Every year, our planet produces 2.12 billion tons of garbage. Is it any wonder that there is a garbage pokemon?
Garbodor is literally a sentient pile of trash, but we we’ll save the details of how a pile of garbage gains consciousness for its pre-evolution’s entry. Today, on Earth Day, we are going to talk about why garbage stinks.
Garbodor’s pokédex entry tells us that it consumes more garbage to produce poisonous gases and liquids. While “poisonous” is fairly vague, the smelliest most common gases in garbage are nitrogen and sulfur. Other toxic gases include carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, chlorine, and ammonia.
So Garbodor produces these gases from garbage; but how? Think of the smelliest garbage. You’re probably thinking of things like eggs, fish, meat. These are all foods that are high in protein, and that give us our answer. As protein is broken down, it produces both nitrogen and sulfur.
Garbage is broken down primarily through microbes like bacteria, who consume the trash and break down the molecules into smaller ones. They will rot meat, liquify vegetables, and who knows what else.
Garbodor then acts like a giant microbe, consuming and absorbing the trash, performing all sorts of chemistry to stink and poison up the environment.
Garbodor breaks molecules in garbage into smaller ones like Nitrogen and Sulfur, producing smelly and poisonous gases.
So please, remember to recycle and be mindful of waste. As cool as the Pokémon world is, one thing I do not want to see is a 6 foot tall pile of garbage coming to eat us.
Moths are always seen flocking towards light bulbs or street lamps, flying around in circles until they start looking more confused than creepy. Dustox is no exception, but why is it attracted to light?
Dustox is nocturnal, meaning it sleeps during the day and comes out at night. Being attracted to light is called being positively photoactic. A negatively photoactic animal would run away from light, like Gengar or Sableye.
As to why Dustox are positively photoactic, there’s a few reasons. The most common explanation being that Dustox uses transverse orientation to navigate. Dustox doesn’t have a GPS, a map, or even a compass, so the only way for it to tell where it is going it based on solid, easy to find sources in the night sky–namely, the moon. Dustox evolved before there were cities or streetlights, and flew by the light of the moon to know which direction it was going.
Then, when it sees a streetlight, it will automatically assume that the light is the moon. If it flies past it, suddenly the angle to the light will change, causing Dustox to become disoriented. Because the moon is so far away, the angle will not change. It will as the moon moves across the sky, of course, but that happens too slowly for a moth to tell. If it flies straight past a near streetlight, suddenly the light is behind Dustox instead of on the left–causing Dustox to think that it has accidentally turned right.
Naturally, Dustox gets confused because it didn’t think it would arrive at “the moon” so soon (or, at all). But once its there, it stays for a number of reasons.
First, light might act as an escape route for moths. If they’re sitting in a bush and a predator comes along, they will all fly upwards–towards the sky’s light. Or if its trapped inside a box, it will fly to the hole in the cardboard, another escape route. So the disoriented Dustox might feel scared and try to escape, by flying closer towards the light.
Next, moths’ eyes have sensitive light sensors just like ours do. If you’ve been to the eye doctor and had your eyes dilated, you know how Dustox might feel. The sides of their compound eyes (called ommatidium) adjust to the amount of light around them, enabling them to see better in the dark, or the bright, and etc. Our eyes do this fairly quickly, but Dustox’s eyes are slow to adjust. When you look at the sun, you are blinded for only a second after, but when Dustox looks at a bright light bulb, it’s blinded for much longer, therefore making it unsafe to return to the dark, causing Dustox to stick by the light longer.
Or, they might think the bright light is the sun, signaling them that its time to go to sleep.
Dustox naturally uses the moon to navigate, and gets confused and disoriented around bright lights. It sticks around the lights because its eyes can’t easily readjust to the dark, or because it thinks the light is an escape route.
Dustox must be very sensitive to orientation in order to be attracted to cities: While a distant city certainly gives off plenty of light, the angle would only change a tiny amount as Dustox flies around.
