Everything We Know About Time Bubbles

[Satsuoni]

Well, my current attitude towards bubbles is rather well summarized in this post. (Though some points have been answered since)

And IIRC, my question to Brandon about water stream impacting the border of bubble was promptly RAFOed (it was during first brainstorming session or whatnot XD)

I mean, photon count, nyah, nyah Photons are energy, so the bubble could probably shuffle them *somewhere*, and time shenanigans could fix blue/redshift issues. But what happens to larger objects, like air molecules? Because they'd have to be destroyed on exit of bendalloy bubble, for example (unless they bounce, which raises a host of other questions)

 

And a question for you, Kurk Imagine that Odium created a time bubble that is anchored to Cosmere center Roshar surface, taking rotation into account, at the Scadrial-Roshar distance from Roshar center. What'd happen when it impacts Scadrial, going at the speed considerably higher that speed of light, and goes through Wax that is just then jumping out of the train?

EDIT: Physics

Edited June 15, 2014 by Satsuoni

[Kurkistan]

Thanks for that RAFO, I hadn't remembered it. Added to the compilation in the OP.

 

Oh hurrah, more hypotheticals.   ( )

 

First of all you just created FTL communication, if you actually can make bubbles that are that far out and you can use smallish anchors. Just get a manipulable anchor and jiggle it around a bit and the bubble should move too.

 

So, stripping away all the fluff (which is amusing, but hinders clarity to some extent), the scenario as I understand it is thus: What happens when a bubble with a truly novel and absurd frame of reference skims past/into a planet and envelops some unfortunate citizen?

 

Nothing very exciting, I'm afraid. If Wax is technically "off" the train and not a passenger, then he'll essentially get teleported a few feet in the direction opposite the bubble's movement as he's yanked out. If he's on the train, the train won't be enveloped and nothing will happen.

 

------

 

Also, general comment: I really wasn't kidding when I wrote "everything" in the title of this thread. Anything I say after the OP is basically guaranteed to be either at-least-mildly-baseless speculation or a straight logical conclusion of some collection of points in the OP. So don't take anything I say as gospel.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Tempus]

Gospel of the Catquisitors! In this case, I'd say we were howling at Roshar's moon.

[The Mad Reader]

For bendalloy, it'd have to be such that the Allomancer only experiences an exceptionally short interval. This means that you need to burn up all of the bendalloy in that short time and speed yourself up accordingly. This results in a situation where Wayne experiences 0.5s while the outside world experiences 0.00000000005s or the like.

For cadmium, it'd be similar, though you can get a tad more utility out of it. Because the only time we have an upper limit on is the subjective experience of the bubbler, Marasi could experience 0.5s to 5000s on the outside, or the like.

--

Example:

So Wayne is on a train, leaning against a wall in the direction that the train is traveling, going 60 mph. He casts a bendalloy bubble. The bubble doesn't stay with him for long, but what happens while he's there is the concern. The bubble is tied to the planet, so it sees Wayne going 60 mph and tries to boost him to 600 mph relative to the rest of the world.

Now the train is too big to be part of the bubble, so that wall Wayne is leaning against is still going normal speed, only 60 mph so far "rest" relative to the planet is considered. So bullet-Wayne is now trying to go 540 mph into a solid, unmoving wall for at least a few tenths of a second. Does he go kersplat? If he were in the bubble for longer (say it was bigger), would his corpse be actively pushing the train forward, what with it's non-slowing, continuous energy input?

--

So Wax is steeljumping along outside a train, going the same speed as it in an essentially straight line. Let's say he runs into a (stationary, of course) speed bubble.

If he's above the train, then he'll zip along for a moment and fall out, having moved ahead relative to the train. Same if he's next to the train or far enough behind it.

But what if Wax is, say, one foot behind the train at this point in time? If Wax were alongside the train, he'd find himself a bit ahead of its caboose when he exited the bubble. But in this case he's behind it, and now approaching the train at 60 mph. Is he going to faceplant into the train? It seems he should, really. No there's no justification to say he's "on" the train, since he's flying along outside of it has been for quite awhile.

Yet it seems odd, as in the earlier example, for someone affected by a bubble to directly collide with an object not affected by it solely because Wax is being affected by the bubble and the train isn't.

