The Physics of Limbo

[Railazel]

Under the curiosity I formed after a good bit of debating in the DmC Dante vs DMC 3 Vergil thread, I have decided to try to actually figure out Limbo's physics and very nature. This will probably be one of the greatest intellectuals I shall ever face due to the bunch of mess Limbo goes through.

There a few things that I know are constants:
1) It's spatially- infinte in size. If you watch this and pause at certain areas, you can see that it goes on forever. The implications of this are staggering. It brings to question whether its within our universe or not. If it is, it means that our universe is holding another one within it that we aren't able to naturally see. However, for that to be possible, it would have to exist on another dimension.

2) It has no mass or, rather, the mass is made up of the matter within it. This is due to the fact that it is infinite size which means it has no intrinsic mass of its own. That also means that gravity works much differently in Limbo because things to tend to fall down when there's nothing at the bottom of their fall.

3) Space and Time are very malleable in Limbo. Pretty much anyone can manipulate them if they have the means. This implies that there is some underlying system that anyone can have access to.

4) It houses "pocket universes" as demonstrated when Dante entered a secret world to unlock his DT and the nature of his DT powers.

5) It's highly chaotic. Different stuff seemes to happen at differetn times. For example, a mirage is produced in Mission 1, you can see what looks like a storm in Eyeless, and matter bumps to background music in Devil's Dalliance. This means that the forces are highly unstable here.

6) Limbo seems to be connected to human consciousness. This could be explained by a theory of Quantum Mechanics.

Now, that I have a foundation, I can do some thought experiments. First, because pocket universes exist, Limbo must be eternally inflationary. Also, because it overlaps with our universe and even creates shortcuts to certain places, it must have at least four spatial dimensions.

Because of the existence of unstable forces, it means that space and time are constantly being altered. This could be due to the fact that Limbo is very large, possibly larger than our universe, and that the forces may have different strengths in its higher number of dimensions. The chaos could also be the result of the existence of pocket universes.

The only theory that I know that can explain all this is String Theory combined with Quantum Consciousness theory.

String theory would allow for the possibility of a universe like Limbo, except that's mathematics at a high scale. Including Quantum Consciousness in the mix would just be mathematically baffling. But these two theories would explain everything. I just don't see how anyone is going to practically apply the mathematics to measure anything in Limbo.

 

[Jak]

how do you propose we get there...theoretically

 

[Railazel]

how do you propose we get there...theoretically

Well, from my basic understanding of theoretical physics, we would never be able to because we live in a universe of three spatial dimensions. To go to four dimensions, we would need to warp our three dimensions to make a fourth. Also, we would need to be able to overlap at least a portion of our universe with Limbo which require the boundary (if it exists) of our universe to curve and seep through Limbo's. Another possibility would be for us to fly past our universal boundary and who knows how that'll turn out.

 

[Jak]

Well, from my basic understanding of theoretical physics, we would never be able to because we live in a universe of three spatial dimensions. To go to four dimensions, we would need to warp our three dimensions to make a fourth. Also, we would need to be able to overlap at least a portion of our universe with Limbo which require the boundary (if it exists) of our universe to curve and seep through Limbo's. Another possibility would be for us to fly past our universal boundary and who knows how that'll turn out.

or we could just temporarily submerge ourselves in that world by dying (briefly. i know a guy who could hep with that). if our souls comeback to our bodies, thats a different story

 

[Railazel]

or we could just temporarily submerge ourselves in that world by dying (briefly. i know a guy who could hep with that). if our souls comeback to our bodies, thats a different story

Actually, our souls already reside there. It's just a matter of how our physical bodies will reach. So no deaths are necessary.

 

[Jak]

Actually, our souls already reside there. It's just a matter of how our physical bodies will reach. So no deaths are necessary.

wait...
*if our souls already reside there, how are both our souls and our physical manifestations residing in different planes?
*how would you suppose merging the two together?

 

[Railazel]

wait...
*if our souls already reside there, how are both our souls and our physical manifestations residing in different planes?
*how would you suppose merging the two together?

