Liquid Protodermis Makes No Sense

[@danielbickford3458]

Another possible option is that below a given temperature the liquid protodermis acts more like water, but once you crank up the heat it starts to polymerize and acts more metallic. I don't know how feasible that is, but it is an option. My brother fiddles with plastic all the time, and there are some Plastics he works with that get very runny to the point where they can drip which sounds like liquid protodermis, you get it any hotter and it starts to break down and you might get a different polymer out of it which sounds a bit like the metallic version

[@kennyholmes5196]

Sort of like cooking an egg!

[@diegodankquixote-wry3242]

The energized protodermis entity is so hype.

[@ninjawhippetproductions7411]

That picture of the silver sea made me think of something - it's realistically just a stylisation on the part of the artist or printer, but the caps of the silver sea's waves seem to have these distinct parallel lines running along the path of the water flow. A property of metal not brought up in this video is ~magnetism~ Could it be possible that the silver sea has a weak magnetic field generated by the flow and interaction of the high metal particulate content suspended within?

[@tkfarms7882]

My main takeaway from this video is that beach sand is fish poop and I have no idea what to do with this information.

[@legonerd0666]

Well technicly its still just sand its just gone through a fishs digestive tract…

[@Naptosis]

Guess what soil is... 😬

[@Joe_Potts]

Takua!!! New Knowledge Tower video dropped!

[@AzureLord707]

You know, the video title says it "doesn't make sense", but you have answered a lot of questions I've had for ages about how exactly the production chain of Metru Nui works. Excellent video as always! I saw the Protodermis Protodermis Protodermis short first, thought it was just a compilation of the times you've said it across your videos, then physically perked up and went "hell yes!" when I realized it was from a new video.

[@ignikatv1589]

Its not exactly, what I thought it might be, I thought it would just be about the different types of Protodermis and their properties. But this might just be even better. And the title is just on point, the way Protoermis is described in the lore still is an enigma to me, especially, the Protodermis from MNOG2 is just compleately random. (luckily its just semi-canon). Anyways: nice Video and surprising topic, as always!

[@aasminecrafter]

Yo wake up new Knowledge Tower video

[@raff3486]

It's a good way to start a day

[@astromenuisix7346]

There is also the fact that protodermis needs all the elements of a Toa team to be created. A Toa seal can only be created when a Toa team is fully united and combine their elemental powers (Fire, water, earth, stone, Air and Ice, we don't know if it's possible to also create a toa seal when other elements are mixed in or are missing. Maybe the addition of more elements can lead to the creation of energized protodermis instead of a toa seal which would explain how it formed naturally on Spherus Magna). I'm not sure how the combination of those elements produces this kind of substance, but it's a pretty interesting fact.

[@Aranthappyrobot]

I believe the only restrictions for creating protodermis with a Toa seal is that you can have multiple of the same element and that light and shadow Toa are incapable of contributing to it.

[@astromenuisix7346]

@@Aranthappyrobot I checked and Biosector01 says that Light and Shadow can contribute. But, if the two of them combine their powers in this manner they will cancel each other and no protodermis will be produced.

[@Aranthappyrobot]

Aahhh, that’s what it is, could’ve sworn there was something that light and shadow Toa would be incapable of contributing in, but I’m probably misremembering.

[@heroranuva8295]

Always love your theories dude! This works out really well, and even helps explain a lot of the supply lines in Metru Nui! I remember a few years back on tumblr, there was a theory that the change from water-like to metal-like was the result of protodermis having slight organic properties, that when superheated it bonds to form a solid much like how the insides of an egg will be liquid, then convert to a more solid state when cooked. Your theory probably makes more sense, but I am curious what you might think of this one.

[@theknowledgetower208]

@@heroranuva8295 I remember seeing the egg theory too, and it's a line of inquiry I tried whilst researching this video. It's got a lot of good points (such as keeping closer to the words as written description of how molten protodermis is made) and you could still work around the evaporation problem by heating it under pressure. The idea was that if you heat pure liquid protodermis under atmospheric pressure it would evaporate, but if you heated it under pressure so it couldn't evaporate then that is when the molecular change you described would occur. Where I got stuck on that version of the theory was how the unused molten protodermis re-merged with the silver sea. To continue with the egg analogy, it would be like throwing a cooked egg into a bucket of raw eggs, which would then somehow "uncook" the egg.