 I think you have Wayne and Marasi backwards here. It sounds like you're saying (and forgive me if I'm wrong and just confusing myself, because anything twisting time around twists my head around as well) that Wayne is experiencing less time than everyone around him, and Marasi is experiencing more, while in actuality, Wayne gets to experience extra time relative to those around him, and Marasi just sits there while everyone else moves faster.

 

In regards to the train questions, I think your problem is solved if you simply have the bubbles relative to the train, not the planet. After all, the allomancer is currently relative to the train, so why wouldn't the bubble have the same frame of reference as their creator? 

I'm a little confused about what you're saying in the second example. I think it would depend on what happens to someone entering a bubble, which we don't really know anything about yet.

 

 

And a question for you, Kurk Imagine that Odium created a time bubble that is anchored to Cosmere center Roshar surface, taking rotation into account, at the Scadrial-Roshar distance from Roshar center. What'd happen when it impacts Scadrial, going at the speed considerably higher that speed of light, and goes through Wax that is just then jumping out of the train?

 

I think that a bubble on that scale would see the entire planet as one unified whole, so an individual wouldn't notice anything at all. If a train can be enough to block its passengers from noticing a bubble, why wouldn't a planet do the same thing?

 

Another thing we know about bubbles is that they can't be too small either. There are times when Wayne can't create a bubble around him and Wax because other people are too close and would be included. I wonder if he has any control over the size of the bubbles at all.

 

It would also be interesting to see if people ended up aging at different rates due to time spent in bubbles. Although the metals are so expensive, I don't suppose anyone could afford to have one going nearly long enough to have a noticeable effect on their age. 

Edited June 17, 2014 by The Mad Reader

[Kurkistan]

I think you have Wayne and Marasi backwards here. It sounds like you're saying (and forgive me if I'm wrong and just confusing myself, because anything twisting time around twists my head around as well) that Wayne is experiencing less time than everyone around him, and Marasi is experiencing more, while in actuality, Wayne gets to experience extra time relative to those around him, and Marasi just sits there while everyone else moves faster.

 

No, I think I got the names right, but the confusion is likely my fault. I'm talking about Wayne moving a lot faster through space when he's in a bubble. So he's leaning against a wall towards the front of the train: if the train stops, he gets pressed up against the wall. If he suddenly gains a lot of velocity, he splats into the wall. I agree that we could get similar results by flipping walls and types of bubbles, though.

 

EDIT: Oops, I see now you were referring to a different section of the OP. And I got that one right too, incidentally.

 

0.5 > 0.000000005 for Wayne and 0.5 < 5000 for Marasi, as is appropriate.

 

In regards to the train questions, I think your problem is solved if you simply have the bubbles relative to the train, not the planet. After all, the allomancer is currently relative to the train, so why wouldn't the bubble have the same frame of reference as their creator?

 

There's a WoB in the OP that tells us that the bubble is stationary relative to the planet in this case, not the train.

 

I'm a little confused about what you're saying in the second example. I think it would depend on what happens to someone entering a bubble, which we don't really know anything about yet.

Entering the bubble isn't the problem: Being accelerated by the bubble such that you splat face-first into (what's essentially) a wall is.

 

I think that a bubble on that scale would see the entire planet as one unified whole, so an individual wouldn't notice anything at all. If a train can be enough to block its passengers from noticing a bubble, why wouldn't a planet do the same thing?

I read the scenario as it being a normal-sized bubble that happened to be really far away from Scadrial.

 

Another thing we know about bubbles is that they can't be too small either. There are times when Wayne can't create a bubble around him and Wax because other people are too close and would be included. I wonder if he has any control over the size of the bubbles at all.

I give some evidence/analysis in the OP that suggests that bubblers can control size. I agree that there are likely upper/lower bounds, though.

 

It would also be interesting to see if people ended up aging at different rates due to time spent in bubbles. Although the metals are so expensive, I don't suppose anyone could afford to have one going nearly long enough to have a noticeable effect on their age.

I don't see any reason why people wouldn't age at different rates in bubbles. Time passes faster/slower so far as their bodies are concerned.

Edited June 17, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Moogle]

Considering the idea that time bubbles are stationary relative to the planet...

 

If you move out of your bubble, does the effect end? If not, what happens to the metal burn rate? Also: can you create two time bubbles at once?

