Brainstorming Tweaks to Fundamental Forces

Drascus

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
148
Reaction score
19
Location
The Pacific Northwest
Hey folks, I'm currently doing some world-building and am trying to anticipate the consequences of a psychic power that I want to include in a book.

The idea is that the psychic power acts through some kind of pervasive, all-penetrating energy field (just like the luminiferous ether was said to do!) and by manipulating that field a psychic can alter the strength of basic forces in an area.

For instance, telekinesis is a common psychic ability that could in this case be accomplished by "turning off" or weakening gravitational forces around a specific object. This would make it easier to move a huge object, though its inertia would still have to be overcome.

I've also considered maybe intensifying gravitational force near the object to pull it.

Both applications have pretty obvious side effects, in that the object wouldn't be the only thing moving, other objects should be affected as well.

But what about other fundamental forces? What happens if you weaken the weak nuclear force, or the strong nuclear force? is it basically a disintegration trick or could you manipulate it in clever ways to transform matter?

What about giving a fundamental force a vector? This again is pretty simplistic with gravity (maybe) but my physics classes are two decades behind me and I'm having trouble visualizing what vectoring the strong and weak forces would do to something.

Any physics students more fresh or physics buffs that care to weigh in?
 

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
12,977
Reaction score
4,512
Location
USA
Website
brightdreamersbookreviews.blogspot.com
Not a physics person, don't play one on TV, but IMHO I'd be careful of overexplaining/overthinking. You're already bending/breaking physics with psychic ability to manipulate basic physics. Decide what effects and drawbacks you want and keep them consistent.

Brandon Sanderson does some playing with gravity in his Mistborn books and in his Stormlight Archives books. He tends to "hard fantasy", where magic follows specific - if entirely invented and not always in keeping with real-world physics - rules, with limitations and drawbacks.
 

Drascus

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
148
Reaction score
19
Location
The Pacific Northwest
I can have the powers be pure magic, and I will if the idea behind this particular physics manipulation doesn't work well for the story. But I like the idea of the limitations this imposes, so I'd like to follow the rabbit hole a bit and see if I can get a good story out of it.
 

ChaseJxyz

Writes 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 and 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 accessories
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 5, 2020
Messages
4,524
Reaction score
6,203
Location
The Rottenest City on the Pacific Coast
Website
www.chasej.xyz
I've been waiting for a good magic system building thread to pop up here.

So there's three situations you need to think of for each of the 4 forces: micro/quantum, macro/space stuff, and "regular world." The regular world is what we live in and is where "classical physics" applies, like how g is always 9.8m/s^2 and we can pretend air resistance isn't a thing.

Gravity is very, very powerful on a macro scale, but the weakest in the micro. It's the thing that we experience the most day to day, though, so for someone who doesn't know a lot about physics (especially in a pre-industrialized fantasy world) it's going to be most of what they do. If someone manages to get enough power to change things on an astrological scale, tho, they could crash a moon into a planet and kill everyone on it. Or they can escape the planet's gravity easily, making space travel much easier (or just aviation in general, which is a big deal in most situations).

The weak force is what causes radioactive decay. Controlling this means you can create nuclear fission and ionizing radiation. If you don't know what you're doing, though, you're going to kill yourself screwing around with this, so it's either going to be a very taboo section of magic or something no one knows anything about, since everyone dies doing it. (Maybe there's a false belief that all psychics have a very shortened life span or get this terrible disease, but it's actually because they're inadvertently screwing around with ionizing radiation. So someone who has psychic power but never uses it won't be effected by this).

The electromagnetic force is technically one but maybe in your world it's thought of as 2, again depending on how much they actually know about physics. It's technically the cause of things such as friction, elasticity, the normal force (i.e. its the ground pushing up against you so you dont clip into the ground). There's a LOT you can do with just those things. Friction is a huge killer of, well, most things, imagine no friction! Or very little friction. Not to mention electricity and magnetism as we know it. Magneto powers, Force lightning, all that good stuff.

The strong nuclear force is the strongest thing, and it's what holds atoms together (both the "basic" protons/neutrons and the quarks that make them). But it only functions at the micro level (like the weak nuclear force). But if you know how to do this, and not kill yourself in the process, well, you just solved scarcity. If you're able to take these fundamental building blocks of all matter and recombine them into whatever you want, there goes the value of gold! If someone really knows what they're doing they could make compounds and not pure elements, so things like minerals, fertilizers, sulfa drugs (antibiotic) (VERY important in a pre-industrialized setting).....so much stuff. IRL, there are several elements/minerals that are crucial for our electronics...but there's only 1 or 2 mines of them in the entire world. If one of those mines collapsed (or got destroyed in a war or something) then we are 100% screwed. So if someone could synthesize raw elements or minerals then they would never have this issue. So much of early history is based on trade of rare (for the area) goods, like rock salt or tin/copper. Diamonds are the strongest material and have so many industrial applications, and they're really simple, molecular-ly speaking.

