scientificpokedex:

This one is going to be fun. Perhaps the single most fundamental piece of technology in the pokémon world is the pokéball. For storing and transporting live animals, these small spheres are far beyond any scientific advancements we have today; but maybe not that far.

Pokéballs transform pokémon into energy, and store them in that form inside. Albert Einstein famously discovered that mass and energy are the same thing in his famous equation,

Using this, the smallest pokémon (Gastly, Haunter, and Flabébé) at 0.1 kg would be converted into 9,000,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy, and Groudon weighing in at 950.0 kg would be converted into 85,500,000,000,000,000,000 Joules of Energy.

The pokéball is capable of storing between 9 quadrillion and 85 quintillion Joules of energy.

Okay, let’s take a step back. How does the pokémon convert from one state to another? The equation I gave to you wasn’t exactly correct. The actual formula Einstein derived was:

What does this change? Although its often neglected, when taking a square root you have to include both the positive and negative solutions. So the correction to the first equation becomes:

But that’s ridiculous. How can something have negative energy? As it turns out, the negative solution is a very important one: the negative solution represents antimatter. We talked more about it in our Giratina article, but the important thing to know is when matter and antimatter collide, both particles are annihilated and transformed into pure energy.

So here’s what happens when you capture a pokémon: 

The pokéball somehow (by persuading a few quarks) changes approximately half of the pokémon’s atoms into their antimatter counterparts, which annihilate and transform into energy. The pokéball captures this energy like an electrical signal, the same way your phone or your wifi store information.

Converting energy back into matter is significantly more complicated, but not impossible. I won’t go into it, but for imagination’s sake you can imagine the pokéball using the energy encoded to essentially entirely rebuild the pokémon upon release.

The Pokéball converts a Pokémon into a pure energy form, which is stored inside.

Next, how does it store the Pokémon’s energy? A device that stores energy is called an accumulator, although more specifically the pokédex resembles a capacitor. A capacitor is typically made of two plates; the inner and outer shells of the pokéball. It stores energy in between the two plates in the form of an electric field. You can think of it almost like a trampoline; when you jump down on a trampoline, the elastic fabric stretches because you have given it energy to store. A capacitor is like that, and when you release the energy, its equivalent to the trampoline bouncing you back up.

Different types of pokéballs must use different dielectrics in the capacitor. A dielectric is what is contained within the two plates. it could be normal air, a vacuum, rubber, glass, an Apricorn or anything. In any case, the better the dielectric is, typically the more energy it can store. In that sense, some dielectrics must be better at storing specifically water pokémon for the dive ball, heavy pokémon (more energy) for the heavy ball, and so on. The Poké-Great-Ultra-Master balls are just steps up in the quality of the dielectric. Master Balls must use a rare or expensive material, which is why there are so few of them on the market.

Pokéballs are spherical capacitors which store energy. Different dielectrics are used in the different pokéballs, optimizing them to store specific kinds of pokémon.

Pokémon are said to be conscious and comfortable within their pokéball; because of this, it’s safe to assume that the ball adds some electrical signals to the pokémon’s energy form, kind of a digital mind-control that will keep the pokémon happy. It also uses this to “mark” the pokémon as caught, so no other trainer can catch it.

The pokéball is also connected to some wireless network, such that it can relay information to a trainer’s pokédex and also to their PC. This is how you store pokémon. The energy itself is still in the pokéball, but the information is in the PC.

Pokémon do not need to be fed in the PC or in their pokéballs because they do not have a physical body in this form.

15.02.16 4:12 3757 notes
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