[Pathfinder]

So I have nothing to base this on, but for some reason this popped in my head. So when the whole partial in the bubble out of the bubble came up, Brandon said RAFO, and we do not know how having a tube in a bubble functions right? But we do know overlapping bubbles compound the effect if I read that correctly. What if theoretically laying down a tunnel THROUGH multiple bendalloy bubbles that overlap, and have an object sent through said tunnel. The premise of my theory is that the tunnel would reduce or remove the resistance of transitioning from bubble to bubble, allowing a steady acceleration to FTL. Or make a the tunnel, instead of a straight line, have it be a donut, so then the object goes round and round and round steadily accelerating till FTL travel is attained. Now I do not know if the tunnel would act as I mentioned, or if all of this is completely unfounded. Just a thought I had. What do you all think?

[The Mad Reader]

EDIT: Oops, I see now you were referring to a different section of the OP. And I got that one right too, incidentally.

 

0.5 > 0.000000005 for Wayne and 0.5 < 5000 for Marasi, as is appropriate.

 

My bad. I think I just misinterpreted your mathematical notation.

 

 

There's a WoB in the OP that tells us that the bubble is stationary relative to the planet in this case, not the train.

 

 

If I'm thinking of the same WoB you are, I interpreted it differently. I thought it said that an allomancer outside the train who created a bubble, would have the bubble relative to the planet even if a train went through it. Therefore, if the allomancer is inside the train, the bubble could be relative to the train.

 

 

I give some evidence/analysis in the OP that suggests that bubblers can control size. I agree that there are likely upper/lower bounds, though.

 

I actually discussed this with my mom last night, and she suggested the lower limit might come from the shape of the bubble and what you want to include in it. So if Wayne wants himself and Wax, he needs as much empty space behind him as the distance Wax is away from him. So when Wayne is making a bubble around himself, he's limited by his own height.

Also, if the bubbles are perfect circles, I wonder if they stick out underground. So if someone was on the floor below Marasi when she makes a bubble (because her bubbles are bigger), would they also be caught in it? Maybe the bubbles are just dome shaped, instead of sphere shaped, and this isn't an issue. 

 

 

Considering the idea that time bubbles are stationary relative to the planet...

 

If you move out of your bubble, does the effect end? If not, what happens to the metal burn rate? Also: can you create two time bubbles at once?

 

When you leave a bubble you create, it bursts the bubble. 

I don't think one person can create more than one bubble at a time, but you could theoretically have multiple people overlapping their bubbles.

Edited June 17, 2014 by The Mad Reader

[Kurkistan]

Considering the idea that time bubbles are stationary relative to the planet...

 

If you move out of your bubble, does the effect end? If not, what happens to the metal burn rate? Also: can you create two time bubbles at once?

 

Yes, the effect will end. It's in the books, even, that the bubbler leaving his/her bubble will collapse it.

 

I also doubt that you can create two at once, since we haven't seen any hints of it so far in the books or WoB.

 

@Pathfinder

 

I am also inclined towards the idea that "tunneled" time bubbles reduce/eliminate the transition problem. Your use of this, though, probably doesn't get the results that you want.

 

First of all, I don't see any reason why we should be getting exponential acceleration from this tunnel of bubbles. If you go into a time bubble going speed X, you should be travelling X*Y within it and then X again when you leave. So any increase in speed within the bubble will just be added onto the base X, and not carried over as a multiple of Y once you leave.

 

Second, I doubt that any degree of "I wanna' go fast" will ever get us to FTL in the cosmere. The laws of physics in the cosmere are ours (barring Spiritual shenanigans), which means that objects can't go faster than light, no matter how much fuel you burn.

 

If I'm thinking of the same WoB you are, I interpreted it differently. I thought it said that an allomancer outside the train who created a bubble, would have the bubble relative to the planet even if a train went through it. Therefore, if the allomancer is inside the train, the bubble could be relative to the train.

We're thinking of a different WoB, perhaps? I mean this one, which is quite clear that he's inside the train and the bubble is still rooted to the planet.

 

I actually discussed this with my mom last night, and she suggested the lower limit might come from the shape of the bubble and what you want to include in it. So if Wayne wants himself and Wax, he needs as much empty space behind him as the distance Wax is away from him. So when Wayne is making a bubble around himself, he's limited by his own height.

Also, if the bubbles are perfect circles, I wonder if they stick out underground. So if someone was on the floor below Marasi when she makes a bubble (because her bubbles are bigger), would they also be caught in it? Maybe the bubbles are just dome shaped, instead of sphere shaped, and this isn't an issue.

 

I would guess that bubbles are spherical, and my current understanding of the State of the Bubble is that the bubble would go through the floor and could envelope someone down there if it was big enough.

