Skip to main content
Worldbuilding

Return to Answer

Added an explanation due to a valid critical comment by @BarbaudJulen.
Source Link
Amadeus
Amadeus
  • 34.7k
  • 5
  • 53
  • 127

First, +1 to JBH, that was my first thought.

If you converted the photonic energy to mass (via E=MC^2) the amount of mass would be miniscule. At best for the brightest light I imagine you'd be creating a few atoms of hydrogen.

However, the visible light spectrum of photonic vibration is quite narrow. Beneath it is infrared, above it is ultraviolet, and X-rays, etc.

An alternative to turning the photons into mass is just modifying their frequency, say reducing it to infrared. We cannot sense infrared as light; a room filled with infrared radiation is completely dark. But it is still the same photons. We do sense those as heat. If your character has a magical lensing effect, they could create a warm shell around something that shifts all visible light into the infrared band.

EDIT due to comment: I wasn't clear on why this shell is warm. If we change the frequency of visible light to a lower frequency, the lower frequency has less energy. If we are not doing energy to matter conversion, then the excess energy has to go somewhere. It can go into warming atmospheric molecules at the point of the conversion. That would be a "shell" of where the darkness effect takes place. How, exactly, this reduction in frequency is accomplished is unexplained magic; but it a plausible physical consequence of reducing the the EM wave length, and thus reducing the energy of the photon.

That would result in darkness inside the shell. The area of conversion (where the 'shell' is) can be very warm air, if anybody passes through it, and the shell would be warmer on the inside than the surrounding air. And as far as somebody inside the shell, it would be dark in all directions, because no visible light reaches their eyes from anywhere. It might as well be black walls all around.

But if they tried to feel their way to the wall, presuming the shell does not move, then at some point they find the edge as hot air, and they can walk through it into the light.

If your hero turns it off, the warm air just dissipates, like dousing a campfire.

If you want, you can make the whole region frequency converting; a flashlight inside the sphere emits no light, it just emits an equivalent number of photons as infrared light. It will feel slightly warmer [edit: due to magical frequency downshifting], that's it. The same for fire; it will feel like fire and behave like fire, but it will be a bit hotter and completely dark.

If there is no light to sense, the sighted people and animals inside the bubble are effectively blind, they cannot see a thing.

Which leads you to another way to implement this; a biological suppression of signals on optic nerves. That would be fine on a personal level, but undetectable outside the bubble of influence. So it depends on what your story demands: I suspect you want want people outside the bubble to see the area of darkness; in that case go with photon frequency conversion to outside the visible spectrum.

Alternatively, if you just want people in a bubble to experience blindness but appear visible and normal to observers outside the bubble, you could go with optic nerve blocking; or preventing retinas from reacting to light.

First, +1 to JBH, that was my first thought.

If you converted the photonic energy to mass (via E=MC^2) the amount of mass would be miniscule. At best for the brightest light I imagine you'd be creating a few atoms of hydrogen.

However, the visible light spectrum of photonic vibration is quite narrow. Beneath it is infrared, above it is ultraviolet, and X-rays, etc.

An alternative to turning the photons into mass is just modifying their frequency, say reducing it to infrared. We cannot sense infrared as light; a room filled with infrared radiation is completely dark. But it is still the same photons. We do sense those as heat. If your character has a magical lensing effect, they could create a warm shell around something that shifts all visible light into the infrared band. That would result in darkness inside the shell. The area of conversion (where the 'shell' is) can be very warm air, if anybody passes through it, and the shell would be warmer on the inside than the surrounding air. And as far as somebody inside the shell, it would be dark in all directions, because no visible light reaches their eyes from anywhere. It might as well be black walls all around.

But if they tried to feel their way to the wall, presuming the shell does not move, then at some point they find the edge as hot air, and they can walk through it into the light.

If your hero turns it off, the warm air just dissipates, like dousing a campfire.

If you want, you can make the whole region frequency converting; a flashlight inside the sphere emits no light, it just emits an equivalent number of photons as infrared light. It will feel slightly warmer, that's it. The same for fire; it will feel like fire and behave like fire, but it will be a bit hotter and completely dark.

If there is no light to sense, the sighted people and animals inside the bubble are effectively blind, they cannot see a thing.

Which leads you to another way to implement this; a biological suppression of signals on optic nerves. That would be fine on a personal level, but undetectable outside the bubble of influence. So it depends on what your story demands: I suspect you want want people outside the bubble to see the area of darkness; in that case go with photon frequency conversion to outside the visible spectrum.

Alternatively, if you just want people in a bubble to experience blindness but appear visible and normal to observers outside the bubble, you could go with optic nerve blocking; or preventing retinas from reacting to light.

First, +1 to JBH, that was my first thought.

If you converted the photonic energy to mass (via E=MC^2) the amount of mass would be miniscule. At best for the brightest light I imagine you'd be creating a few atoms of hydrogen.

However, the visible light spectrum of photonic vibration is quite narrow. Beneath it is infrared, above it is ultraviolet, and X-rays, etc.

An alternative to turning the photons into mass is just modifying their frequency, say reducing it to infrared. We cannot sense infrared as light; a room filled with infrared radiation is completely dark. But it is still the same photons. We do sense those as heat. If your character has a magical lensing effect, they could create a warm shell around something that shifts all visible light into the infrared band.

EDIT due to comment: I wasn't clear on why this shell is warm. If we change the frequency of visible light to a lower frequency, the lower frequency has less energy. If we are not doing energy to matter conversion, then the excess energy has to go somewhere. It can go into warming atmospheric molecules at the point of the conversion. That would be a "shell" of where the darkness effect takes place. How, exactly, this reduction in frequency is accomplished is unexplained magic; but it a plausible physical consequence of reducing the the EM wave length, and thus reducing the energy of the photon.

That would result in darkness inside the shell. The area of conversion (where the 'shell' is) can be very warm air, if anybody passes through it, and the shell would be warmer on the inside than the surrounding air. And as far as somebody inside the shell, it would be dark in all directions, because no visible light reaches their eyes from anywhere. It might as well be black walls all around.

But if they tried to feel their way to the wall, presuming the shell does not move, then at some point they find the edge as hot air, and they can walk through it into the light.

If your hero turns it off, the warm air just dissipates, like dousing a campfire.

If you want, you can make the whole region frequency converting; a flashlight inside the sphere emits no light, it just emits an equivalent number of photons as infrared light. It will feel slightly warmer [edit: due to magical frequency downshifting], that's it. The same for fire; it will feel like fire and behave like fire, but it will be a bit hotter and completely dark.

If there is no light to sense, the sighted people and animals inside the bubble are effectively blind, they cannot see a thing.

Which leads you to another way to implement this; a biological suppression of signals on optic nerves. That would be fine on a personal level, but undetectable outside the bubble of influence. So it depends on what your story demands: I suspect you want want people outside the bubble to see the area of darkness; in that case go with photon frequency conversion to outside the visible spectrum.

Alternatively, if you just want people in a bubble to experience blindness but appear visible and normal to observers outside the bubble, you could go with optic nerve blocking; or preventing retinas from reacting to light.

Source Link
Amadeus
Amadeus
  • 34.7k
  • 5
  • 53
  • 127

First, +1 to JBH, that was my first thought.

If you converted the photonic energy to mass (via E=MC^2) the amount of mass would be miniscule. At best for the brightest light I imagine you'd be creating a few atoms of hydrogen.

However, the visible light spectrum of photonic vibration is quite narrow. Beneath it is infrared, above it is ultraviolet, and X-rays, etc.

An alternative to turning the photons into mass is just modifying their frequency, say reducing it to infrared. We cannot sense infrared as light; a room filled with infrared radiation is completely dark. But it is still the same photons. We do sense those as heat. If your character has a magical lensing effect, they could create a warm shell around something that shifts all visible light into the infrared band. That would result in darkness inside the shell. The area of conversion (where the 'shell' is) can be very warm air, if anybody passes through it, and the shell would be warmer on the inside than the surrounding air. And as far as somebody inside the shell, it would be dark in all directions, because no visible light reaches their eyes from anywhere. It might as well be black walls all around.

But if they tried to feel their way to the wall, presuming the shell does not move, then at some point they find the edge as hot air, and they can walk through it into the light.

If your hero turns it off, the warm air just dissipates, like dousing a campfire.

If you want, you can make the whole region frequency converting; a flashlight inside the sphere emits no light, it just emits an equivalent number of photons as infrared light. It will feel slightly warmer, that's it. The same for fire; it will feel like fire and behave like fire, but it will be a bit hotter and completely dark.

If there is no light to sense, the sighted people and animals inside the bubble are effectively blind, they cannot see a thing.

Which leads you to another way to implement this; a biological suppression of signals on optic nerves. That would be fine on a personal level, but undetectable outside the bubble of influence. So it depends on what your story demands: I suspect you want want people outside the bubble to see the area of darkness; in that case go with photon frequency conversion to outside the visible spectrum.

Alternatively, if you just want people in a bubble to experience blindness but appear visible and normal to observers outside the bubble, you could go with optic nerve blocking; or preventing retinas from reacting to light.