Clearly I'm out of my league; no need to get nasty.

Oephyx

I think you misread my post; I was trying to see if magic could ba a form of Energy.

Tehan;

"Proclaiming your theory to be correct" is an antithesis. Theories, by definition, can't be 'correct'. I never proclaimed it to be correct. I stated it, as an opinion.

Calm down; no need to e-shout.

Points taken. Back to my original question then; where does the light energy from spell casting come from? Do you agree with Taure in that it is simply a warp of reality?

 

Firstly, it can't. At best you can claim that energy is a form of magic.

Secondly, that means your question is really 'Where does the magic come from?', and I dealt with what seems to be your theory on that later in the post. It's a stupid question.

But they can certainly be falsified or useful. Yours is the former and not the latter.

 

We have no canon examples of wizards apparating or controlling imperius-minions over long enough distances to determine how close to instantaneous these spells really are. Furthermore, considering that international intercontinental apparation is only safely attempted by highly skilled wizards, a moderate fraction of c would be sufficient within the practical limitations of human reaction times and practical distances for wizards even of Voldemort's caliber. This still requires a phenomenal amount of energy.

Assumptions:

1) An apparating wizard follows a straight-line path to his destination, at a constant speed, with effectively infinite acceleration at both ends.

2) All processes are 100% efficient.

3) For apparation to be perceptually instantaneous, the journey takes 100 ms. (Single audio stiumlus reaction time for humans averages about 140 ms.)

Physical measurements and assumptions:

1) The wizard has a mass of 70 kg.

2) The Earth's diameter is 12756.2 km.

The Math:

Velocity of the Apparating Wizard

Code:

(12756.2*10^3)/(100*10^-3)=1.27562*10^8 m/s (This is about c/2)

Energy used to accelerate wizard

Code:

e=(mv^2)/2

e=((70)(1.27562*10^8)^2)/2=5.69522*10^17 J

For comparison, this is about twice the energy released by the detonation of the soviet Tsar Bomba thermonuclear device. Kaboom.​

Conclusions and Clarifications

The calculated energy is only the initial acceleration, so the actual energy required would be twice that figure. If the wizard had regenerative braking, however, the required energy would be the original figure, and could be drawn from and returned to a rechargeable source capable of very large instantaneous draw.

Furthermore, at the speed necessary for a perceptually instantaneous journey, relativistic effects would be large.

Edit to Respond:

I view it as a Lovecraftian inability of the human mind to comprehend what it perceives. People observing the casting of spells see flashing lights and flying bolts because they believe they should see flashing lights and flying bolts. This also offers a convenient explanation for why some spells must be aimed (offensive) and some not (charms/transfiguration). The stunning hex takes the form of a red ray or bolt because the very notion of an attack suggests that the attacker should cause something to strike the target of the attack.

 

Could wizards apparate by simply slipping out of this dimension and reentering this dimension at their destination?

 

The flash of light comes before the spell takes effect, and a person seeing a spell being cast for the first time sees the flash as well as anyone else; moreover they probably all see the same flash.

What is possible is that the flash is not necessary, but that the caster includes it because he believes the flash should be there. I don't see how it can depend only on the observer though.

Edit: and stop filling pages of useless shit.

 

Well put, but I prefer this one by Nobel Prize winning physicist Gerard 'Thooft:

 

It's magic. It's not explained. It doesn't come from anywhere. It's rules don't need logic behind them. It's a long-established suspension of disbelief. Some versions have it explained in greater detail, but HP doesn't, which I actually like. It leaves it open to different interpretations and definitely to crossovers. 40k? Stable psyker mutation. Star Wars? Channelling the force. Stargate? Same deal as the Ancient gene. And so on.

There's always need to e-shout. It's cathartic as hell.


Vegemeister, why did you feel the need to pull information about the process of apparation straight out of your arse, and then do an essay on it?

 

But would that opinion still be held if it were discovered that magic actually existed?

Regarding international apparation: it's retarded. The distance from England to France is 22 miles. That's nothing compared to some of the apparation we have seen in canon (e.g. from Scotland to the south coast of England in HBP).

And I disagree with this:

You'd think walls and rock and stuff would get in the way.

Unless you're saying that somehow the wizard destroys their body, moves extraordinarily fast as a "spirit" or whatever (which you have to have horcruxes to survive...) and reintegrates their body at their destination. And then you try to apply physics to it.

/me blinks.

Perhaps you'd like to explain the disembodiment and method of acceleration using physics first, before getting to the energy required.

I think it's clear that apparation is disappearing from one place and appearing in another, without a vector.

 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. if magic were discovered to exist, physicists would just study it like they study gravity. He's referring to magic as hocus-pocus in general, explanations that ask us to accept a theory that is not testable testable.

 

Magic is a hocus-pocus, and it is distinguishible from sufficiently advanced technology. Not in it's effects, but certainly in it's nature. Admitting that magic exists is admitting that not everyting about the real world can be studied and understood rationally.

 

In the words of a novelist.

Perhaps we should go sign up for Scientology 101.

Physicists would attempt to study it like they study gravity.*

If it were HP magic, they'd fail. They might be able to make theories about how magic usually behaves, so long as you don't do anything too odd, and so long as someone with a new idea about how to use magic comes along, but they'd never be able to successfully "figure magic out".

Think about it for a bit. Magic is that which is supernatural. Supernatural. As in, above nature. Not part of it.

Sufficiently advanced technology and magic are not indistinguishable. They would only be so to one who did not know what was going on. When more knowledge was gained, it would be clear that the technology could be explained naturally, whereas the magic could not.

