18 réponses à ce sujet

[NTsikuris]

Could it be possible for two human biotics to produce a child who is naturally a biotic? I'm curious...

[Zulu_DFA]

No. Only the phenotype is affected by Eezo, not the genetic code.

[emmanuelsieyes]

Also, biotic ability depends on eezo nodules inside the body. This requires a source of eezo - for humans, this can be inhalation or injection.

[skiaDUDE]

Yes, but it is possible those nodules are transfered from the mother to the son. So really its a matter of a biotic mother. Interesting idea, I can see the possibility for a more-powerful biotic this way, that the eezo nodules have had more time to embed themselves or something in childhood. Cool idea OP

[Ieldra]

skiaDUDE wrote...
Yes, but it is possible those nodules are transfered from the mother to the son. So really its a matter of a biotic mother. Interesting idea, I can see the possibility for a more-powerful biotic this way, that the eezo nodules have had more time to embed themselves or something in childhood. Cool idea OP

I've been thinking about this quite a bit for a fanfic. It is extremely unlikely that this will come about without genetic engineering. And if the child only "inherits" nodules from its mother there will be fewer of them, making the child a weaker biotic.

The way to go for natural human biotics is this:
(1) Engineer a human child to be able to metabolize eezo and make those nodules from it.
(2) Let the child eat eezo-enriched food in its early years.

The asari must have such mechanisms or they couldn't be natural biotics. By analysing them, you could come up with a human variant. If you could do this on a large enough scale, you could turn humanity into a species with a significant percentage of natural biotics. A human becoming a functional biotic would depend on eating enough eezo in their childhood, but the genetic mechanisms would continue to exist.

[Severyx]

The nodules need to be in place at birth. I highly doubt the body would process element zero to be used in the body through ingestion. It's like eating a rock - there's no nutritional reason for the body to want to metabolize it.

I looked into this as much as I could (seeing as how there's, well, no information on this) because the main character of my fanfiction deals in this crazieness.

It's never fully explained how asari use their biotics, since everyone else seems to need eezo to do it. Element nodules would be passed on to a child just as much as a cybernetic implant would - it doesn't. I sincerely hope Bioware sheds some light on this in ME3. For now, it's easier just to assume the asari have a different means of performing biotics. I wouldn't want to get into the discussion of the posibillity of element zero being a natural part of their anatomy. That's a hard angle to wrap one's head around.

Modifié par Severyx, 15 avril 2011 - 04:42 .

[Ieldra]

Severyx wrote...
 I wouldn't want to get into the discussion of the posibillity of element zero being a natural part of their anatomy. That's a hard angle to wrap one's head around.

Yet we know that eezo is needed for biotics. There is no reason it should be different for the asari. Usually things aren't built into a species' metabolism on purpose btw. It happens they're built into it and then co-opted for a purpose.

What we do not know is when exactly the eezo infusion must happen. It is plausible to think the nodules must come to exist before the first manifestation. Everything else is speculation. I think my hypothesis has value.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 15 avril 2011 - 05:01 .

[MadCat221]

There was an unofficial Cerberus Daily News article that dealt with this.

http://www.cerberusd...rissom-protocol

Not canon, but may give some good basis and postulation.

Modifié par MadCat221, 15 avril 2011 - 05:35 .

[Ieldra]

Interesting, but we'd need the specifics of the science behind it to know if those children would really be natural biotics. By definition, for a biotic to be considered "natural" the only requirement for their biotics to manifest would have to be nutritional. In fact, I'd go further and say they would have to get hungry if not eating enough eezo compounds, or the biotics abilities will die out in a few generations.

[Severyx]

The term 'natural biotic' seems to be a subjective phrase, when it really isn't. Asari are considered 'natural biotics' because they don't require amplification or physical modification in order to manifest biotic ability - unlike humans who require biotic amps.

[Turneyvore]

The easiest way for someone to be born with biotics is for the mother to be exposed to dust-form element zero during pregnancy. This is by no means a sure-fire method for biotic children, most children are simply born with tumors and no powers. However a small percentage do have noticable benefits. In humans biotic ability is not usually very strong, just enough to float a coffee cup, and amps must be fitted if the biotic wants to have a degree of power useful in combat.

