Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#1
Occasionally I like to get opinions on the physics of what would happen if magic was real and such and such happened? It's the idea to try to get realism into a story if x event occurs. Its fun to get input this way and I do like to hear what people think.

Suppose you have a transportation mage or time space element mage with transportation, teleport, or gate spells...

Now lets also say that person can take a certain number of people per transport...

OK, here's where it gets interesting....what happens when the transportation mage tries to return to say a boat that's moving, a spaceship that's moving, etc? What would happen? Would it work out normally? Would there be a chance for failure or for deviation with the expected destination coming out? (A planet that they live on is moving, so how also would that be different from moving vessels like a sea going ship?)

And if something bad occurs, what would be the most likely result? (Bodies explode, bodies are melted into the ships, chimaeira creature or flesh mess, or just people thrown in several directions? Is death gauranteed on a teleport accident or is there a chance to live without any limbs being severed?) 

And is it reasonable for a mage specializing in teleportation to be able to travel to different worlds, and other solar systems? How would you decide in a lit rpg system the distance limits?

RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#3
Lessa's so funny, haha.

Something like teleportation is actually "possible" naosu. Quantum information actually does it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation (They've been seen to "teleport" through atoms just like Goku)
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RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#4
'Media in Sanity' pid='830307' dateline='1511390227' Wrote: Lessa's so funny, haha.

Something like teleportation is actually "possible" naosu. Quantum information actually does it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation (They've been seen to "teleport" through atoms just like Goku)

Appears to is the key word here. at such short distances, speed of information transfer becomes meaningless. but it's not transferable to the macro scale.
Don't let that stop you from using it as technobabble tho. nobody said technobabble has to be well founded. it just has to sound cool and brainy.


As for fantasy teleportation. a destination has to be either some kind of teleportation anchor, magic circle/gate etc. Or driven by the magic users ability to envision the destination correctly, in order to be able to fully ignore the effects of relative motion without needing any handwaveium.
power dependent range is a way to prevent the teleportation to be over the top OP as well.

For more advanced mechanics, you would need to do some serious calculations to calculate the change in speed and motion vectors relative your current set. You don't need an absolute reference frame, you only need the difference between the 2 expressed in units of distance, and changes in relative motion.
You need to end up with an acceleration vector, and the required ?v to match the destinations relative motion to your own.
IF you are on the same planet, getting these numbers is only mildly hard if you know the math. the numbers won't change as long as your destination is fixed. It's worse if you want to teleport onto another planet, since the planets relative positions also becomes a factor you need to account for. of for example you are to teleport to a moon, you now have 2 layers of complexity, where one of them is a time factor. your destinations relative motion relative to yourself is constantly changing. a moon is easy to predict however, so you can know with a high degree of certainty where your destination will be, and what ?v and vector you need at that point in time.
The further away from your world you wan't to go, the more layers of calculus is needed, and the higher the accuracy has to be. especially in regards to the time factor.


As for consequences of a miss teleportation....
You need to answer a question for that.
1. Do you want teleportation to be a potential weapon, and at what scale? mass destruction?
Teleportation mishaps could easily be a non issue, where the destination is simply blocked, and the teleported object get's pushed over into somewhere safe, via the exchange process, where the stuff teleported is exchanged for whatever was in the way at the destination. Wan't an instant perfect replica of your enemies in stone? just teleport them into a big block of stone and enjoy their muffled attempts at screaming while you find a new spot for your newest work of art. Jabba the hut approves very much.
To the very much destructive displacement method where whatever is in the way is pushed away with great force, to the vacuum dependent one where mass from the destination is overlapped by the stuff sendt.... (nukes are for pussies, this is heavy element fusion baby.) expect a big boom no matter what is in the way. teleportation is only a weapon at this point.


Other issues can be failing to bring everything along.... like ending up missing a few limbs here and there. (They will bleed, a lot).
My fiction

Cheers!

RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#6
First, I have buddies in Oakridge working on quantum teleportation, and it's probably worth a read if you're interested in the science of teleportation:

https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.75.022307

[for a little more than the wiki article which I was happy to see mentioned]

Secondly, what does one use for a "magical" frame of reference? The/a point on the surface of the planet? The center? Relative position in a solar system or galaxy? Is line of sight important? I think it could be part of your narrative to establish this. Also interesting if traditional Newtonian work and force equations would apply. If you could fly, but at the same speeds and physical effort as walking or running, would you still enjoy flying as much?

