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Nornagest comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, January 2015, chapter 103 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (173)
So, Amycus Carrow is a psychopath who is willing to do dark rituals. I don't see how this means that a Horcrux has already been used ( do Horcruxes have a use beyond preserving life?)
But Rationalist!Horcruxes are hidden in ocean trenches, on voyager 2 etc. I don't see that Dumbledoor would be able to find them, or reach them even if he knew where they were. I also think that in canon Voldemort knew when a Horocrux was destroyed, but if Quirrel thought that Dumbledoor was a serious threat (e.g. because a Horocrux was destroyed) I think he would stop holding back and just kill Dumbledoor. There must be a way for someone with the intellegence, rationality and raw power Quirrel has.
Incidentally, now that Harry has given Quirrel a physics textbook, the odds of a transfigured antimatter bomb being used just went up. Unlike nukes, antimatter weapons can be made small enough yeild that you don't flatten the whole of hogwarts when you use one.
...but the amount of antimatter you'd use for that is very small indeed; about 0.000023 grams for an explosive yield equivalent to 1 ton of TNT, going by Wikipedia's numbers. I wouldn't put it past Quirrell to figure out a way to transmute quantities that small, but it'd be tricky; everything we've seen transmuted onscreen has been macroscopic.
Also, all the initial yield would be in the form of highly energetic gamma rays, so we'd likely be looking at something more like a hard radiation pulse than a bomb.
Hermione transfigured single walled carbon nanotubes
Hermione transfigured a macroscopic volume into single-walled carbon nanotubes. Barely macroscopic, if memory serves, but still macroscopic.
Do wizards generally have a reason to transmute microscopic things?
There's also the possibility of transmuting a larger portion of antimatter, levitated within a vacuum (bubble head charm maybe?) and then subdivde it, if that is possible.
You could transmute something into something containing trace amounts of antimatter. Once the gamma rays hit something and get absorbed, they'll turn to heat. The bomb will make the floor explode.