There’s no pokédex entry more confusing than ghost types! Which, I suppose, is why you love them so much. Dusknoir receives radio signals from the world of the dead, so let’s figure out how that happens.
If you want to learn more about antennas, I suggest reading Dedenne. While the pokédex does claim that Dusknoir gets signals from an antenna, I think it’s much more simple than that. I think he simply sees the radio waves.
After all, there is no difference between radio waves and the light we see, apart from the amount of energy they are carrying. Dusknoir can interpret the radio waves form the “spirit world” as easy as we can take in visual light, just like you are reading this now. This would also explain why only Dusknoir can read these signals. If it was a typical antenna transmission, anyone with the right frequency could tune in and listen to the dead’s podcast.
So Dusknoir simply has an optical organ (like an eyeball) that is sensitive to radio waves. Okay. There are animals in our world who can see far into the ultra violet or infrared, and even some that can “see” magnetic fields, but no animal we know of can see into the radio frequencies. Why?
At first, there’s simply no use for it. We don’t need radio waves for anything, there aren’t too many of them around so why would anything evolve to be able to see them?
But that’s not quite the reason. Part of “seeing” and any of our other sense involves shifting electrons into different energy states, and only photons with high enough energy can do that. It’s physically impossible to see radio waves because they are so low energy they don’t have enough give an electron the boost it needs to even be sensed. Radiowaves can never be detected by eyeballs made as we know them.
But Dusknoir is different. If Dusknoir’s optical organ can react with radio waves, then it would have no problem seeing them. It would have to be made of some unknown atom or other particle, with such instability that something with as little energy as a radio wave will give it enough energy to make a difference.
This would mean any visible light would just about be enough to blow this particle to pieces. Any time you tried to touch it it would break apart into nothing. Like a ghost. Not only have we described how Dusknoir can see radio waves, but we also just explained its ethereal nature.
Dusknoir is made of very unstable atoms or particles which respond to low-energy radio wave signals, enabling it to see and respond to them.
How the spirit world transmits demands is another question, but Dusknoir appears to be mind-controlled by it nonetheless. What about the other channels? It’s amusing to think of what Goldenrod’s Radio Tower top ten hits must look like to Dusknoir.
Ghost pokémon are always fun to write about because of their esoteric nature. Most of their entries aren’t supposed to make sense, they’re very paranormal and very unscientific. Still, we learned from Chandelure that its family’s flame has some very interesting properties. Let’s find out some more.
When Litwick’s fire shines, it absorbs the “life energy” of people and pokémon, using it to fuel its fire. I’m going to interpret “life energy” as the same “spirit” that Chandelure burns.
Right away though, we run into some weird stuff. The only thing fire “absorbs” is fuel. Light doesn’t absorb anything, it only emits. Light is, however, particularly good at carrying energy.
The spirit in question is likely somehow connected to our bodies. Maybe it orbits our atoms like electrons do, maybe it is attracted to us almost gravitationally, or maybe it’s just stuck on with supernatural glue. In any case, energy can break any of those bonds. If you give an electron enough energy it can leave its nucleus, if you chuck an object fast enough it can escape a gravitational or electric field, and if you pull hard enough you can unstick even supernatural glue.
Litiwick’s light is probably just normal, high energy photons. Its flame is blue, which tells us that it has higher energy right away, because blue light has a higher frequency than red light. In any case, Litwick’s light supplies our “life energy” with enough energy to break the bond connecting it to our bodies.
This “life energy” also might be attracted to others like it, such that all of our spirit can stay together at any one time. We already know that Litwick uses the spirit as fuel to its flame, so it probably has a lot of it stored in its wax. The freed life energy from Litwick’s light would be attracted to Litwick’s waxy, life-energy-dense base, and be pulled away from our bodies and into the candle.
Litwick’s light gives our spirit enough energy to disconnect from our bodies. The freed particles of spirit are then attracted to Litwick’s base, where it can accumulate more and more life energy to burn.
