New answers tagged magic
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Is there any parallel in real life with things animals can do since birth but humans can learn with years of studying?
Sperm whales can dive to few thousand meters under the sea and be there for long time in apnea. Humans barely reach around 100 meters and for no more than a bunch of minutes
Cheetahs can sprint at 110 km/h, while human record holders can ...
answered 12 mins ago
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Probably
Since we are dealing with creatures that evolved semi-independently from the homo line, and an apocalyptic event that undermined typical society, it seems unusual to apply human psychology and sociology to the Kaijura. That being said I’m inclined to believe Kaijura would partner with humans.
Now I couldn’t find information on how exactly the ...
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Your civil engineer will have a strong background in Earthworks and will be able to advise your geomancer in how to build a sound structure even without being able to build traditional ceiling. First displace a torus of Earth like a large foxhole, then raise up a bunch of stone pillars that can rest against the torus of earthwork and come together as a cone....
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The owlbats seem like the only real threat here (everything else is defeated by a circular wall raised by the earth mage and some sharpened sticks at the worst). However, predators do not generally take fights against significant resistance, so we don't need to actually be able to kill whatever comes at us: just be scary enough and capable of throwing out ...
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Hard scales. Let's say our dragon here is being threatened by world war 2 fighter planes. The planes shoot a bunch of missiles at the dragon, but the bullets bounce of the dragon without any damage. The dragon then responds with rubbing it's scales to fire against the planes. The planes retreat, but not before the dragon uses it's thicker-than metal teeth ...
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Design it the same way one would design a portable console.
A wand first and foremost should be modular. There needs to be a solid non-magical base (so no cross contamination) with a lot of shielding for the core swappable components (in this case spells).
Spells should be composed in the same generic fashion with different "models" for different ...
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There might be a mechanism allowing current to flow in the stones for long times: galvanic corrosion.
Galvanic corrosion (also called bimetallic corrosion or dissimilar metal corrosion) is an electrochemical process in which one metal corrodes preferentially when it is in electrical contact with another, in the presence of an electrolyte.
Floatstones are ...
answered 16 hours ago
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This sounds like beasts of burden situation (i.e. Horses, working dogs, oxen, ect.) to me. If the creatures aren't capable of a human intelligence. Working animals are a long practice in human cultures and in fact, many advanced civilizations arose from cultures with reliable pack animals (animals used to carry heavy loads). Perhaps the most noticable ...
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Yes they will help, but AI and deposit schemes will help without the slavery issue.
Yes some living thing that's only purpose of existing is to sort recycling will help. Telekinetic minds in jars are one way of doing this.
Alternatively:
Train an animal to do it. I cant find the video now but I saw a dog trained to sniff out recyclable cans and bottles (eg ...
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Yes
For all effects and purposes, you can replace "slave" with "robot" here. You can "instruct" them via programming what to do. They don't have any special intelligence or agency but can be programmed to act on sensor data - a workflow can look like: 1. pick up item 2. check composition 3a. if paper - to to left pile 3b if not ...
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In the language of the divine, each symbol has one and only one meaning.
Humans like the play fast and loose with words. The symbol for fire might come to mean "bright" (because fires are bright) or "burn" (because fires inflict burns) or "that feeling in the middle of autumn when you're sitting at a bonfire remembering how you used ...
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How many runes are there and how many meaning per rune? EIther group runes together, or have enough of them to fomr a protolanguage of some sort, where the context makes grammar and disambiguates the meaning.
If there are only few meanings per rune, you can use diacritics to disambiguate.
In modern Pǔtōnghuà, you could, if you really want to, kind of get ...
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“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”$^1$
Like in common language a single word can have ...
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Let me note that, according to our finite element analysis https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.05171 , vacuum balloons can be made using commercially available materials. Our article also contains references to other people's work on the topic. Improved altitude control (via pumping air in and out of the balloon) can be one of the advantages of vacuum balloons.
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I began writing this before I saw @Ash's answer; I apologize for the overlap.
At first, I found it difficult to imagine Dexterity having anything to do with Organization. In my personal experience, I've observed that disorganized people just don't find the present time or present space very interesting. They can have far reaching, creative visions about the ...
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More efficient but less organised.
Organisation is the process of making it more efficient to do a task in the future. I'm presorting now so that future tasks are more efficient, gambling that there is a net gain. For example:
I may sort my dirty clothes into whites and coloured every time I strip so that when it's time to do the washing, I don't need to do ...
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Other answers are right at pointing that vacuum zeppelins would be just about 16% better than helium ones. However, there's still one important difference between vacuum and gas that affects the way a zeppelin flies: In gas airships buoyancy is constant, independent of altitude, buoyancy will be higher at low altitudes and the airship will tend to remain at ...
