• Announcements

    • Robin

      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
Sign in to follow this  
Scotty

NP, Monday October 31, 2016

Recommended Posts

17 minutes ago, mlooney said:

If it is, we need to have speaks with The Dan about the term "Hijinks" then.  This, while amusing and world building and all that, isn't hijinks as such.  At least not as I define them, which, given my mental chemistry, may or may not be in touch with reality as the world normally defines it as.

Well we aren't exactly done yet, we still have yet to see how Rhoda carries Tiny Cat out of the mall, that could still be hijinky.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
16 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Catalina can ride on Rhoda's back, concealed by her hair.

Or just revel in it and ride her head, Shadow of the Colossus style minus the stabby and Rhoda's just 'haha forgot I had a doll of my girlfriend ignore me please' if anyone asks.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
15 hours ago, ijuin said:

I think that the reason for women's clothes having fewer/smaller pockets is because the whole design of modern women's clothes (at least the ones that are meant to show off a woman's figure) is for them to be close-fitting and hug their curves relatively tightly. Having bulging pockets detracts from this. So yes, you can blame men's sexual attraction (and/or women's desire to attract sexual attention) for it.

I think that theory about alliance between purse makers and pickpockets also makes sense :)

11 hours ago, Scotty said:

This does happen before Pandora becomes aware of the Will of Magic, so she's likely not aware of Flair for the Dramatic, which is probably what happened here. Rhoda was being dramatic enough for the Will to be like "Sure, why not?"

If it wasn't flair for the dramatic them, it still ranks up there with Ellen's overcharged beam, even the experts weren't sure how it completely transformed Vladia, but given Ellen's determination to protect Nanase in that moment, it altered the spell.

If I were to guess, it might be a combination of both. Maybe the magic system has a bit of flexibility in spell mechanics that allow for unusual effects under the right circumstances. Susan summoning Nase and Ellen copying Nanase's guardian form might fall under that flexibility too.

 

Of course flair for dramatic is implemented by flexibility in spell mechanics. Remember that both are done by same entity.

It's interesting that Pandora totally predicted Nanase getting guardian form BUT failed to predict this. Maybe she understand the flair for drama if lives are at stake, but fails to realize how much drama teenagers recognize in their sexual life?

10 hours ago, Circe said:
11 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Who paid for their food at the Food Court? That person would have to have had either a purse or a sufficiently large pocket that would allow them to carry cash or a debit/credit card. Granted, a card is a lot smaller than Catalina is now, but there are ways to conceal the pocket (if that's what was used).

Girls (and guys for that matter) can't really leave home without a few necessities:  phone, keys, cash/credit card, and ID.  And most will have a lot more than that...a wallet, makeup, comb or brush, charging cable for the phone, etc, etc.  Catalina may have had those things in her pants pockets, but surely Rhoda has a purse if she doesn't have pockets.  It could be a little clutch but she must have something to carry her stuff in.

That makes sense - except it wasn't shown on any panel, which seems suspicious. Yes, I also though about how they paid at the Food Court ... or, generally, they are in mall, didn't they wanted to buy something?

(Girls in movies and comics in general seems to be better able to deal with not having pockets than in reality. In fact, not only girls (warning, tvtropes))

7 hours ago, A.E. Pessimal said:

Which brings up another important question: Does Catalina now have an itty bitty phone? And can she make calls with it?

... considering the length of antennae needing to be in relation to length of waves using in the call, that's VERY good question. Of course, Cheerleadra was able to receive calls without the phone existing in physical reality at all, but Scotty will not like this automatic sideefect of beginner's spell ...

6 hours ago, Scotty said:

It is worth noting that she's managed to continue to keep both Rhoda's spell and her spell secret even till the current point in the story

Yup. The assumed level of hijinks notwithstanding, this story will NOT lead to Rhoda's spell getting public - or any other publicity big enough for main eight to notice.

18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Depends on WHICH pocket. Pocket on thigh is pretty useful for phones.

6 hours ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

Put the phones in your cargo pockets, that's what I do.

... I see that pocket has it's own name :)

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
32 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Of course flair for dramatic is implemented by flexibility in spell mechanics. Remember that both are done by same entity.

It's interesting that Pandora totally predicted Nanase getting guardian form BUT failed to predict this. Maybe she understand the flair for drama if lives are at stake, but fails to realize how much drama teenagers recognize in their sexual life?

