Range of the Dragon Radar?

[Rocketman]

Bulma can fit cars, planes, and houses into a capsule, build ships capable of space travel, and repair alien technology. But the dragon radar detecting balls across a planet is a stretch unless the balls emit a large amount of raditaion? I got to disagree on that.

Bulma says the Dragonballs emit radiation, radiation so weak it can be blocked by living tissue.

Any radiation weak enough to be stopped by living tissue will not be strong enough to go through the entire rock and iron bulk of the planet.

So no, it's not a stretch, it's impossible. The three examples you gave there are not impossible.

[Bussani]

[quote="the_abberration"]You can't detect radiation unless it reaches you. If you're on one side of the planet and the ball is on the other, that radiation has to get through the whole planet.

I'm sticking with "magic radiation", personally.

[the_abberration]

Bulma says the Dragonballs emit radiation, radiation so weak it can be blocked by living tissue.

Any radiation weak enough to be stopped by living tissue will not be strong enough to go through the entire rock and iron bulk of the planet.

Bulma says in the manga it's a faint electromagnetic pulse the radar is tracking. The radiation does not have to be strong for her to track. Her technology could be advanced enough to pick up that weak signal.

If you noticed, the Red Ribbon army used large computers to track the balls. And even then they were in inaccurate. So Bulma was able to make the same tech more accurate and portable. Again, she's a genius (and part wizard apparently).

So she would be capable of making a Geiger counter in New York and having it react to a cellphone in Siberia for example.

So no, it's not a stretch, it's impossible. The three examples you gave there are not impossible.

We can't even put a car in a capsule, but can track a small cellphone in real life. So I can't see how it would be impossible for her to make tech advanced enough to pick up a weak signal in DB. If it was real world, Bulma would have been able to create the same type of tech for GPS. Only smaller and able to compenstate for the limitations of the current tech.

You can't detect radiation unless it reaches you. If you're on one side of the planet and the ball is on the other, that radiation has to get through the whole planet.

I'm sticking with "magic radiation", personally.

I understand what both of you are saying. But I think they may be playing down the logistics in how radiation works to put over Bulma's technological prowless.

[Rocketman]

Bulma says in the manga it's a faint electromagnetic pulse the radar is tracking. The radiation does not have to be strong for her to track. Her technology could be advanced enough to pick up that weak signal.

Again, that weak signal would not be strong enough to penetrate the bulk of the Earth. There would be no signal for her to pick up.

We can't even put a car in a capsule, but can track a small cellphone in real life.

We can track cellphones because of satellites. Cell phones specifically send their signals to those satellites, which then bounce the signal around the world.

With no satellites:


With satellites:

[the_abberration]

Again, that weak signal would not be strong enough to penetrate the bulk of the Earth. There would be no signal for her to pick up.

And yet she is able to. I understand what you are saying, but obviously they are not using logistics concerning the radiation. If the radition required existed, someone would be dead, sterile, or a mutant. So apperently it's the tech that is compensating for the weak radiation.

We can track cellphones because of satellites. Cell phones specifically send their signals to those satellites, which then bounce the signal around the world.

And again in the real world, we have the tech to be able to track signals. But we cannot make a car transform into a capsule. Bulma is able to do both in story. And again, she is able to do this in story without satellites. So again it must her technological genius at work.

[mister yummy]

I'll take care of this.

The key is in the name. Dragon Radar. Since it's a radar, it doesn't detect radiation at all. Instead, it sends out a pulse which reflects off of the dragonballs back to the radar. We can fanwank in the radiation by saying the pulse reflects only off of things giving off that kind of radiation.

Now, we don't need line of sight lessons, real world physics, or intense deadly radiation. Or flame wars.

OK, carry on

[Bussani]

I understand what you are saying, but obviously they are not using logistics concerning the radiation.

That's all Rocketman was saying from the start, I think. Radiation doesn't work that way, but Dragon Ball doesn't care.

The key is in the name. Dragon Radar. Since it's a radar, it doesn't detect radiation at all. Instead, it sends out a pulse which reflects off of the dragonballs back to the radar. We can fanwank in the radiation by saying the pulse reflects only off of things giving off that kind of radiation.

Now, we don't need line of sight lessons, real world physics, or intense deadly radiation. Or flame wars.

Good idea...but now the radar itself is strong enough to make you grow two heads.

[Rocketman]

I'll take care of this.

The key is in the name. Dragon Radar. Since it's a radar, it doesn't detect radiation at all. Instead, it sends out a pulse which reflects off of the dragonballs back to the radar. We can fanwank in the radiation by saying the pulse reflects only off of things giving off that kind of radiation.

That would give the direct distance to the ball, though, claiming that a ball on the other side of the planet is 12,000 kilometers away instead of the 20,000 km it is away since you'd have to go around the bulk of the Earth instead of straight through.

[Gaffer Tape]

For all we know, they got cancer several times, but their chi overwhelmed it.

But not some stupid heart disease, no.

The heart disease was created by Gero, it was accustomed to Goku's chi. Had someone such as the mighty Krillin obtained such a disease, nothing would happen.

Um, what? No it wasn't. Where are you getting that?

