scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2yat34.md

## Physics help with magic

* Author: u/wendigo_days *
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2yat34/physics_help_with_magic/
* Score: 9

* Created: 2015-03-08T02:22:25

### Post:

My knowledge is sub-layman, and I have a question for a quick story I have to do. The arena:

Generic pop magic. A substance called mana is its vehicle. Spirits are mana-based organisms. Among them are souls, symbiotes who use carbon lifeforms as shells (some older creatures, elementals, use nonliving stuff). Employment of magic by life starts as tiny-scale delegation of work and complexifies as increasingly complex organisms are able to create increasingly complex commands, then sentients with culture develop it at a much faster rate than biological selection.

Which leaves the question I need help with. How could fluctuations in this substance called mana, whose nature pends on an answer, rearrange energy? What would be the mechanism? Steps like mana nanobots are obvious, but what I'm wondering is how, granting fictional but consistent physics, these subatomic changes could actually be produced.

All that I'd like to be true is that these spells resemble harry potter/d&d/world of warcraft ones. If they can employ recognizable spellcasty stuff like vocal commands, gestures, implements, that would be a bonus.

Knowledge? Ideas?

### Comments:

> **u/alexanderwales** [+4]  *Time flies like an arrow* (2 hours later)
> 
> Alright, well my (unsolicited) storytelling advice is just to not worry about it. Unless your story is going to exploit some aspect of the magic system, you don't need to explain why saying *Kelenta* produces a fireball, it's enough to know that it does. And you don't need to explain to the readers how saying *Kelenta* produces a fireball, they only need to know that this is possible. Telling them how it works is probably to the detriment of the story if it's unimportant, due to the Law of Conservation of Detail.
> 
> I can't actually help you with making a counterfactual system of physics whose result is classical D&D physics. I *highly* doubt that there's anyone who can do that, given the gaps in our knowledge about actual physics. And even if you did get there, you'd probably have to posit counterfactual biology to make people able to use it, which means counterfactual evolutionary history. And all of that to arrive at the same old system of magic.
> 
> The story I've seen that comes closest to having a particle system of magic is *Ra* by Sam Hughes (/u/sam512). You can read about [what magic is here](http://qntm.org/what), which shouldn't have any spoilers, but it doesn't actually go into the "physics" of the system, which I assume weren't mapped out even though Sam *does* have a working knowledge of particle physics, mostly because there's (again) not much of a point to it.
> 
> My (unsolicited) advice is to think of all the "rules" that your system has, whether any of them are actually false in some clever way that people haven't figured out, and what the answers are to all of the experiments that you can immediately think of.

> **u/traverseda** [+2]  *With dread but cautious optimism* (3 hours later)
> 
> If you're looking for general inspiration...
> 
> I wrtoe [this](https://traverseda.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/computable-magic/) a while back, which was an attempt to approximate vancian magic using something at least sort of reductionist.
> 
> [Days of Wasp and Spider](http://www.fimfiction.net/story/6515/days-of-wasp-and-spider) had a similar mechanism.

>> **u/wendigo_days** [+1]  (5 hours later)
>> 
>> Cool read, thanks. 
>> 
>> >Steps that are equivalent to having a new limb, or in some cases an advanced neural interface.
>> 
>> This is what I was imagining souls would provide in addition to normal brain functions--a system three. The UI you have in a computer game is what real life is like for a souled sentient.
>> 
>> The idea of spells as like detonated algorithms, or "very complex Game of Life starting positions", is also interesting.

> **u/wendigo_days** [+2]  (5 hours later)
> 
> This was kind of a dumbly wide net.
> 
> A proximate thought I had was, and I don't know how plausible: magic as a kind of dispersed nanofiber made by older entities, which has become overgrown with emergent life that's (increasingly less) blindly rediscovering its command language. Some kind of field of...vibrations?...that can rearrange matter and receive commands. Over long periods, certain unbiological motions would have in rare cases approximated these commands and given rise to the perturbation in the manafield that made it fertile for emergent life.
> 
> It's just, the less William Paley it is the better. The more natural, if unlikely, the nature of mana is, the better.
> 
> Verbal commands and accoutrements could be linked to human devices for controlling mana more adeptly, rather than the magic itself.

> **u/ArmokGoB** [+2]  (6 hours later)
> 
> I have like 20 of these, of varying quality, 'cause making attempts at this very things is one of my favorite things to do when my eyes and hands are occupied but my brain isn't, but sadly have never manged to *write them up*. Maybe if you can be more specific and/or contact me over PM and then Skype (don't want to put my skype here publicly) we could work one out together?

