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  1. Uhh... where did we leave off? Dyson Sphere... system-wide production... extensive use of all immediately available resources... Gotcha. Kay. We're back. Stellar Engine! Left y'all hanging on that. It's a real piece of work, taking the power of a dyson sphere to do the unimaginable: Move the solar system. All the planets, asteroids, and stuff in our system are tidally-locked to our star: "the Sun" (as it is rather uncreatively named). Therefore, by moving the Sun, you can move the entire solar system. How would we do this? Good question. The nitty-gritty engineering bits are all pretty foreign to me (check out Kurzgesagt's video if you're interested), but essentially you just need to make a massive booster using the Dyson Sphere as an engine. You plug it into the sun and fire it up, scooching our solar system along at a few thousand kilometers per hour or something. The main reasons we would want to accomplish such a thing would be to avoid potential interstellar threats, like rogue stars and planets kareening into our solar system and throwing everything around like a furious toddler. Such threats would be apparent to us for thousands of years in advance, giving us plenty of time to move the solar system successfully out of the way. Bear in mind, of course, a rather important thing: the solar system is heavy. While we'd be moving pretty fast compared to your old prius, this would be absolutely nothing on the scale of galaxies. Such movements would still be sufficient over long periods of time, as evidenced by space maneuvers used on smaller scales in real life currently (for example, one of the primary ways we move around satellites is by the use of mirrors. The minute amount of energy light puts into these things are enough to slightly change the movements of the satellites, which over the vast span between planetary bodies is all we really need). Some concerns, addressed: But Faaaadrannnnnn, what happens if Earth swings around to where the engine is shooting its propulsion stuff? Relax. We're not stupid. The engine would be facing downwards in relation to our orbit around the sun. But if it's facing downwards, then wouldn't we push ourselves out of the solar system? First of all, you're really overestimating the overall power of this device, and second of all... no, actually! Our solar system is actually facing closer to perpendicular our galaxy's plane than parallel to it. The exact number is close to 60 degrees, I believe. So the engine would be blasting us more or less along the same plane. Would this even get us anywhere??? No. It would not. Reminder: this is useful for minute changes in our solar system's placement for long-predicted threats. This wouldn't be any useful in a space battle or overall travel. If this sucker's moving at 20 m/s, it would take a million years to move 0.003 light-years. Proxima Centauri, our closest star, is 4.246 light years away. Crunching the numbers shows that it would take such an engine 1.415 billion years in order to get our system over there. And also putting a solar system inside another solar system would be really stupid. So, at the end of the day, while Stellar Engines are cool, they aren't exactly great. We need some real speed if we're going to be traveling from star to star, colonizing distant planets and meeting friendly aliens. Which means now we're getting to the real numbers. Sub-lightspeed This isn't anything new. We go at less than the speed of light all the time! Such is perfectly normal behavior for literally anything that we can consider to be a "thing." The laws of physics dictate that in order to get things moving, you have to impart energy into it. Therefore, in order to make something go fast, you need a lot of energy. Good thing we got a lot of energy, then. Currently, the fastest human-controlled things are little neutrons and such, shooting about through massive particle accelerators to do... things, apparently (depends on how much of a conspiracy theorist you are)--and they go FAST. The numbers say they go at 99.9999991% the speed of light, then collide into each other to create MINI BLACK HOLES (depending, also, on how much of a conspiracy theorist you are). This is proof enough that it is within the boundaries of our current knowledge and technology to achieve such speeds, meaning that it's possible that we could do the same with larger objects. Of course, it's not really that simple. Protons are really small and really light, so accelerating them to lightspeed is kind of a cinch. There was literally a boy scout who made a working one for his Eagle Scout project. When we kick up the mass a bit, though, things get more finnicky. In order to understand this, you have to look at the fundamental laws of physics. The speed of light (or "C", as you might know from the famous equation E=MC^2) denotes the finite and immutable constant of a massless particle. A photon is the single smallest amount of energy you could possibly have: it is, essentially, your perfect "1" for the ultimate calculus of the universe. Therefore, if C is the speed it goes, then C is the fastest anything can go. Ever. Which, of course, is a problem. We can look at energy in another way, though, in its kinetic form: force. F=MA is Force equals Mass times Acceleration. If acceleration is C, then to move anything of literally any mass ever (let's say one kilogram. We'll be using SI units, as C is defined