 

 

When you leave a bubble you create, it bursts the bubble. 

I don't think one person can create more than one bubble at a time, but you could theoretically have multiple people overlapping their bubbles.

This.

[Moogle]

I also doubt that you can create two at once, since we haven't seen any hints of it so far in the books or WoB.

 

I'd guess that you wouldn't want to create more than one at once, which is why it never comes up in the books. (For the situations where you would, it's better to conserve metal by dropping and re-making the bubble in a split second). Still, it seems like the sort of thing that should be possible, though it might be difficult like using copper to shield others' emotions.

 

In fact, I think the copper example could be important. Your coppercloud radiates from you, and it seems plausible to me that protecting someone else's emotions with a coppercloud would involve making the coppercloud be centered on them. If an Allomancer can move around inside his time bubble while it stays stationary, it should be possible to create the time bubble or coppercloud at a location not centered on you initially. (Though, copperclouds aren't stationary so far as I know, so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.)

[Kurkistan]

I'd guess that you wouldn't want to create more than one at once, which is why it never comes up in the books. (For the situations where you would, it's better to conserve metal by dropping and re-making the bubble in a split second). Still, it seems like the sort of thing that should be possible, though it might be difficult like using copper to shield others' emotions.

On the idea of "re-making the bubble in a split second", there's actually a cooldown period:

 

It took a couple of seconds between dropping one [speed bubble] and putting up another, the time when Wayne was most vulnerable

At another point (Ch. 18) it's referenced that Wayne was "counting to two" between bubbles when doing his teleporting-bullet-dodging trick. So two's an upper limit on the cooldown.

 

In fact, I think the copper example could be important. Your coppercloud radiates from you, and it seems plausible to me that protecting someone else's emotions with a coppercloud would involve making the coppercloud be centered on them. If an Allomancer can move around inside his time bubble while it stays stationary, it should be possible to create the time bubble or coppercloud at a location not centered on you initially. (Though, copperclouds aren't stationary so far as I know, so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.)

I'm not so sure. The bubbles seem so tied to their makers that it seems odd for them to come into existence centered somewhere other than the bubbler. Maybe, though, for all I know.

How copper works is a discussion all its own...

Edited June 17, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Moogle]

On the idea of "re-making the bubble in a split second", there's actually a cooldown period:

 

At another point (Ch. 18) it's referenced that Wayne was "counting to two" between bubbles when doing his teleporting-bullet-dodging trick. So two's an upper limit on the cooldown.

 

Thanks for the correction. I can see no reason for why there should be a cooldown period, though. Is there perhaps instead a start-up time? I don't think there is, since putting up a bubble seems to be mostly instant, but I can't actually recall any proof of this one way or another. If there's a cooldown period, though, that's just inelegant and silly.

 

As to copper, I'm aware of the uncertainties present. Copper and bronze are extremely interesting, in no small part due to the fact that we have so little information on them.

[Kurkistan]

I seriously doubt there's a star-up time. Every time we've seen it the implication, at the very least, has been that it's nigh-instantaneous, and I would be very surprised if there wasn't some "in an instant..." quote in the book.

 

The cooldown period is pretty necessary mechanically so that Bendalloy isn't unduly powerful, but I suppose some thought is needed on the Realmatics of it.

 

On copper, I just meant that even I might think it a bit too much of a tangent to get into a copper/bronze discussion on this thread.

[Moogle]

I seriously doubt there's a star-up time. Every time we've seen it the implication, at the very least, has been that it's nigh-instantaneous, and I would be very surprised if there wasn't some "in an instant..." quote in the book.

 

I started looking. There's this, which suggests a start-up phase:

Waxillium crossed the room to the tea stand. “Those are very nice bookshelves,” Wayne said. “Wish I had shelves like those. My, my, my. And … we’re in.”

 

The "and..." bit is suggestive. I'll keep reading.

 

I mean, let's say you drop the speed bubble and try to burn bendalloy. Does nothing happen for two seconds? Is there no metal consumed? That's completely out of line with the other metals, and a restriction none of them have. I also don't think it would be too powerful to allow instantaneous dropping/raising of bubbles, so I'm thinking it's not a restriction Brandon placed on it, but rather something that had to be there because of Realmatics. A start-up phase seems the most elegant explanation to me.

