You are granted one of the following super powers: which one do you choose?
You are granted one of the following super powers: which one do you choose?
LIMITATIONS:
- Flight -- Cannot fly faster than 48 kph/30 mph.
- Speed -- Cannot move faster than the speed of sound or run on penetrable surfaces (e.g., water). Super speed is not restricted to running.
- Telekinesis -- Cannot lift more than 2,270 kilograms/5,000 pounds. Cannot use power on your own body.
- Invisibility -- Must be conscious to remain invisible. Your clothes become invisible when you do.
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Telekinesis is a lot more versatile than people make it out to be. Yeah sure I lift heavy things with mind but also I can
- nuclear fusion and fission (depending on the amount of force I can inact and its precision)
- pull air from a room or someone
- use pinpoint force to shatter and break things
- fly by lifting something below me (if you want to allow that)
- compress gasses into a liquid or liquids into a solid, possibly also weather control
- heat objects by rapidly moving their molecules (if you allow that sort of precision) therefore allowing for combustion as well
- call lightning by manipulating ions in the atmosphere
- possible light manipulation and production if you moved electrons up and down energy levels or rapidly heat certain materials
- hell you could do fire bending if you compress the oxygen and add some sort of powdered fuel then heat it
- create magnetic fields by compressing and aligning electrons in a substance
- fucking compress air to make the sharpest blade known to man and use it as a wind shear or just throw telekinesis sharpened metal at people idk
- you could fuck people up if there is even enough dust in the air, just use telekinesis to hold the dust in place. Guarantee you they can't beat 22,246N of force, so suddenly all those tiny particles cannot be moved by them.
Most of these ideas can also be used for strictly non combative purposes but I think if combat when I think of superpowers. With enough understanding of the world around you very subtle manipulations that require very little amounts of force/energy when done rapidly in combination with each other can have drastic effects.
Telekinesis is an absurd power if you don't put enough limitations on it
22,246N is a lot of force if you use it right. Granted I have not done the math on this because I don't feel like it but I guarantee that some of these would be possible and even 1 would be absurd. I would give a no to nuclear fusion though, probably not that.
You forgot the best part: grab something when you're too lazy to get up and get it or after you just sat down and realized that you need something across the room.
You're so right
Jesus. You said angry. /s
And here I was just going to use telekinesis to manipulate the ball in a game of roulette.
I'm a physics major and my passion for it started from overanalyzing superpowers. I was always super frustrated by how underutilized telekinesis was.
There was this book when I was a kid called quantum league that looking back was just pretty ok and not super scientifically perfect but it placed the idea of using telekinesis in an atomic sense. I don't think it ever got a sequel because I remember being frustrated that it clearly left on a cliff hanger and I'd check every year only to be disappointed.
I just checked and it still doesn't have a sequel
Do you have any other book recommendations? Although I dislike the trope of the application of actual scientific knowledge, as characters get very OP very quickly, I love seeing characters using yhe scientific method to figure out what they can or can't do.
Quantum League
I looked up the book description, and a strong sense of deja vu hit me at the word "actuator"... I think I've read this book before.
Currently reading Industrial Strength magic by Macronomicon, and it scratches this itch for me, but waiting for chapter updates, even when daily, is so painful.
Use telekinesis to make a carpet fly, bend the light waves around it to cloak it and ride it. There, you are fast as hell, flying and pretty much invisible.
It would probably take a lot of concentration but it wouldn't be impossible. Good luck seeing where you are going without the photons though. I'm certain you could let some in but it would be very difficult to stop them from bouncing back out at that point.
Two of the other powers are in some ways worse than not having powers. Flying slower than you can drive a car is pretty pointless unless in extremely nice situations. Then running near the speed of soud could cause you permanent damage to the ears or eyes just from pushing through the air.
Invisibility is fine but mostly useful for nefarious purposes. But theoretically you could get a form or invisibility through telekinesis if you can control photons. You probably wouldn't be able to see or hold it as long without suffocating but it's something.
Yeah but they said the speed thing isn't limited to just running so you could probably piss at nearly the speed of sound which is pretty cool except for the possible urethral obliteration. Assuming that doesn't happen then it'd be pretty cool
urethral obliteration
Are we still calling out band names?
'Sounding' like a metal band?
I suspect this would be a one item at a time. I know hard to define what one item really is but I am thinking of some notion of a limited amount of mental capacity to focus on the object you are manipulating. So I suspect there would be a difference between applying a force to a cube at a single point vs trying to apply thousands or millions of tiny little forces on many objects
Pretty much everything you mentioned falls under the OP “hella kinesis”.
Telekinesis is being able to levitate cookies and small cats.
Quantum physics forbid any of these perks. You'll be limited to macroscopic matter manipulation.
Id love to hear your reasoning for why quantum forbids these. Sure knowing the exact location of a electron an enacting a force upon it would be difficult but as long as you don't care about its velocity in that moment it isn't impossible. In fact you could get the probability to be quite high. Hell it even acts as a particle when you're looking at it.
Furthermore there are plenty of workarounds for causing these effects without direct manipulation of the electron or any quantum level physics for that matter. You just need to find a way to create the natural conditions required macroscopically which is typically possible.
With the exception of photon manipulation
You grasp what's not there, and both position and velocity cannot be know at the same time. How do you affect something when you don't know where it is exactly?
If the hypothesis for telekinesis is that you apply force to an object, quantum mechanic is mostly out of reach as well, for the same reason. You need to know where it is.
It's also hard to admit that telekinesis allows you to move gazeous or even liquid objects. And usually you don't even grasp a part of a whole object, which solidify the hypothesis of the inability to grasp particuls themselves as discrete items.
Finally, you make the hypothesis that there is no limit to the number of objects you can affect at once.
You can actually know position with quite a high amount of certainty according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle if you don't know Jack shit about where it's going. If you could affect it instantaneously then its velocity would be pretty unimportant.
Whether or not it works physically based on real forces is up to the lore as is how it can be used and abused to manipulate gases and liquids. I've seen examples where than can but I think that putting a limiter where they can't is also totally fair. Also a limiter on how many objects can be affected at once is to be expected. These things can make the difference between near godlike status and pretty decent superhero
Ultimately it's really up to how the power functions as in what specifically allows for the telekinesis. Just calling it magic for example gives you a lot of wiggle room but making it a physical thing based on forces would certainly limit how you can affect things on a quantum level. There's also the question of what you can affect based on you senses. Do you need to see it or is visualization and knowledge enough?
Actually, knowing the exact position of an electron is imposible.
And not because of the uncertainty principle. It’s simpler than that.