13 KiB
Commonplace Chemical Magic and Dragons in Space (Hexium)
-
Author: u/forrestib Project Freelancer*
-
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2yrzpa/commonplace_chemical_magic_and_dragons_in_space/
-
Score: 9
-
Created: 2015-03-12T09:02:49
Post:
My brother and I recently discussed a fictional premise that I'd like to make more rational, if I can. The basic concept is that earth has magic, and no other civilizations elsewhere do. Once a future-world earth starts building the first FTL starships, of course the magic in their tech starts to draw notice from the numerous other spacefaring civilizations they encounter.
However, the magic is very strict and can really barely be called as such at all. It stems from an element that is exceedingly commonplace on earth, like carbon in our world. This element, Hexium, is unique in how it interacts with other chemicals in the environment.
One atom of Hexium on its own is rather unremarkable. It is an unconventionally heavy element, that binds and breaks bonds very easily with almost any other element. However, larger structures consisting of mostly Hexium will start to give off radiation. This radiation will influence the bonding behavior of other Hexium atoms contacted. This is magic.
Essentially, Hexium will try to bond with whatever other element the largest number of other Hexium atoms it can detect are bonded with. Normally stray individual atoms in the wild send off individual particles of magic radiation that are easily stopped and rarely detected. The animal life on earth have miniature organs called Magi. These organs contain a very very large concentration of Hexium, with few other elements. By exposing this organ to different chemicals within the body, creatures are capable of controlling the type of radiation that is sent out.
In addition, the casing or skin of a well formed Magus organ can concentrate the direction of the magic particles towards a specific object nearby. In effect, to catch something on fire, a specific chemical that your body must engineer is exposed to the Magus, which constricts to only allow the magic to flow towards that object. The magic communicates to the individual Hexium atoms in the object and makes them begin to vibrate, heating the object until it combusts.
Not only can this be used to manipulate the temperature of something, but also to rearrange its chemical composition. If enough Hexium in your Magus is bonded with oxygen, almost all the Hexium in the target will bind with oxygen given the opportunity, leaving very little oxygen left for the rest of the atoms to bond with. An intelligent magic user could transmute a glass of water into a cloud of hydrogen gas, ready to combust, within mere minutes.
Of course as technology advances people realize that this need not only be utilized by individuals. Machines are built with artificial Magi. Soon the magically inept can use their handheld fire rod to do the job that previously would've taken months of practice and training. Soon engines are constructed that can transmute some garbage into fuel. Computers can communicate wirelessly using Hexium radiation at the speed of light.
And with the magic system explained, I fully expect you all to instantly work out how someone could create grey goo, or an antimatter bomb. But hey, that's what I'm asking for. In a future where Hexium powers the reactor core of their starships, how could this element and its unique properties be exploited? And with people being able to personally utilize it through their Magi, what would be the most creative and dangerously overpowered usages of this power?
And there's also the question of the aliens and their reaction. (I'm using the Star Trek model where most species share a common ancestry and have universal translation software.) Magic is completely foreign to them. How will they, as noobs, be able to exploit it once they get some? Especially since it only works on the Hexium rich materials from earth. Which brings up the other point of how well the earth-natives (elves, dragons, etc. All the classics are here) will handle their magic being rendered mostly useless as they visit other planets.
Discuss. Exploit. Dissect. I'm all ears ( =
Comments:
u/chthonicSceptre [+3] Highly Unlikely (6 hours later)
How many protons in a hexium atom?
u/forrestib [+2] Project Freelancer (13 hours later)
I hadn't decided. It's an unusually heavy metal. Its possible it could fill the slot of element 126 (unbihexium), since that element is supposed to be more stable than most in the eighth period, or parts of even the seventh. The similarity in name is a bonus too. Similar arguments could be made for element 164 (unhexquadium), which is also rarely stable, and also has the added bonus of being a metal.
Or, alternatively, since it is magic, however well explained, and isn't supposed to fit squarely within our physical laws, it could have no protons, or have a fractional or irrational number of protons, or even i protons. In other words, it doesn't have to fit neatly into the periodic table. I'm sorry if that answer is incredibly useless, but at least for now there isn't really a better one.
u/DCarrier [+3] (14 hours later)
Headcanon: the name is short for unbihexium. Before they figured out that's what it was, they called it something else.
u/forrestib [+1] Project Freelancer (15 hours later)
Knowing how important it is to every day life, it's bound to have more than a few alternate names. Hexium might just be the scientific one. Transium, Djinnium, Manium, Enchantium. Just off the top of my head. (Anyone else is free to use these element names by the way. I promise not to sue.)
u/Chronophilia [+2] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
So, although magic is only found on Earth, you could bring hexium anywhere and it would work there? It's just that nowhere else has useful concentrations lying around, and nowhere else has life that evolved to use it?
Do Earthlings need a certain amount of hexium in their diet like we do other minerals - you know, a recommended daily intake of 20mg of iron, 10mg of zinc, 5 mg of hexium? Do you have to take hexium supplements if you're eating foods grown on other planets?
The magic communicates to the individual Hexium atoms in the object and makes them begin to vibrate, heating the object until it combusts.
How do you make the hexium atoms vibrate? Controlling their movement like that doesn't seem to follow from the description you gave.