I think Pandora predicted Nanase's guardian form easily because she knew Nanase was the type of person that would fight with all she had to protect someone. Pandora considers Tedd family, so that should extend to Nanase as she's Tedd's cousin and so Pandora would have paid more attention to her. Pandora admitted a few pages ago that she didn't pay much attention to Rhoda as much as she should have so this came out of left field for her.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
K^2    2
16 hours ago, A.E. Pessimal said:

Which brings up another important question: Does Catalina now have an itty bitty phone? And can she make calls with it?

Going off from physics, no. Antenna is now entirely too short to pick up the cell band. They are cutting it close as it is with modern phones. But then again, going off from physics, Catalina's metabolism should now be incompatible with survival. So we're knee-deep in "it's magic" territory. Should a magically shrunk cell phone still magically pick up the cell signal? I'm going to go with, "Yes, but only if it's dramatically appropriate."

Honestly, shrinking magic is the worst in the "making physicists cry" category. You can't just remove a fraction of the matter and have the rest work the same way, because you just broke biochemistry. Nor can you just make matter itself more compact, because you just broke quantum chemistry. And you can't make the space itself more compact, because now you have gravitational tides that are... Holly Hawking Radiation, the whole building is coming down! And none of it is fixable in any clear way without breaking a whole bunch of other things. Size is surprisingly fundamental. All of relativity rests on its invariance. And if you dig deep enough, so does a big chunk of quantum field theory. It's gauges all the way down. Compared to that, silly things like flight, super strength, morphing, or invisibility are trivial silly things. What's a few statistical anomalies reversing thermodynamics for a bit between friends? These things are very near believable. But if I was given a control over every physical constant with a challenge of making a girl 1/7th scale without killing her or taking out half the city block, I wouldn't know where to start.

So yeah, sticking with "flair for dramatic" as the only sane point of reference for this one.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'd totally get into the physics discussion but I'm much more curious about what happens if Rhoda doesn't concentrate as hard when it's time to unshrink Catalina, and she forgets to unshrink the clothes.... :D

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Just now, K^2 said:

Going off from physics, no. Antenna is now entirely too short to pick up the cell band. They are cutting it close as it is with modern phones. But then again, going off from physics, Catalina's metabolism should now be incompatible with survival. So we're knee-deep in "it's magic" territory. Should a magically shrunk cell phone still magically pick up the cell signal? I'm going to go with, "Yes, but only if it's dramatically appropriate."

Honestly, shrinking magic is the worst in the "making physicists cry" category. You can't just remove a fraction of the matter and have the rest work the same way, because you just broke biochemistry. Nor can you just make matter itself more compact, because you just broke quantum chemistry. And you can't make the space itself more compact, because now you have gravitational tides that are... Holly Hawking Radiation, the whole building is coming down! And none of it is fixable in any clear way without breaking a whole bunch of other things. Size is surprisingly fundamental. All of relativity rests on its invariance. And if you dig deep enough, so does a big chunk of quantum field theory. It's gauges all the way down. Compared to that, silly things like flight, super strength, morphing, or invisibility are trivial silly things. What's a few statistical anomalies reversing thermodynamics for a bit between friends? These things are very near believable. But if I was given a control over every physical constant with a challenge of making a girl 1/7th scale without killing her or taking out half the city block, I wouldn't know where to start.

So yeah, sticking with "flair for dramatic" as the only sane point of reference for this one.

The "it's magic" route can still logically work, there's a magic field that tightly surrounds a person that makes a person more durable when shrunk, as well as protects them from getting hurt from clothes being too tight or growing soo big that they break through walls and such as it was explained in Q&A#4. That same field could also adjust air and food as needed when a person breaths and eats. Now, they did say in that Q&A that eating something when shrunk, won't keep you full when you return to normal size so maybe it's a slower process for food, like the molecules and such get adapted to the right size during digestion, and therefore a shrunk person would still technically get full after eating a few crumbs of a cookie. The opposite kinda backs this up as someone who grows, filled up on an entire buffet, then shrinks, doesn't have any complications from the food not shrinking with them, all the excess food just disappears with a loud burp.  It's even stated that transformations in EGS carries few risks because it's more fun that way.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, K^2 said:

Going off from physics, no. Antenna is now entirely too short to pick up the cell band. They are cutting it close as it is with modern phones. But then again, going off from physics, Catalina's metabolism should now be incompatible with survival. So we're knee-deep in "it's magic" territory. Should a magically shrunk cell phone still magically pick up the cell signal? I'm going to go with, "Yes, but only if it's dramatically appropriate."