 

I've been wrong before, though. Soulcasting from TWoK has that irritating gem restriction, which makes no sense because you can just move Stormlight from one gem to another.

 

(Offtopic ramblings)

Actually thinking about it... this makes some sense in some regards. Massive speculation: since the Soulcaster never actually holds the vast majority of the Stormlight. If they did, the Stormlight would be tainted by being 'yours' and having their identity tagged to it - the object couldn't accept and use the Stormlight, since only you can access your own magics without Feruchemical aluminum hijinks. You need to create a link between the object and the Stormlight to be given to it (I imagine Soulcasting is actually just where you create the conduit linking the gem to the object) and so you need some degree of similarity between the object and the gem in question.

 

Or it could be that you need to have some sort of Actual Connection to the thing you want to transform the object into, much like Shallan has to draw the things she wants to Lightweave. In this regard, gem types function the same as Shallan's drawings, giving her a Spiritual connection to the thing that she can 'give' to the object to morph into. I almost suspect Shallan could Soulcast without the proper gem type if she were to draw a picture suddenly...

 

Edit: Looked things up, Wayne definitely counts then puts up the speed bubble.

He counted to two, then put up another bubble and dodged right.

 

Definitely blows a hole in that particular idea. I am left dissatisfied with the inelegance of time bubbles. I hope they and Feruchemical iron go away forever and never come back. /grumble

Edited June 18, 2014 by Moogle

[Pathfinder]

Well my first thought as to why there would be a cool down would be because if there wasn't one, couldn't the user "cheese" the pulses by doing short bursts to allow him to dodge rather then one sustained one in an effort to make the fast burning bendalloy last longer. then after i read both your quotes of Wayne, I believe that is exactly what he did. If I recall correctly (without having the chance to go back and read to confirm), the only times in that battle scene Wayne held the bubbles up for an extended period of time was for when he ended up next to someone, threw up the bubble, fought them one on one, and then dropped it when he was victorious. I believe the two second count was for when he was dodging bullets in general. Basically throw up bubble, see where bullets are coming from, move, drop bubble, count to two while the enemies re-align their sights, then throw up bubble again while they fire so you can see the what the next paths take and avoid those

Edited June 18, 2014 by Pathfinder

[The Mad Reader]

 

We're thinking of a different WoB, perhaps? I mean this one, which is quite clear that he's inside the train and the bubble is still rooted to the planet.

 

 

Ah. I hadn't seen that one before. I was thinking of a different one altogether. 

[Kurkistan]

UPDATE:
 
Stalking about some old threads, I ran into a WoB I'd honestly never seen before:
 
Gravitational Time Dilation:

EricLake: In M:AoL, will bendalloy's time dilation result in redshifting of light going in/out of the bubble? #weescience
BrandonSandrson: I've been working on the science of it. Basically, I've been treating it as a gravitational time dilation.
BrandonSandrson: But only focused inward, and equally, on those inside the bubble. It's making my brain hurt a bit, but I think I've got it working
BrandonSandrson: I think this means yes to a gravitational redshift. But...it gets wacky. Trying to decide just what it would do is tough.

 
Now of course just a few posts later in that same thread Peter proceeded to burn handwavium. But Brandon may well have stuck by this general model of gravitational time dilation and just thrown in the handwavium as an aside. Therefore, I may need to do the unthinkable and ask for a physics person to come in and talk us through what the implications of this may be.

Edited June 21, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Chaos]

UPDATE:

 

Stalking about some old threads, I ran into a WoB I'd honestly never seen before:

 

Gravitational Time Dilation:

 

Now of course just a few posts later in that same thread Peter proceeded to burn handwavium. But Brandon may well have stuck by this general model of gravitational time dilation and just thrown in the handwavium as an aside. Therefore, I may need to do the unthinkable and ask for a physics person to come in and talk us through what the implications of this may be.

When I asked the question, I had recently taken a special relativity class (which is actually, genuinely, very simple at its core). I have not taken a course on general relativity, where gravity and its warping on space-time gets mixed into it. I am not an expert in these gravitational effects at all, but Kurk summoned me, so I guess here I am. If you want an actual expert who has almost assuredly done general relativity, ask happyman. He knows his stuff, as he demonstrated in the original redshift thread you mentioned. I took some upper division physics classes. He has a doctorate in physics (I forget specifically, but eh, he's done quantum field theory, and surely GR as well).