It's actually an old concept in some faiths and religions where our souls may exist in a plane that we cannot see while our physical bodies are here. Of course, the question of merging the two has also been put up and, naturally, different faiths have different ways of doing it.

In DmC, seemingly, it has to deal with having a connection with something from Limbo. Take Dante and Vergil, for example, who have demon blood and angel blood, and Kat who's a psychic and thus has an extra awareness.

Putting this in terms of Quantum Consciousness theory, Kat can control the states of her particles at will and, thus, can access higher dimensions.

Dante and Vergil, on the other hand, are living on the edge between our universes because of their blood which is from Limbo. In a sense, you can say that Limbo is their true home and that's why they can easily be pulled in and need to find ways out. Of course, this is assuming Angels and Demons are from Limbo.

 

[Jak]

It's actually an old concept in some faiths and religions where our souls may exist in a plane that we cannot see while our physical bodies are here. Of course, the question of merging the two has also been put up and, naturally, different faiths have different ways of doing it.

In DmC, seemingly, it has to deal with having a connection with something from Limbo. Take Dante and Vergil, for example, who have demon blood and angel blood, and Kat who's a psychic and thus has an extra awareness.

Putting this in terms of Quantum Consciousness theory, Kat can control the states of her particles at will and, thus, can access higher dimensions.

Dante and Vergil, on the other hand, are living on the edge between our universes because of their blood which is from Limbo. In a sense, you can say that Limbo is their true home and that's why they can easily be pulled in and need to find ways out. Of course, this is assuming Angels and Demons are from Limbo.

what if everything originates from limbo. heaven and hell alike. and once the demons in DmC took control over earth, they bridged limbo with earth.
however, in some christian traditions, our soul resides in our human body. so what if we "die" and have an out of body experience? our soul can travel both limbo and earth, like Kat and other mediums in the world

 

[Railazel]

what if everything originates from limbo. heaven and hell alike. and once the demons in DmC took control over earth, they bridged limbo with earth.
however, in some christian traditions, our soul resides in our human body. so what if we "die" and have an out of body experience? our soul can travel both limbo and earth, like Kat and other mediums in the world

That's perfectly possible. Putting it in scientific context, however, is a different challenge.

 

[MigsRZXAStylish]

Under the curiosity I formed after a good bit of debating in the DmC Dante vs DMC 3 Vergil thread, I have decided to try to actually figure out Limbo's physics and very nature. This will probably be one of the greatest intellectuals I shall ever face due to the bunch of mess Limbo goes through.

There a few things that I know are constants:
1) It's spatially- infinte in size. If you watch this and pause at certain areas, you can see that it goes on forever. The implications of this are staggering. It brings to question whether its within our universe or not. If it is, it means that our universe is holding another one within it that we aren't able to naturally see. However, for that to be possible, it would have to exist on another dimension.

2) It has no mass or, rather, the mass is made up of the matter within it. This is due to the fact that it is infinite size which means it has no intrinsic mass of its own. That also means that gravity works much differently in Limbo because things to tend to fall down when there's nothing at the bottom of their fall.

3) Space and Time are very malleable in Limbo. Pretty much anyone can manipulate them if they have the means. This implies that there is some underlying system that anyone can have access to.

4) It houses "pocket universes" as demonstrated when Dante entered a secret world to unlock his DT and the nature of his DT powers.

5) It's highly chaotic. Different stuff seemes to happen at differetn times. For example, a mirage is produced in Mission 1, you can see what looks like a storm in Eyeless, and matter bumps to background music in Devil's Dalliance. This means that the forces are highly unstable here.

6) Limbo seems to be connected to human consciousness. This could be explained by a theory of Quantum Mechanics.

Now, that I have a foundation, I can do some thought experiments. First, because pocket universes exist, Limbo must be eternally inflationary. Also, because it overlaps with our universe and even creates shortcuts to certain places, it must have at least four spatial dimensions.