Aside from the antenna issue, the strength of the signal sent out by the phone would shrink by the same proportion, so the cell tower may not be able to hear the signal even if the wavelength mismatch wasn't there.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 minutes ago, JustBecauseICantDraw said:

So we're saying Cheerleadra has quite a large "antenna" then?

Well, if the phone is incorporated into her, then her entire body can act as the antenna, since the human body is electrically conductive.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
11 hours ago, Scotty said:
14 hours ago, K^2 said:

Honestly, shrinking magic is the worst in the "making physicists cry" category. You can't just remove a fraction of the matter and have the rest work the same way, because you just broke biochemistry. Nor can you just make matter itself more compact, because you just broke quantum chemistry. And you can't make the space itself more compact, because now you have gravitational tides that are... Holly Hawking Radiation, the whole building is coming down! And none of it is fixable in any clear way without breaking a whole bunch of other things. Size is surprisingly fundamental. All of relativity rests on its invariance. And if you dig deep enough, so does a big chunk of quantum field theory. It's gauges all the way down. Compared to that, silly things like flight, super strength, morphing, or invisibility are trivial silly things. What's a few statistical anomalies reversing thermodynamics for a bit between friends? These things are very near believable. But if I was given a control over every physical constant with a challenge of making a girl 1/7th scale without killing her or taking out half the city block, I wouldn't know where to start.

So yeah, sticking with "flair for dramatic" as the only sane point of reference for this one.

The "it's magic" route can still logically work, there's a magic field that tightly surrounds a person that makes a person more durable when shrunk, as well as protects them from getting hurt from clothes being too tight or growing soo big that they break through walls and such as it was explained in Q&A#4. That same field could also adjust air and food as needed when a person breaths and eats. Now, they did say in that Q&A that eating something when shrunk, won't keep you full when you return to normal size so maybe it's a slower process for food, like the molecules and such get adapted to the right size during digestion, and therefore a shrunk person would still technically get full after eating a few crumbs of a cookie. The opposite kinda backs this up as someone who grows, filled up on an entire buffet, then shrinks, doesn't have any complications from the food not shrinking with them, all the excess food just disappears with a loud burp.  It's even stated that transformations in EGS carries few risks because it's more fun that way.

Sure, doing the shrinking by removing cells, molecules, atoms or elemental particles is impossible without killing the person (at least if you shrink 7x).

When shrinking the "space" - making elemental particles smaller - you don't hit any problems inside body ; the size of particle is already function of some field. Where you hit problems is the border - normal and shrunk particles would react very differently than two normal or two shrunk particles, most likely explosively. But this problem disappears if instead of magic "ending" after shrinking there is actually some magic field which stays in place and converts particles between big and small version, or in case of something bigger, wrap it into the field and convert it gradually later (this is happening with food). Only problem is that you effectively have different values of physical contacts inside the field and outside, which sounds very similar to what Raven describes as spicy magic.

(Note: this is supposed to agree but extend what Scotty is saying.)

Another alternative is to use non-euclidean space, similarly as in bag in holding, just not closing it completely. Catalina is actually still as big as normally, but the space is curved so parallel lines which are 3.5 feet apart inside her body are 0.5 feet apart outside. Of course, normally would bending the space so much cause all sort of city-destroying effects (especially considering you might need more curved space than in black hole ... hmmm ... maybe not just city) but so would the mentioned bag of holding, lot of teleports (some work differently but many are supposed to bend space) and any of those magic doors and mirrors which have their ends very distant if in same universe at all. In fact, just in EGS, the shape of universe which takes griffin's half into account would likely be complicated. So, I would assume that it's proven that magic CAN bend space without gravitation-based sideefects.

And to look back at the cell reception: can work ; magic field will simply resize the wavelength of photons entering or leaving the shrunk area. It would be no different from what it already does with photons of visible light, which would otherwise develop big shift, resulting in Catalina not being able to see visible light and instead seeing ultraviolet with her 7x times smaller eye cells. In fact, considering Catalina does NOT complain she's blind, we can consider proven that the cellphone works :)

PS: Violating the thermodynamic laws is likely bigger reason for physics crying. And yes, it happens with magic very often.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Sure, doing the shrinking by removing cells, molecules, atoms or elemental particles is impossible without killing the person (at least if you shrink 7x).