by the meter). Force would equal 1 X C, meaning you would have to have almost three hundred million joules of energy. To move your car at the speed of light, you'd need about 390 billion joules of force. To get your massive party bus going that fast, it comes out to almost 5500000000000 joules. So you can see now just how ludicrous that is. For comparison, the average annual consumption of energy on Earth is... uhh... let's see... 580 million trillion joules... so to get your bus going that fast you'd need about 1/100th of the annual energy consumption... Uh. wait. Hang on. That's global consumption, but by now we've colonized the entire solar system; not to mention the Dyson Sphere. It's ludicrous still, but... Hold up. Are you telling me that this is actually doable??? Alright, it'd take a LOT of energy to get your spaceship going at close to the speed of light--but by this point in time we'll have increased energy production and consumption by several factors. We've nearly tripled energy consumption since the industrial revolution, which was again triple the amount than humanity in late agricultural periods, which was again about triple(ish) the amount used in early agricultural periods. That said, interstellar travel would be to a system-wide species as regular space travel is to us now. It would be incredibly expensive, but still doable. You'd likely have private investors and crazy gazillionaires funding private scientific and exploratory missions into the closest star systems. Such journeys would be decently long, spanning between five and twenty years. It's possible that by now humanity's life expectancy and quality would've drastically increased, so such time spans would be feel shorter comparatively; however, they'd still be incredibly long and arduous missions. Voyagers would have to take large amounts of supplies and perhaps live in more luxurious ships than what average planetgoers would usually use in order to maintain their mental states. The Speed of Light This is a problem. You see, Einstein was at it again with his massive breakthroughs, learning about things like the fundamentals of space and time--y'know. The usual. I imagine he was driving a car when he came up with the idea of General Relativity: the basic philosophy of frames of reference and such. Let's say he was going at 60 mph on the local highway, then passed an older bloke going only 50. To the police officer watching for speeders from the side of the road, they are going 50 and 60 miles per hour, as he watches them pass. His frame of reference has, effectively, a speed of 0. Einstein's car is going at a speed of 60 (gosh, miles; what have I done to myself?). However, he isn't constantly observing the speed of his car, as he is moving with it. Therefore, from Einstein's frame of refence, his speed is 0. That means to him, the old bloke is going at a speed of -10; the officer, -60. To the old bloke, Einstein is going at 10 mph, and the officer -50. And then he crashes into the median because he'd forgotten something his mother had taught him ages ago: don't math and drive. Of course, it's a lot messier in reality. The easy maths work well if you can't observe your own speed, which is a hard thing to do if you're rolling across a bumpy road during rush hour. The numbers would work better if there wasn't any resistance or external things to observe (like the Carmax ads or bridge overhead). If, say, Einstein was in a spaceship going through the cold vacuum of nothing--no friction, no gravity, no nothing--then these numbers work a lot better. Still, the concept remains. Now we get into special relativity, which is a wonderful can of worms that I will gladly open here. Let's say Einstein drags himself out the burning wreckage of what was once his faithful prius and decides to take the trolley home instead. As he arrives at the station, though, it's just pulling out, forcing him to wait for the next one. Annoyed, Einstein watches all the happy passengers rolling out towards their destination through the window. First, he observes Passenger One: a small child bouncing his toy up and down. To the boy, he's dropping the ball one meter down, and then the ball bounces one meter back up. Because he and the ball are moving with the trolley, he only observes two meters of overall movement. However, to Einsten, he also observes the moving trolley. In the time it takes the boy to bounce his ball, the trolley also moves a meter away from its previous position. So while the boy observes a basic up-and-down, Einstein observes an angled down followed by an angled up, creating a sort of triangle. One meter up, one meter down, and one meter across: therefore, Einstein observes three meters of movement. This is what general relatively says. We already went over this. Moving on. Second of all, Einstein observes someone turn on the overhead lights to read the morning paper. However, the light reflects off the floor into the man's eyes, blinding him and making his spill his coffee everywhere. To the man, the light moved one meter down and one meter up (simplified, because I felt like it), meaning it moved two meters at a speed of yes. On Einstein's end, however, he saw it move three meters along with the trolley. Here's where the problem is. For the ball, the maths are simple. Speed is equal to distance over time: the distance was different, the time was the same - therefore, the only difference between the boy's and Einstein's observations