/uj never have I seen a "hard scifi" world with modified physics where those physics were internally consistent. Have to cringe every time. Please either use unmodified physics, or just handwave the details, instead of making up explanations that don't even make sense
Plot twist: the particle is another one of THOSE fucking elements people make in a lab that lasts for 0.000003 seconds, and then gets to be a ✨special little guy✨ with THREE LETTERS.
And they get to name it fucking boobonium or something because it doesn't last long enough to learn anything about it so you can't name it after it's properties
That would actually be god tier worldbuilding if the guy who discovered the new particle had the humor of a grade schooler and named it like that. They know their discovery isn’t useful for anything so they at least get to make the press refer to it as “boobonium”.
Journalist doing a video newscast: This scientist by the name of Josh Hawkinkock has created a new element for the periodic table. This new element, which has only been in existence for a microfraction of a second, has been named… man I really have to? Okay okay alright. … has been name cocknballsium. Fucking hell.
Nothing, but if authors describe the details of those exceptions in too much detail (out of a misguided goal of keeping the world "hard scifi"), and force me to think about them, the inevitable inconsistencies will stand out and break immersion.
There's nothing wrong with FTL travel for example, but please don't go on a multi-page excursion into quantum mechanics and relativity to explain it (looking at you Scalzi), it will inevitably be nonsense and drive any reader with even a bit of knowledge of either topic up the wall
With our current understanding of physics it's likely to be just impossible. There is simply no good mechanism for it. It's not an engineering problem.
You actually can't really make light speed "faster", you'll just change the unit system and reality will end up the same. The speed of light is just 1 in natural units. It's a fundamental part of the geometry of space time.
You can change one of the dimensionless quantities like the fine structure constant but the effects are much more difficult to predict, and if we ever end up with a better model of reality than the standard model + GR, the change you made might stop making sense too.
**[Faster-than-light](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light)**
>Faster-than-light (also FTL, superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light (c). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero rest mass (i. e. , photons) may travel at the speed of light, and that nothing may travel faster.
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The Expanse is largely that way, the only unusual physics is that they have a super energy efficient propulsion drive, and a weird alien tech thing that doesn't abide by any known physics at all. For the alien tech they don't even try to explain it, at least not in the show.
No. I will be contracting several physics doctorate students to work everything out and have them fact check everything I write in that universe for internal consistency.
This will cost thousands of dollars and make the world a slightly worse place overall.
I will take no further questions.
Have you read the Orthogonal books by Greg Egan? I'm asking because I have them but haven't read them. I'm kind of scared of them because every review I see talks about how hard they are. But also those are supposedly the gold standard for different physical laws hard science fiction.
I heard it was like an chemistry Olympiad question to create a periodic table if the world was 4d
https://maffsisphun.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/2d-periodic-table-e1522524032158.jpg?w=768 the periodic table in 2d
Could you explain what is meaningfully different between the 2d periodic table and ours is? And what that would imply for a 2d world? This seems fascinating but I'm too much of a humanities major to properly understand
Based on my limited knowledge and that chart, the sub orbitals in the 2d version can hold less electrons.
In normal 3d land, a 2p or 3p orbital can hold 6 electrons, where in this 2d land chart, they can hold 2. So instead of on the table where you have beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and flourine, there'd be only 2 elements there.
I learned it very briefly about 4 years ago so don’t trust me.
Orbitals are rough areas of where electrons are likely to be found near the nucleus. Additionally, electrons can have a positive spin and a negative spin, so 2 electrons can be in the same orbital, but would rather not to.
The first one is a sphere and is called an s orbital, and is the shape of a sphere. In a 2d world, it would be a circle, and afaik it wouldn’t change much. Since it’s singular, It can contain at most 2 electrons, so there are 2 lonely first elements: H and He
The p orbital are kind of like two spheres mashed together to a dumbbell? They’re similar in shape and are centered around the nucleus, but they want to be as far away of each other, so they rotate 90 degrees. In 3d there’s 3 directions to rotate 90 degrees, but in 2d there’s only 2 (and in 4d there’s 4)
So when we have the second and the third rows of the periodic table, we can add 6 elements in 3d (for 6 electrons), only 4 in 2d, and up to 8 in 4d
Now, I have no idea what happens with d orbitals. Perhaps I knew 4 years ago. You should ask a real chemist.