When shrinking the "space" - making elemental particles smaller - you don't hit any problems inside body ; the size of particle is already function of some field. Where you hit problems is the border - normal and shrunk particles would react very differently than two normal or two shrunk particles, most likely explosively. But this problem disappears if instead of magic "ending" after shrinking there is actually some magic field which stays in place and converts particles between big and small version, or in case of something bigger, wrap it into the field and convert it gradually later (this is happening with food). Only problem is that you effectively have different values of physical contacts inside the field and outside, which sounds very similar to what Raven describes as spicy magic.

(Note: this is supposed to agree but extend what Scotty is saying.)

Another alternative is to use non-euclidean space, similarly as in bag in holding, just not closing it completely. Catalina is actually still as big as normally, but the space is curved so parallel lines which are 3.5 feet apart inside her body are 0.5 feet apart outside. Of course, normally would bending the space so much cause all sort of city-destroying effects (especially considering you might need more curved space than in black hole ... hmmm ... maybe not just city) but so would the mentioned bag of holding, lot of teleports (some work differently but many are supposed to bend space) and any of those magic doors and mirrors which have their ends very distant if in same universe at all. In fact, just in EGS, the shape of universe which takes griffin's half into account would likely be complicated. So, I would assume that it's proven that magic CAN bend space without gravitation-based sideefects.

And to look back at the cell reception: can work ; magic field will simply resize the wavelength of photons entering or leaving the shrunk area. It would be no different from what it already does with photons of visible light, which would otherwise develop big shift, resulting in Catalina not being able to see visible light and instead seeing ultraviolet with her 7x times smaller eye cells. In fact, considering Catalina does NOT complain she's blind, we can consider proven that the cellphone works :)

PS: Violating the thermodynamic laws is likely bigger reason for physics crying. And yes, it happens with magic very often.

I'm glad I read all the way to the last comment before posting. Saved me a whole lot of typing, and you managed to explain the non-euclidean space idea way better than what I would have been able to.

The only things we are certain of right now is that no matter how you slice it there are going to be problems, and when the nitpicking begins just about every clever theory ends up requiring more magic for it to work.
 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
K^2    2
6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

But this problem disappears if instead of magic "ending" after shrinking there is actually some magic field which stays in place and converts particles between big and small version, or in case of something bigger, wrap it into the field and convert it gradually later (this is happening with food). Only problem is that you effectively have different values of physical contacts inside the field and outside, which sounds very similar to what Raven describes as spicy magic.

While this is potentially workable, and might actually be the least problematic option overall, you at very least completely messed up diffusion rates, which are crucial for all kinds of regulatory processes. Neurotransmission is just one example. I'm not sure if making atoms that are smaller, but react the same, and diffuse the same can actually be solved exactly. Given interactions between all kinds of particles, you have more constraints than variables. Given dimension of the problem, you could probably get "close" to satisfying all restrictions despite the problem being over-constrained, but just how close is close enough for a living organism? And we haven't even touched quantum yet. I don't know if anything relies on QM in animal cells, but something like this breaks photosynthesis, for example.

6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Another alternative is to use non-euclidean space, similarly as in bag in holding, just not closing it completely. Catalina is actually still as big as normally, but the space is curved so parallel lines which are 3.5 feet apart inside her body are 0.5 feet apart outside. Of course, normally would bending the space so much cause all sort of city-destroying effects (especially considering you might need more curved space than in black hole ... hmmm ... maybe not just city) but so would the mentioned bag of holding, lot of teleports (some work differently but many are supposed to bend space) and any of those magic doors and mirrors which have their ends very distant if in same universe at all. In fact, just in EGS, the shape of universe which takes griffin's half into account would likely be complicated. So, I would assume that it's proven that magic CAN bend space without gravitation-based sideefects.

This is why I brought General Relativity and gravity earlier. You can't have space-time curvature without generating gravitational forces as a side effect. And that's the direct reflection of the fact that the underlying invariant is the distance. Once you start messing with sizes, and consequently distances between things, all hell breaks loose.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, K^2 said:

This is why I brought General Relativity and gravity earlier. You can't have space-time curvature without generating gravitational forces as a side effect. And that's the direct reflection of the fact that the underlying invariant is the distance. Once you start messing with sizes, and consequently distances between things, all hell breaks loose.

The undesirable attraction and tidal stress from space-bending can be counteracted by incorporating negative-mass. Within the relevant theories, negative matter is analogous to antimatter, except that its inertia and gravitation are negative. If a normal particle and its negative partner touch, they are completely negated--their energies sum to zero, so there is no release of mass-energy unlike the giant release of a matter/antimatter reaction. Hypothetically, this would mean that no net energy would have to be expended to create a particle/negaparticle pair, but so far no one has come up with a workable way to induce such pairs to form in the real world. However, the existence of negative mass is essential to current theories for wormholes and for Alcubierre-White (Warp) drive. In other words, making warp drive work would be equivalent to creating temporary negative masses.

