The Secrets are not in and of themselves magic.
You sure about that? I mean "the Secrets themselves aren't magic" as opposed to "the secrets revealed/enabled by the Secrets are not magic".
Where the distinction I'm drawing is between "A Secret is some sort of magical knowledge construct that magically connects to the souls of a species that achieve certain qualities usually relating to the research of the underlying fundamentals of the knowledge that Secret covers" vs "The Fifth Secret is about gravity manipulation stuff"

So I guess what I'm asking is that if a Secret is a piñata full of delicious tech-candy, are we being told that the piñata itself is not magical, or just that the candy is not magical? And that theoretically you can build a piñata out of candy, and then fill it with a different candy.
 
Last edited:
So I guess what I'm asking is that if a Secret is a piñata full of delicious tech-candy, are we being told that the piñata itself is not magical, or just that the candy is not magical? And that theoretically you can build a piñata out of candy, and then fill it with a different candy.
Neither the pinata nor the candy are magical in this analogy.
 
You sure about that? I mean "the Secrets themselves aren't magic" as opposed to "the secrets revealed/enabled by the Secrets are not magic".
Where the distinction I'm drawing is between "A Secret is some sort of magical knowledge construct that magically connects to the souls of a species that achieve certain qualities usually relating to the research of the underlying fundamentals of the knowledge that Secret covers" vs "The Fifth Secret is about gravity manipulation stuff"
The difference is in the definition of "magic."

It's hard to come up with a good working definition of "magic" that applies across settings and stories. There a few definitions that cover most things, but they vary in how useful they are as descriptions.

One definition of magic is the ability to do things that aren't possible in the real world. By this definition, the Secrets are magic, but so is a Star Trek phaser. It's not a particularly useful definition, because it classifies basically everything nonstandard as magic.

A second definition of magic is control over supernatural influences that bypass the laws of reality. By this definition, neither the Secrets nor a phaser are magic, as neither violate the laws of reality of the universes they exist in; they aren't supernatural. The Q are magical by this definition in Star Trek. However, depending on how you choose to describe the laws of reality in a given setting, the ability to make things explode by pointing at them might not be magic. The Force isn't magic because it's part of reality, according to Obi-Wan Kenobi.

A third definition of magic is manipulation of a spiritual substance (that is, "mana" by whatever name the setting wishes to call it) to produce effects. The difference between this and the second definition is that point-and-explode would be classified magic because you use mana to do it, not because it breaks the rules of reality. By this definition, Practice is magic and the Secrets might be, a Star Trek phaser is not, and The Force is.

A fourth definition of magic is the ability to cause things to happen with no direct connection between cause and effect. If all you have to do is make something explode is to point at it while thinking about it exploding, that's magic. If you have to set up the right conditions by setting up a spiritual construct using your willpower and directing the flow of mana through the positioning of your body, and then your target explodes because that's what physics says must happen when things are set up that way, that's not magic. Neither Practice nor the Secrets are magic by this definition, because there's a well-defined set of rules for how the customized laws of physics work.

A fifth definition of magic is supernatural ability that derives from rules of reality that are measurably inconsistent with real-world physics. By this definition, the Secrets aren't magic because those customized laws of physics are very intentionally designed to match our best understanding of real-world physics at energy levels that we can currently achieve. But Batman's ability to not be dead many times over from physical trauma is magic, because we can clearly observe that physical objects in his world behave in ways that they wouldn't in ours.



It would be spoilers for me to go into too much detail about it, but... It's been established that the sapient races of the Practice War universe store memories in their souls instead of having to rely solely on their brains. This doesn't produce any observable differences for humanity until a Secret is discovered. At this point, {REDACTED} inserts a basic set of information about the discovered Secret into the soul-memory of the discoverer. Technology that employs the Secret is then able to do things with much less energy expenditure and complexity than it would take to accomplish the same effects without the Secret. The vast majority of Secret-based technology has no need to interface with a soul. (Some applications of the Second Secret are an exception. Our researchers have been too afraid to try to find out more details about that, but we know that something soul-related is in play to make Shiplord armor plating work.) This is different from Practice-based technology, which does require some soul-related... something in order to function.
 
