ZOMBIE FORUMS

If a rock is sufficiently small it will float (surface tension of water).

CLOUDS!!!!!!!



They are simply a different form of water, but water nonetheless. They defy you little world, muhahahaHAHAHAHAHA...

Real life experience that they are water, Krylex? I think not, unless you have climbed mountains.

Steam, mist, and fog would be better examples.

Water vapor, being water heated sufficiently to turn into a gas, is water infused with fire. When that fire is taken out of it, like on those cold misty days, it turns back into straight water (in cloud form, it then rains). The mist/cloud is still wet, but it is driven by the forces of fire to rise.

This ties into the whole "proportions of elements" thing, though, too.

Yes I have climbed mountains, and I do know that clouds, fog, and all the ilk are water. Now, most of them are formed by the evaporation of water, caused by the sun. Would that be considered fire? All I know, those clouds didn't seem very warm to me...

Clouds would count as air, and thus are at their correct height.

I have finally found something first hand that would disprove. Follow me now.


The outermost ring was supposed to be a ring of pure fire. Now, it was supposed to be just fire, nothing else, correct? Well, anyone who has ever played with fire at any extent should be able to tell you that fire cannot exist without fuel. Now, firsthand I have played with a lot of fire from different types of fuel, and the only constant fire has is that it must have fuel, otherwise it cannot exist. Pure fire cannot exist, so the 4th sphere could not have existed.

Some gases can burn. Thus, the highest layers of the "air" sphere could have been made of inflammable gases, which fed the fire for the fourth sphere. Ha!

It said specifically a ring of pure fire, that cannot exists, as a fire is nothing more than heat and light being given off by a chemical reaction. Pure fire cannot exist. So even if an outer ring of air was what was burning, it would not be a pure fire. Also, if I must only provide first hand evidence, you cannot throw out superficial evidence to counter me. You must be able to show that pure fire can exist first hand for me to be wrong.

Er, how is that superficial? I mean, I've had my science teachers show me chemical reactions and flammable gases, and propane is there, too.

Normal air is not a fuel in and of itself, according to available first hand evidence, right? Yet a flame can reach out from it's source, and is not confined to just being a flame inside the log of wood or whatever. It reaches out.

Can you prove that air exists inside the flame? If not, then isn't that pure fire?

Fire cannot exist without fuel. Plain and simple, it needs fuel to be, as fire itself isn't very tangible. It is just light and heat given off by a reaction of somesort. Without some fuel for it to exist, fire ceases to be. Pure fire cannot be, for it to be truly a pure fire, it must be able to sustain itself without fuel, as do water, earth, and air.

Two extra things:
1. What about the dissolution of air in water?
2. What about the magma under the earth? Note: this can be partially observed as the reason why volcanoes can erupt from the ground, as (to my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong) we've never actually put a probe into the ground far enough to hit actual magma pools.

Fire is a hell of a lot more tangible than air.

Krylex, the point is that while the fire may be fueled by the air beneath, it is still capable of being "pure," and all by its lonesome as long as it has a source. Stick your hand in flame from a log, and you aren't poking your hand into the log, are you? The flames that reach up, toward their original place, are still pure fire. Having fuel doesn't change that. It doesn't mean that they (can) exist without anything else, but they can be pure, because two things cannot exist in the place at the same time. I for one can't see any proof that fire isn't as tangible as air.

Could you provide some first hand proof that all fire is "contaminated," and made unpure by other elements?

Unum: Dissolution of air in water? What are talking about? Explain, or be ignored in obscurity! The choice is really yours.

Did we already address the magma thing, or am I just tripping or something?

I think that both Abunai! and Wandering Idiot have provided fair refutations of krylex’s points. However, I shall take a different tack. Where Wandering Idiot raises the specter of “flammable gasses,” I shall instead find something much more intuitively descriptive of the world we see, and in complete keeping with firsthand experience. And while Abunai! accepts krylex’s stated need for fire to have fuel, I will contest this claim.

Do any of the other elements require fuel? No. As krylex pointed out, they are elements, self-sufficient. And so is fire. However, we find this difficult to believe because most fires in our experience must be rooted and diluted by some other substrate in order to be content to remain within our muddled realm. But I have found... pure fire. The trick is recognizing it in its sleeping form, for as the highest of the four terrestrial elements it is proud, and refuses to show its true face while here below the heavens. Even the impure flames we are familiar with strain toward their old home, and it is the topmost portion of any flame which is the most pure, the bottom sections being intermingled with this matter which you refer to as “fuel” but which really is simply whatever combination of the other elements is best able to hold and subdue the fire’s pride. This is a similar mechanism to the way in which some substances – cloths and so forth – can absorb water and coax it above its natural level, while others – metal, most stones, etc. – cannot.

In any case, actions speak louder than words. Observe.