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I'd say no. Physical fitness as pretty obvious benefits in our society. More fit people can perform physical tasks that others cannot. Things from the obvious winning boxing matches down to ordinary mundane things like being more able to move furniture in your house. More fit people tend to live longer, which I would think would be a strong incentive. More ...
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With your numbers, hydrogen-filled airship is still superior!
Ok, so you say a 5 m radius balloon evacuated balloon needs a shell 5 mm thick with average density 140 kg/m³ (it would probably not be solid, but a honeycomb structure; and then it can be thicker, because you need thickness for strength in bending), which weighs 220 kg.
But a 5 m radius balloon ...
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Nope. Not necessarily
Some people are lazy or simply not motivated
People in our world has tons of chances to improve themselves. But not everyone uses those chances. Working harder, exercising etc. can all benefit a human being in our world but not everyone has the willpower to stand the process.
Some people are genetically better
Some people simply has ...
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As I calculated in my previous answer
Let's take the ideal case where the volume in the balloon is completely devoided of air, the balloon doesn't let any air leak in and can withstand the outer pressure. This means that a cubic meter of that void will have a lifting force equivalent to the weight of the displaced air, which means about 12 N. This means that ...
answered Jan 22 at 5:13
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Let's talk about airship practicality instead of lifting power.
Takeoff and Landing.
This is, by far, the most hazardous part of an airship journey. Winds near the ground are unpredictable. A single surprise shear can (and did!) wreck an airship in moments. It was a race to get a landed ship into a hangar or properly tied down before that inevitable deadly ...
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Alternate Vision:
FLYING WINGS: With such a strong, light material, why not make very thin (relatively), light airships akin to giant flying wings that happen to be buoyant if they stop moving? Flying wings have a fairly large internal volume and low drag. They would have all the best qualities of an airplane and an airship. Due to the strength and lightness ...
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The problem is that vacuum doesn't gain you all that much over filling your balloons with hydrogen or helium. Air is a mix of roughly 80% N2 and 20% O2 (with a bit of other stuff I'll neglect for simplicity). The molecular weights of N2 and O2 are 28 & 32, respectively. Thus the average for air is about 29.
Air at 0 °C and sea level pressure weighs 1....
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16% more functional / versatile than existing helium airships.
This is not the best use of Besker in your world.
As was already pointed out in the comments; Hydrogen has 93% of the lifting power of vacuum and helium has 86%. The improvement from helium to vacuum is a 16% improvement, so that's the performance gain you've got from the real-world. Not much in ...
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It Depends:
This answer assumes a first-world country. Lack of existing tech in nations without extensive infrastructure might make magic the new thing like cell phones displacing construction of conventional phones.
Like most questions involving how people think, there are a lot of variables that go into this. 90% of people won't need to be able to throw ...
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Spells work by making the magic vibrate at a certain frequency, which
directly correlates to its temperature, and use crystalline minerals
that focus corresponding magics into a certain range of frequencies or
temperatures.
A 'perpetual motion machine' is just another way of saying that entropy is ignored. That is, in a closed system where entropy exists (...
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"How will this impact mankind's interaction with food?"
In many, many ways. Given that food is now intelligent, it will presumably begin to actively avoid permanent destruction. Especially so given that they possess ape-like (caveman) intelligence. I don't know how motile a living cake is, but we could see foods attempting to flee distribution ...
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Anyone living inside is biologically immortal; they don’t die from old
age, starvation, poison, or disease. Otherwise fatal wounds like a
sword to the chest can be healed, lost limbs or fingers (but not
heads) can be restored. Aging is determined by personal growth and
stops when someone has reached their physical prime. Death occurs for
such people only ...
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There will be war against food
If the food have primitive inteligence, it would try to preserve itself from being eaten, spoiled or dissolved (candy would try to climb out from puddle, for example.) Home food would try to escape to wild, to keep itself alive. And cake can simply absorb berries to became berry-cake, so it would survive there rather than be ...
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By the time food is eaten, it will embrace the propaganda with religious fervour.
The subdivision of food reduces its intelligence. Following from this, when food is joined with other food its intelligence increases, and the amount of food together in one place is proportional to how intelligent it is.
Most food in the western world is heavily industrialised....
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Food cannot be stored in the home.
So everything we eat is alive? Well guess what, that's already true. The cow you had for dinner was alive!
Okay I admit it's not quite the same. But now the world has changed so, not only does the cow in the meadow walk and talk, but also the steak on you plate was still walking and talking as you gobbled it down. The same ...
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Pudding
Wanting to see the world and unable to live with his uncle anymore,
Bunyip Bluegum the koala sets out on his travels, taking only a
walking stick. At about lunchtime, feeling more than slightly peckish,
he meets Bill Barnacle the sailor and Sam Sawnoff the penguin who are
eating a pudding. The pudding is a ...
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Breaking News!! PETA finally loses it and declares war on mankind, starves to death before doing anything.
