WHICH HOGWARTS HOUSE ARE THE FUNDAMENTAL FORCES?

Hogwarts is the opposite of everything which ever advanced humanity: science, technology, and NOT sending your children somewhere full of monsters. Hogwarts leaves more hazardous materials lying around than the Cold War. New student induction is a millinerial phrenologist permanently labelling three-quarters of other students their enemy.

But reality really is divided and defined by four different forces. What if we put the Sorting Hat on the Standard Model?

Weak Nuclear Force: Hufflepuff

The strong and weak nuclear forces don’t affect much outside their own small range, sticking mainly to themselves by holding atomic nuclei together. So they’re Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff: only there to make up the mass while Gryffindor and Slytherin enjoy spectacular special effects. And be honest: as soon as soon as you saw “weak” you knew it was Hufflepuff. Even if you are one. The weak force is one million times weaker than the strong, because in nuclear physics adjectives are no longer messing around. It’s a thousand times shorter in range as well, affecting an area only one quintillionth of a meter. That’s a thousandth of a proton.

Tiny, weak, keeping almost utterly to itself except when forced to interact at point blank range. Which is exactly what happens when you tear a small child from their family, send them to boarding school, subject them to a humiliating parade of being judged in front of the entire school on their first day, and the nicest thing said by even a magical nice-thing-saying hat is “Uh, I’m sure you’re pretty friendly.”

So what’s the point in being friendly? All life on Earth. And not just in the Sesame Street sense of “making it worthwhile” but the thermonuclear energy supply sense of “actually existing”. It turns out being friendly is pretty important! For example: two protons getting friendly to fuse in the Sun’s core, unleashing energy, warmth, light, and making little things like “everything in the universe which isn’t a cold cloud of hydrogen.”

The weak force is also the only one to appreciably affect neutrinos*. Possibly because electrically neutral and almost massless neutrinos are the only things to sleet through the world with less effect than Hufflepuffs.

*Gravity technically applies but the effect is appallingly small even compared to the weak force.

Strong Nuclear Force: Ravenclaw

Ravenclaw is the strong nuclear force. Which is the strongest anything force. It’s a hundred, a million, duodecillions of times stronger than the other three, and those aren’t hyperbole: those are the actual orders of magnitude between the strong force and electromagnetism, weak force, and gravity. The strong force is also the most complicated by an absolutely staggering degree. Which is exactly what Ravenclaws should earn while everyone else gets a basic diploma. They’re acknowledged as the smartest students in the school as soon as they arrive! You’d think an educational establishment would do more with that. Why aren’t they in advanced classes? Why are they losing valuable time while Gryffindors and Slytherins are bickering instead of learning? An easy magical cure for all disease is delayed because the brilliant are being held back by bickering idiots.

The strong nuclear force holds the nucleus together. Every single atom of every single thing? The strong nuclear force says you’re welcome. Gravity and electromagnetism put on the big show and the lightning bolts, but the world they’re struggling over is at the core (of every atom) shaped by strong nuclear. The strong nuclear force works with its own system of quantum chromodynamic color charges which the other forces can’t even perceive, never mind affect. They’re the standard model equivalent of sophisticated in-jokes. Because even among the laws of physics the Strong Ravenclaws are the nerds.

The strong force would utterly stomp all the others out of existence if it wasn’t focused entirely on its own extremely short range. Super-smart, all-dominating, and keeps to itself instead of getting involved in all the weak nonsense of everyone else? Sounds pretty Ravenclaw to me. You can’t tell me they don’t really run magical society. You divide a bunch of kids into “brave, evil, friendly, and smart”? The smart ones are going to prove it by backing off and quietly getting on with everything while the first two slug it out and the third wrings their hands about why we can’t all get along.

Electromagnetism: Slytherin

Glowing lights! Lighting bolts! Glowing while electrocuted by lighting bolts! Pretty much everything we associate with evil wizards from Harry Potter to Star Wars is electromagnetism. (And if you think “from Harry Potter to Star Wars” is a false range I can offer a thousand pages of fan-fiction to prove otherwise). Electromagnetism is 137 times weaker than the strong nuclear force. Which is why Hogwarts is the only school in the entire world where the jerks don’t bully the smart kids. Instead Slytherin target the “brave” Gryffindor, because their “brave” is the perfectly idiotic blend of “stupid enough not to avoid fights” and “obedient enough not to use their actual magic wands against bullies.”

Electromagnetism is why atoms don’t just fly through each other. Every atom is mostly empty space, it’s only the repulsion between negative electrons which stops you when you hit an obstacle. Which is what antagonists are for: to get between people and where they want to be.

