Atom Bomb

[Emily Rose]

No: HPFGUIDX 76540

on 8/9/03 1:05 AM, HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com at
HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com wrote:

> <<< The Entwife wrote: Since places like Hogwarts and the Quidditch
> Cup Stadium are spelled to make muggles avoid them (and make muggle
> artifacts not work in them?) - if someone was say flying overhead and
> dropped an atom-bomb - would it go off?  Would it fall crooked? What?
>>>> 
> 
> The Sergeant Majorette says:
> 
> Ooh, ooh! Something else I never thought would come up in the
> conversation!
> 
> It all depends on WHY muggle artifacts don't work, which possibly
> involves what exactly is defined as a 'muggle artifact'. Electricity,
> but why? Would batteries work? A steam-powered generator? Solar
> cells? TNT?

This reminds me of one of those "could Superman beat up Batman?"
conversations, but it is interesting to speculate about.  :-)

I've actually had a theory about this for some time.  Not about atom bombs
per say, but I think it applies.

My theory is that in the magical world, the laws of physics don't
necessarily apply.  My reason for thinking this came around book 3 when
Harry looked at Hermione's Muggle Studies notes and saw pictures of levers
and ramps and muggles lifting heavy objects.  These are all basic physics
concepts and when I thought about the Burrow whose architecture defies the
laws of physics and is held up by magic, it seemed to make sense that what
separates wizards and muggles is physics.

So the fundamental forces, such as gravity (Fg) and electricity (Fe) are
"replaced" by the force of magic.  This means that wizards don't know about
how levers and ramps work because they have "wingardium leviosa" and
"accio".  Concepts such as velocity and light speed would be irrelevant
because they have Firebolts and apparition.  So muggle studies is studying
how the forces of physics replace the force of magic.

Based on this theory a few things might happen:  A plane might fly over and
drop a bomb, which for some odd reason (to the pilot) didn't immediately
fall out of the plane.  The reason is because over a powerfully magical
place like the Quidditch Cup stadium, gravity was negated.  Or, perhaps at
that very moment, the instruments malfunctioned because the force of
electricity was interrupted so that electrons did not flow.  The detonation
of an atom bomb complies with the laws of physics (detonation of unstable
radioactive atomic particles cause a chain reaction) so perhaps it would
drop and land as a useless hunk of metal.

My thoughts are that a plane full of muggles would never be able to fly over
the stadium at all.  Arthur Weasley described a charm that made muggles
suddenly remember they had to do something else whenever they approached the
stadium so that they turned around.  I expect that that would apply in the
plane and the pilots would suddenly need to make a course correction or
return to the airport or something.

But you never know.  I doubt even Rowling thinks about this kind of stuff!
:-)

-e