Timeline for What change in the laws of physics would prevent the function of conventional digital circuits without breaking everything else?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Feb 23, 2015 at 1:17 | comment | added | Dewi Morgan | Short answer: because there're organic (=carbon) and apparently even biological semiconductors. Long answer: if you say "let's enlarge Si's band gap so's it's an insulator all the way up to its melting point", people would just use GaAs. If you say "let's change ALL semiconductor band gaps"... you've changed the basic chemistry of Carbon. While I'm no whiz at biochem, I suspect that'd break things. So 1) you broke the universe, and 2) you didn't prevent computation by other means anyway: engineers WILL find ways to compute, even if you remove semiconductors. We're too far down that path, now. | |
| Feb 22, 2015 at 21:34 | comment | added | Nyarmith | Yeah, that's what I was wondering and hence "without breaking everything else". I'm just curious why it would affect organic things. | |
| Feb 22, 2015 at 20:59 | comment | added | Dewi Morgan | Yeah, but my point is, in order not to just dissolve the planet into goo, you're going to be saying something super-specific, like "all the laws are unchanged except in computers." You're not only going to need a magic change in physics, but also a magic restriction so that the change doesn't affect anything that matters, just gizmos. Not just changing a physical law, but adding a new one, a new exception... which scientists will investigate and figure out how to exploit, of course. "Can we generate energy by making something alternate between being a computer, and not?" | |
| Feb 22, 2015 at 20:37 | comment | added | Nyarmith | Well, changing the laws of physics from what they previousy were is magic. The intent is to avoid any direct physical intervention such as EMP bombs and rather have something indiscernible in the universe change that prevents electronics from working. It will be magic, but the thing that changes could at least make sense. | |
| Feb 22, 2015 at 20:30 | comment | added | Dewi Morgan | For nothing to turn on, an EMP would work, but changing the laws of physics to make electronics act like an EMP had gone off, wold also affect other things like, say, our brains (we'd die), the sun (we'd die), and so forth. Serious sledgehammer-nut territory. Now, if you want to put in something that's a really fine specific clause, like "any mechanism that is used for computing will go boom", then that's not physics any more, it's magic. | |
| Feb 22, 2015 at 20:19 | comment | added | Nyarmith | I updated my question to clarify the intent. I don't want people to actively shun technology. The specific result is more of "nothing is turning on" than some new celebrity president thinks phones are bad for people and starts a religion or whatever. | |
| Feb 22, 2015 at 20:15 | comment | added | Dewi Morgan | Tried to address this in an edit to my answer. Basically, physics is the wrong tool to affect computation, let alone the concept of computation. | |
| Feb 22, 2015 at 20:14 | history | edited | Dewi Morgan | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
My suggestions aren't physics changes; physics is a sledgehammer; you can't hammer thoughts; social angle needed.
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| Feb 22, 2015 at 19:44 | comment | added | Nyarmith | This is a good idea, but say you were a system administrator of the laws of physics and you could switch these laws on or off at will. How would you just condition society to give up on the idea of making digital circuits in general? | |
| Feb 21, 2015 at 21:40 | history | answered | Dewi Morgan | CC BY-SA 3.0 |