Well then, since you ask!

It's actually pretty simple, just let me explain something up front. The 'big lie' of the Fifth Secret is that negative gravity is possible; that's important, because--

In the real world, gravity is the worst possible weapon. It barely interacts with anything at all; if you try to use it as a weapon, you'll find your opponent is barely affected; the gravity waves -- I'm presuming you'd use gravity waves, not a static field -- will pass right through them, primarily affecting the rest of the universe. If you try to improve that by using more, you'll simply tear yourself apart.

There's one way to work around this. For any given field, if you put a positive charge in one spot and a negative charge somewhere close by, then there'll be a net field when you're close but no noticeable field when you're far away. Since it depends on distance, this is called "near-field" behavior. Since you're no longer affecting the entire universe, you don't need to pay the energy cost of doing so; only the cost of affecting whatever is close to your emitters.

This can be used, for example, to create reasonably efficient wireless phone chargers. Or, for the Fifth, a ruinous vortex of gravity that largely ignores the gravitational shielding used by our ships to stop every other attack.

Negative gravity doesn't exist in real life, as far as we can tell. In the Practice War universe, it does. This possibility is also art of what enables the First.

= = =

There's a lot of ways you can make use of this sort of ability. What a particularly clever group of (simulated) Shiplord allies did was to fire a torpedo -- you'll understand why, momentarily -- which generated a powerful but radially symmetric gravitational field around itself, leaving the 'negative gravity' part of this outside the 'positive gravity' part. Really, very simple. It was however powerful enough to causally unlink the inside of the field from the outside.

In other words, they created an artificial black hole; one held together only by the artificial gravity of the torpedo's generators.

This in itself is just an interesting weapon. It immediately collapsed in on itself at the speed of light, crushing the torpedo into a central singularity, along with any Hijivn vessels unlucky enough to be nearby. Obviously this destroyed the machinery keeping the bubble stable, so it dissipated into--

Not so fast!

The gravitational field wasn't perfectly balanced. There was the negative and positive gravity fields generated by the Fifth, which were vastly more powerful than the natural fields, but the natural fields still existed. The things doing this had mass. So, as those were crushed into a central singularity, after all was said and done we ended up with a natural, ordinary, stable black hole weighing around... let's say, 1,000 tons just for the torpedo, plus however much the Hijivn ships, random space dust, and whatever else might be nearby weighed.

You could also detonate this on an asteroid, if the presence of enemy combatants is a problem. It won't have much bearing on what's about to happen.

A 1,000-ton black hole is really rather teensy, and has a proportionally tiny lifespan. It'll evaporate through Hawking radiation in the course of approximately 0.1 seconds, converting all of the mass it contains into high-energy gamma rays. As well as the occasional electron-positron pairs, which will immediately become high-energy gamma rays.

This amounts to around 1,000 gigatons of TNT, just for the torpedo. Add in however much whatever else is nearby weighs.

The limiting factor to this sort of weapon is that, if you give it too much food, you'll get an actually stable black hole instead of one in the final throes of disintegration. To cope with that, you might try to impose a negative gravity field on it externally, in order to make it evaporate faster; this wouldn't work though, because your generator will likely be destroyed before it has a chance to fully evaporate. The speed of evaporation scales with the strength of the negative gravity field, so if you make it powerful enough you might be able to avoid that, but then you risk exceeding the field generated by the mass-energy of the hole, and--

Don't do that.

= = =


Somewhat amusingly, the best real-world black hole bomb we've thought up is actually even more destructive. Less usable in direct warfare, but a potential galaxy-buster if built.
So if I am reading this right this weapon is, effectively, merely an mass-energy conversion device at the lower bound of masses involved, as in however much you can stuff without exceeding the minimum mass necessary to form a stable Black Hole?

So what's so horrific about that?
(attempts to copy Nanashi Mumei's guileless expression)

I mean, besides potentially exploding a star's worth of mass in an equivalent of matter-antimatter annihilation, with no antimatter actually necessary, and therefore exceeding a mere supernova-equivalent explosion by I don't know how many but by a lot orders of magnitude.




On a different note, a reminder on my opinion in that Remember will be more important as we go on, but especially for First and Second Sorrows.