>> **u/wendigo_days** [+1]  (13 hours later)
>> 
>> PMing.

> **u/DCarrier** [+2]  (a day later)
> 
> Orion's arm has matter made of magnetic monopoles which they discuss here: http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48630634d2591 (see the section Interactions Between Magmatter and Normal Matter). It can normally phase through matter, but if "magnets" are made with it, they'll interact with normal matter. Granted, it's also extremely strong, absurdly dense, and it has a tendency to cause proton decay making it more dangerous than antimatter, but that's just due to the specifics of Orion's arm. Just make it of comparable mass with conventional matter and don't cause proton decay.
> 
> For extra fun, add in a fifth force, and include stuff that conventional matter doesn't interact with at all. Perhaps magical flight is just swimming in a dark matter sea that nobody else notices.
> 
> As for the actual mechanics of spells, perhaps you could make it so trained spirits are used, and the spells are just commands.

> **u/Nepene** [+1]  (10 hours later)
> 
> Have the sun be partially dyson'd, with an ability to make cheap nano or pico scale portals. This dyson sphere is set to respond to life to provide certain desired functions. Kinetic motion, heat, plasma dumping and light are easy to provide- if a set group of organism's with a shared desire do a similar action then portals will open and something will be heated up, be gravitationally yanked around, have light shined on it.
> 
> Over the course of history many new functions were invented. A fireball spell, where heated plasma is dumped in the air and propelled at an enemy. A flame lance. A disk of levitation. 
> 
> A lot of human magic is based off finding these functions and using them. Perhaps only one obscure crab species 10000 years ago used the term oogly boogly to summon a kinetic boost that hasted all, but humans don't really know the exact emotional resonance that made magic do that, so now they say oogly boogly and click their hands to cast a haste spell.

> **u/scruiser** [+1]  *CYOA* (14 hours later)
> 
> Here is a system, inspired by Nasuverse mechanics and my headcanon of Nasuverse mechanics.
> 
> "Mana" binds a conceptual/mental layer of reality to this physical one.  In sufficient quantities and under the right circumstance it can cause conceptual/mental rules to override physical ones.  Because Humans are sapient, they are able to make the mana respond directly to their thoughts.  However, this alone is usually insufficient to properly create magical effects.  Human use various methods of self-hypnosis to make their mental manipulation of mana actually scale into spells.  Words, chants, and gestures can be trained and associated with specific hypnotic states to induce the changes in mana for spells.  Also, naturally existent spirits that exist dispersed in the background (like micro organisms) can be trained to respond to words/chants/gestures of humans and can thus augment spells or create them entirely themselves.  Finally, certain implements with the right conceptual connotations can be altered by spells so that they physically interact with mana themselves, thus allowing the creation magic items.
> 
> So to give a few examles:
> 
> * A shaman daily interacts with the minor spirits in order to build up a relationship with them (in actuality, from a reductionist standpoint he is simply training a learned response in entities that aren't really smarter than plants).  When he needs to do magic, he calls on them for aid.  Often, he will slay predator animals and then try to bind the concepts that make them effective predators in order to aid himself.  So he kills a wolf to gain endurance, or cat for stealth.  The lesser spirits respond to him and aid him in this process.
> 
> * A wizard draws mana that interacts with fire and compresses into a stored form around a flammable material in order to prepare spells of fireball.
> 
> * An oracle sits a significant location (leyline?) and sense the flow of mana in order to divine the past, present, and future.  (Mana is influenced by conceptually significant events, and thus can be used for divination that way.)
> 
> Other points to consider in your system:
> 
> * Do humans and other lifeforms naturally produce mana?  How is their internal supply different (maybe they can directly cast spells from it more effectively than with natural mana)?
> 
> * What limiting factors have stopped the usage of mana from sending evolution on a completely different course?  (Finite amount of it, conceptual effect get weaker if they are overused, etc.)
> 
> * The most important point: What characteristics do you need mana to have to make your story work?

> **u/OffColorCommentary** [+1]  (a day later)
> 
> If you're willing to have alt physics, then... just have alt physics?  You can add an extra class of particles (or whatever) that barely interacts with our own, with whichever exceptions you like.  The real questions are why the world looks so much like our own world (in one of my own, someone asked the very reasonable question of why we're not covered in conservation-of-energy violating organisms) and the origins of any massively coincidental details that crop up (e.g: you can't have vocal commands written into physics and have humans independently evolve that; that's too much coincidence).

>> **u/Foxeyes7** [+1]  (a month later)
>> 
>> Wouldn't a good answer to this question require the poster to know how to do magic?

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