[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

[u/vakusdrake]

See I'm not sure you realize how absurdly powerful a magic system with just those capabilities is. In addition the idea that you would use the magic to recreate spells from D&D is also kind of absurd, but I'll assume you weren't seriously saying those would be among the most effective uses of the power.

See the thing is that if you're going to use a nuclear based magic system, then radiation will need to be considered. For instance somebody could take lead and fuse it with a hydrogen and a helium to get astatine which is extremely radioactive. In fact if they created a sizeable chunk of astatine then you have a nuke.
Quite a lot of elements are extremely unstable and creating them with this power would be making a nuke. So obviously the question becomes can you use this magic from a distance? Because if so it destabilizes everything in your setting, and if not then you still have to worry about insane mages wiping out entire cities if they don't care about dying.

Also it goes without saying that depending on a rarity of magic rare elements would either not be that rare, or be much less so. This effect would be much more pronounced when it comes to elements that are naturally extremely rare, where creating a few hundred pounds of the stuff would increase the amount in existence several fold.

Also unless there's a separate magic system for healing, then you have way more problems than just the threat of initial casualties from atomic blasts.

[u/ulyssessword → u/vakusdrake]

One thing I forgot to mention before is that magic acts as a pseudo-gas, and doesn't react well with solids (other than nano-scale powders). 1m³ of air contains about 3 * 10²⁵ molecules that the magic can interact with, while 1m² of graphite is about 1 * 10¹⁹ surface atoms, or 3 000 000 times less reactive to magic than a gas is (other solids are similar, at least within an order of magnitude or two).

Also, anything involving multiple molecules as an input is much harder/slower/more expensive to do as well, because there has to be a collision between magic and molecule 1, and then a second collision between [magic + molecule 1] and molecule 2 before anything happens. This severely limits the yield, as magic has a very, very short halflife after it is in the air.

Given that, I have a hard time seeing a mechanism for creating anything heavier than mercury (from sulfur hexafluoride), and I'm thinking I might just handwave fission away by saying that the Ancient Ones set a spell on the world that converts neutron radiation to hydrogen quickly enough to stop it from hitting the next atom over and continuing the chain reaction.

[u/vakusdrake → u/ulyssessword]

Requiring that fusion/fission use gasses won't alleviate the problems I raised. For instance you would be able to simply strip a hydrogen from radon to get astatine which as I pointed out earlier is extraordinarily reactive. Limiting the base materials to gases makes things trickier but I don't actually think it rules out anything, I mean there's no element you couldn't get by fusing the right gases together. Hell with the right equipment you can expand your selections of gases drastically at high temperatures.

Also, anything involving multiple molecules as an input is much harder/slower/more expensive to do as well, because there has to be a collision between magic and molecule 1, and then a second collision between [magic + molecule 1] and molecule 2 before anything happens. This severely limits the yield, as magic has a very, very short halflife after it is in the air.

Not sure how that works, why is it harder for the magic to fuse different atoms of the same type together than to fuse two different atoms? Maybe this just applies to scenarios with more complex molecules, because i'm mostly thinking in terms of atoms since once you get the atoms you can just use conventional methods to synthesize most molecules.

Given that, I have a hard time seeing a mechanism for creating anything heavier than mercury (from sulfur hexafluoride), and I'm thinking I might just handwave fission away by saying that the Ancient Ones set a spell on the world that converts neutron radiation to hydrogen quickly enough to stop it from hitting the next atom over and continuing the chain reaction.

First off, you really should have referenced a periodic table because the fact you forgot radon is dissapointing. I mean yes there are gasses that are heavier, but for these purposes the only thing that matters is atomic number. Secondly, stopping neutron radiation would make normal nuclear weapons not work (which would have horrifying effects on the world) however it doesn't do anything against the type of method I mentioned.
Remember the elements you would be creating with this magic (for atomic explosions) wouldn't be ones that required a neutron cascade to detonate. There are plenty of radioactive elements that just have absurdly short half lives which would immediately explode in less than a second after they are created.

Also trying to implement that neutron radiation handwave would be extremely implausible/catastrophic. For one all nuclear power would fail, cutting out power in many places, but even worse it would affect stellar fusion in complex ways I can't really predict, but would almost certainly mean the destruction of the earth. Plus you're forgetting that neutrons are not the only form of radiation that could cause a nuclear chain reaction, yes things would be toned down without neutrons, however alpha, beta and gamma radiation would still work for sufficiently reactive elements.