S'all in the definitions.

 

I suppose if you could seperate you body into sufficiently small particles it might work. Another way is that you send the information needed to recreate your body through waves, which is basically the spirit thing. It's still retarded though. Better to just say that in the apparating wizard's referential one location is instantly translated to the other. With a vector .

 

But that's exactly how science progresses. Newtonian mechanics explains gravity until it does something too weird, at which point they break down and you need general relativity. On the other end of the spectrum, they explain interactions until the scale gets too small, at which point you need quantum mechanics. Neither of these are figured out, because we don't yet understand the fundamental conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics themselves, nor do we have any idea on how to solve it. (The quote was originally from a discussion on string theory, where 'Thooft was comparing it to 'magic' ) Some quantum mechanical phenomena are so weird that they look like magic, like the so called 'spooky action at a distance', where a pair of particles that was original intertwined can travel each to its end of the galaxy, and a change upon one will still be reflected upon the other, seemingly violated the light speed restriction. This is why Einstein thought Quantum mechanics wasn't giving us the whole picture. Science evolves through Kuhnian paradigm changes when stuff gets too weird to the current paradigm. If magic were discovered to exist, it would just be another paradigm change. If scientists were all defeatists like you, they'd just have encountered relativistic or quantum phenomena and given up on studying it, presupposing they were beyond scientific inquiry too.

 

You don't quite seem to get it. Science works on the assumption that the real behaves rationally; even if we might never find the perfect theory, there is a hypothetical perfect unified theory to be found; all theories converge towards one. Magic, by definition, does not behave rationally. It is not something you can understand, because if you could it would not be magic. We are not calling things we can't understand 'magic', we are defining things that cannot be understood as 'magic'. We are not defeatist; I am not against trying to undestand, but they wouldn't.

You managed to make me repeat myself three times in the same post.

Warning: ninja edit

 

Actually, it works on the assumption that reality behaves predictably, not rationally. And magic is predictable. If you do the same spell twice, in the exact same way, ceteris paribus, you get the same result. That's enough for science to be able to study it. The underlying phenomena behind quantum mechanics is still not understood, and no one goes around calling it magic. You are being defeatist because you start from the assumption that is is magic and therefore unable to be studied by science, just because a few reactionary lunatics who are stuck on the 16th century do so. If magic wasn't able to be treated scientifically, it couldn't be taught in a school and be studied academically as is done in the HP-verse.

EDIT: upon further reflection, I think your problem isn't so much defeatism as it is obscurantism. You seek to oppose the spread of knowledge, why I cannot fathom.

 

I thought both, though you probably know this better than I do. Isn't the idea also that you can explain things?

I'm not sure about that. It does seem you can teach to cast a spell.

Study, yes, you can study anything. But that doesn't mean it is more than a log of all that happens in every situation.

To me it is you who seems narrow minded because you refuse to allow for the theoretical possissibility of something science cannot describe. Definitions and assumtions are different. If you want, I am not calling anything specific magic. I like to think that the books describe what I think of when refering to 'magic' in the same way you get an image of a character. But I certainly see no point in the concept of magic if it is to obey laws of nature.

wut?

I might allow that it could be successfully studied if you were yourself magical, but muggle scientists certainly not, and they would not be able to replicate the effects.

 

Oddly, you can cast the same levitation spell with the same amount of skill on a feather and on club and get the same result. You'd think that if magic could be studied rationally that wouldn't happen. You'd assume that a club would be much harder to pick up than a feather, as- if magic could be rationally explained as energy- it would take much more energy to lift something with so much more mass.

It doesn't happen that way.

If you cast the spell right, then the magic will lift whatever item you are pointing at regardless of mass. Anything that is not connected to the ground will go up.

You can't measure something that is indescribable.

 

That is indeed assumption, not science. You would also assume that heavier things fall faster; this is probably still something a lot of people think. Science shows that they do not, for rational reasons.

My view is that the debate is on whether there is any contradiction in the existence of something science cannot truely predict. Personnally I think science is founded on the belief in a transcendental logic, maybe I am wrong.

 

You'd assume wrong then. the story of science is full of wrong assumptions. I didn't say it could be rationally explained as energy--I made no suggestion as to how science might deal with it, just that since it behaves in predictable ways it can be studied and modeled. To what extend its existence would imply the renewal of the existing scientific models is a completely different issue.


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Not necessarily. We don't know why quantum events happen, and we can't even predict accurately that they will, only probabilistically. That doesn't mean we cannot have scientific laws dealing with it.
But if you simply mean being able to describe, then I don't see how magic contradicts that--if you do wand waves in a certain way combined with a certain intent or something, ceteris paribus you get the same result.

If the thing behaves predictably, you can model it too.

Magic is a part of nature, thus it has to obey nature's laws--even if has its own set of laws. If you pass a magnet over a piece of iron, the piece of iron will lift seemingly in defiance of gravity. Does this mean electromagnetism doesn't obey the laws of nature? No just that there are a different set of laws that govern their interaction.

I meant wizards, but it's not important, I was ranting there.

They would just need the collaboration of someone magical, or perhaps with studying magical creatures they would be able to replicate the effect or at least study it enough to understand it. We can't create enough anti-matter to do anything useful with it, but we can still study it and predict what would happen if we could.

 

There are schools of art, it does not mean esthetism can be treated scientifically. I think it's a false inference.

Perhaps you seek to oppose the spread of thinking then. You have not explained where you see the contradiction the existence of things science does not explain. I consider its existence because I see no reason to refute it, just as I consider the existence of God and its philosophical consequences; I believe in neither.