Are you limited to targeting things by chemistry? "Set fire to wooden things within the range I can affect", rather than "set fire to that door"?
u/forrestib [+2] Project Freelancer (a day later)
Hexium functions the same in space as it does in earth. Although with fewer other atoms to control. Hexium is darn near nonexistent in the entire rest of the universe, as far as anyone can tell.
Yes, that would make sense. People could probably get pretty sick from food without Hexium, just as aliens probably couldn't digest anything that had it. That would be an interesting challenge if they ever decided to take on a new crew member.
The radiation communicates more than just bonds. It also communicates things like temperature, density, charge. Basically everything about that atom's current individual state except momentum and position. You could make the other atoms vibrate and heat up by agitating the atoms within your organ. That being said, the target atoms would have to have a source for the energy of that vibration since even magic doesn't come free...
The targeting works through the shielding that surrounds the Magus organ. It works a lot like the pupil of an eyeball, except letting magic out instead of light in. It can point towards specific objects intuitively and all radiation from within is released in a concentrated beam towards that object. Of course you could also do AOE for less effect to more targets if you really wanted to. The particle beam will effect the first Hexium material it hits, whatever that may be. So you can't transmute something past a wall without first transmuting the wall.
u/Chronophilia [+1] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
By the way, I see nobody has linked you to /r/magicbuilding yet. I'm sure we'd love to hear your ideas there.
u/forrestib [+1] Project Freelancer (a day later)
I'm a bit new to reddit. Do I have to post separately on each subreddit or can I simply share the same across both?
u/Chronophilia [+1] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
Post separately, but feel free to mention "this is a crosspost from /r/rational".
u/forrestib [+1] Project Freelancer (a day later)
Kay. Done. I made some edits to the post too, optimizing for new information and a new audience.
u/DCarrier [+1] (14 hours later)
Does it conserve energy? The description seems consistent with that. If you try to make it bind with the oxygen in water, you'll have to force it away from carbon or whatever it's strongly bonded with, putting energy into the system. If it does conserve energy, that limits what you can do, but it also means that it's not a perpetual motion machine where nobody cares what else it does.
If you're conserving energy, then hexium should be attracted to like-bonded hexium, and possibly repelled from unlike-bonded hexium. It should also take energy to block the magical radiat between like-bonded hexium.
u/forrestib [+2] Project Freelancer (14 hours later)
That's a very good question. I think it does, simply because the concept of equivalent exchange is very important to me. It would have to unbind from something in order to do as you command it, which may come with its own unforseen consequences as those atoms would then be free to rebound to whatever other chemicals were available. Which is good. No magic system is complete without some kind of unforseen consequences.
Could you maybe give a quick rundown of that bit about attraction? It's a good concept that actually makes the evolution of Magi more easily explainable. I'll probably use it. I'm just wondering what led you to it.
u/DCarrier [+3] (15 hours later)
Suppose you have an atom of hexium, an atom of oxygen, and a magi currently set with hexium bonded to oxygen. The hexium and oxygen can be bonded or not bonded. The hexium and magi can be close or far.
Let's set unbonded and far to zero potential energy. Hexium binds weakly to oxygen. Let's call the binding energy b. Potential energy in this configuration is -b. Let unbounded and near have x potential energy. Hexium will now bond strongly to oxygen with a higher binding energy B. Thus, potential energy for bound and near is x-B.
Suppose there is no force with unbound hexium. This would be my guess as to how it works, and it would mean that x = 0. Now bound and far has energy -b, but bound and near has energy -B. Since bound and far has B-b more potential energy, there's that much force moving it to bound and near.
u/Chronophilia [+2] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
Very interesting stuff. I'd never considered this as a possibility.
I'm going to try and get some estimates for how strong this effect would be.
A powerful chemical bond like a C-C bond or an O-H bond is in the range of a few hundred kilojoules per mole, so let's put that as our value for a "strong" Hexium bond.
Also assume the Hexium field follows an inverse-square law, like all forms of radiation.
Let's say that one metre is considered "close range", so the potential energy of a mole of Hexium is a hundred kilojoules at that distance. "Far range" is at an infinite distance with a bond strength of 0. Then the force on the nearby mole of Hexium would be 100,000 newtons, or a weight of 10 tons.
A mole of pure Hexium is quite a lot, so it makes sense that it would experience a lot of force. If Hexium is indeed Element 126 as /u/DCarrier suggested earlier, it'll be quite heavy - more than 300g/mol. The acceleration on a mole of pure Hexium would then be 300,000 m/s^(2). But we're not dealing with pure Hexium, we're dealing with substances that contain traces of Hexium. So another way of phrasing that acceleration is: 1 metre per second squared, for every three parts per million of appropriately bonded Hexium it contains. And decreasing quadratically with distance.
This is assuming quite a strong chemical bond, the attraction would be proportionately weaker with a less powerful bond. And the inverse-square law is an oversimplification, there may be some limit to how strong the bond can get so the attraction wouldn't be that strong at very short ranges.
u/forrestib [+1] Project Freelancer (16 hours later)
Ok. I think I followed all that. That's neat, and smart. I hadn't been thinking about the potential energy as it relates to communication between Hexium atoms.