As for the comic, all of this physics stuff assumes that the shrinking is a quasi-stable state (i.e. will hold together without extra energy). However, it has been said (by Adrian in particular) that transformations (and presumably other spells) that must hold normal physics in continued abeyance (such as major size changes) require energy to sustain--usually either the initial energy charge added at the time of casting, or the energy stores of the altered lifeform (if alive), or else environmental energy (if dense enough, such as Moperville with the energy clog in effect). Energy is thus being constantly used, not only to hold the target in its transformed state, but also to enable its interaction with the outside world (in the case of sizechange, altering the size of photons and of air/food/water molecules that cross the barrier). To use an analogy, the spell is acting as Catalina's "space suit" to allow her to walk around in an otherwise-unlivable environment where the air molecules, etc. are too big for her needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
K^2    2
30 minutes ago, ijuin said:

The undesirable attraction and tidal stress from space-bending can be counteracted by incorporating negative-mass.

Gravity is curvature. If you get rid of gravity, you get rid of curvature. Yes, you can add a bunch of energy, resulting in curvature, then compensate with negative energy to flatten it out, and now you're back to boring old flat space-time with no advantage to scaling things.

I'm not concerned about the source of the curvature. Although, it's trivially related to Stress Energy Tensor via Einstein Field Equations. The fundamental problem is that by changing relative scales, you inherently produce a region where metric is not flat. It's like taking a rod and trying to get one end to run North-South, and the other East-West. You can do it, but you'll have to bend the rod somewhere. You can have a sharp bend that's localized, or a gentle curve distributed from one end of the rod to the other. But there has to be net curvature. Scale works the same way. You can have space shrunk around an object you want to be smaller, but then between that object and everything you don't want shrunk, you have to contain a given amount of curvature. That curvature, inherently, results in an accelerated frame, which is guaranteed to have following consequences: 1) Gravitational force pushing everything away from the shrunk object, 2) Severe blue shift associated with the same. Time acceleration is another likely side effect. You can entirely remove that feature from the metric, but then you're likely building a time machine. (Via a few boosts, which would then imply negative mass being involved.)

Now, the tidal forces will depend on how you distribute the curvature, but since you don't have much room to work with, you are pretty much guaranteed regions of extreme compression and extreme spaghettification. In other words, really bad time for anything crossing the boundary.

The great thing about General Relativity is that all of these things are easily computable, if you don't mind a bit of tensor algebra, and even most of that can be avoided if you just want a rough ballpark figure, and don't mind treating this as a 1 + 1 dimensional problem. (Radial + time.) But even without crunching numbers, we are talking warp drive energies and warp drive in atmosphere kind of consequences.

 

Ahem, sorry. My education was in particle physics, so I can babble about relativity at length. I probably shouldn't derail the thread even further, though. Feel free to ping me in a PM, though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, the idea of using the negative mass was to force all of the curvature to be compressed right near the boundary, while most of the interior space (where our shrunken person is located) and the exterior space (where the rest of the universe is located) remain flat enough to be otherwise undamaged. Thus, objects at arbitrary distance away will not be attracted or repelled, but will undergo the requisite distortion if forced right against/through the barrier (e.g. exchange of air between inside and outside).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

One problem I see with shrinking by curving space is that light traveling between the shrunk object and the viewer would also be curved, so the object would not appear to be shrunk.

And if you magically exempt light, then a person shrunk to 1/7 scale can't see. You need to exempt only light that will enter said shrunk person's eyes.

Another problem with this notion is mass. It means that Catalina at 1/7 scale weighs the same as at full size. Rhoda does not look to me like the sort of girl who normally walks around carrying a 120-pound object somewhere on her person.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
17 hours ago, K^2 said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

But this problem disappears if instead of magic "ending" after shrinking there is actually some magic field which stays in place and converts particles between big and small version, or in case of something bigger, wrap it into the field and convert it gradually later (this is happening with food). Only problem is that you effectively have different values of physical contacts inside the field and outside, which sounds very similar to what Raven describes as spicy magic.

