I think the rapid expansion when the transfiguration ends would be enough to set it off.
bogdanb
Karma: 1,229
Also: Metallic sodium and potassium, as well as phosphorus, are quite reactive with human tissue. For bonus points you can make a mixed projectile with two transfigurations, e.g. a core transfigured from ice surrounded by a shell transfigured from sodium, which will explode once the two transfigurations end.
To be fair, it ate her legs, not just her feet.
To be even fairer, that might be just because the legs were bite-sized, and polite trolls are taught by their mothers not to nibble their food.
only person Dumbledore knows and has access to that really matters to Harry
Well, he could have killed Harry’s parents. It might not trigger Harry’s “kill death by any means necessary” reaction, but then I don’t think anyone would have anticipated that in-universe, given that even Q was surprised by the prophecy.
but of higher status than craftsmen and peasants.
I don’t think that was intrinsic to being a merchant, just a consequence of (some of them) being richer.
With regards to (2), I think you’re confusing first-year war games with actual combat magic.
Actual “I really want to kill you” spells are probably much more powerful. Fiendfyre for example has at least the destructive potential of a tank, and in canon even Goyle could cast it. (It’s hard to control, but then again so is a tank.) Avada Kedavra can probably kill you even through a nuclear bunker wall, and it can be used by at least some teenagers. Sectumsempra is probably a instant-kill against a muggle, even with body armor, and it was invented by Snape while he was still a student.
By contrast, pretty much the most powerful potential weapon normal people (well, outside the US at least) have ready access to is a car, and a very tiny fraction of people can easily make something much more destructive than a crude bomb. Also, due to the effects of magic on electronics, pretty much everything other than kinetic impactors would be fried by any kind of spell that manages to connect.
We’re never shown really bad stuff, and during a discussion in MoR it’s mentioned that thermonuclear weapons are only a bit worse than most really bad spells, and that Atlantis was erased from time.
ask whether wizard shields actually do prevent inert lumps of lead from hitting their caster
Almost certainly they do. Minerva mentions that guns aren’t a big threat to a prepared witch, and even if you assume she’s not really knowledgeable, I’m pretty sure someone would have tried throwing (with magic) hard, heavy things at their opponent during life-and-death fights. Or at least using bows and arrows.
In the end, at the highest level, their life is a story
I wouldn’t put it above Eliezer to find a way of having Harry be “the End of the World” literally by just ending the story somehow. But I can’t think of any explanation in that vein for destroying the stars, other than maybe breaking the ceiling in the Hogwards hall, which doesn’t fit. And style-wise it doesn’t feel right.
and Draco can attest to these under Veritaserum!
Technically speaking, Draco can only attest that Harry claimed those things. (Harry’s an Occlumens, and the way Occlumency works in MoR implies that an Occlumens is very good at lying. So he can plausibly claim that he lied to his enemies.)
I don’t remember, does Eliezer allow unbreakable vows, or are those nerfed in MoR like Felix Felicis? Because I’m pretty sure even an Occlumens can’t lie if he vows to say the truth without suffering the penalty.
I think the orbs only come to people (things that think, and can make decisions), and it’s not clear Dementors pass that test. (In particular, Harry leans against that hypothesis. He’s certainly not infallible, but he’s basically the best expert on the subject whose thoughts we have access to.)
Otherwise prophecies mentioning things like life, wands and clothes would attack everyone.
Wikipedia claims 10°C, but it also says “Sulfuric acid in solution with water causes significant freezing-point depression of water’s melting point”, which suggests that both Harry and HowStuffWorks are right. Harry is probably thinking of the pure acid.
(Also, that wouldn’t affect his plan. He only needs it solid so he can transfigure it, and the only significance of the freezing point is that it’s easily reachable, not exactly how high it is above 0°C.)
All known organisms that think have emotions.
Do you have any good evidence that this assertion applies to Cephalopods? I.e., either that they don’t think or that they have emotions. (Not a rhetorical question; I know about them only enough to realize that I don’t know.)
enough magic into it to overwhelm anything a first-year student could produce
That wouldn’t be quite enough; Harry could have got someone else to help, though indeed it is unlikely.
assuming that Finite or Finite Incantatem can affect artifacts, which we don’t know to be true
You’re quite right about this. Presumably there’s some sort of “stabilizing” element for artifacts and spells that are meant to be (semi)permanent, precisely to avoid accidental Finite. (Not necessarily brute-force resistance spells, it could be just a safety thing to make sure you really want that cancelled.)
Note that he didn’t say “I didn’t post much”, he just said that there existed times when he thought about posting but didn’t because of the age of the thread. That is useful evidence, you can’t just ignore it if it so happens that there are no instances of posting at all.
(In pizza terms, Emile said “I used to think the old recipe was bad and I never ordered it. It’s not that surprising in that case that there are no instances of ordering.)
At one point Harry tells Quirrell about the Hallows symbol (the line in the circle in the triangle), which I think he noticed on his cloak, and asks if he’s seen it somewhere, in the context of a discution about the stone. Quirrell then remembers he has to see a man about a horse, and leaves quickly.
plus symbolic comprehension of death.
Which is clearly pertinent due to how Patronus works. Good catch.
What if they believed everything had (some kind of) a soul, including (but not necessarily limited) to plants? The reactions would be interpreted differently. After all, magic beliefs and animistic beliefs were often associated in our history, and wizards actually have things like that crazy violent willow and the sorting hat. They also have examples of magical creatures, including for example centaurs who both have human-like sentience and are magic users (or at least capable of prophecy).
Perhaps Draco has just misspoken, or spoken without thinking. After all, racist beliefs are traditionally not very internall consistent. Maybe the actual claim is only wizard souls go to heaven, or something like that.
Have you spent much time working in labs?
No, I did not, and it shows :-)
Thank you for the examples, I see your point. I can imagine ways 300-IQ AIs would accelerate some of these that sound plausible to me, but since I don’t really have direct experience that might not mean much.
That said, I notice that the bluej’s post mentioned the AI dominating scientific output, not necessarily increasing its rate by much. Of course, a single AI instance would not dominate science—as evidenced by the fact that the few ~200 IQ humans that existed didn’t claim a big part—but an AI architecture that can be easily replicated might. After all, at least as far as IQ is concerned, anyone who hires an IQ 140–160 scientist now would just use an IQ 300 AI instead.
Of course, science is not just IQ, and even if IBM’s Watson had IQ 300 right now and I doubt enough instances of it would be built in five years to replace all scientists simply due to hardware costs (not to mention licensing and patent wars). But then again I don’t have a very good feel for the relative cost of humans and hardware for things the size of Google, so I don’t have very high confidence either way. But certainly 20 to 30 years would change the landscape hugely.
Thank you!
So, basically (3) was almost completely wrong, and (1) missed the fact that “ocean” doesn’t mean quite the same thing everywhere.
Could you explain (2) a little bit? I see in Earth seawater there’s about 15 times more NaCl by mass than other solutes. Is there an obvious reason for that, and is that Earth-specific?
I agree with your analysis, but I also thought this was intended as a straightforward signal to the other students that “we have to fight for ourselves” is not just the usual adult “lording over” the kids. I think it was meant to reinforce solidarity, defuse instinctive teenage rebellion against “the adults’ rules”, and also reinforces the message that the professors are no longer to be trusted to handle things.