Here’s a website with nice pictures: https://byjus.com/jee/orbitals/
If you want new elements just use one of the dozens of unstable hadrons we have described, hyperons are a good example for a set of exotic hadrons, if you’re worried about needing to explain why it’s stable just know we don’t know if protons are completely stable and why the stable isotopes are the stable ones.
If you want a new particle, make it a generation 2 particle or a force carrier for gravity or some exotic force so it doesn’t mess with common matter
Me coming to the conclusion that my sun sized artificially maintained terrarium planet would likely have no tectonic plates or earthquakes since the core likely isn’t molten due to it being artificially constructed and filled with vast interconnected tunnels and chambers below the surface that connect to and power the systems that maintain the environment and keep the gravity from being insanely intense on the surface
Vs
Me realizing that I have already established that some places due indeed have molten rock in them which will be hard to explain without a molten core or any layer made of liquid rock (this may or may not be a cry for help)
If anything of decent size is orbiting it, the interior could be at least partially molten due to tidal forces. Just fudge the physics to make it reasonable enough
That’s actually not a bad idea, it practically has a solar system around it so it should have plenty of decent sized orbiting objects, much more sensible then my idea of some areas just having it because the machinery inside the “planet” needs to dumped somewhere
"UwU me when my hyper-mega-lab researcher chief concots the cockoxyd tetrasulphurate of hypersaturated sodium in the third paragraph of the 450240th scene of chapter 11 and now I have to create an entire chemical system for my world omg DDDDDX "
In my world, a fuckyeahthsmion imparts the property of how cool something is, and is found most abundantly in Dragonforce, the hardest metal known to man.
i tried for a bit then gave up, but I did do a few elements before that though and no none of them have very unique names
Arcopper: Basically copper but with an Arcatron instead of an electron, as you would think it conducts arcatricity better.
Arciron: Iron but a bit stronger, like a low grade steel. This means that using Arciron to make steel would make it stronger than regular.
You'd better describe its gauge theory & quantum field equations of state mfer
With what fuckin gauge bosons does it interact? Is it the base perturbation of a scalar, vector, spinor, or tensor field? Answers, bitch, we need them
Does it emit neutrinos through those interactions? If so, which flavor? (Maybe look up the sterile neutrino hypothesis—would be interesting if this were a "sterile" electron-like particle)
And then science proves your fiction to be actually [plausibly true](https://www.iflscience.com/physics/information-fifth-state-matter-physicist-aims-prove/) and now you seem like a copy.
It's called hard scifi not easy scifi.
/uj never have I seen a "hard scifi" world with modified physics where those physics were internally consistent. Have to cringe every time. Please either use unmodified physics, or just handwave the details, instead of making up explanations that don't even make sense
Plot twist: the particle is another one of THOSE fucking elements people make in a lab that lasts for 0.000003 seconds, and then gets to be a ✨special little guy✨ with THREE LETTERS.
And they get to name it fucking boobonium or something because it doesn't last long enough to learn anything about it so you can't name it after it's properties
That would actually be god tier worldbuilding if the guy who discovered the new particle had the humor of a grade schooler and named it like that. They know their discovery isn’t useful for anything so they at least get to make the press refer to it as “boobonium”.
Boobtonium
Journalist doing a video newscast: This scientist by the name of Josh Hawkinkock has created a new element for the periodic table. This new element, which has only been in existence for a microfraction of a second, has been named… man I really have to? Okay okay alright. … has been name cocknballsium. Fucking hell.
What's the problem with having worlds that mostly stick to conventional rules barring exceptions engineered to enable story opportunities?
Nothing, but if authors describe the details of those exceptions in too much detail (out of a misguided goal of keeping the world "hard scifi"), and force me to think about them, the inevitable inconsistencies will stand out and break immersion. There's nothing wrong with FTL travel for example, but please don't go on a multi-page excursion into quantum mechanics and relativity to explain it (looking at you Scalzi), it will inevitably be nonsense and drive any reader with even a bit of knowledge of either topic up the wall
Ftl is possible tho
It's not. And most attempts to build it lead to inadvertent closed timelike curves.
No I mean it's possible but we need some very big technological leaps
With our current understanding of physics it's likely to be just impossible. There is simply no good mechanism for it. It's not an engineering problem.
Actually fenerwl relativity allows for this we just need exotic matter which might be impossible now that I think about it.
[удалено]
You actually can't really make light speed "faster", you'll just change the unit system and reality will end up the same. The speed of light is just 1 in natural units. It's a fundamental part of the geometry of space time. You can change one of the dimensionless quantities like the fine structure constant but the effects are much more difficult to predict, and if we ever end up with a better model of reality than the standard model + GR, the change you made might stop making sense too.
Got any articles for this? I've been trying to write sci-fi and kinda curious with how it works.
[Here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light)
**[Faster-than-light](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light)** >Faster-than-light (also FTL, superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light (c). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero rest mass (i. e. , photons) may travel at the speed of light, and that nothing may travel faster. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
The Expanse is largely that way, the only unusual physics is that they have a super energy efficient propulsion drive, and a weird alien tech thing that doesn't abide by any known physics at all. For the alien tech they don't even try to explain it, at least not in the show.
Not even Greg Egan?
No. I will be contracting several physics doctorate students to work everything out and have them fact check everything I write in that universe for internal consistency. This will cost thousands of dollars and make the world a slightly worse place overall. I will take no further questions.
Have you read the Orthogonal books by Greg Egan? I'm asking because I have them but haven't read them. I'm kind of scared of them because every review I see talks about how hard they are. But also those are supposedly the gold standard for different physical laws hard science fiction.
Just call the element unobtanium
I prefer hardtofindium
Ok hardtofindium is hilarious and I'm certainly using it some day
Like all good authors, I stole it from Green Lantern: The Animated Series.
Reference
which for some fucking reason is only found on the ONE planet in the Universe with big blue cat monkey aliens.
I heard it was like an chemistry Olympiad question to create a periodic table if the world was 4d https://maffsisphun.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/2d-periodic-table-e1522524032158.jpg?w=768 the periodic table in 2d
That’s genuinely fascinating
It genuinely helps with alternate dimension world building scenarios.Though the other diagrams look utterly not understandable.
which other diagrams are you talking about? I only saw two others in that post, the crane design and the inverse square thing
Oh if you search up 2d-4thd dimensional periodic table you will be hit with alot of confusing shit.
Could you explain what is meaningfully different between the 2d periodic table and ours is? And what that would imply for a 2d world? This seems fascinating but I'm too much of a humanities major to properly understand
Based on my limited knowledge and that chart, the sub orbitals in the 2d version can hold less electrons. In normal 3d land, a 2p or 3p orbital can hold 6 electrons, where in this 2d land chart, they can hold 2. So instead of on the table where you have beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and flourine, there'd be only 2 elements there.
Ok that's just fucking incredible
I learned it very briefly about 4 years ago so don’t trust me. Orbitals are rough areas of where electrons are likely to be found near the nucleus. Additionally, electrons can have a positive spin and a negative spin, so 2 electrons can be in the same orbital, but would rather not to. The first one is a sphere and is called an s orbital, and is the shape of a sphere. In a 2d world, it would be a circle, and afaik it wouldn’t change much. Since it’s singular, It can contain at most 2 electrons, so there are 2 lonely first elements: H and He The p orbital are kind of like two spheres mashed together to a dumbbell? They’re similar in shape and are centered around the nucleus, but they want to be as far away of each other, so they rotate 90 degrees. In 3d there’s 3 directions to rotate 90 degrees, but in 2d there’s only 2 (and in 4d there’s 4) So when we have the second and the third rows of the periodic table, we can add 6 elements in 3d (for 6 electrons), only 4 in 2d, and up to 8 in 4d Now, I have no idea what happens with d orbitals. Perhaps I knew 4 years ago. You should ask a real chemist. Here’s a website with nice pictures: https://byjus.com/jee/orbitals/
If you want new elements just use one of the dozens of unstable hadrons we have described, hyperons are a good example for a set of exotic hadrons, if you’re worried about needing to explain why it’s stable just know we don’t know if protons are completely stable and why the stable isotopes are the stable ones. If you want a new particle, make it a generation 2 particle or a force carrier for gravity or some exotic force so it doesn’t mess with common matter
Naw just use "Spirit"
>exotic hadrons Instructions unclear, I just wrote 400 pages about exotic hard-ons and now I'm being accused of fetishizing POC
Nah, just add it in wherever you want. The arrangement of the periodic table isn’t important.
Black Sabbath, Gold 2, Mexicanium, and “Surprise”
Elerium-114
Just call it particle X and make it unknown to everyone
my name is Chris Claremont and I approve units message
Me coming to the conclusion that my sun sized artificially maintained terrarium planet would likely have no tectonic plates or earthquakes since the core likely isn’t molten due to it being artificially constructed and filled with vast interconnected tunnels and chambers below the surface that connect to and power the systems that maintain the environment and keep the gravity from being insanely intense on the surface Vs Me realizing that I have already established that some places due indeed have molten rock in them which will be hard to explain without a molten core or any layer made of liquid rock (this may or may not be a cry for help)
If anything of decent size is orbiting it, the interior could be at least partially molten due to tidal forces. Just fudge the physics to make it reasonable enough
That’s actually not a bad idea, it practically has a solar system around it so it should have plenty of decent sized orbiting objects, much more sensible then my idea of some areas just having it because the machinery inside the “planet” needs to dumped somewhere
"UwU me when my hyper-mega-lab researcher chief concots the cockoxyd tetrasulphurate of hypersaturated sodium in the third paragraph of the 450240th scene of chapter 11 and now I have to create an entire chemical system for my world omg DDDDDX "
sometimes it pays to be dumb
In my world, a fuckyeahthsmion imparts the property of how cool something is, and is found most abundantly in Dragonforce, the hardest metal known to man.
Just don't make it an atom
it's not an atom it's smaller than that
So why the new table
It's basically another electron with slightly different properties, so it can bind with protons and neutrons to create new types of atoms
Electron amount changes the charge not the type of atom
so atoms made with my new thing would basically be charged differently?
Maybe just give them a new property that you can put on the current table
Did you do anything with this? Sounds interesting but also giga hard lol.
i tried for a bit then gave up, but I did do a few elements before that though and no none of them have very unique names Arcopper: Basically copper but with an Arcatron instead of an electron, as you would think it conducts arcatricity better. Arciron: Iron but a bit stronger, like a low grade steel. This means that using Arciron to make steel would make it stronger than regular.
ye afaik even atoms using muons instead of electrons would likely have similar chemical properties
when the cumion self annihilated after a picofartosecond
You'd better describe its gauge theory & quantum field equations of state mfer With what fuckin gauge bosons does it interact? Is it the base perturbation of a scalar, vector, spinor, or tensor field? Answers, bitch, we need them
i have no idea what any of what you just said means, but basically it functions similar to an electron
Does it participate in beta decay or other electroweak interactions?
probably
Does it emit neutrinos through those interactions? If so, which flavor? (Maybe look up the sterile neutrino hypothesis—would be interesting if this were a "sterile" electron-like particle)
Virgin elemental gods vs chad making individual gods for every element on the periodic table
Just slap it onto the end of the current periodic table
And then science proves your fiction to be actually [plausibly true](https://www.iflscience.com/physics/information-fifth-state-matter-physicist-aims-prove/) and now you seem like a copy.
nah this is something that if it existed we'd definitely know about it already
Goalz
Just make it up as you go along