While this is potentially workable, and might actually be the least problematic option overall, you at very least completely messed up diffusion rates, which are crucial for all kinds of regulatory processes. Neurotransmission is just one example. I'm not sure if making atoms that are smaller, but react the same, and diffuse the same can actually be solved exactly. Given interactions between all kinds of particles, you have more constraints than variables. Given dimension of the problem, you could probably get "close" to satisfying all restrictions despite the problem being over-constrained, but just how close is close enough for a living organism? And we haven't even touched quantum yet. I don't know if anything relies on QM in animal cells, but something like this breaks photosynthesis, for example.

Quite the contrary, I DO plan to solve everything on quantum level. If you don't have strength of electromagnetic interaction in your diffusion equation, it was just forgotten. The shrinking will be done like this: 1) Any distances in any physical law will be expressed in multiples of Planck's length. 2) The Planck's length inside the magic field will be smaller.

17 hours ago, K^2 said:

This is why I brought General Relativity and gravity earlier. You can't have space-time curvature without generating gravitational forces as a side effect. And that's the direct reflection of the fact that the underlying invariant is the distance. Once you start messing with sizes, and consequently distances between things, all hell breaks loose.

Yes, General Relativity is broken by the size change spell. We KNOW that magic can ignore selected physical laws or "take them just as suggestion". Obviously, this is what happens with this spell.

Also, note that while General Relativity claims that you can't have space-time curvature without generating gravitational forces, quantum theory of gravitation might know some exception for that rule.

14 hours ago, K^2 said:

Ahem, sorry. My education was in particle physics, so I can babble about relativity at length.

No problem. My education in particle physics is limited, but I like the topics.

6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

One problem I see with shrinking by curving space is that light traveling between the shrunk object and the viewer would also be curved, so the object would not appear to be shrunk.

It will. The image in binocular/telescope has different apparent size than the real object despite path of light being curved.

Remember that the shrinking won't create region of "sparse" space. There will be just region of normal space outside the field and compressed space inside the field. And the border of course. Some space will be "created" when shrinking and then filled with air, and space will be transformed non-continuously during the shrinking (meaning: it will tear the space continuum and then paste it together differently).

6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Another problem with this notion is mass. It means that Catalina at 1/7 scale weighs the same as at full size. Rhoda does not look to me like the sort of girl who normally walks around carrying a 120-pound object somewhere on her person.

The weight will be solved by modifying gravitation. Problem is inertial mass, which, again, according to our current theories can't be changed. Which can mean that our current theories are incorrect, that the magic is "bending" that rule or, most likely, both. The change of inertial mass MIGHT be some sideefect of shrinking by shrinking space, but if not, well, then it's separate effect of the spell.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
K^2    2

Diffusion rate depends only on mass of the particles, not interaction. If you scale particles down, diffusion rates will not scale down, meaning you will have faster diffusion in proportion to the body. That breaks a lot of crucial processes, like neurotransmission and energy production in mitochondria. You might get away with adjusting masses of particles, but that feedbacks into quantum again. Your electron shells will be different now, and all of chemistry is broken. We are back full circle to needing to adjust all of the parameters at once, with more constraints than there are variables.

Gravity due to curvature is consequence of gauge invariance under Poincare group. If you disable that, you disable electroweak forces, which are result of gauge invariance under U(1)xSU(2), and strong nuclear forces, which are due to gauge invariance under SU(3). Light itself could no pass through the region in question, since it's a gauge boson. Waving this away with, "It's magic" is pointless when we got this far, since we should either do that from the start, or not at all. If we are relying on physics to tell us how this works, our options are either accepting extreme gravitational forces, or complete breakdown of all of physics. Former seems less scary.

Quantum Gravity won't save you here. Everything we are talking about is above Plank Scale, where mean field approximation to quantum gravity works. In mean field QG, gravity works essentially the same way as it does in GR. This is also something I can talk about at great length, but really doesn't fit into the discussion here.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
49 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Quite the contrary, I DO plan to solve everything on quantum level. If you don't have strength of electromagnetic interaction in your diffusion equation, it was just forgotten. The shrinking will be done like this: 1) Any distances in any physical law will be expressed in multiples of Planck's length. 2) The Planck's length inside the magic field will be smaller.

Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, the Planck length (and the other Planck units) aren't some independent parameter of the universe.  It's a combination of the actual fundamental constants that happens to come out in units of length - specifically square root (hbar G/c^3). 

