Where Science Meets Magic (A REAL LIFE Cloak of Invisibility +2 and other cool things)
booinyoureyes
Member Posts: 6,164
I find this amazing. I'm sure fellow geek @Tresset would find this interesting! So... physicists at my alma mater have apparently invented a cloaking device.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtKBzwKfP8E
Imagine? When you were growing up who woulda thought this possible? If I had known I was at Hogwarts I woulda majored in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
This made me think... what other developments in science and technology mimic D&D spells? I don't mean something as boring as "guns are like magic missiles!", but things that are a bit more imaginative. For example, the stealth bomber essentially recreates the second level mage spell "blur". http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1180613/Caught-camera-Stealth-bomber-builds-steam-approaches-sound-barrier.html
Obviously in many ways the technology of today's world has surpassed the magic of Baldur's Gate or D&D. It is hard to find work as a diviner when everyone is carrying around the Wand of Identification that is Google. The level 4 spell Farsight costs 20 dollars at your local Home Depot. But in other ways, magic would still be able to solve problems that technology has yet to tackle, from healing to stopping time.
So, I was thinking this could be a thread that would discuss such topics.
What technology today do you think has mimicked the marvels of the arcane arts of D&D?
Would people choose the magic of Faerun or the technology of today, if given a choice?
And most importantly... if one man was armed with the best science had to offer in this day and age, and another was, say, a level 10 wizard in Amn, who would prove victorious in a battle?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtKBzwKfP8EImagine? When you were growing up who woulda thought this possible? If I had known I was at Hogwarts I woulda majored in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
This made me think... what other developments in science and technology mimic D&D spells? I don't mean something as boring as "guns are like magic missiles!", but things that are a bit more imaginative. For example, the stealth bomber essentially recreates the second level mage spell "blur". http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1180613/Caught-camera-Stealth-bomber-builds-steam-approaches-sound-barrier.html
Obviously in many ways the technology of today's world has surpassed the magic of Baldur's Gate or D&D. It is hard to find work as a diviner when everyone is carrying around the Wand of Identification that is Google. The level 4 spell Farsight costs 20 dollars at your local Home Depot. But in other ways, magic would still be able to solve problems that technology has yet to tackle, from healing to stopping time.
So, I was thinking this could be a thread that would discuss such topics.
What technology today do you think has mimicked the marvels of the arcane arts of D&D?
Would people choose the magic of Faerun or the technology of today, if given a choice?
And most importantly... if one man was armed with the best science had to offer in this day and age, and another was, say, a level 10 wizard in Amn, who would prove victorious in a battle?
Post edited by booinyoureyes on
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Comments
Our mastery of sound waves give us the ability to make a racket that rival's the Great Shout.
A telephone is like a Sending.
Drugs can cover a wide variety of temporary stat boosts (Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, etc.)
Flame throwers make good Aganazzar's scorchers.
Lie Detector is kind of like Detect Evil
Science make's a good Dispel Magic/True Sight =p
Healing magic is tricky, since it's given to clerics from their Gods (at least that's how I remember) Don't know how well that would translate over to our world. I know the Weave is separate from the Divine wifi connection priests have...And I can't even fathom how Druids would get the job done.
In the end, I think people would still choose tech over magic. We did in this world, and for a long time we believed in magic (and in a way still do.) It may not be the same sort of magic in D&D but the idea is the same. It's a mystery that calls out to the curious to come and solve it. And those of us who do are rewarded with knowledge that not only alters our perception of reality, but gives us tools to reshape it. Much like science does. Today's science and tech offers a level convenience and an improved standard of living that I don't believe Faerun's magic can provide.
I think science just needs more time before it can solve the problems that magic can. It's still relatively young. Not a wizard, but close enough =p
Also,
Seriously though, we have lots of healing technology...antibiotics, anaethetics, antibodies...surely the Flu jab is a Protection from Disease spell, while antihistamines are potions of Protection from Hayfever. What is lacking is the ability to instantly close all wounds and re-grow missing limbs, but...you know, give it time.
Portable invisibility cloaks when?
(damn, this video is actually kinda boring. I blame the narrator)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial_cloaking
My prof spent a lecture talking about it in my electromagnetics course a couple years ago. Unfortunately I forget most of it by now. I think the basic premise is to design a material that's basically composed of a bunch of tiny electronic circuits. By doing so you can control and change the effective permittivity and permeability of the material, which determine the way EM radiation propagates. If an object is placed in the centre of a ring of this material, the radiation will bend around it. However, a given material will only function properly over a certain bandwidth, and I don't think they've got it working for optical frequencies yet.
Chemistry is pretty much real life "magical" alchemy in my opinion. We just dropped the prefix off the original word. But we had to learn that we were, historically, on completely the wrong track with all that "earth-water-air-fire" mumbo jumbo. Historical alchemy made intuitive sense the same way that Ptolemy's earth-centered model of the solar system made intuitive sense. And they were both completely, utterly, *wrong*.
I like to be very careful when comparing science and magic when we start to talk about real life. Science works. Magic doesn't. There's no such thing as "magic" in the real world. What we call "magic" is either trickery, (sometimes benevolently done for entertainment, sometimes not), or outright superstition. A lot of evil in our world has been done and can still be done in the name of some superstitions, especially when the person or people who hold to them want to force everybody else to believe the same and live accordingly.
That said, it is kind of fun to compare things we can do technologically with D&D magic. I've often thought about this topic. While it may be flashier and more entertaining to complete a function with a flourish of the hand, a bit of poetry, a sound effect, pretty colored lights, and a cloud of smoke, the thing that really matters is the effectiveness of the result.
As far as offensive combat, no D&D spells including Horrid Wilting X3 or Meteor Storm are capable of even a fraction of the mass destruction we can cause in our world with technological weaponry.
There is very little in the D&D mage and cleric spell books that we can't already do in the real world through science and technology. It might be easier to make lists-for-fun of the "spells" we *can't* perform yet.
A lot of people are already mentioning some of them - manipulating time, regenerating limbs, curing certain intractable illnesses. But for every one of those, scientists and technicians around the world are working on them. I think pretty soon we'll have the entire D&D mage and cleric spellbooks available to us through technology, and more.
A very interesting topic, with good food for thought. Thanks.