[@Aranthappyrobot]

I’d say something about Protodermis breaking down and rusting to explain the leftover material mixing back into the ocean, but then I realized that the sea would probably be more of an orangish color rather than silver so your theory makes a lot more sense. Then again the only major example of an item composed of Protodermis rusting that I can recall is the Vahi, which was originally a bright golden color before turning rusty orange so who knows perhaps the color of the protodermis prior to tarnishing has an impact, or maybe I’m overthinking it.

[@rothgang]

That's assuming protodermis oxide is orange. Many real-life oxides are gray

[@ShadowRoadX]

It does make me wonder then how other metals like Protosteel are formed, or whether they are a natural but rare occurring element within the robot's systems. Given it displays unique properties that differ from typical protodermis, I wonder if there isn't a distinct reaction between certain elemental powers and energized protodermis that creates it.

[@speedryns]

i've always preferred the practice of coming up with theories and explanations to explain inconsistencies in the bionicle universe rather than just pointing and mocking and complaining, and protodermis is one of those things i commonly hear people doing the latter towards. the theory that the impurities of raw liquid protodermis are made up of metallic protodermis is such a simple and elegant solution to the questions raised by liquid protodermis that I'm shocked I never considered it sooner. great work and explanation!

[@billberg1264]

If the impurities are microparticles, wouldn't filtration be a more efficient method of purification than distillation?

[@theknowledgetower208]

It would definitely be more energy efficient, but what is described in story is a lot closer to distillation rather than filtration. Plus, the Matoran don't really seem all that bothered by energy efficiency, with the combination of power from Karda Nui and the Coliseum power plant they have power in abundance, so energy usage isn't really an issue for them.

[@LOBricksAndSecrets]

Purification through heating and cooling also sounds like how foundries can turn raw metal ore in to pure alloys, separated from molten slag. Also, I'm very happy that this channel exists!

[@Nepycros]

I ended up making a "physics" model for Bionicle a few months back, and my explanation for Protodermis... went completely off the rails. Rather than attribute the properties of raw liquid Protodermis to tiny bits of metallic Protodermis, instead I see the nature of Protodermis as adopting the properties of the Elemental Energy it contains. As the dominant Elemental Energy type changes, so too do the properties of the Protodermis itself. During the purification process, the act of heating and cooling means applying Fire and Ice Energy respectively to effectively "cancel out" the Energy impurities, doing as much work as possible to make it so that the given quantity of Protodermis has all of one type (homogenized). Any amount of Protodermis that still has some "impurities" (read: Other types of Elemental Energy contained within its structure) get pumped back into the sea, but if the sieving process is good enough, they could get tiny amounts of, say, Protosteel from Protodermis that retains its Iron Elemental Energy predominantly. Why did I eventually settle on an Energy-dominant physics model that largely ignores the physical structure of matter? Because something never sat right with me: If a Toa of Water produces "water" and a Toa of Ice then freezes it, can that Toa of Ice then absorb the newly frozen Ice to replenish Ice Elemental Energy? In that case, the "water" ceased to *be* water, even chemically. It WAS Ice, as in a unique substance that is distinct from "water" in the Bionicle Universe. There are other cases of matter changing their *substance* when Elemental Energy is applied to it, most notably when Kopaka froze a boulder and then caused it to shatter like glass (in my model, this would be converting Stone Energy into Ice Energy to render it as substantively Ice rather than rock). Protodermis is UNIQUE in this case because unlike other forms of matter, which change their physical structure (from Water to Ice, or from Rock to Ice, or from Stone to Sand, etc), Protodermis never stops being Protodermis, even if it can change its phase due to an application of Elemental Energy. This makes it the most useful building material in the universe. Also, this model takes the idea of Elemental Energy *as* impurities and pushes it to the next step: If gathering Elemental Energies changes the properties of matter, what happens if you gather all possible Elemental Energies in the core of a planet for eons in a complex geological process, pulled into a single point from the immense pressure?

[@toafellha8130]

To add on your water/ice example: there's also the Canon instance of Toa Lhikan freezing water by removing the heat (story: the many deaths of Toa Tuyet) and since toa and makuta are shown to form/shape (tangible) hands out of their elements, could a toa of water freeze water by just keeping it in a fixed position or a toa of sonics by absorbing the reverberation/motion of its particles? Would a Toa of magnetism be allowed to manipulate light by manipulating the electromagnetic light spectrum like Light Teridax did shadow (story Reign of Shadows) ? While I'm biased in believing elemental power to be just an overlap on how the different casts/element users sense, harvest and manipulate different aspects of matter and energy- with a corresponding mindset for their toolset, especially the elements earth, sand and stone... I'm intrigued by your model and hoped you could clear things up to me: Since protodermis can be generated by combining a minimum of six elements respectively including water-ice and rock-stone wouldn't those elements also inherently be of unchanging nature as you propose protodermis to be, to be counted seperatly? And could you please further define "unchanging"?

[@Nepycros]

​@@toafellha8130 So this is where things get awkward. In Bionicle, we know that "atoms" exist, but we never got a proper clarification of what types of atoms they are. My model does not have matter behaving under classical physics with a standard periodic table. Instead, *matter assumes properties based on what Elemental Energy it holds*. If you applied enough Earth Energy to Water "atoms" grouped together in a puddle, it becomes muddy water, then watery mud, then mud, then Earth "atoms" until all the Water Energy is gone and only Earth Energy is left. Protodermis is also an atomic structure, but the difference is that no matter what type of Elemental Energy is put into it, it'll never stop being Protodermis. As you layer more Elemental Energies, you start to see that instead of being cleanly divided and uniformly distributed "physical states," instead Elemental Energies behave more like a spectrum. We know from Bara Magna that the element of Sand exists, but it was never included by the Great Beings in the MU; it was arbitrarily excluded for the Elements we DID get. I believe that leads to the conclusion that there is a gradient of possible Energies, and these can overlap or have bounded ranges. Water Elemental Energy and Air Elemental Energy can produce lightning because their overlap contains the region where Lightning Elemental Energy exists. The 6 Primary Elements are "special" because they are the most transient Matter Elements: They very neatly and easily combine into other "Combined Elements" (which are themselves just regular Elements in nature), and can subsume into other types of matter (water to ice, etc). This makes a team of 6 Primary Elemental Toa super efficient for teamwork. Toa Seals are largely special not because of the *Protodermis* aspect of it, but because of the Toa Power latent in the seal itself, which has semi-miraculous properties it'd take me another hour to explain. Suffice to say, Toa Power, Energized Protodermis, and the unification of Willpower leads to anomalous properties that the basic physics model had to be reformatted to explain. I believe your grasp of Element users having a "Sense" of what they can have influence over is correct; I believe that if the Great Beings willed it, they could've tweaked any number of bounded power sets to include more of the overall Elemental Gradient. For your question, I think Protodermis can be made out of more (or less!) than 6 Elements, however the process is very intricate. Consider that Krahka's blast did not produce Antidermis as a "byproduct." I believe as you layer more Elemental Energies together, you can get such byproducts, and if you have less Elemental Energies, then the Protodermis' stability drops and it has a less coherent form. Also consider that even after reapplying 5 Energies, Terry's seal only lost cohesion when the sixth energy was reapplied, even from a remote location. There may be a "resting point" where 6-energy structures are far more stable. If you layer all possible Elemental Energies, I believe that you can generate Energized Protodermis, which is actually the complete form of Protodermis + Antidermis. When the Great Beings made Protodermis, they had no idea that they were imitating a natural process, and messing it up. Protodermis is structurally impermeable and maintains a unique kind of cohesion, while Antidermis contains volatility and a fractured will. The two together creates a miraculous alchemical godling (The EPE). Takutanuva, a Protodermic and Antidermic being, overcame the division of properties (with the help of EP) and gained similarly miraculous abilities.

[@toafellha8130]

@@Nepycros many thanks for your elaborate answer :)

[@billberg1264]

@@Nepycros It is theorized that the state of existence we all know represents a "false vacuum" which could at any moment decay into a new state of existence with wildly different laws of physics. Technically, the world of Bionicle is as likely to result from that collapse as anything else, as far as we know. So really, we're doing cutting edge theoretical physics research here.

[@PolyChromium]

Matter doesn’t just change states due to temperature, but also pressure. Maybe different pressures in the processes have an effect on the different states protodermis can take on from seemingly similar conditions?

[@DZ-X3]

Wonderful video, glad to have found it. Another great channel to add to our wall of subscriptions. Looking at the desalination machine, I started thinking about some properties of the seawater. Perhaps the impurities all have a lower boiling point than the protodermis, so Ga-Metru isn't distilling the seawater at all. All the impurities are either released into the air or captured as vapour, while the seawater stays entirely liquid. That would let you reserve the gas state as being related to metallic protodermis: something that doesn't happen by accident or weather, due to the temperatures required. We'd really need to know more about protodermis on a chemical or atomic level to understand these. The other idea is that the sea of protodermis is actually based on normal H2O water. It's a saturated solution of mostly water, with as much metallic protodermis dissolved in the water as it can hold. Just eliminate the liquid form of protodermis and replace it with dihydrogen monoxide. That solves the question of molten metallic protodermis looking entirely different from seawater, and one being at a much higher temperature. You can still extract metal from the ocean, but now there isn't a form of protodermis that's liquid at room temperature, behaves almost exactly like water, is called water and responds to elemental powers over water.

[@Yan_Alkovic]

Well this was an interesting solution! Not one that I would have gone with, but it does sound plausible and rather sensible! Though that would imply that we'd find beaches of metallic dust on the shores of Metru Nui... which I guess was never disproven in the canon, so it still works!

[@Korohpu]

Protodermis being an atomic element never sat right with me given its ability to mimic any other substance. My personal headcannon is that it is naturally occuring programmable matter - a "grey goo", like a swarm of nanobots that can be instructed to simulate any type of atomic bond and electron configuration. Given the right input, it can change which substance it mimics, or its phase (such as a Toa of Ice "commanding" water-protodermis to form a crystal lattice). Simple changes might be achievable using the right combination of external conditions like temperature, pressure, electric current, or magnetic field.

[@dafoex]

Just looking at the protodermis purifying machine it looks more like a sewerage cleaning unit than an evaporation unit. Sewerage processing usually works on a chemical basis, so another hypothesis could be that heating protodermis from the silver sea causes a chemical change that allows the silver suspension to dissolve into the liquid. Once dissolved it can be collected again simply by boiling off the liquid, like salt can, and also like salt it can be melted if enough heat is provided. What exactly those silver impurities are isn't answered by this, but there are chemicals that can become soluble only after being heated, since that heat allows them to react and become something new. Or it's just "lol programmable matter".

[@VainerCactus0]

Sounds like a solid theory.

[@rothgang]

I always just assumed that "liquid protodermis" was just an aqueous solution, and the "pure liquid" was actually just water. This would explain water powers being able to manipulate the substance.

[@eclipseslayer98]

Protomatter vs Protodermis vs Necrodermis Metal skin for the win.

[@rothgang]

When dealing with measurements as small as .1mm, there is no need to convert to inches. Inches aren't generally used beyond a precision of 1/16, and are almost only decimalized in applications such as drafting. Only engineering students would have any semblance of what four thousandths of an inch means.

[@theknowledgetower208]

Good to know, thanks. I've only ever used metric, so my experience of imperial units is somewhat limited.

[@rothgang]

@@theknowledgetower208 most non-americans don't realize that the two systems are used very differently. In fact, in America, behind the scenes, there is plenty of metric everywhere. We really only use imperial for construction and engineering, and even then, it's sometimes a mix anyway. EDIT: We also use it for cooking and sales. All science is in metric, though. The main advantage Imperial has is the relationship between its units and the human body, making it better for high-intuition, low-precision applications, as well as being fraction based, rather than decimal based, once again, being better suited for dividing things approximately. The exception here, as I mentioned, is engineering. I believe its use is a hold-over standard from early days of American manufacturing, but with the increasing volume of foreign machinery, Americans have become more familiar with metric, and can use it almost as much as imperial, depending on their occupation.

[@Trimondius]

Protodermis is like the perfect substance,at normal temperature is a liquid,by purifying it and heating it you can form a hard metal which armor and masks are made out of.

[@ajerjavec4723]

I have a few video ideas the first is what is fire/ice resistance level of a makuta They do mention tahu and kopaka original toa nuva tools, but I assumed that those just channel their powers, and my other idea is interesting. How much of beings elemental abilities are due to training to control their powers I think Greg has said makuta can’t use their sonic powers for sonar despite having the same power level as a toa who can and there is some evidence for this I mean, we know when it comes to the shadow hand power most makuta don’t have control but the one who use it the most does plus I think the first toa has showed her mastery of her element to do stuff that a rookie probably couldn’t

[@toafellha8130]

That sounds like a plausible theory. Seeing as we have several names for water in real life for the different steps of usage and purity like gray and black water (and water's matter state being weird too) I figured something similar. Furthermore since Metru Nui is among the oldest places in the universe and probably the biggest protodermis exporter, its extraction method could easily have led to a cultural misnomer. To build on your theory, in Canon there exist the microscopic Protodite, which existed even before Mata Nui, so maybe like in real life microbes evolved naturally that lived by breaking down the metal-like protodermis substance. An original theory of mine would be that the protodermis metal can be transformed into a "time crystal"-the matter state (energized protodermis), with the breaking of time-translation-symmetry leading to the random destruction and mutation of exposed materials. Great and Noble Kanohi just have a purified level that when given elemental energy mimics those effects on a lower more manageable level. Lastly the Protodermis Entity would be a Boltzmann brain side effect (combined with strange matter), explaining why the Great Beings didn't find it in their sample or it not existing/happening/appearing to them yet.

[@billberg1264]

Well, all known life in the real world is based on carbon. And silicon largely can form all the same sorts of molecular structures as carbon. So the idea of biological processes based on a metal is pretty plausible. A world of such creatures would have a "silicon cycle" in the same way out world has a carbon cycle.

[@toafellha8130]

@@billberg1264 Actually I was just referring to microbes (bioremediators) which metabolize on ores through various oxidation processes producing pure copper, gold, manganese... which besides metal recovery detoxifies environments from toxic metal ions. With the exampleI just wanted to present a further real life analogy for Protodermis' metal like status and add a step in the breakdown to its diluted liquid state.

[@kociarzultimate384]

But wait, why does metalic protodermis not melt if in normal temperature liquid protodermis is liquid? Can it be rearanged to not melt easily

[@theknowledgetower208]

Metallic protodermis has different melting and boiling points than liquid protodermis, so that's how they can exist in different states. It's why a Toa of fire would need to use way less heat to melt ice like protodermis into liquid protodermis than they would need to melt solid metallic protodermis into molten protodermis

[@kociarzultimate384]

@@theknowledgetower208 but how can you make a substance change it's boiling point?

[@theknowledgetower208]

@@kociarzultimate384 you can't really, but that's not what's happening here. We talk about protodermis being all one substance, but given the massive variety of types of it and the different properties of each, it's got to be it's own substance on a more fundamental level. Like how both water and iron are fundamentally just different arrangements of protons, electrons and neutrons, but those different arrangements give them different properties, such as their melting points. Protodermis would have to work in the same way, with a low level building block / blocks that are all "protodermis" but with those blocks arranged differently in liquid protodermis and metallic protodermis, giving them their different properties and melting points.

[@astromenuisix7346]

Now, we need to explain energized protodermis. The substance of creation. ;)

[@robbymanable]

I agree. Also we need a proper explanation of what state of matter energized protodermis is since we have proof that Toa of Water cannot control it unlike liquid protodermis

[@sebastianthomsen2225]

i like this theory! 😉👍

[@ViliousTorch]

v

[@deadman9335]

3 minutes ago and second comment

[@mariogarcia7445]

7:54 So basically all the sand in the MU is... Rahi poop? 😳