was the speed. This makes sense, because the boy wasn't observing the additional motion of the trolley, but Einstein was. S = 2/1 for the boy, and S = 3/1 for Einstein. But light has a constant speed. Always. ALWAYS. We don't actually know why this is, but it is THE RULE. That means that we can't apply the rules of general relativity to the man who used to have a coffee and Einstein. If we did, then S = 2/[fast] for the man, and S = 3/[fast] for Einstein... this would mean a difference in speed, which is totally not okay. Something that we also can't dispute is the distance covered, because the distance isn't a constant or randomly variable in any way. They have to remain at what each of them saw, or the law of general relativity wouldn't hold up, and suddenly traveling by car would get a whole lot weirder. This, of course, leaves us with one thing we're allowed to mess around with: Time. If the distance is x and lightspeed is the constant, then time is the variable. Let's put Einstein back in his brand-new, top-of-the-line Prius Spaceship, then send him for a joyride out into the cold heart of space. As he passes other, inferior spaceshippers along the space highway, he observes them at varying speeds due to the law of general relativity. However, he also observes light from his headlights shooting forwards at their own speed: the speed - you guessed it - of light. The way to conceptualize it is to remind yourself that frames of reference don't need to be human or animal or even alive at all. Literally everything is its own frame of reference: your shoe, your shoebox, the shoe store... even the old shoes left in your closet from years ago! This means that Einsten is in his frame of reference; the space prius is in its frame of reference; and the photons shot out from his headlights are their own frame of reference. What are the implications of this? Well, remember that light has its constant speed of roughly 300 million m/s, and from EVERY frame of reference, it must be going at this speed. That means that for Einstein, who is going at a speed of... let's say 500k m/s (it's a good prius and also in space), he sees the light shoot out from his car towards the rapidly-approaching Space Starbucks at 300m meters in a second. However, for the space highway cop waiting for something to actually happen, he sees the light go at 300m meters in a second... PLUS 500k meters. The difference in apparent spacialities is due to general relativity, as I explained earlier. Remember that Einstein is observing the rest of the universe moving towards and then zipping by him at the speed of his prius due to his frame of reference, while the cop is observing Einstein zip by at the speed of his prius from his own. That means when Einstein sees the light, he's seeing it move at 300m m/s away from him as apparent from his own reference frame of 0; while the cop observes light moving at this speed, but already effectively "pushed" by the prius's speed of 500k m/s. Now there's only one thing left to do: plug in the numbers and see how much time got dilated. speed = distance / time. Distance covered for Einsten going to be 300m, as he observed over the course of one second. The speed of light, of course, is constant, meaning we can plug that in right away. 300m/s = 300m / x. 300m/s (x) = 300m - > x = 300m / 300 m/s. x = 1. Easy. Now for the cop. He saw a distance of 300500000. 300000000 m/s = 300500000m / x. Do all the same stuff as above and you find a brand-new number: 1.006666666...7 So at a speed of 500k m/s, Einstein is experiencing time 1.007 times faster than a person sitting still and doing nothing. Time travel is real, guys. And we're doing it all the time.
  2. Dual Definitions of Investiture, and Investiture and Relativity (In case anyone wonders about the two titles, this is sort of two theories. It started out as the first, and the second one grew and developed on its own.) Well, friends, I’ve been thinking (always a dangerous pastime), and it strikes me that we’ve been seeing a delightfully ambiguous usage of the term Investiture. Or, rather, that we’ve seen it being used in two separate ways. As an example (to show what I mean), I will use the word promenade. This word can mean: A form of walking [1] Or a street; a place one would walk: [2] Perhaps the best way to explain myself is to jump right in and give the definitions of Investiture(as I see them). Definition 1: Magical Chemical Reactions of Creation Investiture n. (v. Invest, adj. Invested): This is what Brandon Sanderson has termed so often “The Power of Creation[3];” what we are usually thinking of when we hear the word. This is the energy that came from Adonalsium, now primarily held in the Shards. However, it is also used elsewhere and is what powers the magic systems of the Cosmere. Investiture of this sort can be had in a solid, liquid, or gaseous form (i.e. Preservation: Lerasium, the Well of Ascension, and the Mists)[4]. Every person (possibly every thing) in the Cosmere has innate Investiture to a certain degree – On Nalthis, it is their Breath, and on Scadrial, it is a piece of Ruin and a piece of Preservation. One can Invest an object (endow it with Investiture), which is then considered Invested. Side Speculation: After rereading the Ars Arcanum to the Alloy of Law, I consider this type of Investiture to be a … reaction, of sorts. The terminology used seems to imply this (at least to my mind)[5]. It has long been theorized that magic requires three parts: Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual. With these (or possibly other) components, along with the power of Adonalsium (usually directed through a Shard), the magical effects would be the result of something akin to a chemical reaction (again, the similarities mainly hark back to the terms used). Definition 2: Holy Lego Blocks on a Galactic Scale Investiture n. This is where I believe the ambiguity kicks in. You see, Investiture is described another way (only by Brandon, mind you), that doesn’t quite fit with the previous definition: “The building blocks of the Cosmere.”[6] While, as noted above, it is quite plausible that everything has a component of Investiture (As defined in #1), I feel that this is more absolute than that, more all-encompassing. It doesn’t seem to refer to a slight addition of Investiture to everything; I feel it seems to refer to something grander: something like matter itself. And this is where I sort of negate my entire premise of Investiture really being two things, while at the same time presenting the main point of my theory: In our world, as was discovered as part of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, matter and energy are essentially the same thing[7]; so much so, in fact, that they can be converted back and forth. The only differences are in its temporary state. I propose that Investiture is the same: Investiture is the Cosmere equivalent of matter and energy. As “the building blocks of the Cosmere,” it takes the shape of the atoms and particles that make up the worlds. Everything is literally Investiture, of a sort; hence why all of the major worlds were created by Shards of Adonalsium. Adonalsium itself is called “the power of Creation.” This implies that everything not formed by Shards post-Shattering was made by the same power pre-Shattering. A Power, in fact, that the recipient of The Letter calls God[8]. This is why Investiture is “beyond” all three realms: The three realms are how different parts of the Cosmere experience everything. As Investiture composes everything, it would literally be “beyond” the Realms. (As an aside, Investiture also demonstrates properties of quanta. For example, Investiture resists itself [Hence why it is harder to Push on an Invested object, or why an Invested object stops a Shardblade.] Similarly, two electrons with the same spin and energy level cannot occupy the same space.) The other side of the coin, then, is energy. This is easy enough to identify: power is manifested by Shards. This power can be used for creation, as seen with Ruin and Preservation. This Shardic energy is also used to power the magic systems and in the other manifestations of Investiture (Definition 1). It is also interesting to denote that this energy can be “condensed” into matter, of all three states. This, in fact, seems to be how most, if not all, of the energy is contained. The “reaction” of Investiture thus converts the substance back into its energy form, making it usable. Speculation: In fact, I just had a thought that explains some of this (though it is not the main point). You see, we have a WOB that any of the Shards can power any of the magic systems, but it requires expending energy in a way they were hesitant to do. We also have one that any Investiture can power any magic system, but it requires some jury-rigging. This could be because each magic is attuned to the Shard that inadvertently created it – for instance, Preservation is able to fuel Allomancy directly, Ruin can fuel Investitures through Hemalurgic spikes, etc. because these magics utilize the same type of Investiture as the Shard. (Allomancy doesn’t use Preservation’s power directly, but the power accessed is the same. Thus, it is no different for Elend when Vin fuels his Allomancy; the power is the same, but from a different source.) Using Ruin to fuel Preservation’s magic, however, would be like trying to fit a steel cube into a spherical hole; to do so, it would have to be forged into the same “shape,” or “type” of Investiture as Preservation’s. This might change the Intent of that Investiture, and it would be irretrievable until the steel –Investiture- was changed back to what it was before. (Back to main theory) In conclusion, I split how Investiture has been used as a term into two definitions I feel are best considered separately. These definitions fit the famous equation of the Theory of Relativity that states that matter and energy are convertible to each other; that matter and energy are intrinsically the same thing. The two uses of Investiture correlate strongly to each of these, suggesting that the same connection applies: that Investiture is the Cosmere equivalent of both matter and energy. Postscript: This all reminded me of the theorized Dark Matter and Dark Energy. According to NASA, 68% of our universe is Dark Energy, and 24% is Dark Matter[9]. Since so much of the Investiture has always been held by Adonalsium and the Shards, this could have been the origin of the concept. This, of course, is completely baseless; it’s more a random guess than anything else. (By the way, physics for me is a hobby; unfortunately, I have as of yet had little time for studying it on a large scale. If those with more complete knowledge than mine can correct me on wording or usage, please do so; I will try and fix any problems or inaccuracies as quickly as possible.) SOURCES:
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