Okay, so that may be pushing it... they'd probably starve before declaring war. I don't think the overall relationship between us and our food would change all that much just because food is cute now (have you seen a baby cow? cute as can be... also ...
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Why bother with bows and arrows at all? They could just drop or throw air-based flechettes.
The flechettes have a higher terminal velocity than arrows and gain kinetic energy as they drop. Also, flechettes (as well as arrows) benefit from the initial velocity of the weapons platform. A two-inch long version of these weighing only 0.7 ounces called the ...
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I don't think so.
I don't have most of the math in me so I searched. According to this article, lifting a person even with helium takes a lot of volume. For a small, 100 pounds teenager:
Therefore each cubic foot of helium could lift 0.069 pounds. In order to lift 100 pounds (which would include the weight of your load, the balloon, and the helium) you ...
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The cloth won't be that small if it has to rely just on the lifting power of hot air.
Let's look at the best case scenario, where the volume in the cloth is completely devoided of air, the cloth doesn't let any air leak in and can withstand the outer pressure. This means that a cubic meter of that void will have a lifting force equivalent to the weight of ...
answered Jan 20 at 13:23
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It strikes me as slightly odd that you are worrying about real physics when you've already got the archers doing 'flying by magic'... why worry about conservation of momentum or the like in this circumstance? You could just define that they are able to operate whatever weapon and that it has no effect on their velocity or height as it's compensated for by ...
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All these answers are neglecting the boring realities of the effects of these archers on "real combat".
There are two aspects to a projectile's range and terminal velocity:
Initial launch speed
Initial altitude
Fighter jet pilots know this well - the main complaint about the F-35 is that it will launch a missile from lower altitude and with less ...
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Is it possible to draw a bow midair? If not, then they would use crossbows that they would load while on the ground and shoot once midair.
I went to a martial arts school with an archery range. One of the things the instructors had us do for us to learn how to shoot fast was leaping over a bench or a chair (while running) - and we had the time in the air to ...
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Lars Andersen can catch an arrow shot at him and accurately return fire while still in the air. It is by no means impossible to shoot a bow while in the air.
Conservation of momentum means that the momentum of your projectile will be subtracted from the momentum of your archer once it is fired, according to the law. A heavy arrow might weigh as many as 40 ...
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Throwing and drawing a bow require a remarkable amount of core and upper body movement. Throwing specifically is the art of transferring the momentum of your body into another smaller object.
I have some practical experiments for you. Throw a ball normally to judge your range. Throw a ball while sitting down. Throw a ball with your back to a wall.
Now ...
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Drawing a bow midair doesn't look impossible, and seems way more practical than bringing loaded crossbows along. Due to practical limitations, how many crossbows could one take along? 5 seems to be already a large number, and a flying attacker firing up to 5 darts before stopping seems rather underpowered.
Also recoil doesn't seem to be a huge issue: first ...
answered Jan 19 at 7:42
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Yes you can, and a subtle effect.
Rather than getting all physics on you, I'd suggest the best way to understand this is to try it: hop on a skate board / roller skates / frozen lake / floor covered with lube, put on some safety gear like helmet, and give this a shot, the physics are the same. (It's both fun and educational!).
Assuming you're able to fly ...
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I feel like everyone missed one thing here: magic is an extension of the user.
Let's say magic is part of a mage (not much of a stretch), part of their essence. In order to put a spell on a scroll, the mage has to put a bit of their very soul into the scroll. The words of the spell, the phrasing, and even the language of the spell is personal, unique, and ...
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Decades ago, probably in the previous millennium, I read an article in a science fiction magazine which described a typical day in the life of a wizard using magic, and then pointed out that the readers were just as much wizards as the one whose day was described, doing everything that the wizard did, only with advanced technology and not magic.
In advanced ...
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This type of magic is no different from technology.
Talking with people on different continents, who you won't ever meet personally, but they can pay your work. Eavesdropping others by tricky video calls and shared cloud accounts. States in cold war use the Internet as a battlefield to eavesdrop and manipulate each other.
The parallelism between our current ...
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What political, social, military and agricultural things should I worry about when trying to make this world realistic?
Political positions affected by magical powers
I guess a great way to "balance" things out would be to not allow a person to have a unique power, let's say there's a single person in the world that can change someone's thoughts ...
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You have laid out enough rules to make your story work. Now lean into the magic.
It is technically possible to figure out the energy to remove carbon from steel, or break a nitrogen-hydrogen bond, or melt and reform a piece of metal. It is not the same calculation for each thing you want to do and at the end of the day you have spent hours figuring out ...
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Every other answer regarding power and geopolitics is basically right, so I wont repeat them.
Some other things to consider:
Nuclear medicine. We have radioactive chemicals in our body when were getting medical imagining, when were treating certain cancers, or dealing with thyroid conditions. Having this lifesaving medicine turn to silver is a death ...
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