Of course, this has got to be some weird kind of energy. Like kinetic, potential, electric, and dark energy are all different, this is could possibly be just one more type that we don’t understand.
Being consumed in Chandelure’s flame burns up the spirit, leaving the body behind.
Chandelure, like most ghost pokemon, is plain spooky. According to this entry, its flames don’t burn anything except for the soul. Fire is generally regarded as hungry, uncontrollable, spreads relentlessly. So is there such a thing as a fire only burning up a specific substance, leaving everything else untouched?
Short answer, no, there is nothing like this in our world. But, for the sake of science, let’s explore this more.
Fire is a pretty strange substance. Its not really a substance at all in the way that solids, liquids and gas are. Instead, fire is a chemical reaction. The fire we’re familiar with is burning oxygen. Without any oxygen, there is no fire.
So we may be on to something here. Chandelure’s fire could be a new, strange kind of fire that doesn’t consume oxygen but rather is fueled by souls. But, we run into a problem very quickly. Our fire spreads quickly. It will burn trees, skin, a marshmallow, pretty much anything it can get its hands on. Chandlure’s flame doesn’t do this, even though its blue, indicating that it is very hot.
But, it is possible to play with fire and not get burned. If you’ve ever seen someone walk on hot coals, or juggle torches, you might be thinking this now. In this case, its not that the performers don’t get burned, but rather the heat doesn’t have enough time to transfer to the skin to harm it enough.
Now we’re finally getting to the point. There’s a popular magic trick that involves setting a dollar bill on fire, but remarkably, it doesn’t burn up or crumble to ash like you would expect paper to do. In fact, immediately after the flames are out, it doesn’t even feel warm.
(Obligatory do not try this at home). The trick is that money is first dipped in a solution of alcohol and water. Alcohol, gasoline, and similar compounds as you probably know, are easier to burn than water. In this case, because the alcohol is easier to burn, the fire consumes the alcohol without even touching the rest of the bill.
So it might not be that Chandelure is incapable of burning anything but the soul, but rather the spirit is far easier for it to burn than anything else, so it will consume it without touching the rest.
To Chandelure’s flame, souls are far more readily combustible than anything else. Therefore, the fire will quickly burn up the spirit without even touching the rest of the body.
I wouldn’t go sticking your hand in it to test it, though.
Its body is 95% made of gas. Despite lacking substance, it can envelop an opponent of any size and cause suffocation.
We’re doing something a bit different for this post. So since Gastly has some cool physical properties as well as some cool biological properties, Professor Julie and Halie have decided to team up this time!
Professor Julie says:
Gases naturally expand to fill the space that they’re in. By this logic, Gastly would suffocate anyone and everything in the room with it. But, he doesn’t. Gastly appears as an orb of gas, a small poisonous cloud, so how does Gastly keep its shape?
At first, you might think its something like gravity. Just like we’re stuck to the Earth, the little gas particles could be stuck to Gastly. This isn’t practical, especially considering that Gastly ties for the least massive pokemon in the pokedex.
Instead of gravitational field, Gastly must use a similar static electrical field to keep its shape. Opposite charges attract, so if Gastly’s central orb was, say, positively charged, it would keep all negatively charged gas particles close to itself.
Alternatively, think of water. Water molecules like to stick together, which is why you get raindrops and why you can fill a cup over the edge without it spilling over. They do this because water molecules are highly polar. In other words, one side of the molecule is positively charged, and the other side of the molecule is negatively charged. This makes them all attracted to each other.
If the gas molecules that make up Gastly are polar, they will want to stick together. With that, they would not expand and suffocate everything in the room.
Professor Halie says:
Alrighty, so thanks to Professor Julie we can assume that the molecules that make up Gastly are polar, but there are so many polar molecules out there that doesn’t really help us determine what exactly he is made up of, and as scientists we want to know everything we can. So let’s play detective!
Here is what we know about Gastly’s gas:
It is polar.
It is purple.