If you are not familiar with the idea of a "redshift" or "blueshift" of light, it's pretty simple. Locally (don't worry about the "local" word here; it is not relevant to this specific issue with time bubbles), light always travels at the same speed. If a light source was moving away from you really fast, at, say, .7 times the speed of light, because light will always travel at the same speed (rather than the light moving faster in this case), the frequency of the light changes, and so the color of the light changes. One direction is a redshift, the other a blueshift. Physicists use these terms even if we are not talking about visible light. (Why are you having me explain this so late at night? Wikipedia has great articles on this subject. Their physics articles are very, very good. So, you know, just read up.)

So that's the special relativity case, without gravity. The gravitational version is just that, hey, really massive objects dilate time just as in the special relativistic case.

If you're wondering what sort of gravitational implications this would involve... Stop I do not find this line of thought very fruitful. Handwavium needs to be applied so outside observers don't notice the shift in wavelength, so for basically all practical purposes, any "gravitational" effects are conveniently and magically very local and you should stop asking questions about redshifts with time bubbles

In fact, happyman said in the original thread that the only people who would really know exactly about these gravitational effects in specific, quantifiable detail to actually be useful would be, you know, people who do general relativity for a reason. And general relativity, my friends, is very mathematically challenging. A very special group of physicists know it that well.

I don't know if this was very helpful, but eh, it was that thread that I was like "welp time bubbles are basically worthless to talk about with the handwavium."

[Kurkistan]

Thanks for dropping by, Chaos.

 

Not to diminish your good works, but I'd actually wanted you to speak on a slightly different question than redshift/blueshift... 

 

Specifically, how looking at the effects of time bubbles as somehow like gravitational time dilation might speak to the frame of reference question, or the nature of overlap. It'd also be interesting to know if the time/movement disjunction I postulate and how it works out with multiple bubbles is at all reflective of how these gravitational effects would interact.

 

But you yourself said that you didn't really study the gravitational side, so I suppose I'll rope happy into helping.

[Chaos]

Thanks for dropping by, Chaos.

 

Not to diminish your good works, but I'd actually wanted you to speak on a slightly different question than redshift/blueshift... 

 

Specifically, how looking at the effects of time bubbles as somehow like gravitational time dilation might speak to the frame of reference question, or the nature of overlap. It'd also be interesting to know if the time/movement disjunction I postulate and how it works out with multiple bubbles is at all reflective of how these gravitational effects would interact.

 

But you yourself said that you didn't really study the gravitational side, so I suppose I'll rope happy into helping.

That sounds like a lot of thought work to something I don't care about Have fun with that.

[Kurkistan]

I've already called in some reinforcements who'll hopefully be Happier to help.

[happyman]

Wow.

 

So, sorry for the long delay getting back to this.  Life has thrown me some very strange curve-balls recently, and I stopped paying attention to FTL and/or time bubble theories a long time ago.

 

I have done QFT, but I haven't done any GR.  It really is an extraordinarily difficult theory, mathematically.  I have been studying it recently, mostly via Wikipedia (which isn't as unreliable or incomplete as it may sound once you get into the necessary mathematical articles.) so I'm starting to get some sense of what they really mean by the term, say, pseudo-Reimannian manifold.

 

The common effects of GR in the real world have almost nothing to do with time bubbles as we see them.  Real space-time effects are caused by a combination of energy and momentum, and as a general rule they fall off continually and without barriers.  So at best the effects of time bubbles are analogous to general relativity in some conceptual sense, but certainly not in the details.

 

For those who don't know, GR models space and time as part of a more complete whole.  In "flat space" (far away from anything that can cause gravity) everything is, in some sense, moving at the same "speed" (the speed of light) through space-time.  This may sound like nonsense, but it actually isn't.  Something sitting perfectly still in space is actually moving "as fast as possible" through time (aging normally).  If it starts moving in space a little, it has to stop moving so quickly through time, and we get time dilation.  Light never ages because it always moves at the speed of light in space.

 

There is a lot more to all this, including the fact that every person in the universe always sees themselves as moving only in time, with everybody else' motion being slightly mixed between space and time.  If we keep talking at this level, we will get confused very quickly, so I will just say that, as Chaos said, the core mathematics is fairly simple and elegant, and everything always works out consistently.  That last point is a rigorous mathematical theorem.

 

With gravity around, things are more complicated.  Space-time is curved, which has a solid mathematical definition.  In practice, it means that motion through time can turn into motion through space, at least from the perspective of people a long ways away.  Thus a particle that isn't moving at one time can, just by the nature of the space around it, begin moving a bit later, its motion through time being converted into motion through space.  This is what we call "gravity," and it has all kinds of unintuitive, but very real and observed, effects.  Among other things, if you are deep inside a gravitational field (say near a black hole), the "distance" to get from one "point" in time to another is actually shorter than that experienced at a point a further distance away.

 

With all this background, and If I had to guess, I would say that pulsers and sliders are somehow pulling or pushing directly on space-time itself in a way analogous to mass-energy in standard GR.  Unlike standard GR, where the pulling and pushing comes from point sources and never stop but just fade away, the pulser or slider is essentially yanking on a bit of the space-time around them and forcing the relationship between space and time to change so that there is literally more or less time available in the bubble they create.  That's the best I can do, though; an awful lot of the answers involve Realmantics which, as far as we know, don't apply to the real world at all.

[Kurkistan]

Thank you for your thoughts, happyman. Can't say I understand most of the words you used, but thank you...   ( )

[Tempus]

So, by happyman's dissection, we could then presume that...

 

The bubble creates a gravitational space-time dilation that extends to the boundaries of the bubble. If we think of this Realmatically, we can think of it probably in the same sort of terms as we think of the gravity lashing. Rather than an actual local gravitational increase/decrease limited to an inwards vector resulting in a modification of space time within the bounds, the relationship between space and time is rewritten within the boundaries. Basically, like how Kaladin changes his relationship to the gravity of objects around him, the bubble changes the relationship of gravity to space-time dilation.

 

This would then follow why things need to be in a bubble or out of it, and never partial. Any object partially within the field would pretty much be torn to bits. If we consider it like the Lashing again, we can justify this by the same rationale that changes the gravity of clothes when the person wearing them is lashed. *STARES HARD AT KURKISTAN*

 

Non-matter seems to be observably not affected - light being the clear example here. We'll also attribute this to the above - light is not included into the bubble for the same reason a house and it's contents would not be included in the dilation if you slightly clip a wall, or the floor.

 

 

 

That's all pretty nice and dandy, we can get behind that, and it fits nearly perfectly with all known scenarios. Nearly? 

 

Not really. A bullet shot out of a speed bubble IS robbed of kinetic energy—not all of it, but just enough to slow it down to the speed it would have been moving at had it been fired outside the bubble in the first place.

 

If the above posited scenario were true, objects exiting or entering a bubble would have no change in kinetic energy. They would have a change in speed measured over time from a single reference frame, but the kinetic energy would be constant - the bubbles are not adding or removing energy. In fact, this anomalous quote makes no sense. Kinetic energy is a quantitative measure of motion. Were a person to be inside a speed bubble (or enter or exit one) that had a dilation of 20x (under F=ma and KE=1/2mv^2), they would find themselves with either 40 times more force (which does I dunno what but it sounds bad), 40 times more acceleration (which would probably injure or kill you shortly), 10 times more mass (and you would crush yourself), 6.32 times more speed (which would probably mean you'd be flying across the bubble in a most unusual way), or some combination of the above dispersed.

 

As none of those things seem to happen, we can either say that A) The premise is wrong. The premise is right but handwavium is burned to add an inconsistency. C) The above quote was an offhand remark made to illustrate a concept rather than scientifically describe it (or Peter wasn't clear about how it worked). Or lastly D) I'm no good at physics and KE is modified in GR within a gravitational distortion of space time, or I have some other glaring inconsistency with how this stuff works.

[happyman]

Thank you for your thoughts, happyman. Can't say I understand most of the words you used, but thank you...   ( )

 

This is pretty complicated stuff.  You really can't understand GR without a solid grounding in SR, and while SR is not mathematically complex, it turns our intuition into a bloody mess.  GR just makes it worse.

 

The basic summary of what I said is that a time bubble forces the relationship between space and time to change in a way which causes more or less time to pass inside than outside.  It is rather like grabbing space-time and pulling or pushing it taut in the area around you.  You take pretty much flat spacetime and bend it directly using magic.

 

Incidentally, conservation of energy does not apply (globally) in general relativity.  (Still can't make a perpetual motion machine, though; it's still locally true.)  So the energy non-conservation and odd effects at the boundary may actually be handwaved as effects due to very rapid changes in space-time curvature.  I doubt it holds up in detail, but I don't really care, either.

Edited June 25, 2014 by happyman