Could members of the Green Lantern Corps create kryptonite if they wanted?
I'm aware the rings can make pretty much anything the wearer can imagine, but in order to make a complex organism like radioactive kryptonite, wouldn't they need to know the molecular composition? Was this ever used in a story?
I'm guessing Alan Scott could do it as the source of his ring's power was magical, but could John Stewart or Guy Gardner do it?
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In the JLA/JSA crossover where they teamed up with the Fawcett heroes to fight King Kull, Hal Jordan and Alan Scott were both shown to be able to synthesize green kryptonite with their power rings.
Sorry for the poor quality, but this is what I was thinking of:
The Baron said:
That was quick. Thanks.
Of course, I don't know the mechanics of it.
Do the rings just know how to make the stuff, or do the Lanterns have to either know the composition of the substance in question, or to have scanned it with their rings in the past, as Hal and Alan almost certainly have?
(On a side bnote, I swear I remember a story where it was established that kryptonite from the Earth-2 universe didn't affect a Kryptonian from the Earth-1 universe, and vice versa.)
Randy Jackson said:
"Do the rings just know how to make the stuff, or do the Lanterns have to either know the composition of the substance in question, or to have scanned it with their rings in the past, as Hal and Alan almost certainly have?"
Probably a bit of both. Although I think the ring could make whatever the wearer imagined in any case, it might be that much easier if the wearer him/her/itself knew the mechanics or science behind what's involved. I seem to recall, during the Englehart/Staton days, that Kilowog's constructs were simple and straightforward because that's the mind of guy he was.
Here's 1001 Uses for a Power Ring. Although I never got quite to a thousand, some of them are quite amazing.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke
IIRC, there hacd been various editorial edicts surrounding different Lanterns and how they use the ring. For instance, I think Kyle is nrver supposed to use the same construct twice because of his imagination, whereas most of John's constructs are simple and utilitarian.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
Yes, as discussed in the linked thread.
Kyle was supposed to never create the same thing twice, but I argue that he used his ring to create only one thing over and over again: light constructs. In that way, he is the least imaginative GL to ever wield a ring.
There is also 1980's DC Comics Presents #26, which is doubly noteworthy as the first preview of the New Titans and as the prelude to Mongul's first appearance.
In it, the alien N'Gon possesses Hal's body and creates Greek Kryptonite with his ring to confront Superman.
It is treated rather matter-of-factly; presumably the GLC Members have no particularly difficulty with that task.
Was it ever established that the rings were pre-programmed with all known information and atomic building blocks (like I suppose the Star Trek replicators were) so that the knowledge of the individual members didn't have to include this info?
No idea. There were times when the rings seemed to provide access to vast repositories of knowledge from alien cultures, but of course there were also limitations.
On the other hand, the nature of Kryptonite wasn't always presented as particularly complex and challenging to synthesize. Early on it was actually a metal and therefore a single element instead of a complex compound or molecule, which would imply that it had a comparably simple structure and would theoretically be about as easy to produce as any of the heaviest elements in the periodic table, the most well known of which is probably Plutonium. The 1971 story which transmuted Earth's Kryptonite into iron seemed to hint that it was a chain reaction, some form of nuclear fusion or fission or perhaps radioactive decay. It probably had at least some inspiration in the natural decay of Uranium into lead. That decay takes billions of years and goes into three intermediate elements - Radium, Radon and Polonium - but hey, it is comics. Some things are portrayed in less than accurate ways.
However, the post-Crisis John Byrne story where Superboy meets Superman establishes that their respective Kryptonites are composite substances with different properties yet built of many of the same elements. While the short-lived "Tales of Kryptonite" that existed in the 1960s IIRC established that Kryptonite is not only easily transmutable into other colors of Krytonite, but also sentient. I file that one under "cute anomalies".
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