r/Greenlantern • u/Ok_Okra7177 • 1d ago
Question Can Lanterns make non-construct substances through chemical reactions?
Forgive me if this sounds like a stupid question (and quite frankly pointless, just indulge my curiosity) but I was wondering whether or not, for example, a Lantern were to create table salt/sodium chloride (NaOH + HCl) through the experiment rather than simply creating the salt itself, would the salt be a construct or would it be the real thing? Same with how water is created, real water or construct water?
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u/onyxonix 1d ago
To me, all constructs are made of the same hard light, but in the Justice League animated series, Kilowog built a bomb, which I imagine involves some chemical reactions. With time and concentration, maybe
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u/Pegasoo0 1d ago
I have no idea, but I think it would be like the others' builds and the ones by John. It might be more effective since it’s more detailed, idk
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u/NyctoCorax 1d ago
I mean movie Hal made a flamethrower which is considerably more bullshit.
They could easily use the ring to create the conditions for a chemical reaction to occur if that's what you mean, assuming they knew how of course.
Hell one of the times they had a GL (Kyle I think) make kryptonite he had to know the chemical formula to create it, but it then created the necessary radiation to take out Superman.
(First time that happened I believe Hal just made it. And more recently they clearly forgot this was an option. Personally I headcanon kryptonite to be a visible spectrum radiation to tie into how supes powers work by solar absorption, this is just a very specific wavelength that poisons the cells - if that's the case you could easily mimic it though)
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u/redneckotaku 1d ago
Since we have Ultraviolet Lanterns, a Part of the invisible spectrum, a Kryptonite Lantern would be cool.
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u/jerorapero 1d ago
I remember tomar re creating a bug from his planet that would spray some substance, so I guess so
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u/MisterEdJS 1d ago
I seem to remember Hal doing exactly this during the Silver Age, using the ring to control chemical reactions to create an acid or something, so he could dissolve something yellow that his ring didn't work on.
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u/Superman_Primeeee 1d ago
Hal has:
Created an invisible forcefield
Created aspirin
Made more rings
Worn clothes that he turns into his costume
Created space warps
Shrunk someone
Shrunk himself
Turned himself into a robot
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u/Perlmannecklace 20h ago
I think they could. One explanation i always like was when Kyle (forgot the issue) blocks the barrel of alien gun to his head with a construct banana. After the gun backfires, Kyle says something like his mixture of will and imagination made a banana that could withstand a multi-megaton bomb.
So, if their will wants to make salt out of thin air, the ring could just interpret that and do the molecular heavy lifting.
Oh god. You could have endless pocket sand...
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u/flurocainedaisy 1d ago
Chemical reactions are affected by what surrounds them. If you could control temperature and pressure, plus titration of reactants? Yeah, you could probably synthesize things we still can’t, we just don’t have that much continuous, fluid control of material.
You would want to be a chemist, though. But I’m thinking about complex synthesis of biochemical structures- that’s a whole other world. Relatively simple chemical reactions (bombs, flamethrowers, etc) aren’t really made for tight control of function. They’re made to get to position and then go boom.
This might mimic the (I’m speculating from whole cloth here lol) basic synthesis process that the wearer directs the ring through- plasma ➡️atomic structure. There has to be a point where you ‘let go’ and let the construct lock
into its form and structure. There’s a similar pattern of hold/release there.
My current hot take is becoming: it’s SO much power that it strikes force from the equation. You’re left with problems that can’t be solved with force- and plenty can’t.
In practice it seems to come down to skill and dexterity- the bottleneck in efficiency is the person who wields it. They aren’t mechanistic constructs. Their power therefore comes from things that can’t be manufactured. Like consciousness. And everything that comes with it.
Vulnerability comes from that too.
So.. kind of a dogfight structure: who can fly the killing machine faster, better, more creatively, who can project strategy and tactics (very different things) through the prism of these energy weapons.
So is the fight about tactics or ideology? Seems like it’s a mixture of both. Not easy to map one onto the other, either. What do you need for that? Willpower and idealism. And an impatience with the way things are, because inaction feels like complicity. You’re making choice either way.
I don’t really buy that any of this is instinct or reflex, either. Anyway- it’s a fun conceptual universe… and absolutely none of this came through in the tv show lol. But it was the characters that got my attention. All of this is just further means for the characters to show us who they are.
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u/DTux5249 1d ago
I mean, they could. I don't think they never have (just make the results of reaction, right?), but they can create any substances, and those substances can react. Ask Guy Gardener making a bunch of neurotransmitters for... reasons
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u/ItsOkItOnlyHurts 6h ago
AFAIK the only limits on this are 1) the lantern knows the requisite chemistry 2) is very specific in their construct and/or verbal commands to the ring
Seems like everyone here remembers versions of this happening but no one can remember a specific book or anything XD (me included)
Idk if it counts but maybe the times lanterns have created breathable atmosphere for others? (such as in the Doomsday Clock book when the Justice League goes in space) Idk if it's ever been explained if that's an extension of the ring's life support or not
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u/TeacatWrites 22h ago
Didn't one of them create functional kryptonite that actually affected a Kryptonian at some point?
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u/dot_exe- 1d ago
Yes. The is a run where they make machine constructs that outright terraform a planet for Kilowog’s people, one of which was creating oceans. They seemed to have done it without the need of any significant starting material either. In that same run they also used the ring to contain the souls of the dead and were going to somehow use it to resurrect them before ultimately being sabotaged by Sinestro.