Submitted 3 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/01ad8ba0-e339-4010-8b8c-7963f5779839.png
The real question isn’t if the universe ends…
It’s if the genie magic expands outward from the source at the speed of light, or if it’s instantaneous everywhere, which would allow information to be transmitted faster than the speed of light, allowing for violations of causality, and destroying our fundamental understanding of the universe before we all died.
Not if the universe is inside the genie.
No. It’s inside you. For listening to the genie.
This assumes the genie doesn’t have access to some weird higher-reality or higher-“dimensional” power. For instance, if the universe is a simulation, then perhaps the genie has access to a console.
And you don’t call discovering that the universe is a simulation “destroying our fundamental understanding of the universe”?
real question, is there a difference?
I’m theory yes, but for any observer, it won’t matter and it’s all the same to them, as they cannot observe any difference in either case.
The fermion number conservation would be violated anyways.
Turns out, there’s a rule against exterminating all life in the universe with a wish, but the genie doesn’t know what an electron is or what adding one to every atom will do, so you’ve found yourself a loophole.
Genie, looking up Wikipedia:
Aah, I understand. Nice wish, granted!
Wouldn’t that make reality crash? Unless the genie can spawn all the electrons at once, but in that case you’d be talking to god.
I’m a physicist, not a genie, and I have no fucking clue what adding an electron to every atom would do. I can’t even begin to fathom the question.
Whatever it is that happens, it would be pretty violent.
“What If” had a slightly different, more localized but more concentrated premise it covered once:
Electron Moon
Quote:
“This is, by far, the most destructive What-If scenario to date.”
I don’t know either, I just think the consequences would be very negative.
break all chemical bonds immediately, there will probably be further consequences regarding a universal electron imbalance, but we would already be atomised
just choose an electron somewhere random in the universe, and declare said electron to be the legal property of every atom in the universe. problem solved
I think in this way, one universe was obliterated and ours was created at the big bang.
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” - Douglas Adams
seriously, a single meaningless executive order or law. could make that wosh happen without ant magic
This reminds me of the sketch from Chris & Jack, where one person tries to outsmart a genie and almost succeeds, but still fails.
Chris n Jack are hilarious!
Fun fact : Jack is Jack de sena - Voice actor of sokka from Avatar the Last Airbender.
They have cameos from other voice actors from the show as well in their skits.
Is there an XKCD What If about this? Sounds exactly like that territory.
Not 100% identical scenario, but near enough:
what-if.xkcd.com/140/
Idk, but if not, I bet there’s an SMBC with an exponential implosion of the nonsense and then some.
ls this some kind of problem at all?
I mean, it is not wishing to add an electron to each atom in the Universe…
To the set of all atoms in the universe, add one extra electron, easy peasy:-).
Good catch
I don’t get the difference
See e.g. here.
The relevant part:
The second difference between each, every, and all impacts how the objects of a sentence are distributed among the members of the group. Look at this:
Each child wore a hat. → one hat per child
Every child wore a hat. → one hat per child
All the children wore a hat. → the children shared one hat
Did someone read The Laundry Files? What you are describing is approximately used in making a Basilisk Gun
1.) I wish the speed of light were 60 MPH.
2.) I wish nothing could travel slower than light.
3.) I wish for the genie’s freedom.
False vacuum … expansion?
What will 1 extra electron do? Destroy universe?
Is it like every Proton has an anti-proton and if it wasnt perfectly balanced the universe would fall apart? Ive heard something like that before…
or would mess with the chemical bonds of all chemistry, likely breaking up every single molecule into individual atoms, immediately killing everyone and destroy everything
Lots of things become conductive.
It’ll be like a Coulombic explosion, but with an excess of negative instead of positive charges.
Everywhere in the universe where matter lumps together, it would disintegrate.
Sounds like a case for xkcd’s what if
my wish is to change the mass of the proton.
I asked ChatGPT what would happen. Here you go:
If every atom in the universe suddenly gained one extra electron, the result would be instant, universe-ending chaos — in less than a nanosecond. Here’s why:
⸻
Right now, matter is electrically neutral — the positive charges in nuclei balance the negative charges of electrons. Adding one electron to every atom makes every single atom negatively charged. The universe instantly becomes dominated by repulsive electrostatic forces.
