If we could manipulate the 4 Fundamental Forces What Could We Do?

[Spacescifi]

 

 

The 4 fundamental forces are:

Gravity.

Electromagnetism.

The strong force: What holds atoms together or something like it.

The weak force: Something to do with how atoms decay into radiation or other elements.

Question: If we found a way to manipulate these forces by diverting the localtion where the force is present to another location nearby... what could we do?

This is not enhancing or weakening any of the forces per se, it is just moving it's area of influence away from an object to another or even the air itself.

 

For example, you could remove the EM force from a meter wide radius of air and put it elsewhere 

No idea if doing that would nuke your immediate surroundings.

Removing gravity from local area could be useful for SSTO's obviously.

Removing the strong force could just make any mass radioactive or maybe explode.

Removing the weak force could make an objective less likely to decay and harder to break.

Obviously removed forces have to go somewhere, and wherever they are put would have a net increase of that force.

 

So... you may discuss and perhaps figure out stuff I have not. Thanks.

 

I thinks this concept holds with conservation of energy too. Energy is neither created or destroyed... just moved around.

EDIT: Removing the forces in percentages would be far more useful than an all or nothing approach.

As by dampening gravity you could simulate life on other worlds or increase it by the same margin.

Have no clue what dampening or increasing the EM force in a 100 meter radius would do.

I do know that manipulating such forces with humans within the radius can be lethal, so I do not recommend it.

 

Edited December 3, 2019 by Spacescifi

[Guest]

Everything. Well, almost, but close to everything. If you can manipulate the four fundamental forces, you can make matter and energy fall apart and come together at will. You could induce nuclear reactions, rearrange quarks into whatever particle you want, rearrange protons and neturons into any element you want, adjust the rate of decay (so you could make any combination of protons and neutrons last)... If you can control those forces with subatomic precision, there's little that you couldn't do.

If your control is not that fine, you could cause nuclear explosions, and that's about it. Subatomic interactions are beyond fine (props to anyone who gets this pun  ) and store quite a bit of energy. Mess with them with anything but subatomic precision, and the particles involved will release that energy, reverting to the closest basic state. The exception is gravity, which works on a different scale, and you could probably use that ability to move things around in a variety of ways.

Edited December 4, 2019 by Guest

[Spacescifi]

17 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Everything. Well, almost, but close to everything. If you can manipulate the four fundamental forces, you can make matter and energy fall apart and come together at will. You could induce nuclear reactions, rearrange quarks into whatever particle you want, rearrange protons and neturons into any element you want, adjust the rate of decay (so you could make any combination of protons and neutrons last)... If you can control those forces with subatomic precision, there's little that you couldn't do.

If your control is not that fine, you could cause nuclear explosions, and that's about it. Subatomic interactions are beyond fine (props to anyone who gets this pun  ) and store quite a bit of energy. Mess with them with anything but subatomic precision, and the particles involved will release that energy, reverting to the closest basic state. The exception is gravity, which works on a different scale, and you could probably use that ability to move things around in a variety of ways.

 

Thank you!

All I want is a legit SSTO scifi starship.

 

So you're telling me we can do it... but the way I designed there will ALWAYS be some fallout effect, since your removing a force somewhere to another place, decreasing it in one location while increasing it in another.

EDIT: Can make a nuke out of an apple with this scifi tech. Wow.

WOO HOO! Could we make and store metallic hydrogen and antimatter?

Or am I asking for too much now?

Edited December 4, 2019 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

We could make an apple nuke made of metallic antihydrogen.

[KSK]

Changing  the electromagnetic force would change the chemical properties of anything in the affected area because you’d be changing the interaction between atomic nuclei and the electrons surrounding those nuclei (ie chemical bonding) How those properties would change, I have no real idea. 

Turn off the electromagnetic force and there’s nothing to hold matter together, so it all turns to plasma.

Tweak the strong force and you start doing fun things like messing around with quark confinement. (The strong force increases sharply over distance, so much so that under normal circumstances you never see an isolated quark. And by ‘normal’ I mean not even in most particle accelerator experiments.) Turn off the strong force and you switch off the force holding atomic nuclei together and the force holding the protons and neutrons in those nuclei, together. This is probably bad news for any bystanders.

Gravity is an odd one. If we’re going with Einsteinian gravity then turning the gravitational force up or down implies that you’re changing the local curvature of space. At which point you can build an Alcubierre drive.