Because of the existence of unstable forces, it means that space and time are constantly being altered. This could be due to the fact that Limbo is very large, possibly larger than our universe, and that the forces may have different strengths in its higher number of dimensions. The chaos could also be the result of the existence of pocket universes.

The only theory that I know that can explain all this is String Theory combined with Quantum Consciousness theory.

String theory would allow for the possibility of a universe like Limbo, except that's mathematics at a high scale. Including Quantum Consciousness in the mix would just be mathematically baffling. But these two theories would explain everything. I just don't see how anyone is going to practically apply the mathematics to measure anything in Limbo.

This is rather an interesting, intellectual, and scientific theory on what Limbo really is. It had changing physics. This is one of the things I liked about DmC to say the least.

 

[EllDawn]

After reading through the posts, I actually thought of a belief of one of the Native American groups. That dreams are actually adventures the human soul takes while we sleep. If, when you're awake, you're not happy, and your soul is happier in its nightly adventures, then it won't come back and you're dead. That kind of goes with the idea of a person's spirit existing both in another world and in our physical bodies.

I also had the thought that Limbo is like a person's mind. It doesn't have any limits. The only limits are self imposed. We're supposed to use only a small percentage of our brains, just as Limbo city was only a small part of the world of limbo. It could be that Mundus created limbo in order to hide the demons, sort of as a cloak. It did make it possible for the demons to watch the humans. In that case a human could travel to limbo through astral projection (what Kat does).

What I'm saying is it's not exactly a physical plane, not in my opinion anyway. It explains the strange physics. It could be something created by Mundus as an outer layer for demons to watch without being discovered. Or it's like a haunting where it has to have great amounts of energy in order to manifest. Maybe destroying the gate created the needed energy and threw the demons into the human world. We all ready know it's manipulated by the demons, and they can influence the human world while in limbo. With spirits, given enough energy to draw on, they can manipulate objects. Sometimes they can even become visible.

And now I'm not sure of what I'm saying any more. I've watched too much of Ghost Hunters, apparently. Maybe you can make some sense of it.

 

[TWOxACROSS]

You're putting a little too much emphasis on video game level design for your "Limbo goes on forever." You're using a video that displays what's past what the player is normally intended to see in the game. Limbo doesn't go on forever, it's a complete mirror of the real world. There only exists as much Limbo as there is real world.

You're also trying to say gravity doesn't exist there when it is displayed to constantly be in effect for everything that doesn't have something magical holding it up. You really just need to accept that it's there, just as many other scientific principles are, along with being able to breathe air, and good ol' combustion caused by firearms. Things don't float in Limbo because there's no gravity, things float in Limbo because something is magically holding it up.

And if something didn't have mass, we wouldn't be able to run around in Limbo because we'd be falling through everything, which reminds me of the major complaint I (and my friend actually in college for high-level physics) have on your whole "Vergil FTL thing," when something goes FTL, it no longer has any substantial mass - so even if Vergil was attacking at FTL speeds, his sword would just pass through everything.

Limbo is a magical realm, so much of it can be controlled with certain magical means. Malice is all-pervasive in Limbo and responsible for much of the geographical changes, but demons also have control over Malice to manipulate it as they see fit. Malice is really just like this force you can tell to telekinetically tear apart pieces of the world, or hold them in midair. Nephilim can alter it because they are half-demon, and Kat even has a limited, localized capability for messing with Limbo with all her magical concoctions.

However, there's only one instance of any sort of time manipulation, and we're still not clear on exactly how that happened. The events of The Trade are an isolated incident we can't figure out, but nowhere else does time not seem to progress like it normally does.
There's also no "pocket dimension." That "secret place" Dante goes too when unlocking his Devil Trigger is a part of Limbo that Vergil previously purified, apparently.

I don't know what mirage there was in Mission 1 >.> A storm is just a storm, and energy dancing like soundwaves to a beat isn't evidence of chaos or anything being "highly unstable" (what does that even mean?), it's evidence of a demon with some very fancy design concepts for her area of Limbo. Damn dude, even water bounces to a beat, so Limbo is at least no more chaotic than our own :/ At most Limbo is more easily modified by magic than the real world, but it really just seems to follow all the laws of physics until an active force manipulates it otherwise. A lot of what happens in Limbo is because of the inhabitants of Limbo, not Limbo itself...