I would think it should be relatively fatal if something goes wrong, and one would want to practice externally if at all possible. Remember it doesn't take a lot of air, to say nothing of anything else, in the blood stream to be fatal. And if external teleportation is possible, can it be used for surgical removal, or to teleport out infected mucus when you have a cold?

RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#7
If there were to be a magic that could be used to teleport then chances are that there were previous iterations of it that were flawed. For example, like you mentioned already, a portal would open but it would be in space causing the mage who activated the spell to be sucked in and killed (btw for spacetime magic the portal would be 3D shaped cause space is 3 dimensional).

The other mages who saw such an incident would immediately begin theorizing WHY that happened and eventually come up with a solution like, it incorporates the use of search + memory magic (if it exists) to take the image from the mage's mind and find it on the planet (or on some other planet) then it would create the portal there instead of the precise location in the universe.

That's when the next problem would occur.
Let's say the portal is opened but it the other end opens INSIDE another person or thing. That person or thing would suddenly have the part of them/it that is intersecting with the portal teleported while the remaining part that wasn't caught would remain, causing a pretty gruesome scene that I don't think I need to go into detail explaining.

The mages would, first, vomit their insides out at the horrific scene but then proceed to fix that 'bug' in their magic 'code' per say.

For this, they would use yet another spell that checks if the required space is open and free of any solid matter BEFORE setting the portal.

Finally, they would have a working teleportation spell with safeguards against such events, (Well there would be a couple more 'what if' scenarios they would have to debug but to keep this shorter we'll say they already solved them) the only problem now is that the use of all those safeguards spells and the variable distance/personnel transported would cause the mana required to be ENORMOUS making it usable, but only to those with large mana pools or some genius who figures out a way to condense the magic code into a more cost effective version.

Oh, and also the other teleportation that kills the person could be used as an OP end all spell so the spell would have to be hidden from the public to prevent the wrongful use of it or a counter defense spell would need to be made.





I like thinking about this kind of stuff... :D
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RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#8
The Traveller RPG covered one aspect of this, teleporting to a ship or altitude at a different relative speed, and that the energy difference had to come from somewhere.
Personally, I've always liked the idea that the mage needed some kind of link to the destination. That could be a physical connection like a teleport beacon left there. It could be that familiarity with the location creates a form of link to the place, which might even be something that can be used against the mage. Or they do an astral-projection type of thing to go there energetically to create the destination end of the wormhole or whatever.

The other question I like is what happens to the air at the destination? What happens if you telelport to underwater? If you're underwater at the start, do you bring a volume of water with you?

If you're using portals/wormholes, can they be created underwater to act as a big water pump? Imagine a portal that starts at the bottom of the ocean and opens up in a mountain region to create a river. Instant irrigation, although I hope you can control the portal size...

RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#9
Is it only teleportation magic we talking about here? Because I have my own take on the whole magic vs physics thing that I thought made sense in one regard when I thought it up. Specifically in regard to one type of magic which is enchanting.

In other novels I've read enchanting seems to just be put some runes on the thing, add some Mana and Bing bang boom you got a enchanted item. Well I thought that was dumb in that what if you say, put a run for "Protection" on a shield. Said enchantment creates a Mana shield from the shield to protect the wielder. But my thoughts were that "How the hell does it know HOW and WHAT to do to protect the wielder in that situation"

So my immediate thoughts were that if such a thing as magic was possible, enchanting magic would be a BITCH. Tons of math and preparation. Why? Well to make it so the enchantment knows what to do. How does it protect the wielder in aforementioned scenario. With what? Where does the protection start and end. Is it a solid, liquid or gas protecting the wielder. How does it know when to power up and down. Is it a shield that coats the wielder or is a distance away from the wielder. Does it form a perfect shield around the body in the form of the person or in another form? Can it deflect projectiles if the form is sloped/made to deflect like a buckler to a sword?

That's my take on a part of magic if it was a real thing. It'd be cool, useful and pretty badass but I imagine we should be able to agree enchanting would be fairly complicated.

RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#10
Trying to bring realism into the fantasy of magic can be fun, but it can also become convoluted.

The first question I would ask myself, if wanting to introduce some physics to teleportation, is what kind of teleportation is being cast?

For example - if I'm considering the mage is using some kind of control over gravity and space-time, and creating a wormhole to connect where he is now to where he will be in a moment, that "portal" would be fixed.

As a result, if a boat were moving fast enough, by the time he finished changing locations he may fall into the water behind the boat. If, however, he was able to cast it while running at the same speed of the boat and timed his coming to a stop just right, he may find himself standing exactly where he intended. This, then, could also provide opportunity for some amusing mishaps.