Forget SSTO’s though, with this level of control over matter you could probably build a Star Trek style transporter and beam everything you need to orbit.

Edited December 4, 2019 by KSK

[Okhin]

Or you can have those nifty nanofabbers. Feed them inert matter (for instance, blocks of carbon), and recombine the particles into anything you want (alchemist would thrive for this, don't tell them). Since you're not removing stuff, you probably have to conserve mass and energy somehow, but besides that everything is ok.

Also, if you change the weak force, I suspect it does alter the tensile strength (or is it gravity ?) which allow you to build space elevator from even the worst planetary body. Yes, it means you can have one to the surface of the sun. And a dyson sphere (which you should turn into a stellar engine to move your planetary system around, which will save fuel).

Where it gets pretty funny, is that you can mess quite a bit with some constant of the universe, using quantum intrication. That would allow you to transmit information through the whole universe in no time (like, really, no time at all if I get quantic intrication right). So, you'll have a universal system of communication, which would allow to exchange blueprints between nanofabbers, and then removing any need for physically moving stuff around. Just send the blueprint to the place you want it, print it out of blocks of whatever's around and bam, you got it.

It might also allow for transfer of consciousness, but I think we're going out of the realm of physics (since we do not really know what consciousness is).

As said before by others, if you can control (even by displacing) the 4 fundamental force, you're basically a god, you can create universe, free from the need of feeding yourself or maintaining a body, existing in a state of pure information, stored in quantically intricated particles, along with your fellows gods, merging into whatever this is. Welcome to the postHuman realms were everything is possible. So, what will you do ?

[kerbiloid]

No gravity → no orbit → no KSP.

No electromagnetism → no electricity → no power → no games → no KSP.

Do we really need this?

Edited December 4, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Spacescifi]

12 hours ago, Okhin said:

Or you can have those nifty nanofabbers. Feed them inert matter (for instance, blocks of carbon), and recombine the particles into anything you want (alchemist would thrive for this, don't tell them). Since you're not removing stuff, you probably have to conserve mass and energy somehow, but besides that everything is ok.

Also, if you change the weak force, I suspect it does alter the tensile strength (or is it gravity ?) which allow you to build space elevator from even the worst planetary body. Yes, it means you can have one to the surface of the sun. And a dyson sphere (which you should turn into a stellar engine to move your planetary system around, which will save fuel).

Where it gets pretty funny, is that you can mess quite a bit with some constant of the universe, using quantum intrication. That would allow you to transmit information through the whole universe in no time (like, really, no time at all if I get quantic intrication right). So, you'll have a universal system of communication, which would allow to exchange blueprints between nanofabbers, and then removing any need for physically moving stuff around. Just send the blueprint to the place you want it, print it out of blocks of whatever's around and bam, you got it.

It might also allow for transfer of consciousness, but I think we're going out of the realm of physics (since we do not really know what consciousness is).

As said before by others, if you can control (even by displacing) the 4 fundamental force, you're basically a god, you can create universe, free from the need of feeding yourself or maintaining a body, existing in a state of pure information, stored in quantically intricated particles, along with your fellows gods, merging into whatever this is. Welcome to the postHuman realms were everything is possible. So, what will you do ?

 

It is not a an all or nothing scenario, as I realized the results could be catastrophic. That is why I added that it would be useful for weakening or strengthening forces across distances.

 

It's still a tricky abiltity though, since if you want to increase the strong force on an object by 200 percent then you must weaken the strong force by 200 percent in the space surrounding it.

 

On a planet this could be catastrophic, but it could work for a spaceship, as vacum has so little mass that I doubt you could nuke your surroundings.

On the other hand, such a force weakner/strengthner could be used as a type of shield.

Any missiles encountering a field that could weaken/strengthen fundamental forces could blow them up easily.

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

KABOOM

need I explain further 

[magnemoe]

On 12/4/2019 at 2:38 PM, kerbiloid said:

No gravity → no orbit → no KSP.

No electromagnetism → no electricity → no power → no games → no KSP.

Do we really need this?

Think the idea is an area there you can change the forces, say you have an spaceship or plane who can turn reverse gravity around it. It will fall upward. Have an reactor there hydrogen fusion at room temperature. 
all sort of crazy stuff like like the Alcubierre drive, in short its kind of the cheat codes to the universe. 
And yes is this was easy it would probably be an late filter. 

