Even though the ball looks round just like a pearl, the surface is anything but round at a microscopic level. It would appear rather mountainous with pits in between all the mountains. Think of it as having retention basins in the coverstock. All reactive balls have these, but they happen to be the largest on solids and smallest on pearls, with hybrids falling somewhere in between.
John,
I hate to disagree but your confusing surface with cover stock composition. You could have a pearl with deep grooves just as easily as you could a solid or hybrid. You will more normally see solid balls finished with lower surface grits and pearls polished or with higher surface grits but there are exceptions to this rule. The Rotogrip Hysteria and Hammer Viral are both polished solids the closest I can't think of a pearl with a real low surface grit off the top of my head The Hammer Arson Low Flare Pearl comes at 3K or 4K. Basically the mountains and pits you are referring to is the surface of the ball and any ball can have any surface put on it be it pearl, hybrid, or solid. The difference between pearl, hybrid and solid has to do with the additives in the actual makeup of the cover stock pearls having additional mica (from what I've heard) added to cause the ball to slide farther. Hybrids are a mix of solid and pearl cover stocks mixed together.
Now solids may have larger pores which is different and takes place at an even smaller level than surface but I'm not entirely sure that even that is correct. Actually porosity of different cover stocks is something I've never seen discussed with real numbers so anything said that way is simply supposition. Many of us suspect that solid lower grit surfaced heavy oil balls probably do absorb more oil than a comparable polished surface ball but I would guess there is a lot of variation even between those. It's always important to remember the difference in what we know, what we suspect, and what's just rumor.
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