So now that you have some really, really good ideas for what your magic system CAN do and HOW it works, next you need to figure out what people actually KNOW and BELIEVE. We were doing surgery back when we thought the four humors was a thing, and believing that stuff, no matter how wrong it was, didn't stop people from performing (and performing successfully!) cataract surgery or even plastic surgery. We were doing chemical synthesis when we didn't have a periodic table and we were preventing diseases when we didn't know viruses were a thing that existed. So the people of your various cultures can believe totally different things on how the world works and still do things, but those beliefs can also limit them. We thought that with a magic rock we could turn lead into gold, so many, many very smart people spent countless hours trying to figure out the philosopher's stone. Same thing with bloodletting. We can look back and think that they're dumb, but they had every reason to believe that those things were true because they didn't have anything to prove that it WASN'T.

So maybe there are some rituals or limits as to what is possible to your magic system...but only in the minds of your people. They can very, very easily do things that can kill themselves or cause huge accidents, what do the people who survived think caused that? What do they think can prevent it? What are things they do not believe are possible but actually are, and what are things they think are possible but actually not?

My magic system has different "types" of energy that are based on various principles of physics or chemistry (like the fundamental forces). Some cultures view magic as being from your body/blood/bloodline, so they don't consider it possible to draw magic from nonliving things (the fact that it "feels" different doesn't help). One culture is very science-y and they can do some amazing stuff but since they're "facts, not feelings" they can't do things like telepathy or shapechanging. There's this one bird who wanted "more power" and she went off and researched....something, no one really knows what, but long story short now we have Chernobyl and no one has any idea why this magic is so poisonous and feels so different, so without an understanding of how ionizing radiation works things, uh, turn out interesting. But there's all that magic, just waiting to be used, there just needs to be a soul brave (or stupid) enough to figure out the rules.

If you want to learn more about people screwing around with powers they don't understand and the consequences of it, read up on the demon core of the Manhattan project. And those were NUCLEAR PHYSICISTS, who had a decent grasp of things. Or sticking radon/x-rays into everything as soon as we discovered them (fossie jaw, anyone?) Some magic/psychic scholars at the royal research institute don't have a snowflake's chance in hell to fare any better. Unless they make a deal with the devil, that is, but who knows what he might tell them, or even if what he knows is the truth :thinking-emoji:
 

ironmikezero

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 8, 2011
Messages
1,737
Reaction score
426
Location
Haunted Louisiana
Typically in plot-driven fiction, it's to the writer's advantage to keep an explanation of magic relatively simple; i,e., magic is the manipulation of energy and/or matter by a means not yet understood. Whatever speculative grasp of further understanding your characters may develop in the course of the tale will almost always find some degree of plausibility within that simple adage. This empowers the author with enormous leeway, and encourages leaps of imagination.

Trying too hard to offer rational explanations for magic based upon current theoretical physics, quantum theories, etc. runs the risk of confusing and subsequently losing some readers (or maybe a lot who thought this story was supposed to be a fantasy).

Even if you feel you must articulate the appropriate laws of physics for your world-building, remember the multi-worlds theories (Membrane, etc) where the laws of physics may well be quite different. There really are no limits . . . Best of luck!
 

Drascus

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
148
Reaction score
19
Location
The Pacific Northwest
I guess I should have clarified that this is intended to be science fiction in a future so there are people in the world that can use instruments to measure what's going on. Radiation emission, etc can be tracked and quantified.

That being said, I certainly anticipate that there's a high rate of death / radiation dosing / dismemberment for psychics that start playing around with fundamental forces. Even with putting up radiation shields, etc, it would be dangerous.

Like the Manhattan project, a series of very dangerous failures would also be part of the history of this program too, thanks for that suggestion, I had forgotten how nuts they had gotten with that project. IIRC they very nearly created a critical mass in the lab by accident.

I don't plan to go for 100% realism by any means, I already have psychic powers after all. At the same time, I want to look at what would happen if you messed with these things and how that would twist the world. Limitations are a great source of narrative inspiration.
 
Last edited:

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
12,977
Reaction score
4,512
Location
USA
Website
brightdreamersbookreviews.blogspot.com
If you want a specfic book on people going to extreme lengths to create "real" superpowers with science, check out Ian Tregillis's Bitter Seeds, first of a trilogy. It's an alt-WWII novel where Axis powers use gruesome human experimentation to create what are essentially superhumans with specific powers - one can pass through solid matter, one can stop bullets, one can predict the future with perfect accuracy, etc., though all are permanently psychologically and physically scarred by the process. (The Allies turn to "magic" to counter, which is more of a compact with Lovecraftian extradimensional entities with a very, very dark blood price.)
 

TulipMama

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 28, 2020
Messages
170
Reaction score
114
Location
Canada
I guess I should have clarified that this is intended to be science fiction in a future so there are people in the world that can use instruments to measure what's going on. Radiation emission, etc can be tracked and quantified.