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Think the idea is an area there you can change the forces

http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-536

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-536

Pretty much yes, note that lots of stuff here would be nuclear bomb level energy density. More if you do stuff like turning stuff into miniature black holes. 

[Starstruck69]

If only we could play god.. The problem is that the reason the forces are there in the first place is because of the arrangement of such systems and matter and their interactions together.

For example we have the earth and its gravity field. If we remove a proportion of the earth, we remove a proportion of the gravity field too. And so on and so forth. It wouldn't be there to be used in an another way. Conservation of energy...

I guess thats physics for you.

Interesting post though:)

[RealKerbal3x]

OK...the speed of light isn’t a fundamental force, but I recently finished the Three Body Problem book series by Cixin Liu, and there was some stuff in there about changing the speed of light within a localised area, like the Solar System.

If you were able to do this, you could reduce lightspeed to lower than the Sun’s escape velocity - no light would be able to escape, so you would have a ‘reduced-lightspeed black hole’. Anybody looking in the direction of the Solar System would not be able to see anything, but you would also trap yourself inside the Solar System, as you would experience the usual effects associated with moving at close to the speed of light at a much lower speed.

Edited December 8, 2019 by RealKerbal3x

[wumpus]

One thing is that the speed of light has an inverse square relationship with the electric and magnetic permeability of vacuum.  So if you reduce the speed of light, you increase the strengths of magnetic and electric fields.  This would do wonders to chemistry (probably immediately extinguishing all life) let alone such obvious issues as electronics and electrical devices.  And of course the reverse would be likewise true (except for the effects on life of course).

The math is beyond me, but I've been told that altering the universes' constants tends to result in a boring, trivial universe that can't support life, and probably can't really support matter as we know it.

That said, I highly recommend Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" and later books that takes this idea (speed of light is variable by location) and runs with it.

Edited December 9, 2019 by wumpus
missing possessive

[Starstruck69]

Speed of light is generally thought of as a constant by physicists (in a vacuum of course). The most extreme environment that we know of is black holes where things get really crazy. There are many different theories of what happens beyond the event horizon by respected scientists but nobody actually knows for sure. Of course we can't measure or observe anything beyond the event horizon but without getting bogged down in crazy complex mathematics it might be worth looking at Hawkins radiation and of course einsteins work on relativity. They aren't overly complex just skip the geometrics part of relativity.

Also a proffessor called Leonard Susskind (Stamford University) discusses this in great depth and has some really great theories on the matter. Especially Einstein Rosen Bridges i found fascinating. You can watch his lectures on you tube.

[Starstruck69]

By the way another point that is really interesting (to me anyway) is quantum entanglement. Fascinating subject that does require a good level of physics to understand. However here is the interesting bit. Currently it is generally accepted that light travels at a constant speed and nothing can travel faster in our known universe. Well it seems quantumly entangled particles can flip their polarities instantly, regardless of distance. You flip one the other flips too. Instantaneously!!

If you think about that for a second that means it happens quicker than the speed of c! Which according to current physics is not possible but this experiment has been repeated numerous times with the same outcome.

Leonard Susskind goes into this in great depth in his lectures.

I highly recommend watching them if your physics/maths is a decent level.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2019 by Starstruck69

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, wumpus said:

One thing is that the speed of light has an inverse square relationship with the electric and magnetic permeability of vacuum.  So if you reduce the speed of light, you increase the strengths of magnetic and electric fields.  This would do wonders to chemistry (probably immediately extinguishing all life) let alone such obvious issues as electronics and electrical devices.  And of course the reverse would be likewise true (except for the effects on life of course).

The math is beyond me, but I've been told that altering the universes' constants tends to result in a boring, trivial universe that can't support life, and probably can't really support matter as we know it.

That said, I highly recommend Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" and later books that takes this idea (speed of light is variable by location) and runs with it.

its more subtle, they changed there you could use FTL travel, stranding an invading fleet in normal space to die then their life support ran out. 
The universe had some extra rules, close to the galactic core intelligent life did not exist, nor could it, if you went in there you would die. The next layer faster than light travel did not work. 
Stuff like bussard ramjets works, outside it FTL worked and a clarkteck device changed this border for an region stranding the fleet. 
And yes its an very good book, however its  star trek scifi just way way better written. 

[Guest]

With the power to manipulate the fabric of existence I would first find out what project you have been gathering all this sci-fi knowledge for and second I would make sure everyone that has contributed to your questions gets their name in the credits :p