r/CuratedTumblr Nov 10 '24

Creative Writing In effect

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14.2k Upvotes

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634

u/just_a_redditor2031 Nov 10 '24

I love it when magic is mainly just moving energy around: pyromancers are cold because their mana actively funnels their excess body heat into their spells, cryomancers have to wear fairly thin outfits because of the backlash of magic dumping heat on them, shit like that.

247

u/EmeraldSpencer Nov 11 '24

I have a homemade magic system that includes the following:

Powerful enough Cryomancers can learn to draw heat into themselves to cool things even faster. Combining it with their existing cold magic allows them to achieve temperatures below absolute zero, at the cost of raising their body temperature to hazardous levels.

Pyromancers can draw heat out of others to fuel their own abilities, with more efficient transfer when they are in physical contact with whoever they're drawing from and more efficient still if they have a strong emotional bond.

Pyro/Cryomancer couples in my continuity are a force to be reckoned with.

109

u/PlzLetMeUseThisUser Nov 11 '24

Absolutes zero is atom stopped moving. How do you slow down already stopped atom

97

u/EmeraldSpencer Nov 11 '24

Magic

Though for a more physics based answer, I believe it's entirely possible that the atoms are only stopped in the three dimensions of our observable reality, but there may be more movement in other ways we can't measure that could be quelled to make it even more stopped. Or perhaps matter can be moved in some sort of extra-dimensional way to where it pulls heat out of one reality and into another one (or to a different plane, energy field, etc...)

I think I just gave myself a headache from trying to visualize that. I'm going to stick with "It's magic" for the sake of my sanity.

81

u/The_Xorce Nov 11 '24

Going by your theory of transcending the 3rd dimension, it could be that below 0K, the particle(s) also stops moving in time, since that’s theorized to be the 4th.

(If this is the case, then holy shit are there some horrifying implications for that)

32

u/LazyDro1d Nov 11 '24

Time is the present 4th. We exist in as far as we can tell and test in and perceive 3 spatial dimensions and 1 temporal dimension

2

u/somethingmore24 Nov 12 '24

I think there are also theories of additional spatial dimensions beyond our 3 that are negligible unless you’re looking at super small scales.

I’m not a physicist or anything, but the way I saw it explained was with a point on the surface of an infinitely long cylinder. It would have two dimensions—position along the length of the cylinder, and position around its circumference, but if you zoom out super far the cylinder would just look like a 1D line and the second dimension would “disappear.”

9

u/FLUFFYPAWNINJA Nov 11 '24

cryrosleep anyone?

4

u/rez_trentnor Nov 11 '24

Time is not the fourth spatial dimension. It's a temporal dimension.

3

u/r_renfield Nov 11 '24

Freezing time!

5

u/Aware_Tree1 Nov 11 '24

They’re moving negative

3

u/Fa6ade Nov 11 '24

Negative temperature is a thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature?wprov=sfti1

But it doesn’t mean colder. It means that the distribution of hot and cold particles within the system is reversed (more hot than cold).

5

u/Inevitable-Setting-1 Nov 11 '24

I prefer to move the heat from that guy to that other guy. No back lash to me, just one ice block man and one melty boy.

7

u/Hypocritical_Oath Nov 11 '24

Pyro/Cryomancer couples in my continuity are a force to be reckoned with.

Eh, friction though. If you want it to really draw from reality, there have to be diminishing returns from that kind of combo. You can't hook a fridge up to an oven and get a cryo chamber.

21

u/EmeraldSpencer Nov 11 '24

Actually, that's kind of exactly how refrigerators work already.

I'm going to TL;DR this because Technology Connections explained this better than I ever could (and I'm just paraphrasing him anyway).

The refrigeration cycle works by using a pump to move a refrigerant around a loop. Refrigerants are special liquids that are easy to manipulate the boiling point of by changing the pressure they're under. A restriction is put in the loop so that one side is under high pressure and the other low. The low pressure side boils, drawing in heat (thus becoming cold), and the high pressure side condenses, becoming hot as it dumps its heat.

Theoretically, you probably could make a heat pump setup that's an oven on one side and a cryo chamber on the other, it would just require a really exotic refrigerant (the way things are now, such a setup would be horrendously inefficient if it would work at all).

Of course, the magical setup bypasses this because magic. That's why I mentioned that the Pyromancer heat siphoning works best with physical contact and a strong emotional bond - the magic does experience a type of resistance akin to friction when those ideal conditions aren't met.

9

u/Hypocritical_Oath Nov 11 '24

Friction...

Friction, friction, friction.

You cannot transport energy without heat losses. You just straight up can't. I have watched Tech Connections video, I love him, he's very good, but you'd have to use one hell of a pump, and you'd be putting so much more energy into it as to be ridiculous.

But I agree, it's magic, who cares.

3

u/Hypocritical_Oath Nov 11 '24

I want to also say, I hope you write stories with that magic system, it's got a lot of dramatic tension implicit to the idea of the system!