The Asari almost defintely do not Eezo laden food in childhood. The most likely explination is that there is some component of their genes that causes eezo modules to form on their nervous systems while developing. In which case either the mother must eat eezo laden food or somehow the asari body can transform small quantities of organic matter in eezo for their young. Not unlikely considering all the crazy things asari can do.

Modifié par Turneyvore, 16 avril 2011 - 11:10 .

[naledgeborn]

Isn't it speculation that the Asari are natural biotics because their species evolved on Thessia which is or was a very eezo rich planet?

[Ieldra]

Severyx wrote...
The term 'natural biotic' seems to be a subjective phrase, when it really isn't. Asari are considered 'natural biotics' because they don't require amplification or physical modification in order to manifest biotic ability - unlike humans who require biotic amps.

That's wrong. Humans don't require biotic amps to manifest biotic abilities. They require amplification for those abilities to become useful. According to the official timeline, biotic abilities in humans were discovered when children exposed to eezo in utero showed minor telekinetic abilities - without any bioamps.

Turneyvore wrote...
The Asari almost defintely do not Eezo laden food in childhood. The most likely explination is that there is some component of their genes that causes eezo modules to form on their nervous systems while developing. In which case either the mother must eat eezo laden food or somehow the asari body can transform small quantities of organic matter in eezo for their young. Not unlikely considering all the crazy things asari can do.

Eezo is an element. It can't just form out of nothing. If something is to be incorporated into a body, it must be metabolized somehow. The natural ways to do that are eating, breathing or absorbing the stuff through the skin. It may originally have been the result of a side effect, just like human bodies can metabolize certain heavy metals that accumulate in our bodies (here to harmful effect). If eezo accumulates the same way in asari, manifestation of biotics could have been an evolutionarily beneficial side effect. In humans, ways to metabolize eezo cound possibly be genetically engineered, resulting in a natural biotic.

naledgeborn wrote...
Isn't it speculation that the Asari are natural biotics because their species evolved on Thessia which is or was a very eezo rich planet?

It is speculation, but an extremely plausible one:

(1) Biotic abilities are based on the "mass effect"
(2) The "mass effect" requires eezo.
(3) Thus, asari physiology must use eezo to build up the nodules required for biotic abilities.

Anything else would mean that biotic abilties can be based on some other physical effect than the "mass effect", or that the "mass effect" can be achieved by using something else than eezo. Both would be so momentous discoveries that they would merit a Codex entry. In absence of evidence to the contrary, it is therefore very plausible to assume that asari metabolize eezo and that eezo is part of the asari's natural environment.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 17 avril 2011 - 09:46 .

[Severyx]

Ieldra2 wrote...

That's wrong. Humans don't require biotic amps to manifest biotic abilities. They require amplification for those abilities to become useful. According to the official timeline, biotic abilities in humans were discovered when children exposed to eezo in utero showed minor telekinetic abilities - without any bioamps.

That's not so much wrong as it was simply a poor choice of words. Anywho, after giving it some thought, I have to wonder how eezo is treated by a human body. Inhaling red sand, a drug presumably laced with eezo particles, allows a person without any biotic ability to temporarily have very limited control over mass effect fields. I'm not so sure metabolizing is the right word for it, since exposure in utero accumulates the dust into nodules througout the body. The nodules/dust particles are certainly not motabolized by the fetus, but it had to have passed through the mother's body in one way or the other to get to the fetus.

Also, I have to assume that inhaling red sand doesn't bring about temporary biotics in everyone, as only one in ten fetuses exposed to eezo show any signs later in life as a potential biotic. I wonder if this is due to the amount of exposure or some other factor during the child's growth in the womb. So how, then, does the body treat an element such as eezo?

I think I'm going too deep with this.
*Insert Inception joke here*

[Turneyvore]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Turneyvore wrote...
The Asari almost defintely do not Eezo laden food in childhood. The most likely explination is that there is some component of their genes that causes eezo modules to form on their nervous systems while developing. In which case either the mother must eat eezo laden food or somehow the asari body can transform small quantities of organic matter in eezo for their young. Not unlikely considering all the crazy things asari can do.

