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1 hour ago, insert_anagram_here said:

What I found strange with that merchant was that he let Shallan keep the necklace. Why would anyone do that if it was as valuable as he said it was?

So I think this points that this merchant may not be as 'clueless' as he wanted to appear. Maybe that necklace was indeed made of aluminum, this merchant was able to recognize it, but what he said about 'Soulcasting made it' was a lie to hide the fact of how he knew that?

I mean, come on, Lin giving Shallan that necklace trying to keep spren away or make even her 'undetectable' to protect her would make sense after she killed her mother with Pattern. And it would make even more sense if he was a Surgebinder, or at least a very 'aware' Soulcaster (the poison couldn't kill him). It doesn't necessarily mean he Soulcasted that necklace, he could've got it from Mraize or any other Ghostblood.

Hmmm. The only thing I really have to add here is Lin put pattern/dagger in a box and put that box in the wall. I think had Lin known about radiant spren and how they work, he would have either had that box be made of aluminum, or would have known that would not have held pattern. So to me that would imply he didn't know. However we do know the Davars have been influenced by Odium/Unmade, so maybe you have a point that odium could have urged him to. Not sure what Odium's goal would be in that case, but interesting to think on. 

53 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Same, Im just spitballing here.  On the value chart amethyst are 2nd tier along with Sapphire, one step below the Food Producing Emeralds.  That actually seems odd to me, while I can understand why being able to Soulcast Metals would be in high demand (even absent Aluminum as a factor) Im less clear on why Gas and air would be considered so valuable, unless they are needed to keep the air in some of these deep stone fortresses breathable?

 

They are definitely behind in the sciences in General thanks to Soulcasters acting as a short-cut/crutch.  Though they also have had several developmental setbacks, both the Desolations that kept resetting them to the Bronze age, and more recently what sounds to me like a bit of a Vorinistic Dark Age. 

 

EDIT:  On the topic of the threshold at which the Cosmere treats an alumium alloy as something other than aluminum, Im curious if it makes any difference what the other metal involved is, and whether it's already active in the Metallic Arts.  As @Calderis pointed out, the Era2 guns are Scandium alloyed at less than 1%, vs the Duralumin that's at 4% but is also alloyed with Copper. Does an alloy of something that wasnt one of the Metallic Arts metals (and/or silver, that's apparently weird in its own right) change the threshold, causing less interference with Aluminum and whatever it's doing to block Investiture?

Maybe soulcasting away garbage, and waste to air? Though we have seen them do that with smoke too. Maybe amethyst is worth so much because of other precious metals it can make as well? Not only aluminum? I could see topaz not being as valuable considering it could not create new gemstones for soulcasting. Or to clarify, it could create gemstones, but they wouldn't be able to be used with soulcasting, so no infinite self replicating cheat (WoB confirms that). 

Found the WoB I was referring to regarding metallurgy. posted below

 

Phantine
At the risk of getting too technical, is there anything besides lack of knowledge preventing a soulcaster from turning some rocks into a bunch of plutonium and exploding?

I know you've got some rules attached to time bubbles to avoid those going nuclear so I wouldn't be surprised if there was something or another.

Brandon Sanderson
Well, Soulcasting isn't fission or fusion. It's a spiritual transformation process, not a physical one, and so you don't have to worry about some of these issues. There IS historical precedent of accidentally setting off fission reactions in the cosmere using the magic, but that was a different process. Soulcasting is actually pretty safe. (Well, on a grand scale.)

You could end up irradiating yourself, though, which wouldn't be very fun.

If you know what you were doing, making plutonium or uranium on Roshar wouldn't be difficult. The problem is more a matter of knowledge, and room for scientific exploration. They're unlikely to make atom bombs for the same reason they haven't made gunpowder. Once they figure out that some substances are important, they can learn to make them with Soulcasting (assuming they have Radiants) but some substances just don't occur naturally--so discovering them in the first place is difficult, and would require more modern scientific process.

Phantine
Okay, just to clarify here (since I'm not sure how up you are on early nuke designs)

A big enough chunk of uranium or plutonium will explode regardless of whether it's in a bomb or not. Early bomb designs just slammed two smaller chunks together so they'd be one big chunk.

For plutonium 'big enough' is about 35 pounds in one place - a chunk somewhere between the size of baseball and volleyball.

If I understand properly, people can soulcast from the cognitive realm into the physical, which implies once we get into a more modern stormlight setting soulcasters will make nuclear submarines look like small potatoes.

Brandon Sanderson
Slamming two chunks together so they became one big chunk seems an understatement, from what I remember. I'm under the impression that you had to use a great deal of explosive force to ram them together in order to set off a viable fission reaction. Doesn't it have to be compressed somewhat in order to react with itself?

I'll admit, it's been a long time since I've looked at this, but I remember glancing it over, and deciding that you'd need more than just soulcasting to get it to happen. Though it's not outside of reason that a soulcaster could learn to create super-dense plutonium. The problem is one of understanding, however.

Just like it's totally possible that we, with our current technology, could figure out some huge breakthrough in science allowing FTL or other incredible discoveries. But we don't have the understanding to pull it off yet.

In a modern setting, however, a lot of these complaints go out the window. Let's just say that this isn't the only reason a modern society that can instantly transmute one substance to another is potentially a very interesting place.

Phantine
You're totally right that everyone currently uses an 'implosion' style compression design. It's a lot more bang for your buck, and you need less radioactive material to work with. They're also a lot safer, because just sitting around they're well below critical mass - without the power-boosting tricks they basically can't go off.

The old "nobody uses these anymore" designs were 'Gun-Type'. Very simple - shoot a uranium bullet into the center of a uranium ring (or vice versa). Inefficient as heck (the Hiroshima bomb only fissioned 1.4% of its uranium), but also super simple to put together.

Despite being simple to build, gun-types were also super unsafe relative to modern implosion devices (among other worries, dropping a gun-type device into the ocean could potentially set it off because of how neutrons react with water). Also, getting the timing perfect on the fissile 'bullet' was a problem, so practically speaking it could only be done with uranium.

After WWII, the only use the US ever had for gun-types was in bunker busters and nuclear artillery (because of course that was a good idea).

Darn, that post turned out longer than I expected it to.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to see you make something really cool out of a post-scarcity transmutropolis setting (especially since the liespren would be in charge of nuclear treaties), and also my roommate just pointed out all the laying out of nuclear bomb details is pointless if they could just make antimatter instead. D'oh.

Brandon Sanderson
This is useful information for me, but my gut says that Rosharans couldn't get this working with their current tech level. That said, the REAL issue (as you mentioned in your original question) is knowledge, not feasibility. They'd have to know how to make the right kind of Uranium or Plutonium--and would need to be able to get this across to a soulcaster in a way that works, then THEY would need to get this across to spren. Cross that hurdle, and I suppose it's not at all implausible to imagine Alethi during Dalinar's era with nukes. I suspect the right kind of fabrial could make a trigger device to match ring and bullet at the right time. Depends on how quickly it needs to be going, though.

Edited by Pathfinder
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