The possibilities....
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I see this as a win
Considering e = mc^2, creating a small pebble would probably drain you dead.
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Considering e = mc^2, creating a small pebble would probably drain you dead.
I was hoping the fat would be considered equalivelent exchange for equal mass.
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Considering e = mc^2, creating a small pebble would probably drain you dead.
I'm sure it would be quite rare to fight in a clean-room where such a tactic would be necessary, but not to worry... even in conditions free from dirt and dust, you can still get several hits in by converting your ordinary EDC PocketSand
into earth-shot. -
I was hoping the fat would be considered equalivelent exchange for equal mass.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]If we're talking fullmetal alchemist rules, it's pretty clear that transmutation doesn't change the atomic make-up of a thing. Just the chemical bonds and intermolecular forces, combined with moving the bits around following a formula. However, you could turn fat into a hydrogen-propelled diamond bullet.
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You can make something levitate, removing the need for it to be supported.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Though that wouldn't help for many biological organisms, such as arthropods, where it's about Surface Area vs. Volume in diffusion. The oxygen diffusion rate gets too low without higher O2 concentrations
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The whole issue with that is not only about weight, that hardly scratches the surface. Heat transfer, friction, radiation, mass transfer, etc. all get limited by this in some way and are FAR more consequential than weight alone.
Also diffusion.
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The magic probably takes the energy from somewhere else
Mana/chi/whatever
That still is a violation of entropy because you’ve increased the “order” of energy in the universe as a whole, which is not possible.
If you can violate entropy, one can create a more than perfect Carnot Engine (or in general just a heat engine with efficiency greater than 1) which would allow you to generate an infinite amount of energy in the form of mechanical motion.
Unless in creating/gaining “mana” one is accelerating the entropic decay of the universe as a whole equal to or greater than the amount of entropy reversed locally (eg spells must produce heat and be inefficient at converting mana energy into work), magic would violate thermodynamics and allow for infinite energy creation.
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Fuck the square cube law. If there is any magic that can freeze things / make things cold, the second law of thermodynamics is void, and by extension the other two are as well.
Perpetual motion machines? Hell yeah. Infinite energy? Hell yeah. Being able to create negative energy by decreasing entropy thus being able to create antigravity and simulate negative mass? Hell yeah
If you get negative mass (we'll, negative energy density) you get a working Alcubierre drive. Instant FTL.
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That still is a violation of entropy because you’ve increased the “order” of energy in the universe as a whole, which is not possible.
If you can violate entropy, one can create a more than perfect Carnot Engine (or in general just a heat engine with efficiency greater than 1) which would allow you to generate an infinite amount of energy in the form of mechanical motion.
Unless in creating/gaining “mana” one is accelerating the entropic decay of the universe as a whole equal to or greater than the amount of entropy reversed locally (eg spells must produce heat and be inefficient at converting mana energy into work), magic would violate thermodynamics and allow for infinite energy creation.
If I was shoe horning a magic system that co-exists with physics, I'd make magical black holes around the universe that are constantly sucking matter in and turning them into magic in some kind of sub space that eventually leaks back in as matter and regular energy. Close the system so to speak.
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If I was shoe horning a magic system that co-exists with physics, I'd make magical black holes around the universe that are constantly sucking matter in and turning them into magic in some kind of sub space that eventually leaks back in as matter and regular energy. Close the system so to speak.
I have had the same thought before. Unfortunately conservation of energy is not enough to ensure entropy is monotonically increasing.
Say you created a tiny universe with the same average entropy of our universe and then you connected it to the edge of our universe. Energy is not conserved because you just added some, but entropy is because you didn’t create an entropy potential.
Say you had a warmer object and a colder object and you took all the heat energy from the cold object and added it to the warm object. The energy of your system was conserved, but its entropy decreased, violating the second law.
You can use violations of the second law to violate the other laws because entropy naturally wants to increase due to probability (which cannot be violated without destroying math and logic etc.).
In the scenario above, if you put some fluid between the two objects you could harness convection via a turbine to harvest energy. Even though your action of moving energy around didn’t create or destroy energy, it created a sort of entropic potential energy. Kind of like how teleporting an object to a higher elevation doesn’t really increase any energy in the universe since all mass and kinetic energy were conserved, but you’ve now increased the potential energy of the object which would become kinetic energy as the object falls back down. You could then harvest infinite energy if you repeated the cycle.
In order for one to move energy around via magic without violating entropy, one has to increase the entropy of the universe by at least the same amount it would take to move that energy without magic.
The solution I thought of was just that magic accelerates the expansion of the universe. Technically this still allows for some “impossible” stuff locally, like a perpetual motion machine or free energy generator that will eventually die but on the timescale of human lives seem infinite.
Magic would get weaker with use over time as the universe nears it’s equilibrium temperature, and you would be shortening the lifespan of the universe every time magic is used. But even if you used it excessively, you probably wouldn’t be shortening the lifespan of the universe by very much unless you were using magic to like move black holes around or rearrange galactic clusters.
