I mean, when you level up a character in an RPG, both their power and speed will probably increase, but that doesn't mean their power is equal to their speed, or even that the two increase at the same rate. Hitiro's right about speed being a factor in punching power, of course.

[desirecampbell]

You're forgetting something very important. You can't accelerate to lightspeed because your mass increases exponentially as you get close, requiring you to use more energy to continue to accelerate. It's not as simple as "x4 = 4x faster!"..

There was a great bit of theory I read (fuck, this made me feel old) ten years ago, about how the way ki is generated and controlled and used mirrors fluctuations in gravity. Like, the ability to manipulate ki could actually be the ability to manipulate your own gravitational field.

I wonder if I could find that again... edit: I think I found it, it's actually terribly written. I feel bad about myself now.

[Bussani]

This part gave me the giggles:

Remember, the higher ones gravity or weight in proportion to one's relative gravity, the faster time would travel. To an ant, life seems just as long as to an elephant. That's why flies have much better reflexes.

[Fox666]

LOL

Anyway, no matter how energy works in real life, that doesn't prove anything regarding Ki.

[Kaboom]

So basically, powerful DBZ characters are generating their own warp fields? Neat idea.

[Hitiro]

So basically, powerful DBZ characters are generating their own warp fields? Neat idea.

Did you not know about this? Each Enterprise has a clone of Vegito inside their warp engine.

[Hellspawn28]

I always wonder if Gotenks was flying at FTL speed then won't he destroy the Earth's surface for going too fast? I remember most comic book characters don't fly at FTL speed on Earth to avoid the planet getting destroyed.

[Rocketman]

If Gotenks was moving faster than light, how can he react to turn back around the Earth? Earth's gravity can't hold on to something moving that fast, and the brain's neurons don't operate at anywhere near lightspeed.

Also thousands of years would've passed on Earth.

[Hitiro]

If Gotenks was moving faster than light, how can he react to turn back around the Earth? Earth's gravity can't hold on to something moving that fast, and the brain's neurons don't operate at anywhere near lightspeed.

Also thousands of years would've passed on Earth.

Their brains are fast enough to react to punches which can't be seen by ordinary people like Bulma, and to be fair, even Krillin was struggling to keep up with Goku's movements in the Cell games so if their brains can't operate at those speeds then speed would be the only thing needed to win the fights as your opponent or you wouldn't be able to react to each others movements. Yet we see throughout the series people reacting to attacks done at super speed for the majority of the time.

[Bussani]

If Gotenks was moving faster than light, how can he react to turn back around the Earth? Earth's gravity can't hold on to something moving that fast, and the brain's neurons don't operate at anywhere near lightspeed.

Also thousands of years would've passed on Earth.

Their brains are fast enough to react to punches which can't be seen by ordinary people like Bulma, and to be fair, even Krillin was struggling to keep up with Goku's movements in the Cell games so if their brains can't operate at those speeds then speed would be the only thing needed to win the fights as your opponent or you wouldn't be able to react to each others movements. Yet we see throughout the series people reacting to attacks done at super speed for the majority of the time.

Super speed, maybe. Light speed, or anything close to it? That's the matter at hand.

[Hitiro]

Super speed, maybe. Light speed, or anything close to it? That's the matter at hand.

A humans reaction time is not as fast as the characters in the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai. There reaction times must be increasing somehow throughout the series as, like I said, they wouldn't be able to react to attacks at such high speeds.

[Bussani]

Oh, I see what you're getting at. I misinterpreted what Rocketman had said. Sorry about that.

[shonenhikada]

I always wonder if Gotenks was flying at FTL speed then won't he destroy the Earth's surface for going too fast? I remember most comic book characters don't fly at FTL speed on Earth to avoid the planet getting destroyed.

He wasn't anywhere on Earth's surface he was well in mesophere-theromosphere region.

[TRL]

All science aside, doesn't the afterimage technique already used by Goku in the first tournament implicate that they're going faster than light? The afterimages still being in a certain spot because light is still "travelling" from that spot.

[Fox666]

I guess they are just fast enough to make illusions to the human eye, nothing to do with light itself.

[Hitiro]

All science aside, doesn't the afterimage technique already used by Goku in the first tournament implicate that they're going faster than light? The afterimages still being in a certain spot because light is still "travelling" from that spot.

Not necessarily, if you put your hand in front of you with your fingers spaced apart and you shake your hand in a sort of jazzy motion you will be able to see an extra finger or two. That doesn't mean your hand is travelling at the speed of light. Also look at a helicopter, you will also see it happen to the blades to a much larger degree.

Like so: Huey Helicopter

[TRL]

I thought about that. A blur around an object moving back and forth. But complete still separate images, that's not exactly the same thing.
And what about the move where Goku became completely invisible by moving fast. I guess that's the temporal resolution of the eye reaching it's limit. Makes me wonder at what speed/frequency that actually occurs.

[Hitiro]

I thought about that. A blur around an object moving back and forth. But complete still separate images, that's not exactly the same thing.
And what about the move where Goku became completely invisible by moving fast. I guess that's the temporal resolution of the eye reaching it's limit. Makes me wonder at what speed/frequency that actually occurs.

I believe that's just the way they animated it. If you look in the manga there is a blur on each afterimage Goku made. I don't think I've seen a scene in the manga where there wasn't a blur. Goku moving so fast it looks like he's invisible is really like the helicopter blades, you don't see every position of the blade once its reached a certain speed. There are massive gaps in where you don't and do see the blades but we know that the blades are passing through that space, our eye just can't register them because of the speed they are travelling. Also don't forget that unlike the blades on a helicopter, which are completely in the cone of our vision, Goku is zipping around outside of our field of vision too. So even if our eyes could catch just a glimpse of him if he were in front of us that wouldn't work in this case because he's also moving outside our cone of vision. I suppose its easier for people like Krillin because he can sense Goku's ki position later in the series which gives him some time to track Goku's movement and his eyes will be able to capture a glimpse of him like seeing the helicopter blades.

[Bussani]

Good points, Hitiro.

If you think about it, being faster than light shouldn't make you invisible, anyway. I mean, what would you be doing--dodging all the photons? It's like saying that you could move through the air without disturbing it so long as you were "faster than air". No matter how fast you're doing, you're going to plow through the light waves in the room...unless you can vibrate through them or something crazy like that. Of course, if you were running in the opposite direction of the only source of light so that it couldn't catch you, then that's slightly different.

[desirecampbell]

Oh god, what have I done to this thread?