P. S. As promised, for this vote I will abstain.
 
The speed of evaporation scales with the strength of the negative gravity field, so if you make it powerful enough you might be able to avoid that, but then you risk exceeding the field generated by the mass-energy of the hole, and--

Don't do that.
Can you walk a layman through this? If a positive mass exceeds the negative one at the moment of collapse, it forms a black hole (stable or unstable, depending on the excess mass). If a negative gravity field exceeds the mass-energy of the hole, then... the opposite happens? An explosion? But would its strengh not be proportional to the difference in mass-energy?

[x] Leave to
-[x] The Second Sorrow

This world was an important milestone in our understanding of the path the Shiplords walked, but it was neither the first nor the last step. We have done a lot here already, and I suspect there is more to do still as we trace it back to the source.

I'd like to preserve a reverse chronological order, if only to struggle less with the timeline and have a clearer view of how every new Sorrow flows from the limitations imposed by the ones before it.
 
Last edited:
I mean, besides potentially exploding a star's worth of mass in an equivalent of matter-antimatter annihilation, with no antimatter actually necessary, and therefore exceeding a mere supernova-equivalent explosion by I don't know how many but by a lot orders of magnitude.
That's part of it. Though you can't do that with version one of the weapon, since a black hole of that size should be relatively stable.

The real risk with this sort of weapon is you could form a naked singularity. Potentially by accident.
 
That's part of it. Though you can't do that with version one of the weapon, since a black hole of that size should be relatively stable.

The real risk with this sort of weapon is you could form a naked singularity. Potentially by accident.
[grunts, embarrassed]

What would the naked singularity do, that would be so bad? I was thinking you were talking about a false vacuum collapse, earlier, but apparently not.
 
Vote closed
[grunts, embarrassed]

What would the naked singularity do, that would be so bad? I was thinking you were talking about a false vacuum collapse, earlier, but apparently not.
I don't know exactly what Baughn is thinking of, but the thought that comes to my mind is that a naked singularity means that weird stuff will exist in the universe without an event horizon protecting the rest of the universe from it. Infinite mass-energy density that HASN'T warped spacetime around it to make sure that nothing that comes in contact with it ever gets away is... something we don't entirely know how to predict. Some scientists even speculate that it might emit light.

And based on the way Kicha was talking about it... that might not even be directly relevant. If you can make stuff that violates the cosmic censorship principle, what else might that technology be capable of? Obviously something that scarred the most powerful empire in the galaxy.
 
I'm actually not even sure that it's specifically that Fifth Secret superweapon that was the cause of the Sorrow, or rather, not the only cause of the Sorrow.

Odds are, there are other Secret-based superweapons that Shiplords consider too dangerous to ever use, and any of them appearing in the simulation, or worse, in the real world, would cause them to collectively flip out.
 
I don't know exactly what Baughn is thinking of, but the thought that comes to my mind is that a naked singularity means that weird stuff will exist in the universe without an event horizon protecting the rest of the universe from it. Infinite mass-energy density that HASN'T warped spacetime around it to make sure that nothing that comes in contact with it ever gets away is... something we don't entirely know how to predict. Some scientists even speculate that it might emit light.
Okay, I'm almost certainly wrong but... That makes me think White Hole?
 
Last edited:
A full on complete Universal Vacuum Collapse is not a thing that can happen and Astronomers still can't tell a distant White Hole from a Supernova.
 
A full on complete Universal Vacuum Collapse is not a thing that can happen and Astronomers still can't tell a distant White Hole from a Supernova.

You'd think that would be easy, given a White Hole would just... not stop.

Huh, I wonder if the Energy Secret(Third, I think?) can mess with White Holes to cause something similar.
 
You'd think that would be easy, given a White Hole would just... not stop.

Huh, I wonder if the Energy Secret(Third, I think?) can mess with White Holes to cause something similar.

Real life Black Holes evaporate. Real life White Holes are momentary sparks of quantum tunneling on a truly grand scale. And while we are talking about shit people get their heads stuck up their asses over the entire concept of Thermodynamics is off because of Capitalist salt and we don't even know by how much.
 
Back
Top