It could be explained by a theory of quantum mechanics, or it could be explained because Limbo is a thinly-veiled realm sitting on top of our own, and anyone with magical inclination, even a psychic human, can sense it.

Ultimately, it seems like you're using a lot of cursory knowledge of theoretical sciences that you have no way of legitimately applying to the discussion because it's all theoretical, so you have no way of being able to prove those theories when applied to a completely imaginary universe.

It's like trying to convict someone of a crime with imaginary evidence :/

 

[Jak]

After reading through the posts, I actually thought of a belief of one of the Native American groups. That dreams are actually adventures the human soul takes while we sleep. If, when you're awake, you're not happy, and your soul is happier in its nightly adventures, then it won't come back and you're dead. That kind of goes with the idea of a person's spirit existing both in another world and in our physical bodies.

that explains a lot. looks like i'm gonna be taking a trip to dream land permanently

 

[EllDawn]

that explains a lot. looks like i'm gonna be taking a trip to dream land permanently

I don't think I'd want to do that. You might get trapped in a nightmare.

 

[Jak]

I don't think I'd want to do that. You might get trapped in a nightmare.

can't be any worse than what i've seen already

 

[Railazel]

You're putting a little too much emphasis on video game level design for your "Limbo goes on forever."

Don't ruin the fun.

Seriously though, you can check Mission 4 when Limbo attempts to drop the floor under Dante. There's what looks like a bottomless pit of... "sky" beneath them. Then there's Devil's Dalliance which was also an endless pit (however demons dude die and turn into red orbs when push them off a ledge... weird). You could argue that there's an end and that we can't see it. That's perfectly possible.

You're using a video that displays what's past what the player is normally intended to see in the game. Limbo doesn't go on forever, it's a complete mirror of the real world. There only exists as much Limbo as there is real world.

Except that's not always the case like when Dante used Limbo as a shortcut to get to Poison.

You're also trying to say gravity doesn't exist there when it is displayed to constantly be in effect for everything that doesn't have something magical holding it up. You really just need to accept that it's there, just as many other scientific principles are, along with being able to breathe air, and good ol' combustion caused by firearms. Things don't float in Limbo because there's no gravity, things float in Limbo because something is magically holding it up.

Or I can say that physics in Limbo works differently than our's. Heck, I didn't even deny the existence of gravity, I said it worked differently.

And if something didn't have mass, we wouldn't be able to run around in Limbo because we'd be falling through everything

I said that Limbo, itself, doesn't have mass. It's like how our universe's mass is made up of the stuff within it rather than having it's own mass. If it did, it would collapse on itself.

Limbo is a magical realm, so much of it can be controlled with certain magical means. Malice is all-pervasive in Limbo and responsible for much of the geographical changes, but demons also have control over Malice to manipulate it as they see fit. Malice is really just like this force you can tell to telekinetically tear apart pieces of the world, or hold them in midair. Nephilim can alter it because they are half-demon, and Kat even has a limited, localized capability for messing with Limbo with all her magical concoctions.

Okay? I never said otherwise.

However, there's only one instance of any sort of time manipulation, and we're still not clear on exactly how that happened. The events of The Trade are an isolated incident we can't figure out, but nowhere else does time not seem to progress like it normally does.
There's also no "pocket dimension." That "secret place" Dante goes too when unlocking his Devil Trigger is a part of Limbo that Vergil previously purified, apparently.

So, is the Lost City in Dante's mind?

Also, one instance is enough to say that Time can be manipulated in Limbo.

Iand energy dancing like soundwaves to a beat isn't evidence of chaos or anything being "highly unstable" (what does that even mean?)

