Pegasus Lightning Strikes: How to Design a Pony to Withstand Extreme Electricity · 10:01pm Jun 24th, 2017
My day job at the moment involves running computer models of electrical pulses through the readout of a CERN particle detector, testing whether all the megabits produced every second in the layers of silicon will be successfully routed to the data servers without bouncing off circuit board connections, or getting lost along over-etched copper tracks.
The sort of finite element analysis software I am using is a standard workhorse of electronics engineering. The principle is to take a 3D model of the assembly and divide it up into a large number of elements, and then solve the equations to calculate the voltage, currents, and electric and magnetic fields in each one.
It’s getting a bit tedious. After spending several hours investigating the impact of reducing the width of a thin layer of metal by 25 micrometres, I got distracted reading the case studies in the software manual of other electromagnetic modelling scenarios, such as aircraft lightning strikes.
A few jetliners are hit by lightning every year, but this does not normally cause much damage beyond a few black marks on the paintwork. A scorching electric current will flow between the entry and exit points (usually nose and tail), but if your plane is well designed, it goes through the outer body and won’t get close to the heavily-shielded fuel lines, or fry any sensitive circuitry. But to be sure it will be fine, you need an engineering team to test your design in a virtual simulation before sending the real thing into a storm.
Which made me wonder if the pegasi of Equestria have any special design features to mitigate this risk. Being struck by lightning is not good for any creature. While about 90% of humans who meet such a fate survive, many more suffer serious and long-term injury. Pegasi, however, are made of tougher stuff. They evidently encounter a fair amount of high voltage discharge in their life in the clouds, but when struck, it does not do any more damage than frazzle a few mane hairs and wing feathers.
Could it be that flying ponies are surrounded by a magical electrically conducting aura, so the current does not pass through their bodies, but merely heats up the air around them?
The way to investigate this further would, of course, be with a full computer simulation. As plenty of artists in our community have released 3D models of ponies, in principle, all that is necessary would be to import these files into an electric field modelling programming, set a low-conductivity layer around the body, apply a transient current pulse between wing-tip and horse-shoes, and see what happens… Add another physics package and you could simulate the rise in temperature, and learn just how toasty it would feel.
Tempting though it is to embark on such a project I should probably get back to particle detectors.
Clearly, we just need to find someone who's conducted airplane lightning strike simulations before. No pun intended.
When I was thinking of modeling robots at university back in the 80s, I was hoping to cover them in fur, so that each fur element was an axial fibre optic antena with piezo behaviour. the idea being that it would St Elmos fire when in a high field enviroment, creating a plasma field around the outer surface, which could then be further manipulated by RF and light energy pumped into it. Given MHD coupling, can even use the piezo to physically stir things up.
Back then, cell phones were big enough that you could actually consider the possibility of building them like a spark gap lightning conductor so have a good chance of handling a direct strike and remain working. These days though, far too small
So much fun when you have to enter the physical geometry of the placing of the compoannts as LCR values in a DC/AC/RF SPICE net?
And then dust starts to build up and change evreything in many places.
As least the energy densities in the circuitry aint high enough to start causing nonlinear velocity effects, unlike teh collision point.
Indeed. What's the worst injury we've seen a pony sustain? A broken wing (in Read it and Weep)? And that was after impacting the ground at what was likely a very high velocity.
Yet more evidence that ponies are superior.
I fully endorse this project with all that money I don't have.
...Eh, you could get a grant for this.
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That would be the lowest resistance path to this objective.
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And yet they are always careful to wear a helmet when playing with scooters.
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I think the research council might feel it doesn't align sufficiently well with their roadmap.
The correct response here is 'Do it, and ask for forgiveness later if necessary'
For science. FOR. SCIENCE.
Hey, do it. Your day job isn't as important as this!
I wish all bronies would be so invested in the show and do such in-depth thinking as you..... Instead of doing this, which is much more interesting and worthwhile to spend ones time on, with much more intriguing and exciting results, the bulk of bronies rather complains about the show and forcefully searches for "flaws", like they don't know how to have fun.
Though, as I said in the past, I'm tired of it that bronies claim that pegasi fly with magic. We saw the undeniable counter-proof a ton now, yet so many still insist they do, like they hate it that Equestria disproved them and now, try to deny they are in the wrong and to delude themselves into thinking they are right.
So, even though this theory is interesting, it gives me a bad feeling in the gut to see another ability of them getting explained (away?) with "magic".
Though, at least this theory makes sense and could actually be true, as opposed to that insistence about their flying ability, because we already know that pegasi magic lets them walk on clouds, so the same magic might give them a resistance against what can be IN the clouds, as well.
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He said "superior" not "invincible".