Eezo is an element. It can't just form out of nothing. If something is to be incorporated into a body, it must be metabolized somehow. The natural ways to do that are eating, breathing or absorbing the stuff through the skin. It may originally have been the result of a side effect, just like human bodies can metabolize certain heavy metals that accumulate in our bodies (here to harmful effect). If eezo accumulates the same way in asari, manifestation of biotics could have been an evolutionarily beneficial side effect. In humans, ways to metabolize eezo cound possibly be genetically engineered, resulting in a natural biotic.

You bring up a good point but to be honestly I'm not sure element zero is an element as we think of them. If element zero was an element than it would be assumed by the name that it is simply a neutron. I'm fairly certain that adding electrons to a neutron doesn't create a mass effect field or we would know about it. Furthermore the way in which element zero creates mass effect fields of either positive or negative mass is running a positive current of electricity through it for additional mass or a negative current for negative mass. There is no such thing as positive current of electricity there is only negative currents. The only way for there to be a seemingly positive current of electricty is if it is a current of electrons being drawn away from something. If element zero is an element then, even if the electricity that passes through it came from it leaving another atom, the movement of electricity is an inherently negatively charge occurance. If element zero was simply an element then it would never be able to create a positive field. Only negative fields of varying degree. The only way that I can see for element zero to expirience both positive and negative currents is if it has positive and negative poles, something that traditional elements on their own cannot possess. I think that element zero may be composed of protons neutrons and electrons but not in a traditional arrangement. It may also be that element zero is a molecule of some kind or even that it is composed of something other than the current accepted atomic particles. Might be a bunch of quarks wrapped up in a big ball for all we know. The only thing I'm certain of is that element zero is not an element.
Also, If you thought that I meant that I thought that it is formed out of nothing in asari that is understandable. Wait, not really. Why did you decide to point that out next to the quote by me? Did you read what I said after the first line? Of course it's not formed out of nothing.

[Ieldra]

You're making no sense, Turneyvore. Especially after I read your other post again and noticed indeed that you'd said asari would form eezo out of organic matter. How would a body consisting of nothing but organic compounds be able to do that? Here's how I see it:

If eezo can be built into bodies, it must have a chemistry. That chemistry may be highly exotic, but eezo must interact with organic matter or it couldn't do what it does, namely react to activity in the human nervous system to create biotic effects. Also what the Codex should say is electric tension, or more to the point fields of electric charge. It would make sense to have eezo react to that. The writers just didn't know better.

In the end, we all know - ok, at least we suspect - eezo and what it does makes no sense physically. But there is no reason why we shouldn't fit it into the existing body of scientific knowledge as best as we can instead of applying magical concepts as we need them.

I'm going to refine my hypothesis about the physiology of biotics and then come back to settle the matter. But I think the current version will stand as a framework.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 17 avril 2011 - 07:43 .

[Turneyvore]

I don't really know how any of this works I'm just making my best guess. I'm not saying it doesn't have chemistry. I'm simply stating that it can't be an element. Even fields of electric charge would require it to be polar. There is no way for it to interact both in two different ways to an inherently negative force without it being polar. It must be at least a molecule.
You're right about my asari idea though, it would make little sense. Was I stating that it's a possibility, and now, upon reflection, not a likely one. If they could form element zero out of organics then people would be exploiting them much more than they are. So yeah, that idea of mine makes little sense.
I'm fairly certain that the activity in the nervous system that you are refering to is electrical impulses travelling through the body. Also extensive training (or instinct as may be the case for the asari, I'm not sure if they must be trained) is required to use element zero in the nervous system. Element zero doesn't have any special reactions to organic matter, other than growing in it if the conditions are right.
I guess I kind of resent the "writers didn't know better," this is their world, their word is law, at least in my eyes. Even somehow their descriptions have to be correct. While I agree that it would have made more sense if element zero functioned in some other fashion we simply have to accept that it functions somehow in the fashion described.
Honestly though, if someone from a hundred and fifty years ago saw me typing on a computer they would have thought it magic. Who can say what science will have revealed by the time of Mass Effect. All I know is that the non-polarity of elements and the negative charge of electrons will never change.

[Severyx]

If this thread turns into another 'wtf, this doesn't even work', then I'm out of here. I was hoping for a solid, civilized debate on possibilities in a sci-fi world, not a comparison to real life.

[Turneyvore]

Any science-fiction world that claims to be based off our world must either directly disregard or accept and compound upon the basic facts of our world.
And I'm trying to be civilized, trying hard.