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Comments on Would it make sense for an entity who can control tangible and/or intangible materials be able to manipulate electricity but not light?
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Would it make sense for an entity who can control tangible and/or intangible materials be able to manipulate electricity but not light? Question
I have this idea about people with "Psionic" power. Psionics in my story are primarily beings able to emit and/or manipulate a special energy field from within that takes physical form. They can extend it outward to pick up various materials like picking it up with their own hands with approximately 3 to even 10 times the strength of their actual physical body depending on the individual. Everything they do affects their own body and if they go past their limit they can risk their bodies going through the same problems as if overdoing it in terms of exercising (fatigue, muscle aches, death via exhaustion, etc) and this energy can be used only in two forms; tangible and intangible.
Those that can affect tangible materials (rock, metal, etc) can either move it around or straight up crush it by applying pressure through their energy field. However, due to psionic energy being more equivalent to a physical extension of the body like an arm, the heavier the object the harder it'll be to hold onto it let alone pick it up and if it's granulated like sand for example the user will have to pick up the chunks of sand with some it dripping out or if they actually want to do anything with the sand they would have to pick up the individual grains of sand which runs the risk of tiring out the user depending on individual power and the portion of sand being used.
Those whose energy type affects intangible materials (gas, air, etc) can grab intangible materials including air (only small portions of the air though) and can condense it to a certain degree. However, the larger in body the amount of air or gas the psionic user tries to grab, the harder it is to maintain, as well as it becoming more strenuous to hold onto and condense. They also can't affect the individual gases when it's a mix like say for example how air is made out of oxygen, nitrogen etc, they can't separate or grab said individual gases.
One rule I especially wanted to set up is that regardless of what said psionic energy user affects, they can't grab light with their psionic energy, period, simply because I felt it would be a little too much in terms of power.
The problem is I did want to set it up where psionic energy can affect electricity (grab it, condense it etc) and wanted to set it up where the user can only affect electricity from outside sources such as from a taser or a fusebox so no grabbing and moving electrons.
So now I'm left wondering: does it make sense that psionic energy can be used to grab electricity but not light, let alone if there is a way to make sense of it? After all, light and electricity are practically the same thing (energy). They aren't exactly one of the three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas) and I don't want to use the excuse of it being too overabundant to simply grab with psionic energy since intangible users can grab air in small portions (which is everywhere).
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Yes, you can make sense of it: mass
The property you are searching for is "mass". All the matter you describe as tangible and intangible is matter with mass ("particles"). Also electricity can be considered as being a flux of electrons which itself have a mass (albeit really small).
Light on the other hand, is considered to be carried by electro-magnetic waves - or for simplicity: photons - which are considered to be massless.
The psionic forces thus can be based on a fundamental principle of manipulating mass-carrying particles of matter. This is something like a "gravitational force" but not quite the same: Only as a construct of explanation like in Newtonian rules of physics "only" - "gravitational force" is a simplification here, because gravitation actually describes the observable effect of matter moving in bent spacetime in our current understanding of physics - therefore gravity itself is/would be able to influence light as well.
Sidenote: If you consider the term "energy" to comprise electricity and light, this can be considered an (over-)simplification. They might be a form of energy but so is mass as well (mass-energy-equivalence). I won't go into details here in the scope of the question.
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