Scientific thoughts on Handwavium--what is established?

[New Hampshire Battleship Lover]

Since the yarn I'm looking to spin involves a scientist who's studying both Handwavium and hardtech, I was wondering what, if any, science has been mentioned with regard to Handwavium, its various types, and such.  Has it even been studied extensively in a scientific manner?

[Proginoskes]

You know how it can be experimentally proven that light is a wave, and it can just as easily be proven that it is a particle? I think it's been established that depending on the experimental set-up, Handwavium can act like an ionic compound, a pure substance, a suspension of nanomachines, or a colony of microbial life. Particular strains might exhibit particular habits. Jess Ayanami's Quick-Clone strain, for example, would tend to present as nanoassemblers suspended in nutrient material; a strain intended to produce low-quirk biomods might act like a virus, so as to spread non-quirkily through the subject's entire system; a strain intended for mechanical parts to eliminate the need for lubrication might look and act like lube.

[HRogge]

One of the mayor problems of a scientific study of Handwavium is that Handwavium reacts to the wishes and thoughts of the person using it.

A trekkie who really wants his warp capable shuttle can easily wave his car. A scientists interested in not influencing his probe of Handwavium might just have an unreactive blob in front of him which doesn't do anything.

[Dartz]

One of the mayor problems of a scientific study of Handwavium is that Handwavium reacts to the wishes and thoughts of the person using it.

A trekkie who really wants his warp capable shuttle can easily wave his car. A scientists interested in not influencing his probe of Handwavium might just have an unreactive blob in front of him which doesn't do anything.

"It's a memetic polyalloy"
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[HRogge]

"It's a memetic polyalloy"

A memetic polyalloy with a disinterest in physics, chemistry and biology..

[New Hampshire Battleship Lover]

One of the mayor problems of a scientific study of Handwavium is that Handwavium reacts to the wishes and thoughts of the person using it.
A trekkie who really wants his warp capable shuttle can easily wave his car. A scientists interested in not influencing his probe of Handwavium might just have an unreactive blob in front of him which doesn't do anything.

Handwavium's reactions to people's thoughts, and to such material as magazines and movies, is part of its observed properties, and thus, an integral part of any analysis.  The important questiion, for now, IMVHO, is this:  Has any scientific study of Handwavium been done?  If so, what has been said in cannon about this?
  

[HRogge]

One of the mayor problems of a scientific study of Handwavium is that Handwavium reacts to the wishes and thoughts of the person using it.
A trekkie who really wants his warp capable shuttle can easily wave his car. A scientists interested in not influencing his probe of Handwavium might just have an unreactive blob in front of him which doesn't do anything.

Handwavium's reactions to people's thoughts, and to such material as magazines and movies, is part of its observed properties, and thus, an integral part of any analysis.  The important questiion, for now, IMVHO, is this:  Has any scientific study of Handwavium been done?  If so, what has been said in cannon about this?
  

Most likely there have been hundreds of analysis... most of them inconclusive, because noone is able to measure what external influences are being received by a batch of Handwavium.

[New Hampshire Battleship Lover]

Since very little has been officailly erstablished, I see a fertile field for both a researcher and a writer.  At least for now, part one is data filtering and analysis.  It can't be studied like physics, due to the number of unknowable variables...but it is a fertile field--if difficult to plow.

[Dartz]

Sure you can apply science to handwavium, but the only consistently reproducible result is is that there are no consistently reproducible results. Sure it's a fertile field, but it's a bit like those fields in Belgium with all the WW1 shells still buried in them. You can plow it, but don't be surprised if it changes shape while you're plowing....
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[New Hampshire Battleship Lover]

Not enough--yet--for a hypothesis--but data analysis is a start to developing one.  (And Handwavium doesn't change shape as quickly as a Belgian or French field that has a big charge under it.  The British LOST a charger they planted under  a German trench that was in the hundreds of tons--it's still there...somewhere.  It's to be hoped that the containers leaked...)

[HRogge]

I think a story about a scientist trying to come up with a valid "Handwavium Theory" might be interesting.

But you should know that this will be only the (in universe) scientists theory, and it will most likely fail horrible with a lot of examples in Fenspace. Because (from a metagame PoV) Handwavium has no rules, just a rought set of guidelines. So you cannot develop the "true" Handwavium theory.

[robkelk]

Handwavium does have some rules:

• It dampens explosive effects to the point where they are not dangerous (the "Slapstick Effect").
  
• It reacts differently depending the user.
  
• Once an effect has been established, the person who established that effect can reproduce it.
  
• It reacts well to a strong will, or to repeated ritual.
  

Most but not all of the results of the in-universe research are mentioned in http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... e_Universe]the prologue to Legend of Galactic Girls.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Proginoskes]

The Slapstick Effect is a side-effect of the Genre Directive (though I don't know that anyone actually inside Fenspace has put together the Genre Directive, or called it that if they have). It similarly resists efforts to use it in the development of chemical and biological weapons, and will never create a Grey Goo-capable nanoassebler (though it might increase the virulence of an extant one, if some omnicidal maniac wanted it badly enough).