To make a long story short, a discussion happened in This Topic about Toa elemental capabilities, and I want to know what’s going on with Lewa.
Namely, how was it that Lewa was able to generate bubbles of air in the vacuum of space with no air present in Reign of Shadows:
Lewa summoned his elemental power, an effort in this environment, and created a thin bubble of air linked around the heads of all the castaways except Miserix. “Join hands!” yelled the Toa of Air, seeing the group members already beginning to drift away from each other.
The environment was described as airless not long before. So can Toa create their element out of… Nothing?
I would assume this act of creation is converting his elemental energy into Air. That’s typically the explanation for how they create additional matter/thing of their element in other environments.
I imagine that a toa’s ability to create an element is the reverse on absorbing one. Most toa can absorb their element, converting mass to energy, so in my mind creating their element is converting energy to mass. Toa have a battery of elemental energy built into themselves, so creating their element in any environment would make sense
That would explain why it’s considered “an effort” in the quote. Lewa would be using more of his elemental power than normal to simply keep everyone breathing (himself included).
I rarely partake in these types of discussions mainly because I normally have no idea what the hell I’m talking about when it comes to Bionicle lore, but I feel like I can contribute my two cents to this one
Note: I’m not an astronomer or a physicist, I’m more of a biologist, so I might get some stuff here wrong
So, as far as I know, such thing as ‘perfect vacuum’ (vacuum with precisely 0% content of air in it) is a pretty hard thing to find in our universe. You’d have to fly countless of light years into the void of space to come across vacuum with such content of air.
The closer you are to a planetary body like the Earth, the higher the content of air in the vacuum of space will be, because, no matter what, air always tends to escape the atmosphere. That’s not really “nothing”, but still not a lot, we’re talking way less than a percent of air particles per cubic meter (you can do the conversion into murican football field units on your own, that’ll be your homework), which is definitely not nearly enough air for stuff like breathing (I know it’s crazy, but you actually can’t breathe in space), but maybe it’s just enough for a very powerful Toa of air to generate (with “an effort”) more air out of, using fictional robot elemental magic.
As far as I remember, Lewa and the company ended up in space relatively near one of the Magnas (can’t remember which exactly), which is a planet with an atmosphere consisting of air, and Lewa was a very powerful Toa at that point. So, all of my conditions are met here, so he can generate air without breaking any of the elemental power rules of the Bionicle universe.
Not out of nothing - out of elemental energy. Toa do not need for their element to be present in the environment, they can create it on their own. Utilizing pre-existing surrounding element is just more efficient:
Man came up with a whole theory not knowing the greg quote had out-maneuvered him
That would make sense, and would also explain how their elemental energy is never at risk of depleting entirely - it always seemed like such a thing would be a pretty big danger for most Toa.
The theory is still plausible, it’s just that it is not needed - the feat still makes sense as is. Speaking of creation being reverse of absorbtion, I would point your attention to Book 7 of Bionicle Adventures where on page 60 Matau uses his power to absorb ALL THE AIR in the sealed corridor down to the very last molecule to create a perfect vacuum. The idea that Lewa can create air bubbles in the not-so-perfect vacuum suddenly becomes not very surprising.
And I will add that all Toa Metru were out of EE for the majority of Legends of Metru Nui because they did not yet know how to use it efficiently and ran out of it during first three books.
My biggest problem was that they didn’t commit to it. At first it was just jungle, then it was jungle +air jokes and a year later it was straight up jungle + air = two elements for Lewa
If you are going to swap elements for Lewa, then do it, but stick to your decision!