So to make it 1/7 smaller, your options are shrink hbar by a factor of 49, which does nasty stuff to relative energy levels - I think it means the vibrational energy content of every molecule in the thing now vastly exceeds that necessary to instantly dissociate it, possibly into plasma - shrink G similarly (the rotation of the Earth throws the shrunk object off into space) or increase c by 7^2/3, which might be the most survivable, but still does bad things to relative energy levels, electromagnetic forces, and may well raise the strength of nuclear binding energies enough for something to start spontaneously fusing. 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Diffusion rate depends only on mass of the particles, not interaction.

Diffusion works by gravitation? I though gravitation is hardly affecting anything on this scales. Bigger, yes, smaller, yes, but not this scales.

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Your electron shells will be different now, and all of chemistry is broken.

Yes. Smaller. But proportionally same and with modified electromagnetic interaction ...

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

adjust all of the parameters at once

Technically, yes, unless you write those parameters in multiples of Planck's size ...

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Gravity due to curvature is consequence of gauge invariance under Poincare group. If you disable that, you disable electroweak forces, which are result of gauge invariance under U(1)xSU(2), and strong nuclear forces, which are due to gauge invariance under SU(3). Light itself could no pass through the region in question, since it's a gauge boson. Waving this away with, "It's magic" is pointless when we got this far, since we should either do that from the start, or not at all. If we are relying on physics to tell us how this works, our options are either accepting extreme gravitational forces, or complete breakdown of all of physics. Former seems less scary.

Quantum Gravity won't save you here. Everything we are talking about is above Plank Scale, where mean field approximation to quantum gravity works. In mean field QG, gravity works essentially the same way as it does in GR. This is also something I can talk about at great length, but really doesn't fit into the discussion here.

... ok, I must admit this is over my knowledge ...

Still, no. While there are multiple equivalent ways to formulate any physical laws, they may not be equivalent from the POV of magic breaking/bending some of them. Especially breaking, as "turning off" some physical law in one representation would be changing equation by adding another term into equation in other representation. So, no "disabling law will disable half of physics". We are searching for modification of physical laws, not just removal of equations or just changes of constants. (I agree that removal would get scary quickly.)

And what we are talking about can easily be under Plank scale. The boundary between shrunk and unshrunk can be thinner than Plank Scale and therefore have very weird properties. Something like naked singularity :)

Might be in fact necessary because we may need photons quantum-tunnelling through.

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Waving this away with, "It's magic" is pointless when we got this far, since we should either do that from the start, or not at all.

It is obvious that the physical laws as we know them were violated. What we are doing is to search for different (but similar) set of physical laws, which would either directly contain magic (in forms of terms which are zero when magic is not involved) or for which we can say "magic replaced (locally) the normal laws with these modified ones".

Of course, lot of handwaving is involved, as we are not good enough to actually compute such laws, but we may be able to offer some rough idea how would they look.

1 hour ago, malloyd said:

So to make it 1/7 smaller, your options are shrink hbar by a factor of 49, which does nasty stuff to relative energy levels - I think it means the vibrational energy content of every molecule in the thing now vastly exceeds that necessary to instantly dissociate it, possibly into plasma - shrink G similarly (the rotation of the Earth throws the shrunk object off into space) or increase c by 7^2/3, which might be the most survivable, but still does bad things to relative energy levels, electromagnetic forces, and may well raise the strength of nuclear binding energies enough for something to start spontaneously fusing. 

What if ALL of them would be changed? Or, alternatively, what if we change another constant, which is normally 1 so noone noticed it?

Note that changing G would be related to fact Catalina now weights considerably less. I think there would be some reserve between "full weight" and "thrown into space". Oh, wait, we wanted to solve THAT bit by altering her inertia mass, which doesn't appear in this equation because everyone assumes it can't be changed.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
K^2    2
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Diffusion works by gravitation? I though gravitation is hardly affecting anything on this scales. Bigger, yes, smaller, yes, but not this scales.

No, it has to do with kinetic energy. Equipartition Theorem of thermodynamics tells us that equal amount of energy is going to go into each degree of freedom. So the average velocity of a particle just bouncing around is related to temperature via mv² = kT. Consequently, at any given temperature, lighter particles move faster than heavier ones. So in order to reduce the distance a particle travels on average via diffusion, to compensate for smaller size, you'd have to make all the particles heavier. This is on top of increase on density due to condensing the object. Alternatively, you could reduce temperature. But then we're back to having to adjust all of chemistry, because now the barriers are wrong.

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Still, no. While there are multiple equivalent ways to formulate any physical laws, they may not be equivalent from the POV of magic breaking/bending some of them.

