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!
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.
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.
No more fridge magnets.
No more iPad covers.
FML
Exactly. This is clearly the biggest problem. Who cares if every atom in the entire universe gets shredded in a new big bang when the screen of my iPad might get scratched next time I toss it in my bag.
Not gyrocompasses that things like planes and missiles uses, just the kind low tech hikers use.
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.
If you mean a complete absence of the electromagnetic force, then chemistry and physics are going to get very disastrous for us very quickly
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
A lot of kids’ art on the ground
All electricity generation would stop
You would hard pressed to learn about the details without electricity and communication networks.
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.
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.