It causes suffocation.
It is sentient. (sorry, we can’t really explain this one)
Let’s take this piece by piece. (Remember, we have to take some creative liberties with these PokeDex entries because taking them literally doesn’t always seem to work.)
What polar gas is purple? Well, none. The only gas that is known to appear purple is iodine vapor, but Iodine vapor is non-polar. So what we have to assume is that Gastly is mostly composed of some other polar gas with some iodine vapor mixed in, assuming that the two gases don’t react with each other and are able to maintain a stable mixture.
What polar gas can cause suffocation? Let’s first define suffocate.
SUFFOCATE. transitive verb. 1 a (1) : to stop the respiration of (as by strangling or asphyxiation) (2) : to deprive of oxygen. b : to make uncomfortable by want of fresh air.
We are going to use the second definition for this, because when we get down to the physiological level it gets kind of specific. Lets assume that Gastly is made up of carbon monoxide. Many of you have probably heard of carbon monoxide, this was used in gas chambers during the holocaust and many people have succumb to carbon dioxide poisoning after prolonged exposure to car exhaust.
When the body is exposed to a lot of carbon monoxide (or CO) it can’t ventilate all of it out of the system and the CO will bind to hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the protein that carries oxygen throughout the blood to supply it to the different areas of the body, including the brain. The chemical affinity (how much they want to bond) between CO and hemoglobin is way higher than that between oxygen and hemoglobin. The Hemoglobin is going to choose the CO over the oxygen. This causes a problem when the body can’t access oxygen as easily.
Everyone knows that we needs oxygen, but do you know why? So oxygen plays a crucial role in cellular metabolism, and how we make ATP. (Remember my Bulbasaur post? We learned about ATP then, so refer back to that if you need a bit of refreshing on the subject.)
So I think we’ve figured it out!
Gastly is made up of a mixture of Carbon Monoxide and Iodine Vapor, causing his purple hue and his ability to cause suffocation.
Carbon Monoxide is also found in cigarette smoke. So this is your friendly neighborhood Pokemon Professor reminding you kids not to smoke! Also, don’t hang around too many Gastly’s.
Duskull, like many spooky ghosts, has the ability to pass through walls. Pure energy like radio waves or x-rays pass through objects, but what’s particularly peculiar about these pokémon is that they still have mass, reported by the pokédex. In Duskull’s case, 15 kg of matter floats through a wall as if it wasn’t even there.
The strangest part is—this actually happens in our world. It’s known as quantum tunneling, when a particle passes through a barrier that classical physics should not allow it to. For example, think of a roller coaster: If the car are not moving fast enough after the first drop, it won’t have enough energy to make it up the second hill. But, in an electron’s case, there’s a chance that instead of climbing over the hill, it will pass right through it and out the other side.
Like most things in quantum mechanics, quantum tunneling is only possible due to the wave-like nature of particles. Most people know of the famous dual nature of light, where photons sometimes act like particles, and sometimes act like waves. However, quantum mechanics tells us that this is true for all particles. Electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, and much more can all act like a wave, or a particle.
Rather than existing at one time in one place with one mass, velocity, etc., quantum mechanics tell us that particles are really nothing but probabilities. We can know the likelihood of whether a particle will tunnel, or the likelihood that it will behave classically, but we’ll never know if it actually will until it’s already done. These probabilities of existence form a “wave distribution”, which is responsible for the wave nature of particles.
Us, as humans, are made of about 10^25 atoms. Each one of those atoms individually has a probability that it will tunnel through a wall when we run into it, but collectively, for all 10^25 to tunnel at once is impossible.
So how does Duskull do it? Duskull is a rather large collection of particles, so for it to tunnel through a wall as an entity requires control (and understanding) of quantum physics that we just don’t have yet. Duskull can either manipulate probabilities, or manipulate the outcome; either way, causing the atoms that make up its body to pass through a wall unobstructed.
