Timeline for Realistic version of White and black magic
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 30 at 18:18 | comment | added | Robin Saunders | I'm not sure I agree. Arthur C Clarke famously quipped that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and Brandon Sanderson has spoken about how magic which violates the laws of thermodynamics can break immersion. I'd say it's possible to do interesting and magical-feeling things without breaking the most fundamental of physical laws. | |
| Jan 30 at 10:07 | comment | added | DystD | * (in this case). What I meant to say was that naturally occurring effects aren't interesting if we're considering magic, and those that don't happen naturally, require some form of energy. | |
| Jan 30 at 10:03 | comment | added | DystD | @o.m. I hadn't heard of it, thanks. I wasn't sure what you were referring to, but re-reading my comment, I think it must be about how a change of state that doesn't require energy would still require an increase of entropy. I know little chemistry, but I suppose that if the reaction releases energy, then the entropy is actually increased instead of reduced (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Creating the poison would be disorder instead of order. | |
| Jan 29 at 5:32 | comment | added | o.m. | @DystD, consider Maxwell's Demon and how that violates thermodynamics. Even rearranging existing matter takes energy. | |
| Jan 28 at 20:34 | comment | added | DystD | @RobinSaunders I think that mundane sense is what o.m. is referring to, and what's breaking physical laws. How do you combine mundane ingredients to produce poison without energy? If no energy was required, it'd happen without magic, naturally on its own. At the very least, you'd need to put the ingredients together, and that's kinetic energy. | |
| Jan 25 at 13:46 | comment | added | Robin Saunders | Put another way, if we want to produce poison without magic, we don't have to put in the energy needed to conjure a poisonous substance from nothing - we can produce it from mundane ingredients in our environment. But if we want to produce a fireball, we do need to get its energy from somewhere, whether it's present in ingredients (as in gunpowder) or fed in by us during chemical synthesis. | |
| Jan 25 at 13:44 | comment | added | Robin Saunders | @Davor As I acknowledged, all physical processes involve energy in some sense, but I don't think this is the sense o.m. meant when they said "all effects need some sort of energy". Fireballs and the like deal physical damage directly through their energy - there is no way for a fireball to produce a large effect without putting in a large amount of energy into it. By contrast, the mechanisms of poisons (and hence their effects) do not depend on the amount of energy needed to produce them, which is relatively tiny and in some cases may be net negative. | |
| Jan 24 at 11:59 | comment | added | Davor | @RobinSaunders - where does the poison come from? If you want to conjure it from nothing, that actually requires a pretty big amount of energy (e=mc^2) even for just a few grams. | |
| Jan 22 at 22:38 | comment | added | Robin Saunders | While I agree that producing fire from the heat in a living body breaks the second law of thermodynamics, I wouldn't say that "all effects" need energy. For sure, a fireball or anything designed to deal physical destruction will need an energy source. But even staying within the realm of violence, poisoning works by interfering with life processes. No energy per se is needed, except in the mundane sense that all physical processes involve energy. | |
| Jan 21 at 17:14 | history | answered | o.m. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |