During the beach daydream of the other day, I also had a strange but interesting idea flash through my mind. It was of a material that can change its state and density instantly through some sort of simple but as-yet-undiscovered process. When an electric or mechanical field is applied, the material changes from a solid, concrete-like density to a liquid form (or various stages in between). It’s like melting a block of ice and refreezing it, only instantly – with a flip of a switch. This change can also affects the material’s weight (but perhaps not its mass), so that it can be easily manipulated with the process is in effect but becomes heavy again in its natural state. The process involves harmonizing the material’s molecules or atoms in some way so that they’re all synchronized, a process which somehow suspends the material’s usual properties.
I imagined it as being like the concrete sidewalk I was walking on could be changed at will back to its liquid state, re-arranged, and hardened again instantly, without the wait of the manual setting process (and of course, there is no known way to turn hardened concrete back to liquid form).
It was a fantastic, outrageous idea: seemingly impossible by what is currently known about matter. And yet during that moment of inspiration I had a curious, nearly absolute certainty that this material or process exists. It was a given in my mind, a “why didn’t we think of this before” kind of idea. In a moment when rules were thrown out the window, it was truth. Truth.
I really don’t know where the idea came from, but if nothing else it makes for some interesting science fiction!
Did you just watch the new Star Trek movie? Sounds like Hollywood stuff to me, but it would be very cool.
When you get something at the critical temperature just adding a little motion will turn it from a liquid to a solid. I remember my Father acquired some lead for casting bullets. Unfortunately it had been alloyed with copper. The result was that the electric pot would heat the lead just hot enough to melt it. When we tried to release some lead into our molds, the contents of the pot would freeze. We had to go through this really tedious process of scooping out all the lead with an old spoon, then ruining some good lead in order to “rinse” out the pot.
I suppose you could conceive of plastics that would liquefy when a current passes through them and heats them.
In regard to Science Fiction, I like Arther C. Clarke’s third law:
Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
some of the new body armors use a similar concept – they’re effectively magnetic, non-Newtonian fluids that solidify on either pressure contact, or via magnetic field