Duskull uses quantum mechanics to cause all of the atoms in its body to quantum tunnel through walls, allowing it to pass through unobstructed.
Banette is a creepy pokémon. Apparently, all banettes are discarded dolls, which out of anger and abandonment have become possessed by cursed energy and become alive. The only bit of comfort the pokédex offers is that all of that dark energy is, in fact, trapped inside of the doll. The energy can only escape if Banette’s mouth is opened.
So how do you trap energy? Outside of Banette’s actions, this dark energy has no effect on the rest of the world. It doesn’t leak out, it doesn’t effect anyone else, it presumably can’t be measured. The cursed energy that created Banette is entirely isolated, insulated, and trapped inside of the doll.
There is a device that has a similar effect in our world – a Faraday Cage. A Faraday Cage can shield or trap electrical field effects, radio waves, lightning strikes and other electrical effects. Any source of electricity on the opposite side of the cage as yourself (whether inside or outside, relative to you) is completely and entirely undetectable.
Michael Faraday, whom the cage is named after, invented it after discovering certain properties of conductors. Conductors are typically metals, or materials where the electrons aren’t bound to specific atoms but are free to move through the entire object. You can think of it like a “sea” of electrons: instead of one or two atoms sharing one or two electrons like a covalent bond, all of the atoms in a metal share all of their electrons together.
This property is what makes Faraday Cages possible. Electrons are negatively charged particles, so they react to an electric field. For the sake of example, let’s imagine a donut-shaped Faraday Cage. With nothing inside or outside of it, all the electrons inside the conductor are evenly distributed.
Now let’s place a one-directional electric field inside of the cage. We know that opposite charges attract–just a fundamental concept in electricity. And we know that since the cage is a conductor, the electrons are free to move wherever they want. So because of the field inside the cage, the electrons organize themselves inside of the walls of the cage. This is called induction.
So now think about what’s happening outside of the cage. Before there’s anything inside, the electrons are all distributed equally. The whole system is neutral, and has no field or other effects.
Now once the field is inside of the cage, you really have two things going on. The conductor is no longer neutral: as you can see, the way the electrons orient themselves has a specific pattern to it. So instead of being a neutral conductor, the conductor is actually now producing its own electric field. However, the catch is that this field is exactly the opposite of the field that is inside the cage. The two fields – the enclosed field, and the field made by the conductor – perfectly cancel each other out, making the entire system appear neutral from the outside.
This entirely shields the electric properties of the interior of the cage from the outside of the cage. Even though both scenarios are very different, from the outside they appear exactly the same – perfectly electrically neutral.
So that’s an example on how you can trap electric energy inside a Faraday Cage. How could you trap “cursed energy” inside of a Banette? Imagine Banette as a Faraday Cage. The fabric (or skin?) that Banette is made of has certain properties that respond very well to the cursed energy. Perhaps that’s why the cursed energy took hold in the first place. In any case, once the cursed energy is inside, the fabric responds to the energy by producing a field exactly opposite of the cursed energy: effectively canceling it out, and making the entire system neutral.
This traps the cursed energy inside of Banette, making it unable to escape, making it entirely invisible and undetectable from the outside, and so on. We are entirely protected from Banette’s cursed energy, because it is trapped inside this way. But if Banette were to open its mouth, the energy would be free to pour out back into the world.
Banette acts like a Faraday Cage for the cursed energy that give it life. Banette’s fabric perfectly counteracts the energy trapped inside, making the whole system act as a neutral one.
Noivern, one of the cooler generation 6 pokémon can pulverize a boulder with it’s ultrasonic powers, apparently!
The first thing that strikes me about this entry is that it emits the waves from its ears. This is strange, because our ears perceive sounds, not emit them. Emitting sound from your ears would be like shooting lasers from your eyes. What this tells me is that Noivern’s ears are not only hearing devices, but are also some kind of vocal organ, which makes sounds like our larynx or a bird’s syrinx.
