Ukrainian writer in need of your knowledge

[Mike Air]

Good day and thank you for taking interest in this thread =)

My name is Mykhailo, and I am currently creating a concept of a sci-fi character. I require your help to point out obvious physics-related mistakes in my concept. Tips and directions on improving the concept are highly encouraged as well.

In the universe where the story takes place rare individuals may deny, refuse to believe in certain aspects of our life (quite anything goes here: from abstract concepts such as love/wealth/dignity etc. to laws of physics). This makes them different and (most of the time) miserable. The fictional part is that when such a person denies a concept, it is completely lost to him, but on the other hand he gets to bend it at will since for him it's nothing but an illusion. For example: 'normal' people accept/belive in probability, and this belief supports the random outcome of flipping a coin. But for those who deny probability the very idea of 'random' is a joke, and because of this denial they can actually influence the result of flipping a coin - getting 'heads' 100 times in a row for example.

Which brings us to my character, whose draft name is Black. He denies light. This renders him completely black (much like black holes I guess), since his essence immediately 'kills' photons that reach his body by denying them, and as thus nothing bounces of, no light is reflected, creating perfect blackness. He also doesn't 'see' in normal way - he just knows the light is there. If any light exists, anywhere - he can feel it. He can also switch it off by denying it. I'm planning to have him developing this ability so that he eventually learns to benefit from it in various ways:

1) create complex 2d (and later 3d) illusions of perfectly black objects - text, figures of people/animals, copies of self etc;
1.5) Pretty much everything that can be understood by his brain could be rendered this way. For example, if someone explained to him how the mandelbrot set is visualised, he would be able to 'project' it on any flat surface and to explore it in great detail (restrained only by computational limits of the brain)
2) temporarily blinding people by preventing light from reaching receptors in the eye.
3) explore the universe by mentally grasping light. I understand this can also be used to partially 'look in the past' because of the light reflected from Earth some time ago.

etc. etc.

***
My aim is to make this character believable even for a scientist, which is why I require your help in developing this concept.

Various notes:

I would like to point out that this is NOT in any way a superhero concept (although this was partially inspired by dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, the only similarities I want them to have is some actual science behind their abilities. I have read on wikipedia that Alan Moore in fact consulted some physicians while working on the omnipotent doc). The story will focus on phylosophy, human relationships, morality etc.

I apologise if my request does not belong to this forum, but I think you'd agree that it's hard to determine where to put it. I need some advice on physics, this forum is amongst google's top picks and I am posting in most general subforum. Again, my apologies if this post caused any inconvenience for the forum users/mods.

EDIT: Wow, look at the 'similar threads'... seems like another ukrainian writer - Uksvets - requested your help people. I mean, what were the chances=)

EDIT#2: I will check this thread next tuesday-wednesday. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[JoAuSc]

Good day and thank you for taking interest in this thread =)

My name is Mykhailo, and I am currently creating a concept of a sci-fi character. I require your help to point out obvious physics-related mistakes in my concept. Tips and directions on improving the concept are highly encouraged as well.

I'll contribute a few comments:

1. What happens if Black controls light and someone else is trying to control it in some other way?
2. Wouldn't denying light make you invisible?
3. I'd think you need to create consistent, detailed rules as to how "denying" things works.

 

[Battlecruiser]

Which brings us to my character, whose draft name is Black. He denies light. This renders him completely black (much like black holes I guess), since his essence immediately 'kills' photons that reach his body by denying them, and as thus nothing bounces of, no light is reflected, creating perfect blackness. He also doesn't 'see' in normal way - he just knows the light is there. If any light exists, anywhere - he can feel it. He can also switch it off by denying it. I'm planning to have him developing this ability so that he eventually learns to benefit from it in various ways

I don't really understand this ability to deny something, but the reason that things are black is because they absorb all the light, so that there are no photons left to get reflected back. So black holes are black because their gravitation field just pulls all the photons within the hole. Light is composed of photons, which are just packets of energy. It doesn't make much sense to me to just destroy (if that is what "kills" means) energy because that would violate the Law of Conservation of Energy.