Unstable means that the system is... wacky. It's when the system is highly sensitive to various degrees of changes (the proper term would be chaotic but I think unstable works). Considering that Limbo went from red sky and fog to blue sky and... dust... I can definitely say that nothing really makes sense in Limbo. There's a methodical madness in it- we can see the madness and all I'm doing is making a suggestion for the method.

It could be explained by a theory of quantum mechanics, or it could be explained because Limbo is a thinly-veiled realm sitting on top of our own, and anyone with magical inclination, even a psychic human, can sense it.

Okay, great. Choose what you want.

Ultimately, it seems like you're using a lot of cursory knowledge of theoretical sciences that you have no way of legitimately applying to the discussion because it's all theoretical, so you have no way of being able to prove those theories when applied to a completely imaginary universe.

So... what? Stop?

Seriously, dude, just shut up, go grab a cookie, sit down at the computer, think about the implications of these ideas being right, then take a bite out of that cookie, nod your head, say "hmmm...", think about it some more, then chew on the cookie again. Why? Because that's what this thread is for.

After reading through the posts, I actually thought of a belief of one of the Native American groups. That dreams are actually adventures the human soul takes while we sleep. If, when you're awake, you're not happy, and your soul is happier in its nightly adventures, then it won't come back and you're dead. That kind of goes with the idea of a person's spirit existing both in another world and in our physical bodies.

I also had the thought that Limbo is like a person's mind. It doesn't have any limits. The only limits are self imposed. We're supposed to use only a small percentage of our brains, just as Limbo city was only a small part of the world of limbo. It could be that Mundus created limbo in order to hide the demons, sort of as a cloak. It did make it possible for the demons to watch the humans. In that case a human could travel to limbo through astral projection (what Kat does).

What I'm saying is it's not exactly a physical plane, not in my opinion anyway. It explains the strange physics. It could be something created by Mundus as an outer layer for demons to watch without being discovered. Or it's like a haunting where it has to have great amounts of energy in order to manifest. Maybe destroying the gate created the needed energy and threw the demons into the human world. We all ready know it's manipulated by the demons, and they can influence the human world while in limbo. With spirits, given enough energy to draw on, they can manipulate objects. Sometimes they can even become visible.

And now I'm not sure of what I'm saying any more. I've watched too much of Ghost Hunters, apparently. Maybe you can make some sense of it.

That's actually pretty close to how Limbo works normally (at least in terms of how we get there).

Although, talking about this kind of stuff has got me wondering if Dante has a soul in Limbo like everyone else...

 

[Jak]

That's perfectly possible. Putting it in scientific context, however, is a different challenge.

well, there might not be any concrete scientific evidence due the the fact that these "gods" can alter reality witht he slip of a wrist. however, sort of like the mexican american war, after the war was over, texas became a part of the U.S. maybe the angels just gave limbo to the demons. we might not have the proper tech but it is possible to build a bridge between two dimensions. its just getting to the other side alive is the difficult part

 

[Railazel]

well, there might not be any concrete scientific evidence due the the fact that these "gods" can alter reality witht he slip of a wrist. however, sort of like the mexican american war, after the war was over, texas became a part of the U.S. maybe the angels just gave limbo to the demons. we might not have the proper tech but it is possible to build a bridge between two dimensions. its just getting to the other side alive is the difficult part

On the matter of Limbo's origins, since Angels and Demons have always been fighting, I would assume Limbo was the battleground.

And crossing dimensions... Travelling between two universes is more than just a matter of getting to the other side. It first brings to question whether our universe is even escapable or if it even has an edge.

 

[Jak]

On the matter of Limbo's origins, since Angels and Demons have always been fighting, I would assume Limbo was the battleground.

And crossing dimensions... Travelling between two universes is more than just a matter of getting to the other side. It first brings to question whether our universe is even escapable or if it even has an edge.

if there is a way to cross successfully, then i guess there is no real bridge. escaping...we'll cross that bridge when we get there

 

[Railazel]

if there is a way to cross successfully, then i guess there is no real bridge. escaping...we'll cross that bridge when we get there

And that shall be the task for my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandbabies.