Ice is a mineral. Thus, water is lava. Hence, you eat lava every day, and it is not the texture of thick honey. QED.

Do you have a source for cost comparison? Not doubting you just curious if it’s intuition or if there’s a spec on how much Oreshnik costs, THAAD definitely is hella expensive.

But oreshnik is certainly more expensive than non hypersonic options. So your point with Ukraine is kind of a counter argument. If the need for hypersonic is to avoid interception by advanced systems, and Ukraine has none of those systems, why waste the better weapons in a situation where they’re unnecessary?

I suppose Ukraine has been able to shoot down Russia’s other hypersonic missiles (Kinzhals) with just patriots so maybe this is Russia stepping up its game to try and counter those? Still seems like overkill to me but this whole topic is rather new to me so it’s likely I’m missing context.

Tell me when you do! I’ve never really looked into this stuff before, but trying to find the right plane lead me down a bit of an interesting rabbit hole engineering wise. I’d imagine it’ll be the same no matter what country made the plane I’m looking into.

Actually if you all already have Chinese planes you think are cool you should comment them here so I can look them up instead of working on my final projects lol. Bonus points if the shape of the jet is weird because the shape is that way for a reason, and that reason is usually interesting physics.

I’m not an expert but I thought the US tested those in like the 70s and decided they weren’t very practical for US needs. In most cases, regular missiles work perfectly fine, why pay more for the same functionality?

I assume much of the current push in the US to create them is because other nations have been showing them off, not out of need.

As I understand it, the perks of hypersonics over typical missiles is the ability to fly below radar and maneuver fast enough to avoid being intercepted.

Also, Oreshnik can be intercepted by THAAD which is not even that cutting edge. I’d image the American military would prefer taking the time to develop something that can at least pose a challenge to their basic, standard missile defense system.

If they didn’t they do now. When the US hears one of their rivals (everyone) has some military tech they don’t, they will immediately create their own version of it but better if possible. Even if the military tech doesn’t actually exist, they will create it.

That happened with one of their fighter jets though I can’t remember which. The soviets said they had a hypermanuverable jet with crazy specs and the US created one to match it. The Soviets had embellished the capabilities of their jet. No such jet actually existed… until the US built one… with even better capabilities because they fell for the ruse.

Anyway, moral of the story is that if there’s military tech the US doesn’t currently have and it becomes known, the US will immediately make their own

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Edit: Found the planes! The American fighter I mentioned is the F-15 Eagle. The Soviet one was the MiG-25.

The F-15 was built because the Americans felt they needed “a pure air-superiority design that would be able to meet the expected performance of the MiG-25.” It exceeded them, by quite a lot, becoming one of if not the best fighter jet. No F-15 has lost in aerial combat, ever.

Also fun fact: it is the only fighter jet in history that has ever made a successful landing after losing a wing.

Be the change you wish to see in the world, I await your album drop

Nope. We’d spend the whole weekend doing any tasks that I’ve wanted to get done but couldn’t because I can only do one thing at a time. We make copies of the work we do so the other version can take those copies home.

Either that or spend the entire weekend collecting data on whatever rift let them show up and/or setting up equipment to collect data on the event when they get taken back.

I like sex, but how could I think about something so common when there is only a brief window for extremely rare and useful science to be done?

Godskin duo from Elden ring

Not to be that guy, but science is basically anything that gets studied/tested/researched. If you have the ability to cast spells and someone notices similarities and tries to categorize spells, that’s science. Studying how spells are made would be science. Studying the limitation of spells would be science. Testing news spells would be science. Etc.

So the big question is really how well understood is the science of magic in your world?

Does anyone actually know how it works or is it more like quantum mechanics with lots of theories but each still has limitations?

If magic is widespread and the beings using it are curious, chances are they’ve experimented with it and possibly taken notes about their experiments.

If magic offers great advantages then knowledge of it might be closely guarded by practitioners and not easily learned.

If magic can only be practiced by a certain species/family/etc. then general knowledge of how magic works could be much less accessible to the general population making it much more mysterious.

If not, then it’s likely there are schools that teach it to those who can use it and even those who can’t use it would likely still be taught about it. I mean, if you’re an engineer and you want to shape titanium and some spell can do that more easily than a mill or lathe, you’re going to want to know.

If you can heal with magic, non magic doctors would still want to be in the know about what can or can’t be cured with either medicine or magic.

If you mean science as in advanced physics or having digital devices, things will get more complicated if you want to make a logically consistent world. Like very complicated to the point it might take the joy out of world building. For example…

If there’s a spell that creates light/heat, where does the energy come from? You either violate thermodynamics or that energy comes from somewhere. OR the energy disappears after a while which might be a cool thing to think about.

If there’s a spell that freezes things, it violates the laws of thermodynamics in a big way unless more heat (entropy) is generated somewhere else. If this generation somewhere else is somewhere really far away, you can create an infinite power source pretty easily.

Arguably teleportation may or may not violate relativity which, fun fact, might be the reason gold is gold colored and not silver colored so if you break relativity you might break some weird shit from the color of chemicals to the laws that hold your proteins together.

If magic has any visual effects, like an aura, it means magic interacts with the electromagnetic fields in a way that generates or manipulates photons. This could fuck up lots of digital stuff but also might be dangerous because color corresponds to frequency. If you can change the frequency could certain spells emit gamma radiation? Do invisible spells produce infrared or UV? If some spells interact with photons but some don’t then why?

Furthermore, air is a substance. If you cast a spell that explodes objects how does the spell know when it hits the object and not an air molecule? If the spell isn’t instant why does it have a specific speed? If it’s effected by matter then would casting a spell under water go slower? Does water explode if you cast an explosion while in it or does the spell hit the nearest solid before causing an effect?

If magic doesn’t interact with matter between the caster and the object, what medium transfers the information? What particles carry the magic force(s)? If magic particles don’t interact with physical matter how does a being made of that matter cast a spell? How does the being specify a target?

If spells have incantations, what makes those work? Can any sound create magic? Could a parrot accidentally cast a spell? If it’s in a specific language, why? What beings created that language? If magic just randomly happens to be a set of sounds that humans can make that seems rather coincidental yes?

If only certain creatures/races/families can use magic, why? How does the genetics of a being effect if it can or can’t interact with a fundamental field of this universe (magic)?

If it is genetic or physical in any way, with enough scientific study it should be possible to replicate it or remove it.

If it is metaphysical like it comes from the ‘soul’ then religion and science will overlap. Furthermore beings would likely use this to be prejudiced against any living thing that can’t do magic.

If all living things can do magic what about viruses? What about single celled bacteria? What specifically defines “living” in the context of magic and by what mechanism do those criteria enable the use of magic?

Anyway, the point is that if you try to get to technical and logical, it’s going to become a pain. The best bet, in my opinion, is to try avoiding the abundance of magic. If magic existed in our universe it would already have multiple scientific disciplines devoted to it. You’d be able to major in magic but more importantly, most of the general population would know fundamental things about magic and its limitations which means you’d likely need to explain your magic system more.

If you don’t want to get technical it might be best to not let your characters get technical. Keeping the knowledge of magic secretive/mysterious would help with this.

Or you can get completely lost in the world building and start writing out how many different magical fields there’d need to be and how they interact with elementary particles and how the thermodynamics of spells is rectified by events in those fields giving the illusion that thermodynamics was violated while still preserving the typical physics required for chemistry to remain unchanged and then think to yourself wait, wasn’t I going to write a story? Why am I researching theoretical math?

See I agree with your last statement. I mean “any” is a stretch but yeah there probably are other systems involving distance based forces that we could draw similarities to chemistry from.

I guess the issue here is that my argument is there are similarities and your argument is that one shouldn’t point out similarities unless there are enough of them…?

Your first paragraph implies you thought I meant just setting these systems statically next to each other would create a stable orbit. You’re right, that would be wrong. But I don’t think I ever mentioned stationary combination. Furthermore, while regular chemistry could work like that, in the real world every atom is moving. The bonds form when atoms get close enough. This is why temperature increases chemical reactions. More motion means more “collisions” that aren’t really collisions but you get the picture.

Objects in space are also constantly in motion. If you want to bring two stellar systems together, you need to give them velocities relative to each other. Or as you put it, momentum. This could be enough to ensure a stable system but it requires that the velocities at least a roughly specific which is what I meant when I said system chemistry would be highly directional in my original comment.

As for magnets. You could say both atoms and magnetic systems run on similar forces. You could make the argument that they, like atoms, have components which are constantly in motion and that if perturbed enough one could overcome those forces and break the system into its individual components.

However the behavior of the system as a whole is not similar to atoms because it cannot form any bonds of any kind with other similar systems.

If you were able to find magnetic monopoles which may or may not exist, you could probably build a system that is much more atom like than a gravitational system. But with magnets that have dipoles, even a ferromagnetic material would be drawn to one pole or the other. I suppose you could get up to two ferromagnetic bodies to orbit a rotating bar magnet if the velocities and distances were right, but you wouldn’t be able to combine them because moving any magnet closer would disrupt the conditions needed for stability.

Magnets are much more sensitive than gravitational systems because the objects have to be large relative to the system and close together whereas gravitational systems can be ginormous like Alpha Centauri.

Anyway it’s fun to think about what exactly I would count as chemical like properties.

I’d say they are mostly just the following:

1. A unit system is made of different components that are held together by some distance based force in a specific state of equilibrium; the unit has a space near the center containing the majority of the mass, and the unit can on some scale be treated as a particle.
2. Both components and units are separated by a functionally empty medium
3. Units can lose/gain/steal components from other units
4. A unit’s components and their amount/locations/motion change the way it interacts with other units
5. Some components can combine into a single component, split into multiple functioning components, or decay
6. Units can decay spontaneously or as a result of physical interaction
7. The removal or addition of a component to a unit can cause the unit to become unstable but does not always do so
8. Units interact with other units via a distance based force and can form stable multi unit equilibrium states, combine into a single unit, or destabilize entirely.
9. The specific equilibrium state (shape/configuration)of a multi unit system affects how it will interact with other units or multi unit systems.
10. Units can be removed from multi unit systems by other multi unit systems or external units with or without destabilizing the rest of the system from which it is removed.
11. Units and systems with similar enough configurations will react in similar ways

I think that covers it. So if you can find a system that fits those then I’d say there are similarities between them and atoms/chemistry. I will honestly be pretty excited if you do because it will be interesting.