On Electromagnetism

When I was a kid, I discovered a way to magnetize and demagnetize metal objects by running an electrical current through them. I can't remember exactly how I did it now, but it was pretty fun, at least up until the point where my Dad would get mad because his watch was stuck to the fireplace. What I had no idea about at that time was how this actually worked. Most people go through their lives not knowing, in fact. But it's just one of the very many crazy things about electricity, or rather the electromagnetic force: one of the four fundamental forces of the universe, and the one, other than gravity, that we're most familiar with. A magnet is just a piece of metal, usually iron, in which the electrons in its atoms are spinning. Without going all quantum on you, what this basically does is give the object an attractive force. (Hey baby, I feel drawn to you, do you wanna touch your South Pole to my North... I'll see myself out.) It happens all the time and it's all around us.

A few years ago, when post-apocalyptic TV dramas were all the rage, there was a show called Revolution. The premise was that one day, electricity all over the world suddenly stops working, permanently and without explanation. The show then picked up ten years or so later, following the adventures of a group of characters trying to make their way in their newly refeudalized society and figure out what had happened.

Um, yeah, they'd all be dead.

If I recall correctly, the show got canceled before we ever found out who or what was behind the electrical shutdown. But in reality, if there were something powerful enough to simultaneously and irrevocably disable every single electrical device on and above the planet - in the pilot episode we saw airplanes plummeting from the skies, and presumably satellites too would no longer be able to maintain their orbits in the absence of signals from the ground - if such a thing existed, it wouldn't just take down human-made objects. It wouldn't discriminate. It would disable... EVERYTHING.

Which means there would be no thunderstorms. Lightning messes with oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere to form nitrates, which fall to the ground in rain, are absorbed into the soil and are taken up by plants as nutrients. So all our crops would die and then we'd all be dead in a matter of a year or two as well, once we'd blown through our reserves.

Except we wouldn't last that long.

With electromagnetism out of the picture, the Earth's magnetic field would be gone. That opens us up to bombardment from solar radiation, cosmic rays and all sorts of other nasties. Every living thing on the planet, with the exception of a few stubborn single-celled organisms and maybe those cute water bears, would be dead within weeks.

Hold on though, we wouldn't even have weeks. And those microorganisms wouldn't make it either.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Electricity drives us. No electromagnetism means the heart of every human being, and of every animal that has one, would cease beating instantly. Neurological activity would stop and every brain would shut down. So, in fact, would every cell in every living thing, including Mister Thinks He's A Tough Guy Microbe. Which doesn't sound like fun. Not that there would be anyone around to decide whether it was fun or not.

Let's just make clear that this could never actually happen. (Rest assured, though, we humans have invented plenty of other ways we could obliterate ourselves if we wanted.) Electromagnetism is part of the universe we live in. It just is. You can no more turn it off than you can tell three feet away to stop being three feet away, or tell a daisy to stop sitting around being all white and petally like that, or tell Donald Trump to be humble. I imagine this may be why Revolution got canceled. Probably the show runners realized they were never going to be able to come up with an explanation for the premise that would pass even a rudimentary scientific sniff test.

So we're left with the magnet thing, which if I can figure out how I used to do it maybe I can teach to my daughter. We don't have a fireplace but I'm sure there are many other things around the house she could stick Mommy's watch to. Now that would be fun. Briefly.