What would happen to society if all magnets suddenly lost their magnetism?
Alternatively, what would happen if the loss of magnetism instead happened gradually over a period of time?
The Earth's magnetic field is gone and we all die.
Finally, some good news!
The earth is a giant magnet.
You'd be burned to a crisp by solar winds ;)
You'd be burned to a crisp by solar winds ;)
No, you wouldn't. You'd start getting cancer.
Also, the atmosphere would start getting worn away. Most people would die of cancer before it'd get bad enough to asphyxiate everyone though
You'd be nuclear burned to a crisp
Just wait till night time
How didnt I think of that... facepalm ;D
I'm no expert, but I feel like magnets losing their magnetism would also cause electricity to stop working.
Most electricity is being created with the use of magnets i motors/generators. No more electricity then.
Asides from batteries and solar.
Every single electrical item on the planet stops working, because every generator, turbine, and motor immediately stops running.
Car batteries never charge, starter motors won't turn, and any hall effect sensors cease to operate.
Kitchen floors would be covered with souvenirs and notes.
Society would collapse
Are we including electromagnets? If so, an awful lot of motors would suddenly just not work anymore.
...magnets is quite general, but i believe it counts, and yeah, fucking everything stops...
Electricity generation would suddenly also get a lot harder. Without dynamos I think the only real option becomes solar panels.
Rather than listing all of the ways modern life and society would collapse it'd be easier to just say this:
Your ability to understand the world would in an instant be limited to the people that immediately surround you and you'd better quickly think of a way to find a clean water source, some land, grab an "Agriculture for Dummies" book, and some form of weapon to defend your new homestead with your new tribe.
Nah, don't worry about that shit. The earth just lost its radiation shield.
Well is this about permanent magnets loosing their functionality or the whole concept of magnetism just vanishing?
One puts us back to a steampunk technological ceiling the other means the universe pops out of existence; electricity, magnetism, and light are closely linked so removing one is likely to just break reality.
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If you mean a complete absence of the electromagnetic force, then chemistry and physics are going to get very disastrous for us very quickly
We just lost all data still being stored on magnetic drives and mediums.
Compasses just became useless.
A lot of medical and scientific equipment suddenly stopped working.
The MagSafe charger on my computer just fell off.
Everything would come to a halt, quite literally. Pretty much everything that moves using electricity uses magnets.
The rest depends on what you mean by magnets. All magnetized materials? Now all computers and internet are gone. The ability to create magnetic fields using electricity? All manufacturing equipment becomes scrap metal. No magnetism anywhere with anything? The universe implodes.
You’re talking about a change in one of the fundamental forces that govern the universe. Things would start falling apart at the atomic level, including in your brain. I don’t know that you would remain conscious for long enough to observe anything. I don’t think anyone could tell you what would happen because we’d literally have to re-calculate physics without electromagnetism. I don’t even know that that’s within the scope of human imagination.
Electricity and magnetism are the exact same thing. A non moving charge creates an observed static electric field. A moving charge creates an observed magnetic field. So if you were moving next to the charge as it went down a wire, you would see no charge moving. No charge moving means no magnetic field.
They only look different because things get distorted moving at near light speed relative to you. It would be like if we gave two different names to a police siren based on whether you were listening standing next to it or listening as it zoomed past you.
On the bright side we could stop wondering how do they work.
What did they all get wet or something?
Not only that, Insane Clown Posse would cease to exist.
Everyone stock up on paper towels! A Costco trip could save the world
You would hard pressed to learn about the details without electricity and communication networks.
All electricity generation would stop
A fairly disastrous set of outcomes described in the comments so far.
Thank goodness though, that you didn't ask about there being no springs.
Thank goodness though, that you didn't ask about there being no springs.
Ha ha, wow, someone at the Simpsons is an MST3K fan, I think.
All the shit would fall off of my fridge.
Magnetism is "just" the ability of some elements to line up their fields so that the effects are felt beyond their electron shells. It's much more complex than that, but magnetism is in all matter, just some more than others. For it to stop at any rate would be like changing a constant of the universe. I would imagine very quickly things would be very different and we wouldn't be around to witness it.
my hard drives...
We very quickly die from intense solar radiation
Not quickly, the atmosphere itself would actually protect us for a while (I had to look into this to explain to my conspiracy-oriented parents that a pole reversal would not kill everyone). But if the magnetosphere was gone for good, solar wind would strip the atmosphere from the planet over time, as happened to Mars. We would probably all have to retreat to underground caves and domed cities sealed to keep the pressure high enough to live.
Does that include the magnetic fields of Earth and the Sun? There'd be significant knock-on effects from that potentially causing severe long-term consequences for life.
Magneto would be very, very sad.
I want an xkcd what if video of this
People couldn't use their MagSafe iPhone accessories and society would crumble within days (You can't tell me I don't know what Vietnam was like!!)
....more than just the magnets... ...it's all electromagnetic pulses... ...even brain-thought... ...everything would stop...
what if ... no electromagnetic field all of a sudden? dense.
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The situation room would be ablaze with work as the Insane Clown Posse would have an even bigger mystery on their hands! How do magnets not work? By situation room I mean wherever they are hot boxing, and by ablaze with work I mean 3-4 fat blunts
This whole post is giving me writing ideas. Interesting thought experiment.
According to Trump, a rainstorm would cause that to happen. But wouldn't put out the fire that is Portland.
My tapes nooo
Depending on what counts as a "magnet", the loss of magnetism could destroy the universe.
Maybe the exercise should be limited to all ferrous metals just became inert.
Welp, bye bye to the shield against the Sun's deadly laser. Although I guess that also means bye bye to the laser too? Hmm.