The fun of exercises like this for me, is remembering to come back to the magic of it all. Magic is whatever we want it to be within the confines of the world we're creating, so any actual physics I want to use are there more to flavor the magic, than the other way around.

Is magic kinetic? If that's the case, physics become incredibly important. Or, is magic incorporeal and only impacting the world around it in a metaphysical way? If incorporeal, it may not make sense to bring physics into play. In that case, I'd focus more on the philosophy of it all.

Fun topic!
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RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#11
My version in the novel I'm trying is more of a mix of a bunch of elements, mainly emotions, intent, image and will combined with commands the magic can or should do. So if a mage without a grasp of physics wished to create a wall to protect himself he'd had to come up with some image, idea or something along those lines to create it. Whether from Earth, metal, Mana or whatever. Then he'd have to guide it.

That's the system I'm goin with atm. I'm liking the possibilities it's presenting me as an author. Might have not explained it well. But combining it with what I said about enchantment it works well in that without a body to guide, focus or otherwise command the magic the enchanting has to be really complex. Just putting in my ideas.

RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#12
Scorpion,

In your example of a mage without a grasp of physics wishing to create a wall to protect himself - is he simply willing the wall into existence with thought, or is he somehow manipulating the world around him at a molecular level, to rearrange itself until a wall forms before him?

I ask because, if he's simply willing it to be then no science or physics need come into play. It can just be "magic", after all.

Alternatively, if he's pulling the "stuff" to make the wall from reality, it has to come from somewhere, or something. Does ground rise up to a hard clay wall in front of him, causing some of the ground around it to sink in a bit? Does he pull molecules from the steel girders of the construction site nearby to form a metal wall, causing the structure to collapse from the sudden weak points introduced into those girders?

Nothing wrong with forming the wall "because magic, and sheer force of will", but the thread has me curious what other ways you could go about explaining HOW he forms the wall after creating the image of it in his mind.
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RE: Fantasy physics; how does this work...? Teleportation

#13
In my example it's a mix and this system I'm using is a bit abnormal from other ones I've seen in novels. For reasons I alluded to in my novel I've set up some rules to the magic, almost Ying and yang like. Not because there is a good or evil side but because I wanted a reason for magic to be one way or another and not infinitely powerful. In my system magic is just a tool that people can use due to reasons beyond their knowledge but it's a tool and has specific uses or ways to use it etc. Anyhow sorry for confusion by way I'm saying this, I know it's probably confusing but it's complicated how I set it up but I like it alot. It'd take me a whole page to explain it fully(Which I think it should, magic shouldn't be simple. Oh you can summon fireballs? How the hell you do that???!!)

Going back to the example if he knows how to make it using the physics it would be much easier and it would be fufilled with just using intent and magic. Basically "I know how to do this so I just pull the trigger" and would be accomplished by one the methods you prescribed such as taking the materials from around him(Although there's reasons why in my system atm why that might be hard to do in certain ways.).

But without knowledge of these methods he has to try harder. So he wants to make a wall to protect him. He wishes for it. But without the knowledge he required more. Basically coupled with intent with emotions and ideas(Or experiences.) He can do it. By having these emotions the magic gains a intelligence of sorts where it thinks "I must achieve this goal, it kinda matters how but it's up to me to figure it out." So with the earth wall example the mages intent is a wall of Earth. He wants, hopes and wishes for something to protect him(Or others) with it. And perhaps drawing ideas of how he wants the magic to result(Also drawing upon experience to know what the wall should be made of. If he wants it to be sand, but he's never felt sand how would he know?). All this combined with at least double the amount of energy required gives the Mana in this system the following to achieve. A goal, intent(Almost a need) and a partial amount of info of what the end goal should be.

Of course this is limited by what's possible based on the surroundings. The magic can't just pull the molecules out of nothing. With 0% humidity it can't make water from the air. I know this way I'm presenting isnt very well defined or in depth but I like it. It makes a mage have to be someone focused on their goals, knowledgeable in their area of expertise (A water mage would focus their research on the forms of water in order to make themselves better at using it by understanding it better) and very creative. Of course if the level of technology was at our stage with this magic it'd be super effective but in my story they're at......I guess Roman era tech in some respects? Idk. Some technology is all over the place so I can't put a time stamp on it due to the people being creative. For example the dwarves have a pretty good system going with plants and ecology to create underground cities and also have indoor plumbing because they empty out mountain tops to have water reservoirs(Or through other methods. Sorry but if you lived in a cave with hundreds of other people I'm sure getting a working toilet would be a high priority. And they can't just dump it all somewhere. Limited space(Unless you wanna work to create a cavern just to dump all the trash))