MagicPhD
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World: Fractal
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Post by MagicPhD on May 19, 2015 17:12:12 GMT
I have a power generator that converts matter directly into energy. This is known by anybody who spends more then 10 minutes thinking about it, as I use it to supply the world with cheap clean energy. However, every generator is also a bomb. I have, of course, taken many precautions so nobody else learns how to do it. Re-deriving the method is also possible.
Does anybody have general advice on how to ensure that nobody detonates a matter-energy conversion WMD? I'm pretty sure we have it handled, but one can't be too careful about mass extinction events.
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Post by Meletiti Entelecheiai on May 19, 2015 18:00:14 GMT
Mm. Normally I would suggest an information ward, but your world's magic does not seem to allow for such things.
If you can maximize the amount of inconvenience it would take to learn how to make a bomb, that would be helpful. One idea that comes to mind is come up with a design that depends on economies of scale to function; this would make it difficult to make smaller, more useful bombs, as hopefully there are few people willing to blow up entire continents. This has the downside that the plants themselves will be more dangerous - do you have nonlocal energy transmission of any kind?
Related ideas: other obfuscated design practices, mutually assured destruction political entities.
Another option is... mm, you can't hang effects on organizations, can you.
How nonlocal is your local magic, anyway? Can you set up an automatic scanner to search the Earth for matter annihilation? How fast does it "evaluate": in principle, if you had a black box that could find annihilation and a black box that could interfere with the process, could you activate the latter in response to the former in time to prevent it from running to completion? What if the former was precognitive?
I can provide the former black box; I may be able to manage small scale precognition, but I suspect that I will end up having to figure out how to pull off nonmagical time travel and that you would have to implement it at great cost to yourself, so that is less of an attractive option. I have no idea how to manage the latter.
On an entirely random note, shouldn't direct matter conversion do unfortunate things to parity conservation? I wouldn't bring it up, but it seems like your magic cares about such things...
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MagicPhD
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Post by MagicPhD on May 19, 2015 18:40:03 GMT
I have done what I can to maximize inconvenience of learning how to build one. Nobody but me has access to the theoretical underpinnings or the device itself. I have also maximized the space inefficiency and intentionally obfuscated it's working. Only one has been built, only one needs to be built: we can manage power transmission just fine.
There are political entities who also wish this to be kept secret, who are aiding me in this.
A global spell is theoretically possible. Self-sufficient programmed spells do exist, and I could come up with one that blocked the M-E mechanism. Sustaining it globally would be an issue; other magic use could disrupt it, leading to a global malfuntioning self-sustaining spell, which is a bad idea. Currently, magic-based computers are slower than electronic computers. I expect this to change in the next decade.
I could create a spell to locally disrupt the effect from a distance: your second black box. It takes some finite time to start, and then sends a light-speed signal that would disrupt the process. Building this would take about a month.
The process is fast. After the same startup time, the process converts mass to energy at a rate given in tens of grams per second, depending on the exact settings and size of the device.
I have nothing that could detect the explosion before the light from it would reach me: which would be too late. Even a tenth of a second of precog could solve this issue.
I even know a possible in-universe method. FTL travel and wormholes should both be doable. So it should be theoretically possible to create a pair of wormholes in my lab that allow information to travel back in time by a second, giving me enough warning. I estimate making this would take me several decades if I made it my only priority. If you have some other method for the first black box, that would be great.
In fact, this conserves neither charge nor parity: it violates CP symmetry. This should not be a great shock, as weak force interactions can violate CP symmetry as well. CPT symmetry does still hold.
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Post by Meletiti Entelecheiai on May 19, 2015 19:06:23 GMT
Parity was the one which came to mind, but yes, CP symmetry. I'm not entirely sure how it's possible to conserve symmetries when you're setting charge and parity to zero from nonzero, but it's been a few hundred years since I last studied nonmagical physics so that doesn't say much.
Precognition... Well. The nature of this forum and of communication with me in particular is that instantaneous communication is trivial. (And on that note, at some point we should find out how the forum deals with two people from the same world moving at relativistic speeds relative to each other.) The existence of any relativistic object...
Yes, that will do. If you create a suitably robust object and shoot it off at relativistic speeds into space (you may feel free to insert as much grumbling about indistinguishable particles here as you like), I can anchor a perception spell on that object and communicate the occurrence of an M-E conversion event to you simultaneous to that perception from its reference frame, which (if it is also far enough from Earth) will be appreciably far into the past. Will that serve as your first black box?
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MagicPhD
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Post by MagicPhD on May 19, 2015 19:57:37 GMT
Leaf and Nifl are from the same universe, so perhaps one of them can be convinced to try it? They have some method of FTL, and Leaf has said that the forum is still better for interplanetary communication.