Sure, but this is sort of what I'm talking about, and it goes for the other points. At some point, we must say "it's just magic," and we don't know for sure if something is going to be easier or harder for magic. But while a lot of the magic used in EGS is the sort of thing that just gently bends a few rules, and in many cases could easily be replicated with sufficiently advanced technology, size altering magic breaks a lot of very fundamental rules. Which is why it has my first pick for, "Magic that makes physicists cry," among all the odd things going on in EGS universe.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 minutes ago, K^2 said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Diffusion works by gravitation? I though gravitation is hardly affecting anything on this scales. Bigger, yes, smaller, yes, but not this scales.

No, it has to do with kinetic energy. Equipartition Theorem of thermodynamics tells us that equal amount of energy is going to go into each degree of freedom. So the average velocity of a particle just bouncing around is related to temperature via mv² = kT. Consequently, at any given temperature, lighter particles move faster than heavier ones. So in order to reduce the distance a particle travels on average via diffusion, to compensate for smaller size, you'd have to make all the particles heavier. This is on top of increase on density due to condensing the object. Alternatively, you could reduce temperature. But then we're back to having to adjust all of chemistry, because now the barriers are wrong.

Heavier is obviously opposite of what we want to accomplish. But let's try the temperature: wouldn't the change of temperature be compensated by what we did with electrons?

10 minutes ago, K^2 said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Still, no. While there are multiple equivalent ways to formulate any physical laws, they may not be equivalent from the POV of magic breaking/bending some of them.

Sure, but this is sort of what I'm talking about, and it goes for the other points. At some point, we must say "it's just magic," and we don't know for sure if something is going to be easier or harder for magic.

Well, sure. Our best pick on "what is easier" is "what makes the equation prettier", which is pretty bad method of measure, despite already having several useful results in "normal" physics.

12 minutes ago, K^2 said:

But while a lot of the magic used in EGS is the sort of thing that just gently bends a few rules, and in many cases could easily be replicated with sufficiently advanced technology

"Gently bend a few rules" based on measurement which is basically same as the measurement we use for the shrinking hypothesis.

13 minutes ago, K^2 said:

size altering magic breaks a lot of very fundamental rules. Which is why it has my first pick for, "Magic that makes physicists cry," among all the odd things going on in EGS universe.

I still think the thermodynamic laws are more fundamental, although they have that huge loophole of only really working for isolated systems and last isolated system was contaminated when Jenny Everywhere got lost on her way between Oz and Wonderland. She apologized of course, but that didn't fixed the experiment ... (The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition: This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, that others might use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.)

Of course, size altering magic as described in EGS have the violating-of-thermodynamic-laws covered with the "loud burp" solution of enlarged person eating too much, so you may have point here.

Also, the limit of shrinking and enlarging for TF-gun and/or Tedd's watches is likely based on "what can be done WITHOUT violating too many physical laws", meaning Rhoda's magic is more physics-teardrop-worthy.

And note that we don't know enough about different kinds of magic in EGS to be sure there isn't something even worse. The classification of magic itself seem to be based on different criteria than which physical laws it's breaking, with size altering being just one specific kind of transformation enchantments  ...

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
K^2    2

Thermodynamics is statistical. And rules of statistics are easily broken with a time machine. There are some other interesting ways of completely bypassing some thermodynamics limitations in QM. Without getting into details, suffice it to say, that superconductors and superfluids ought to be thermodynamically impossible. Consequently, things like flight, element manipulation, and shape-shifting while preserving volume, are all relatively straight forward. Primarily because they aren't impossible under our laws of physics. Merely very, very unlikely. And breaking fundamental rules is very different from stacking the odds. That's basically what QM is for.

54 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Heavier is obviously opposite of what we want to accomplish. But let's try the temperature: wouldn't the change of temperature be compensated by what we did with electrons?

No, it would not. Because we have all the different kinds of bonds to balance. Different attractive forces between particles have different scaling with elementary charge and distance. And you have to adjust elementary charge and Plank's constant just to get the correct atom size and correct energy difference between excitation levels. So you are already locked into a very specific reduction of elementary charge just to keep the individual atoms working the way they did. And then you simply don't have anything there to make sure the relative strengths of covalent bonds and hydrogen bonds is correct for the temperature ranges you had to choose to keep diffusion rates low. An example of not getting these right would be air liquifying in shrunk person's lungs because reduction of intermolecular attraction was insufficient to compensate for reduction in temperature.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this