Coulomb’s law tells us electric forces are ~10³⁶ times stronger than gravity. That means: • Atoms would violently repel each other. • Molecules couldn’t hold together. • Planets, stars, and galaxies — all held together by gravity — would be ripped apart by overwhelming electrostatic repulsion.
Within moments, all normal matter disintegrates into a plasma of electrons and nuclei being hurled away from each other.
⸻
Each atom now has one more electron than its nucleus can bind: • The extra electron would either occupy a weakly bound outer orbital or be completely unbound. • Chemical bonds depend on balanced electron sharing — those would fail instantly. • Solids, liquids, and gases all cease to exist in recognizable form.
Essentially, chemistry ends. There’s no more “matter” in the familiar sense — just a roiling cloud of charged particles.
⸻
The addition of an electron to every atom requires — or releases — colossal energy, depending on the element and context: • Ionization energies and electron affinities differ between atoms. • You’re effectively forcing a global-scale electron capture reaction.
But the real kicker is that the sudden Coulomb repulsion between everything would dwarf any nuclear explosion imaginable. The entire universe’s matter would “explode” outward — far beyond the speed of galactic escape velocities — powered by the electrostatic potential energy now released.
⸻
With matter annihilated into a universal electron-ion plasma: • Photons would scatter off free charges (via Thomson scattering). • The universe would become completely opaque. • Eventually, as it expands and cools, you might end up with diffuse clouds of charged particles, but never stable atoms again.
You’d basically reset the universe to something like an ultra-energetic pre-recombination plasma — except with the wrong charge balance and no chance of re-neutralizing.
⸻
In short:
Adding one extra electron to every atom would: • Destroy all atomic and molecular structure. • Overwhelm gravity entirely. • Convert the universe into a high-energy, negatively charged plasma. • Likely erase all physical structures — stars, planets, life, everything — in an instant.
It’s not a slow catastrophe; it’s an immediate, total one.
⸻
Would you like me to estimate the total electrostatic potential energy released by this imbalance across, say, one cubic meter of matter (to get a quantitative feel for how bad this gets)?
Maybe that’s what happened with the big bang. Some ent just randomly wished the protons and neutrons liked each other and electrons have to just dance around then instead of the stable atomic pudding that made sure the world was flat and unchanging, moving only on the whims of the Great A’tuin.
kittehx@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Wish granted: the same electron is added to all atoms in the universe.
This one single electron is created in a quantum state described by a wave function that is uniformly distributed over every atom in the universe. This wave function collapses nearly instantaneously to a single position, and the end result is that one random atom in the entire universe gains one electron.
Nothing of interest happens.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Considering how intentionally malecious the side effects of typical genie-wishes tend to be, the extra electron probably comes to rest in the wishers hypophysis and causes a free radical that leads to a rare sort of cancer that prevents the wisher from falling asleep ever again, so he dies in madness scratching out his own eyes.
0r something similar along that line.
mr_satan@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I’m really bothered by that zero 0 instead of an o O.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
its like the wishmaster GENIE(djinn) which is really demons, since demons also grant wishes. he gives wishes but the wishes always have unintentional consequences if your not very specific. I think Xfiles there was a genie episode, where mulder was able to grant a “true wish” that end up negating everything(the bad wishes). or like shikon jewel which doesnt really grant a true wish to a person.
CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
One-electron Universe
Image
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
It’s all fun and games until someone points out that anti-atoms are predicted to have identical properties to atoms.
Then the whole chiral parity symmetry stuff gets involved, and you talk about quantized spacetime, and how come the entire universe is essentially perturbations on a continous universe spanning set of fields, and things start getting existential.
I personally believe time is the real problem.
xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I think this is much more challenging than oneock Minecraft
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Can the wish include a --dry-run option before going for it fully?
Quantenteilchen@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
That’s the Chris and Jack sketch currently listed above somewhere in this thread on my client.
AtariDump@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
-whatif
rikudou@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
So that’s how matter won over antimatter.
HK65@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Classic case of “history is written by the victors”. You only call it antimatter because it lost, if it won, you’d call it matter.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
go with the one electron theory, how can you add an elecron to every atom when there’s already only one electron in the whole universe.
lengau@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Well now there are two electrons in the universe and their job is way easier.
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The genie granted two wishes at once. The other was from a speed runner.
thegamer.com/how-ionizing-particle-outer-space-he…
halvar@lemy.lol 3 weeks ago
boooring now do the apocalypse