Ask Lemmy

Depending on what counts as a "magnet", the loss of magnetism could destroy the universe.

The Earth's magnetic field is gone and we all die.

Are we including electromagnets? If so, an awful lot of motors would suddenly just not work anymore.

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.

If you mean a complete absence of the electromagnetic force, then chemistry and physics are going to get very disastrous for us very quickly

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.

The earth is a giant magnet.
You'd be burned to a crisp by solar winds ;)

I'm no expert, but I feel like magnets losing their magnetism would also cause electricity to stop working.

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.

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.

What did they all get wet or something?

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.

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.

On the bright side we could stop wondering how do they work.

We wouldn't be on the internet talking about it, that's for sure. Electricity wouldn't exist anymore outside of lightning.

generally speaking, mass chaos and hysteria and then nothingness.

if we exclude the possibility of "magic" doing it, and instead focus on the realistic causes of a loss of magnetism the chances for just magnets to be directly impacted are low.

that is, the strength of phenomena that would be required for all magnets in the world to cease functioning it would also likely cause the magnetic cohesion of molecules and atoms to break. this breakdown at the atomic and subatomic level would cause a chain reaction where we would both cease to exist and explode with enough energy to destroy the universe.

if any atoms of you survived at all, they would be flung to the outer reaches of the universe in seconds only for the entirety of the universe to be sucked into the void such an explosion caused. it would probably be something akin to a big bang.

We very quickly die from intense solar radiation

Does that include the magnetic fields of Earth and the Sun? There'd be significant knock-on effects from that potentially causing severe long-term consequences for life.

I want an xkcd what if video of this

Every single electrical item on the planet stops working, because every generator, turbine, and motor immediately stops running.

Car batteries never charge, starter motors won't turn, and any hall effect sensors cease to operate.

Kitchen floors would be covered with souvenirs and notes.

Society would collapse

Magneto would be very, very sad.

All the shit would fall off of my fridge.

....more than just the magnets... ...it's all electromagnetic pulses... ...even brain-thought... ...everything would stop...

my hard drives...

This whole post is giving me writing ideas. Interesting thought experiment.