You may want to further define your science fiction future. Are you sub-light, space faring, celestial colonizers future, or still working on the third mission to Mars, but everybody has a 3D food printer instead of a microwave future. One has every possibility of accurately measuring Higgs Bosons, while the other is still probably using the Super-Kamiokande Neutrino detector.

That being said, I certainly anticipate that there's a high rate of death / radiation dosing / dismemberment for psychics that start playing around with fundamental forces. Even with putting up radiation shields, etc, it would be dangerous.

Like the Manhattan project, a series of very dangerous failures would also be part of the history of this program too, thanks for that suggestion, I had forgotten how nuts they had gotten with that project. IIRC they very nearly created a critical mass in the lab by accident.

History is very important, and you also have to find out where your history divided from our history. Was it the 70's when over-use of psychoactive drugs accidentally rewired our brain chemistry to catch and alter ambient radiation? Then you'd have to look at how world powers at the time. Post cold war Russia may seize on this to try and re-assert itself as a power in the West, or a concentrated effort by the US government may aggressively experiment in hopes of winning it's second arms race in as many decades and create a new sub-class of powerful but highly dysfunctional psychics. Maybe it happened in antiquity, but was so rare and miss-understood it gave birth to many of our modern day legends. Maybe it was less rare, and people with these gifts were found and selectively bred, or rose to political power, or started religions or all three in different corners of the world. Depending on when people start stretching reality like taffy with their brains will significantly impact how much experimentation in recent years has occurred. The psychic researchers of the late 90's may look back at the barbarism of the early 1800's. Ye-olde nerds may get their subjects to try to flash fry a pig. Now-a-days, they know that the energy requirements cook that much ham released lethal levels of gamma radiation because the psychic wasn't 'using their fury to heat the pig' but causing the atoms and molecules in the pig to attract stray neutrons.


I don't plan to go for 100% realism by any means, I already have psychic powers after all. At the same time, I want to look at what would happen if you messed with these things and how that would twist the world. Limitations are a great source of narrative inspiration.

Nobody ever get's 100% realism, obvi, it's fiction even if it's very well thought out fiction. Even Andy Weir's The Martian has science fallacies in it despite being AWESOME and very well researched.

Depending on what you want to do with your magic system, you could potentially get away with affecting one of the four pervasive forces of the universe, (Nuclear weak, Nuclear strong, gravity and electro-magnetism) or maybe different brain structures allow some humans to affect a different force. Maybe you're Pyro can influence the Nuclear Strong force and bonds more highly energetic particles to whatever they're heating up, while your telekinetic makes Higgs-Boson particles 'ignore' matter, making them effectively weightless. Maybe there's just a pervasive blanket of aether made up of psychotronic particles that psychics use to do all of the above. It really depends how much you feel like researching, how much you feel like explaining, and how much your characters actually know about how it works.

Maybe your modern day future scientists THINK they're working with the four fundamental natural forces, but there's a fifth one they've been playing with and the nerd who figures that out hasn't been born yet.


Lastly, this is a warning I've heard dozens of times: Your magic system is going to be more interesting to you than to the reader. Don't explain every detail of it in your first chapter, book, or even the trilogy. Keep some of it, most of it, back if you can. Know the rules, follow the rules, let the story show the consistency, but don't necessarily tell the reader exactly how everything works.

Hope this helps!

Tulip Mama <3
 
Last edited:

litdawg

Helping those who help themselves
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 18, 2019
Messages
873
Reaction score
562
Location
California
Cheers to all who contributed to this thread! Extrapolation from known phenomena is the lifeblood of innovation.
 

Drascus

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
148
Reaction score
19
Location
The Pacific Northwest
I'm still in the early worldbuilding phase so I haven't completely pinned down the tech level, but interstellar space travel is a thing for sure. Not a sprawling space empire, at most a dozen colonized star systems, possibly less. No Star Trek level energy conversion technology, so no transporters or replicators.

Humanity is Balkanized, there isn't a big space empire. Not post-singularity or post-scarcity. That's about all I have nailed down right now.

I really like the idea of turning off Higgs-Boson particles in an object, I hadn't thought of that at all. Pyrokinesis is almost certainly going to be a thing, it just depends on what the method ends up being.

Thank you for the warning, I don't plan to explain much about the magic system except how it works from the perspective of the character using it. In other words their experience of using the powers. I still want to know the underpinnings so that I can create a consistent power curve for the various psychics and force in some hard limits to the system so that it can't become a genie wish power.
 

Pallandozi

Registered
Joined
Dec 2, 2020
Messages
41
Reaction score
2
Location
Cambridge, UK
Imaging a drum whose surface is made of stretchy rubber. Put a lead ball in the centre, deforming it. Now take a marble, and roll it so it orbits the lead ball. The closer it is to the ball in the centre, the steeper the gradient of the surface, and the faster the marble needs to orbit in order to keep circling rather than move closer to the centre.

This analogy gives you several ways to think of manipulating the situation.

You could add a piece of elastic between the ball and the marble (a 5th force)

You could tighten the rubber surface.

You could reduce the weight of the marble.

You could stick a finger underneath the ball, lifting it a little.