Magic always leads to trouble

I picked up this piece of profound wisdom from kid’s TV. If you have to know, it was Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom. Can’t say we usually watch this in my house, but I guess someone was too lazy to change channel... or couldn’t find the remote control. Tells you all you need to know about Sunday mornings, really.

            Anyway, this brought back an idea I have been thinking about for a while. Nature is governed by a number of pesky principles that dictate that so and so is possible but such and such is not likely. We refer to these as “laws”, but you would hardly be sent to prison for breaking them. It’s simply not a matter to be settled in court.

            However, suppose we allow ourselves just a little bit of (black) magic. Suppose it was in our power to repeal these laws. Why not? We invented them, didn’t we?

            Which law would you get rid of first?

            I have two prime contenders, but unfortunately there are problems with both.

            I’d like to start by getting rid of gravity, this terrible law that holds us in its grip and ties us down. Every single day of our lives. If there were no gravity, then we’d be able to fly. Wouldn’t that be great? I have this strange feeling that I actually used to be able to fly when I was little. It is a really weird “memory” because it seems so real. I can even recall what it feels like to kick off from the ground and float up in the air. I’d like to experience that again.

            Wouldn’t it be great to get rid of gravity? Well, perhaps not. It is true that gravity holds us down, but isn’t that actually a good thing? Without gravity we might all float off into space. Someone would have to invent velcro boots, or something, to keep us on the planet. There would be no up or down, which I think could be quite confusing. Even worse, the solar system would fly apart. The moon would drift away. There would be no night and day, so poetry would take a bit of a hit. Repealing the law of gravity suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good idea.

            What about thermodynamics and that annoying second law? It might be ok if we understood it, but we don’t so can’t we just get rid of it? Surely that ought to be good? Without the need for entropy to keep increasing, nature wouldn’t have to evolve towards disorder. Things would stay neat and tidy and a lot of domestic effort could be saved. It could be fun, as well. You’d be able to throw a broken glass on the floor and see it come together again. Stuff like that. Like magic.

            I’d settle for this. Get rid of thermodynamics. What’s the problem with that? Uh... well... for a start... Heat might flow from cold to hot. This would upset quite a few things, like the fridge in your kitchen. The central heating system would become more temperamental. There is a much bigger problem, though. The entropy law is one of the prime contenders for an “arrow of time”. The underlying reason why we experience the world as evolving rather than standing still. No one really understands how this works, it remains one of the unsolved mysteries of physics, but it might be a bad idea to get rid of the thermodynamic laws just in case they have something to do with it. Who’d want to run out of time, as it were?

            There we are. Two suggestions, neither entirely satisfactory. Begs the question, are there laws of nature that we can get rid of without ending up in trouble? What are the pros and cons or meddling with this? Why not have a go at this yourself? Let me know where it takes you.