In my WIP there's a scene where my MC sees a bunch of plants (for miles around) that had their heat pulled out of them. All my research tells about frost and how to protect plants from it, but what I'm looking for isn't frost related or how to protect plants; it's what would happen if those plants had their heat pulled out of them. Would they turn brown? Would they curl up? Would they stay green and turn brittle? They're all dead and frozen, due to there being no heat left in them.
How would you pull the heat out of a plant, other than exposing it in some fashion to a low enough temperature as to cause damage or death? Water inside them would turn to ice crystals with destructive potential to vital cellular structures for the plant sustain itself. Perhaps look into how plants react to being dipped in liquid nitrogen. They would be come brittle, but not too sure how or what happens to the flash frozen composition at the cellular level. Perhaps you could look into something to that effect, and see how it would be relevant in what your are looking into explaining for your story.
I didn't know people dipped plants into liquid nitrogen. Thank you for suggesting it! I'll definitely look into it.
Depends on how rapidly it cooled. Flash freezing is when it instantly goes from warm to a frozen using something super cold like nitrogen. It creates a lot of jagged crystals out of the water, which bursts and tears all of the cell material, leaving them mushy once they unfreeze. If it’s done slowly, they’ll just slowly adapt and freeze and likely come back once it’s warm depending on the type. Lots of plants live in frigid winters at -50. If the temperature is somehow magically dropped by fifty degrees over a large area, I’d think the resulting windstorm would be insane. If you are talking really extreme like all heat energy was suddenly removed from a section of space you’d likely have some really strange results. First off, no heat is likely impossible, the fabric of spacetime has energy in it so absolute zero is an impossibility. If you took all the plants in a region to say a trillionth of a kelvin, weird things would happen: they’d likely melt. When atoms reach a certain temperature, there isn’t enough energy for them to bounce off of each other and their component parts kind of meld. They’re still atoms but they have no defined shape or size or even position anymore. Everything is almost an uncertainty state. This is called a Bose-Einstein condensate, and it’s really weird. It’s a liquid that will climb up walls, has zero friction, perfect electrical conductivity and a few other strange behaviors. Solid is not the bottom of the phases of matter when dealing very close to absolute zero.
I'm not sure what you mean—'had the heat pulled out of them.' By what? Is there any instance where a plant would be cooler than its surroundings—unless it had just been taken out of cold storage and put into a hot place? I don't see a plant cooling off faster than its surroundings, unless it gets moved.
This. The water in the plants would freeze then sublimate depending on if it happened slower than instantly. If you took ALL the heat out, the plants wouldn't move at all given the molecules with zero heat have zero energy. Freezing with liquid nitrogen is a good model.
It's a monster that absorbs heat when it hibernates. It's coldest for the first few miles around the monster and then its effects gradually decrease the farther away plants/animals are from it. I'm picturing everything being about minus 150 degrees around the monster and then gradually warming up to just below freezing some twenty miles from it. It cannot affect the weather due to how few miles it has an effect on, but rain within a few miles of it will freeze. Edit to add: clothing would not help humans to survive its effects, since it doesn't freeze things from the outside, rather it pulls heat right out of them.
That's a good idea, actually. To answer @Elven Candy 's question—technically the plants HAVE been frozen (from within.) The after-effects would be the same as normal freezing. Assuming the people who discover the situation are arriving when the whole situation has thawed out again? The tissue that holds the plant upright and together would have been destroyed, so the plants would be lying flat and shriveled (unless they were woody plants like trees) and would quickly turn black and start decomposing. If the people arrive while the plants are still frozen, they might have leaf-curl, and they would be extremely brittle.
@ 0:10 More seriously: https://www.google.com/search?ei=fl...i10j0i20i263j0j0i22i30j0i22i10i30.Tb727LZIoWc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_tree The Wikipedia link is particularly fascinating, imo.
Thanks, guys! It looks like I had the right idea in mind, so I should be able to keep the scene as-is, but add a little more frost and ice to it. The story is completed and in the editing phase. This is actually a scene I added in because I really like the idea and it fits in with the story and monster very well.
*goes and gets Bose Einstein condensate oxygen and nitrogen in a pale* Okay guys I got it! *looks down and realized it crept up the sides and leaked out*
Ian runs out to get a pail of Bose-Einstein, puts a lid on it. Everyone suffocates as a large pepperoni pizza decondenses...