Electromagnetism has infinite range. No wonder people were scared to say Voltemort’s name. It can’t overpower the strong nuclear force in the atomic nucleus but it does build everything else around it. Little things every element in existence. And all of chemistry. So also biology. As with all evil groups in power they’ve simply gotten on with rearranging reality to their designs instead of waiting to talk about it.

In true evil fashion electromagnetism is strong enough to dominate everything but instead wastes most of its potential struggling against itself. The magnitude of charge in existence would be enough to explode everything, ever, always. Except half of it is always opposed to the other half. Just like any story with multiple villains — they get in each other’s way to give everyone else a chance.

Gravity: Gryffindor

Gravity: by far the weakest, it’s almost impossible to even see how it ever achieves anything (if you ever find a graviton please report for your Nobel Prize), but it reshapes the big picture of the entire universe around itself anyway. Of course it’s Gryffindor.

Like electromagnetism gravity has infinite range. Unlike electromagnetism gravity always attracts and never repels, because Rowling-forbid that any Gryffindor should experience or display any kind of negative characteristic. Ron Weasley attracts Hermione despite being the world’s most useless whiner. Hermione attracts Harry and Ron despite correctly informing them that everything they ever do or did was wrong. And Harry attracts everyone despite being functionally useless at magic while also attracting constant lethal attack by magic.

Gravindor is about ten to the power of minus thirty-eight times weaker than the strong nuclear force. That’s a hundredth of a thousandth of a millionth of a trillionth of a quadrillionth. (And that’s still less laborious reading for such a small effect than Order of the Phoenix). It should disappear as a rounding error in every calculation. Gravity does disappear as a rounding error in every calculation, except the ones involving such immense masses they override all other terms. You need to rearrange the entire universe with ludicrous amounts of extra material just to make it possible for gravity to win. Which is exactly what happens in Hogwarts.

Harry Potter is the black hole at the heart of the Hogwarts’ galaxy. Only consuming, drawing a swirling vortex of every other force in existence into its inescapable singularity. All the spectacular Slytherin effects are only reactions to his all-dominating narrative attraction. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are crude matter to bulk up his all-consuming story, providing a little warmth while he crushes their existence around him. All their possibly interesting interactions overridden and removed from reality as they pass the Harry’s narrative event horizon.

Newswise — One of the annoying side effects of being absorbed in a gripping novel is that the cup of tea on the table becomes cold! Unfortunately, the tea would not heat itself by absorbing the heat around it, just as pieces of a broken egg would not put themselves together or milk mixed in coffee would not separate by itself. Such things are irreversible, and define a fixed direction of…

#QuantumPhysics #Reality #Philosophy #Thought #Connectedness #QuantumEntanglement #NuclearForces #EDENbyFREI

From the eleventh volume of EDEN by FREI < previous

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Russia's President Vladimir Putin has warned the United States against deploying new missiles in Europe, threatening to retaliate in kind by targeting western capitals with Russia’s new weaponry. #AfricanNewsNetwork

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SEOUL, South Korea  | Kim Jong Un could give up ICBMs but keep some nuclear forces

SEOUL, South Korea  — After years of effort to develop nuclear missiles that can target the U.S. mainland, is North Korean leader Kim Jong Un really ready to pack them away in a deal with President Donald Trump?

Perhaps, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean Pyongyang is abandoning its nuclear ambitions entirely.

Tuesday’s meeting in Singapore between Kim and Trump comes after a sharp turn in North Korea’s diplomacy, from rebuffing proposals for dialogue last year to embracing and even initiating them this year. The change may reflect a new thinking about its nuclear deterrence strategy — and how best to secure the ultimate goal of protecting Kim’s rule.

A look at how Kim’s appetite for talks swung amid the North’s ups and downs in weapons development and what that says about how he might approach his negotiations with Trump:

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TESTS AND TALKS

North Korea’s attitude toward dialogue in the past two years has seemed to shift with setbacks or progress in its weapons tests.

Even after starting a rapid process of weapons development following a nuclear test in January 2016, Pyongyang constantly invited rivals to talks that year.

It proposed military meetings with Seoul to reduce tensions and indicated it could suspend its nuclear and missile tests if the U.S.-South Korean military drills were dialed back. Washington and Seoul demurred, saying Pyongyang first must show genuine intent to denuclearize.

At the time, North Korea’s quest for a credible nuclear deterrent against the U.S. was troubled. The military conducted eight tests of its “Musudan” intermediate-range missile in 2016, but only one of those launches was seen as successful. The country’s path toward an intercontinental-range ballistic missile appeared cut off.

North Korea’s stance on dialogue changed dramatically, though, following the successful test of a new rocket engine in March 2017, which the country hailed as a significant breakthrough.

The engine, believed to be a variant of the Russian-designed RD-250, powered a successful May flight of a new intermediate-range missile, the Hwasong-12, reopening the path to an ICBM. That was followed in July by two successful tests of an ICBM, the Hwasong-14.