[Dayspring]

I'll take care of this.

The key is in the name. Dragon Radar. Since it's a radar, it doesn't detect radiation at all. Instead, it sends out a pulse which reflects off of the dragonballs back to the radar. We can fanwank in the radiation by saying the pulse reflects only off of things giving off that kind of radiation.

That would give the direct distance to the ball, though, claiming that a ball on the other side of the planet is 12,000 kilometers away instead of the 20,000 km it is away since you'd have to go around the bulk of the Earth instead of straight through.

The Dragon Radar is to conventional radar as Capsules are to storage closets. Like the_abberation said, it's just insanely sophisticated tech. 25 years ago, cell phones were enormously bulky handsets with gigantic antennae. Now we've got iPhones. Technology advanced.

[dbgtFO]

The heart disease was created by Gero, it was accustomed to Goku's chi. Had someone such as the mighty Krillin obtained such a disease, nothing would happen.

Um, what? No it wasn't. Where are you getting that?

I think he is being sarcastic, he even refers to Krillin as "mighty"
I could be wrong though, but that's how I read it.

[caejones]

Pilaf uses a satellite to spy on Goku. Who's to say that Bulma doesn't use a Capsule Corp satellite to operate the Dragon Radar?

[Piccolo Daimao]

The heart disease was created by Gero, it was accustomed to Goku's chi. Had someone such as the mighty Krillin obtained such a disease, nothing would happen.

Um, what? No it wasn't. Where are you getting that?

How is it this hard for you to read sarcasm on the internet?

[the_abberration]

Pilaf uses a satellite to spy on Goku. Who's to say that Bulma doesn't use a Capsule Corp satellite to operate the Dragon Radar?

Then the Red Ribbon Army would have went after/hacked/destroyed the satellite, instead of going after the radar directly.
Also, a CC satellite would have to be in orbit around Namek and every planet they went to in GT.

[Bussani]

I'm sticking with "magic radiation". Don't misunderstand that, though; I only mean that it doesn't behave as normal radiation, not that it has to be magical somehow. Maybe it's more like neutrinos and doesn't interact with normal matter much at all, except if you know how to detect it, like with a dragon radar. Then it would just have to be smart enough to account for the circumference of the planet you're on to give you a meaningful reading.

Ki's kind of the same, I guess. Maybe scouters work the same sort of way?

[Puto]

This leads me to another question: After Freeza died and the Namek Dragon Balls were brought to Earth, did the radar pick up 14 balls at once? And when they hunted for the DBs (off-screen, after reviving Kuririn and Yamcha), did they end up running into the wrong DBs?

The Namek balls do not disperse after use. They just turn to stone until they recharge.

The animation for when they brought back Kuririn and Yamcha (in the anime) disagrees with you there.

[Dayspring]

This leads me to another question: After Freeza died and the Namek Dragon Balls were brought to Earth, did the radar pick up 14 balls at once? And when they hunted for the DBs (off-screen, after reviving Kuririn and Yamcha), did they end up running into the wrong DBs?

The Namek balls do not disperse after use. They just turn to stone until they recharge.

The animation for when they brought back Kuririn and Yamcha (in the anime) disagrees with you there.

The anime manga agrees earlier, though. They go to Earth and stay where all everybody who got teleported from Namek was. I think they seem to stay near the Elder after being used.

[the_abberration]

The Namek balls do not disperse after use. They just turn to stone until they recharge.

The animation for when they brought back Kuririn and Yamcha (in the anime) disagrees with you there.

I chalk it up to the animators filling the gap, by using the knowledge of how the Eath DB's work and applying it there. Even though we know they don't operate the same in other aspects.

Animewise, it could be a matter of perception. Namek is mostly field vs Earth with the buildings. The balls could have been close by, but perception makes one think they flew further because they went past or behind a building.

In both cases it is implied the wishes were made as soon as the 130 days went by. So I think they were somewhat close.

[dbgtFO]

This leads me to another question: After Freeza died and the Namek Dragon Balls were brought to Earth, did the radar pick up 14 balls at once? And when they hunted for the DBs (off-screen, after reviving Kuririn and Yamcha), did they end up running into the wrong DBs?

The Namek balls do not disperse after use. They just turn to stone until they recharge.

The animation for when they brought back Kuririn and Yamcha (in the anime) disagrees with you there.

The animated version is stupid at times, but then again, we haven't seen what will happen with the Earth DBs, if their creator dies during a wish would they randomly disperse? or would they just fall down like the namek DBs?
But then we later see, that after the 3rd wish is succesfully completed on Namek, they return to their creator without flying away, but that was a special case, as well, as they had to follow the trail of their creator, who died seconds later.
So the anime could be right about even the Namek DBs flying away, but I don't think it is, because then as someone else said, the Dragon radar would pick up 14 DBs at once, making the hunt for them a lot harder.

[Gaffer Tape]

Technically we do. When Piccolo Daimao kills Shenlong, the balls simply fall to the ground, similar to what we later see when Saichorou dies. So I always assumed the Namekian dragonballs disperse. Well, there's an easy way to solve this. When Dende makes the last wish to teleport everyone but Goku and Freeza to earth, what happens to the balls?