::dons a lab coat::

::prepares some sleeping fire in the top of an upturned beaker::

For all you damn Technocrats out there, you can read that last sentence as, "distills some Hydrogen from somewhere." But note that I doubt the existence of this "Hydrogen" of which you speak, as I have never interacted with it in any manner in which I could recognize it as anything other than "sleeping fire," which is the name I choose to give to it because of its properties which I have observed. Namely: a tendency to drift toward higher planes than air, and a tendency to betray its true nature when provoked in the proper conditions.

::lights a tall candlestick::

Observe. The candle burns in air, but the air does not combust. Therefore, we know that air, as a distinct element, does not transform into flame. But...

::puts the candle into the beaker and raises it until its flame ignites the sleeping fire in the top of the beaker::

...since this substance which looks like air did combust, we know that it is not really air, but sleeping fire. The flame of the candle encountered its sleeping brother in the top of the beaker and roused him to a moment of great wakefulness. For the sleeping fire came to believe, in the moment of contact with living fire, that it had at last returned to its place in the heavens. However, upon awakening and discovering that this must not be so, since it was trapped within a terrestrial material, it immediately died of sorrow. Sometimes a fire so misled will out of spite and anger attempt to slay the flame which had deceived it, extinguishing the candle.

A sad story, it is true, but there is your pure fire.

::removes lab coat and bows::

We need to get somethings cleared up. With how vague things have been presented, it makes it next to impossible to get something done. What is air, specifically. If it is just gases, then Yevaud's pure fire couldn't exist either. What I am trying to say is that I think the reason nothing has been successfully done to counter this argument is that the argument in and of itself is too vague and non-specific. I do like the displacement technique, as it is the only one providing some firsthand evidence against my claim. Hows this for size though, according to the original statement, "2. All matter is made up of elemental combinations, but it is not always, or even often, possible to determine what elements are present in a given object or in what quantities." To say that you have captured pure fire would be incorrect, as its impossible to discern even pure earth now due to the catyclysm mixing it all up. Therefore, you did not have pure fire, and said fire still cannot exist.

Hmmm...never mind about the dissolution of air into water...
/smacks self

I think, though, that the main weakness of the theory is relative amounts of elements. Take, for instance, oil. You could say that, because it burns more than water, it has some fire in it, so it is lighter than water. But what about flammible gas? Gas burns less than oil, but it is lighter. How?

*Applauds Yevaud's bit of over-anthropomorphized balderdash above, once he stops laughing*

THAT's the way to handle these nonbelievers, me boyo! Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go put my meat in the fridge before it spontaneously transforms into a pile of maggots…



I'm sure you could find some gas, or misture of gas, that burns hotter than oil. And anyway, the oil is heavier because it's water mixed with fire, while inflammable (English is weird, ne?) gas is *air* mixed with fire. Duh. :)

Like I said before, it's just an over-generalized statement about the differences in phase densities, so it's not all *that* incorrect.

Yevaud, you said that you caught pure fire. Well, I have another experiment I just remembered from chemistry. What happens when you get a small beaker with a little bit of oxygen and get a light to it? It catches fire. Also, as can be seen with an acetelene torch, other gases are flammable, and oxygen is one of the more cumbustables. Wouldn't all of those be considered air? That means hydrogen, which, from my first hand experiance, behaves like any other gas and would be considered air by all concerned parties I do believe...

Hmmm... good point, krylex, I'd forgotten about not being able to pin down how much of an element there is within a substance. This doesn't disqualify my calling it 'sleeping fire,' mind you, just 'pure fire.' The existence of combustible gasses doesn't hurt the elemental theory any more than the existence of things like coal and oil do. They're just examples of fire mixed into air, earth, and water, respectively. By exposing them to open flames you awaken the fire within them, and they burn. Obviously 'purer' examples of air, earth, and water (common air, most rocks, and common water) don't burn because they don't have fire in them.

As far as defending the possibility of pure fire goes, I guess I'll just retreat to the position that, while we can't capture or define pure fire or any other pure element, it remains a theoretical possibility that that's the way things once were and the way they are striving to return to now. It doesn't seem any more far-fetched than the idea that all of reality was once a single point which sprang out of nothingness and expanded and differentiated into the many materials we find ourselves surrounded by today, which are really made up of little dancing warticles (the sporked union of waves and particles). Talk about a head trip!

Glad I could amuse, Wandering. 8) (And you're damn right you gotta watch that meat, if you let it get too hot and excited it does that to you!)

BTW, krylex, your new avatar is scary. Dunno why... but scary. I think it's the stone cold sober expression on your face or something. Maybe if you photoshopped your reefer bear in on your shoulder it would help soften the overall effect, I dunno.

But I dig the elf ear.

Hows that for you.

I'll have to mill over this all for a bit longer to argue more. Its time for food...

Awesome. :D You've even got it all perspective-skewed and stuff!

Gotta love the reefer bear....