Pyongyang’s demands for talks disappeared. Proposals to meet from a new liberal government in Seoul were ignored. Determined to test its weapons in operational conditions, the North flew two Hwasong-12s over Japan and threatened to fire them toward Guam, a U.S. military hub.

The North’s state media brought up President Richard Nixon’s outreach to Beijing in the 1970s following a Chinese test of a thermonuclear bomb, saying it was likewise inevitable that Washington will accept North Korea as a nuclear power and take steps to normalize ties.

Kim talked of reaching a military “equilibrium” with the U.S. By all signs, he was fully committed to completing an ICBM program he intended to keep.

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THE DETERRENCE GAME

Kim’s turn toward diplomacy this year suggests he may have concluded the nuclear deterrence strategy was failing, some analysts say.

After a November test of a larger ICBM, the Hwasong-15, Kim proclaimed his nuclear force as complete, but his announcement may have been more politically motivated than an assessment of capability.

Although the Hwasong-15 displayed a greater range than the Hwasong-14, there was no clear sign the North had made meaningful progress in the technology needed to ensure that a warhead would survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry.

New U.S. National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy reports released in December and January respectively also seemed to reduce the credibility of Kim’s deterrence plans, said Hwang Ildo, a professor at Seoul’s Korea National Diplomatic Academy.

In the documents, the U.S. assesses it could sufficiently defend against the small number of North Korean ICBMs — believed to be about 10 or fewer — with its 44 ground-based interceptors deployed in Alaska. Missiles fired from North Korea would have to pass Alaska to reach the U.S. mainland.

Experts are divided on whether the interceptors, which Washington plans to deploy in larger numbers soon, can be counted on to destroy incoming warheads. However, Hwang said, real capability doesn’t matter as much as Trump believing that the system works, which reduces the bargaining power of the ICBMs.

Kim can’t be the Mao Zedong to Trump’s Nixon if the U.S. sees his weapons as containable. With North Korea’s limited resources, as well as the threat of a pre-emptive U.S. attack, it’s difficult for the North to mass produce enough ICBMs to overwhelm the interceptors in Alaska.

Rather than prolonging his nation’s economic suffering, Kim may have concluded it would be better to deal away his ICBMs at the cusp of operational capability, especially when it was no longer clear the missiles would guarantee his survival.

“North Korea always tries to maintain flexibility and increase its options from step to step,” Hwang said.

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A PAKISTANI MODEL?

What never changes for North Korea is that the survival of the Kim regime comes first.

Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Korea University, said Kim is probably modeling a nuclear future after Pakistan, which began building a nuclear arsenal in the 1990s to deter India. Pakistan is now estimated to have more than 100 warheads that are deliverable by short- and medium-range weapons and aircraft.

Kim may be seeking a deal where he gives up his ICBMs but keeps his shorter-range arsenal, which may satisfy Trump but drive a wedge between Washington and its Asian allies, Seoul and Tokyo. In drills with shorter-range weapons in 2016, the North demonstrated the potential to carry out nuclear attacks on South Korean ports and U.S. military facilities in Japan.

In negotiations, Kim may try to exclude submarine technologies from a freeze or verification process to leave open a path toward sub-launched ballistic missile systems, Hwang said.

Then, if diplomacy fails and Kim goes back to building nuclear weapons, the systems would expand their reach and provide a second-strike capability to retaliate if North Korea’s land-based launch sites are destroyed.

North Korea successfully tested a submarine-launched missile that flew about 500 kilometers (310 miles) in August 2016. Analysts believe the solid-fuel missile can hit targets as far as 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) away.

That said, it would take years for the North to develop a fleet of submarines that can quietly travel deep into the Pacific.

The immediate outcome of the summit in Singapore is likely to be a vague aspirational statement on the North’s denuclearization, Nam said. When it comes to details, Washington and Pyongyang are destined to “muddle through” a lengthy process, wrestling over the terms of monitoring and inspections, he said.

Still, such a process would halt the growth of the North’s nuclear program and prevent it from using its weapons to flex its diplomatic muscle, Nam said. It could take a decade or so for Kim to find his next move in nuclear deterrence if he’s eyeing a submarine-launched system. That could be enough time for Washington, Seoul and others to convince Kim he just can’t win the nuclear game.

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By Associated Press

Global nuclear powers modernize arsenals despite falling numbers – report

“Some estimates suggest that the USA’s nuclear weapon modernization program may cost up to $1 trillion over the next 30 years.” RT  July 3, 2017 An unarmed Trident II D5 missile is launched from the Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine USS Maryland (SSBN 738) during a missile test off the coast of Fla., Aug. 31, 2016 © U.S. Navy   Although the number of nuclear weapons across the globe is…