Join Rue Allyn today as she brings us some science and ‘facts’ about possible material properties of magic.
No this isn’t a review of a movie or an instruction text on how to use magic in everyday life. Because the focus of this blog is Facts Behind the Fiction, I bring you ‘facts’ about possible material properties of magic. I make this choice because my current research involves creating a world populated by magic users.
To make this world plausible, I had to decide what ‘magic’ was. Was it simply the will of a powerful person bent to the shapes and tasks that person desired? That’s a pretty common way of thinking about magic and rather trite in my opinion. So how
could I make magic unique in my world? I could have made magic some extreme of the ‘woo-woo’ variety, but that too felt trite. So I went in the complete opposite direction and made magic in this world I created to be a physical substance, specifically a plasma. (Which Google’s AI tells me is “the most common state of matter in the observable universe, making up 99% of its visible matter.”)
That doesn’t mean it is the most common state of matter in the world I’m building. No, plasma, specifically magic plasma, is a a rarely occurring substance known only to one set of human beings. I’m calling those beings the Tuatha (I will get into the reasons behind that but in a different article.)
So what properties does a plasma have? That’s where facts behind my fictive magic are found. Google’s AI tells me that:
Elements possess both physical and chemical properties. Physical properties are observable without changing the element’s chemical
composition, such as density, melting point, and boiling point. Chemical properties describe how an element reacts with other substances to form new substances, such as reactivity and flammability.
But exactly what types of physical and chemical properties would make magic as a plasma-like substance plausible? Once again, I turned to Google’s AI and learned that magic as I imagined it must have the standard traits discerned by the five senses Color, Texture, Odor, Flavor, and
Audibility. Specific physical properties should include:
- Conductivity
- Malleability
- Ductility
- Density
Melting Point,- Boiling Point
- and a specific state.
The chemical properties of my magic plasma must include:
- Reactivity
- Flammability
- Corrosive Resistance
- Oxidation States
- Acidity/Basicity
- Toxicity.
In the case where a property is absent or minimized, I should provide very good, plausible reasons why. Once I determine all of the physical and chemical properties of magic plasma, I also need to account for how that plasma interacts with other substances. Examples of that might include
combustion—will magic cause an explosion and oxidation—will magic cause a thing to rust or oxidize, among other potential interactions that might be unique to the substance of magic itself.
I had tremendous fun creating magic for the world of the Tuatha and hope to launch the first story involving this world before June of 2026
About the Author
Award winning romance author, Rue Allyn has a lifelong passion for happy ever after. She lives south of the border with her husband of more than forty years and their cat, Tanto. She has two sons and is a proud veteran of the US Navy. Shewrites heart melting romance in all sub-genres, but her favorite is historical romance, especially medieval.
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