Having two (or possibly three with its mouth?) sound-emitters would definitely be helpful in echolocation (see Zubat). More sound sources allow Noivern to more accurately determine where, how far, and how fast other things around it are.
But that’s just being nitpicky, let’s get on to the pulverization! As you probably know, sound is a wave, meaning it has certain properites like wavelength, frequency, energy, and so on. Ultra-sonic just means “beyond hearing”. Ultraviolet or infrared light would be considered ultra-visual light (outside our range of seeing), as an example. Ultra-sonic typically refers to sounds with frequencies larger than 20,000 Hz, which humans can’t hear, but dogs and bats can.
So how can sound be used as a weapon? Think of a stereotypical opera singer, who’s voice shatters a wine glass in her hand:
This happens because every object has a resonant frequency, or a frequency which it likes to vibrate at. If you flick a wine glass and it rings, you can hear its resonant frequency. If you give that frequency back to it loudly enough, it will vibrate out of control and shatter.
Our eyeballs have a resonant frequency of about 19 Hz! Your eyeballs wouldn’t shatter, but you would have vision problems such as seeing spots if this frequency was pointed at you, as discovered in the 1950s with on of the first sonic weapons.
Sonic weapons are exactly what they sound like (pun intended): weapons that shoot sound! Many of them can injure, incapacitate, or even kill people. For example, this is an LRAD (Long Range Acoustical Device), which produces extremely powerful sound waves like Noivern:
It produces over 120 decibels of sound, which is extremely loud, like a rocket launch. This will hurt you physically, and if you set it to the right frequency you wouldn’t even be able to hear it coming.
So that’s how Noivern works! Extremely powerful sound waves, the right resonant frequency, the rock shatters like a wine glass. All with his sound-emitting ears!
Noivern’s ears contain vocal organs which emit extremely powerful sound waves at ultra-sonic frequencies. At the right frequencies, it can shatter boulders.
Mewtwo is a Pokémon that was created by genetic manipulation. However, even though the scientific power of humans created this Pokémon’s body, they failed to endow Mewtwo with a compassionate heart.
Mewtwo is the product of decades of genetic engineering. Years of gene decoding, splicing, and cloning gave birth to the strongest and quite possibly the most tragic pokemon to date. What’s more, there are heavy implications that Mewtwo was not just cloned from Mew, but is part human as well.
DNA is the basic component for all genomes. Within the double stranded helix, every bit of information you can think of is present. What texture of hair, what colors you can see, if you have scales, resistance to certain diseases, and anything else you can’t think of that makes you, you is inside the DNA.
Cloning is relatively easy: genetic engineering, on the other hand, is not. The whole intent behind Mewtwo was to create the strongest pokemon possible. This is IV breeding to the extreme. To do this, scientists would have to decode the entire genome sequence of Mew, to determine what traits they wanted to keep, and what not. Keep the strength. Toss the cute. Funnel and focus the psychic ability. Dump the natural innocence.
Once you’ve managed to sequence the DNA and isolate the pieces you want, the next step is extracting it. This is most commonly done through a process called PCR, Polymerase Chain Reaction. This is an extremely specific process that usually involves 20-30 repeated temperature cycles. Because of this, PCR machines have been invented to automate the temperature of the sample in these cycles.
Essentially, the sample is heated quickly such that the DNA strand splits apart. This allows a specially engineered primer to enter in, and locate the target sequence. Think of the primer like a puzzle piece. It only fits one place in the DNA, where it will gladly connect. The primer, however, is just the starting point. Once it attaches, free nucleotides will come in and attach themselves to the primer, creating an extended exact copy of the desired gene sequence, at which point it will leave and the DNA strand will zip itself back together.
After that, the newly-created copies of the target gene sequences can be inserted into another organism. Or more commonly, embyros. The engineered embryo was implanted into Mew, and on February 6th, Mewtwo was born.
This method has been used to create glow in the dark rabbits, Jurassic Park style chicken egg dinosaurs, or the harsh and powerful Mewtwo.
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