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[–] 81 points 4 months ago (20 children)

First wish was to repeal Bernoulli's principle

The second was doubling the mass of a photon

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  • [–] 24 points 4 months ago (10 children)

    What would that do to a star's interior?

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  • [–] 43 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    2 * 0 = 0

    Doubling the mass of photons is no change.

    Repealing Bournoulli's principle requires changing how kinetic collisions of molecules translates into bulk measurables like pressure and density. There's no way to predict what that does without first specifying more about what changes are made.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Just pour salt on the universe and make it turn inside out.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

    [note: I thought the OP said "proton"]

    Best case? atoms shrink slightly and some changes to how chemistry works

    Realistic case? The change in nuclear binding energies renders protons unstable, making many elements unstable or radioactive. All matter suddenly becomes much heavier, changing gravity and internal pressure, which in turn disrupts stellar and planetary structures. Fusion reactions depend on precise mass differences between particles, which may alter how stars generate energy, or completely prevent them from forming altogether. Additionally, since proton mass is tied to the strong nuclear force, it will fundamentally alter physics, and it's likely that protons will decay into neutrons, preventing atoms from existing at all.

    The first wish would affect how fluids act under pressure, including how our blood would move throughout our bodies. Depending on the exact effects, the wisher may not even get the chance to make the second wish because their blood would either stop moving, or they would drop to ground as every capillary in their body ruptures causing an immediate loss of blood pressure, quickly followed by loss of consciousness and then death.

    IF they live long enough to make the second wish, then they probably wouldn't live long enough to make the third.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    That's neat, but he said photon, as in the light particle

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (6 children)
    • Switch all protons and neutrons of the universe
    • Set PI = 3
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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    Pi can be equal to whatever you want, as long as you’re using a number base that accounts for it. Pi is only an irrational number because base-10 is a rational base. You could create a number base that sets pi equal to 1, if you wanted.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    what if i make a base pi system?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago*

    That’s exactly my point. A base pi system would have pi equal to 1. In a base pi number system, a circle with a radius of 1 would have a circumference of 10. A radius of 10 would be a circumference of 100. Etc… Pi (and the relationship between a circle’s radius and circumference) only normally requires complex math because base 10 is a rational number base.

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  • [–] 72 points 4 months ago

    That's your wish? It's really negative.

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  • [–] 37 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Mine would be to remove a chromossome from evangelicals lol

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    one chromosome per person seems easy to recover from

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  • [–] 29 points 4 months ago*

    Why not change the measure of the nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, to be from 0.007 into 0.006?

    Boom, now only hydrogen can be made.

    Or if we put it to 0.008, boom, now everything fuses way faster.

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  • [–] 28 points 4 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

    Ok, it's not 2PiR now, but just PiR. Given how often 2Pi is used some mathematicians will actually be happy. Would be a mess with other constants though.

    Edit. Also all the people in IT will have a terrible week trying to figure out why their programs started working weird, then figuring out why they even need those constants. Log messages would be funny though.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    I was talking more about physical constants, like magnetism, gravity, planck, etc. But sure, mathematical ones work, too. Probably even worse than physical constants doubling, since the doubling of mathematical ones would imply the corruption of reality itself.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Constants are known at compile time, and therefore are more performant as they don’t need to be reasoned about at runtime.

    These days it’s not much of a performance boost but never a bad idea to use constants where appropriate.

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I want one random atom to be one plank unit shifted to the left at the beginning of the universe.

    🦋

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Did you just initiate the big bang?

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (12 children)

    I'd go with making each next proton in the universe an anti proton

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (11 children)

    Maybe that's already the case, just out of our event horizon

    There is, afaik, no explanation why there is more matter than anti matter, so maybe we just don't see it

    Like, dark side of the universe or something ;⁠-⁠)

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    There is, afaik, no explanation why there is more matter than anti matter, so maybe we just don't see it

    Like, dark side of the universe or something ;⁠-⁠)

    This is the baryon asymmetry problem, and indeed, one of the proposed solutions is an "anti-universe" that flows backwards in time. The theory goes that all the antimatter travelled backwards in time while matter travelled forward from the Big Bang, creating a mirror anti-universe. However, there has been experimental evidence against this theory, as antiparticles seem to move forward in time, just like their matter counterparts.

    There are a bunch more theories on how matter dominated the universe, like electroweak baryogenesis and leptopgenesis! Those are a bit more complicated though and are difficult to explain in an internet comment.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    iirc the experiment was verifying that anti-matter falls downward in gravity? otherwise it still functions physically rather like time-reversed matter. Unless anti-matter is time-reversed and has reversed gravity in which case it would also seem to obey normal gravity because we would see it under the effect of anti-gravity but backwards?

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Imma go ahead and postulate that beyond the observable universe is a wall of anti matter, that keeps eating our universe's matter and neutralizing it.

    Prove me wrong! (Don't.)

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Isn't that the opposite of what we're "seeing" now with the expanding universe and dark matter (not anti matter) being the reason for space to grow?

    Anti matter and matter live inside the space, that dark matter is "producing"

    At least that's my layman interpretation of looking at some videos and reading some stuff

    So, I have no clue ;⁠-⁠)

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    I thought Madam Wu's experiment provided a starting point for explaining why the universe exists despite its best efforts to annihilate itself. Disclaimer, I have passing interest in physics but I have no formal education on any of it.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Don't know about that
    Can you provide me some more words to search for it or even a link?

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_experiment

    Wu was one of the few female physicist on the Manhattan project. Absolutely amazing what she accomplished despite having the double whammy of having to overcome racism as well as sexism. Currently on my watch list is a veritasm video that talks about her experiment.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Yeah, CP violation is a big focus when it comes to the research of baryogenesis, the theoretical process that produced the baryon asymmetry! Her experiment established that parity symmetry (P) can be broken through weak interactions, and later experiments showed that the combined CP symmetry (charge conjugation + parity) can also be broken, again through weak force shenanigans.

    CP violation is one of the three Sakharov conditions (which were proposed by and named after Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov) of dynamic baryogenesis, as it would mean that matter and antimatter can behave differently in certain processes. If they behaved identically, no asymmetry would be produced and they would both annihilate. However, there was one extra baryon for every million antibaryons (we know this through measurements of the CMB and the quantities of light elements produced in Big Bang nucleosynthesis), and this slight difference allowed matter to dominate the universe.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    wishes are basically reality warping to varying extent, although most wishes dont work on a universal scale

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I wish for water to no longer be a bipolar molecule.

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