Anyway, I can launch a relativistic object. Is a sphere of ferromagnetic metal good enough to hang the spell on, or would it help to have some pattern on it. Either way, I'll need a few weeks to prepare a relativistic launcher.
If you can use that to then give exact coordinates for an M-E event ahead of time, I could then shut it down, solving the problem.
Thank you very much!
Several centuries of study? I'm impressed: I haven't reached half a decade yet. I'm sure there's a lot we can learn from each other.
It helps that both photons and mageons have non-zero parity and charge parity. With some work, one can balance the equations for CPT.
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Post by Meletiti Entelecheiai on May 19, 2015 20:11:25 GMT
Several centuries since I studied, I'm afraid. I've put a good two and a half millenia into metaphysics, but while I did get the local equivalent of a doctorate at the time my physics is extremely rusty. But yes, that does seem like it would help. And working with fellow scholars of any field is always quite fun.
Having a pattern on it would help. Doesn't matter what, it'll just make it easier to find, make it less likely that the spell could be confused by some identical ball elsewhere. It's not normally a problem, but I am casting an information-based target spell between truths here, and that's one of the more obvious fail-states I can imagine. If you encode a gigabyte's worth of random spin-states or something into it that would be perfect.
And then, yes, I can deliver exact coordinates relative to the center of the sphere. Mm... This might present some difficulties. As I mentioned earlier, performing momentous change directly is expensive. How fast can you query the forum for private messages? Or... Perhaps we could bring in Mother Starlight? If she would be willing to have her forum "software" send you a signal when you receive a private message containing a particular string, I can invoke a message when I detect an M-E conversion.
I'm always glad to help. My world has many problems it is very difficult for us to solve, so having a (relatively, on the scale of decades) easy way to help a few billion (?) people is always nice.
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Post by Mother Starlight on May 19, 2015 21:29:20 GMT
I can hook up a sender to a receiver for you.
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Hadassah
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Post by Hadassah on May 20, 2015 10:22:41 GMT
How opportune. This seems like the appropriate thread, if you don't mind me interrupting. I need help understanding the following technology. It appears to use a mechanism of converting matter into energy that we are not familiar with. We are dealing with someone using our world as a dealing grounds for weapons, and we found a stash of these rifles that use energy as a weapon. Our diviners and technicians both claim that it is using water to create energy, but it is beyond our current understanding. If anyone could help, I'd greatly appreciate it. If I can't find a way to justify my continued defense allowing access to this forum, it'll probably get shut down on our end.
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MagicPhD
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Post by MagicPhD on May 20, 2015 12:08:26 GMT
Mother Starlight, that would be greatly appreciated.
Hadassah-
They're using that kind of tech for hand held weapons!?
That's..rather tame. The weapons we have that work on those principles are city destroyers. Given that, I'm reluctant to spread generic knowledge of it's principles. If you have specific questions, I can answer them individually.
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Hadassah
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Post by Hadassah on May 20, 2015 12:26:12 GMT
My apologies. I should have clarified. We are looking for a way to track more of these down so that we can find the dealer and shut them down. I don't care how ithe works so much as I care about how to find them.
We don't have any means of finding these sources ourselves, and they are crafty enough to hide themsleves from magical scrying.
Our divinations state that the power source is somehow slightly poisonous and we know, when it is damaged, they release a store of water, but we can't track the mechanism through the city.
I was hoping that since there seems to be a matter to energy link, you might know what is going on and how to stop it.
The weapon releases powerful bolts of ball electricity that explode on impact, but I don't know if that helps.
Thanks, and good to know these could be that dangerous.
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MagicPhD
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World: Fractal
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Post by MagicPhD on May 20, 2015 12:38:51 GMT
That I can answer. These generators slowly leak a kind of detectable poison. Here are schematic of a device that can detect that poison when nearby, which can help you track it.
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Hadassah
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Post by Hadassah on May 20, 2015 12:46:23 GMT
Assuming that works, I appreciate it greatly. You may have made my week. I will try to figure out a way to compensate you in return for the boon you offer.
Thanks again! Back to work.
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MagicPhD
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World: Fractal
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Post by MagicPhD on May 20, 2015 13:01:51 GMT
You're welcome. Knowledge and understanding are gifts I give freely when I can.
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Post by Meletiti Entelecheiai on May 20, 2015 15:02:38 GMT
Huh. I didn't know those were possible in small-scale without magic. Learn something new every day.
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Hadassah
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Post by Hadassah on May 20, 2015 15:37:51 GMT
I don't think our world had any idea it could be done at all. Why spend all that effort making containment devices and poisonous energy when you could store the energy in superconductors.
We don't have the technology this miniaturized yet but I think we are getting there.
Then again there is something to be said about not needing to plug in to recharge every time you use up the power, let alone the the concerns with trying to get interuniversal plug-in adaptors for power when traveling.
We are cobbling together one of these now, but the seer said it would work. Thanks!
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