Jump to content

The Externals (aka the Timeless Shoving Match)


Dysphoric Kitten

Recommended Posts

WARNING: the following thread is a speculation/spoiler of the Allomantic table, so those of you who haven't finished Alloy, you are advised to leave before we get Ironeyes to follow you all day.

 

 

 

Hello fellow Scadrians!

 

 

Have any of you ever thought about the Cadmium/Bendalloy pair's effects on Scadrial throughoutly? How about Chromium/Nicrosil? I did not, for most of the time. However, they bug me. The first issue I will present here is minor (which is why it was placed in a spoiler tag), and you may ignore it. However, the second one is very pressing for me.

 

 

First off, I want to get this off my chest: what happens when standing partially in a timebubble and partially outside it, or when exiting or entering bubbletime? Think about it, and you may find, I think, something strange.

The immediate answer (at least when presented with objects) is that when, for example, shooting a bullet from outside a Bendbubble in, each of the bullet's molectules will transition to bubbletime when it enters. However, this means that when the back enters (after 0.001s of realtime flight), the front will be farther and the bullet longer (because it had 0.001s of much faster flight). This seems unreasonable, since we have heard bullets change course, but not that they change shape. This is probably because their cognitive aspect keeps them together.

As to the change in course, I think it is like optics - when hitting bubbletime or realtime in a right angle to the bubble, the course is perfectly straight. However, when hitting Bendtime (or realtime from inside a Cadbubble) in an off angle, the amount by which the angle is off is magnified. When hitting Cadtime (or realtime from inside a Bendbubble), the amount by which the angle is off is diminished.

The first one is like in optics, where entering air from glass (for example) - which is a transition from a place where light goes more slowly to a place where light goes faster - magnifies the amount the angle is off by.

The second one is like light entering glass from air (again, for example) - which is a transition from a place where light goes faster to a place where light goes more slowly - which diminishes the amount the angle is off by.

Another thought: What happens when a Leecher and a Nicroburst hug (both are of the same strength, both burning at the same intensity)? Can they affect Ferrings and Keepers?

 

 

 

Now, to the real reason for this thread. (all numbers were chosen to be simple and round)

 

 

Wax is standing next to Wayne, burning Steel. He spots a silver candlestick, connected to his chest, standing on a table about 10m away. If he were to Push on it for one second, the candlestick would just fly over at the speed of 100m/s. 

 

Wayne starts Pulsing at a 1:20 ratio, making his Bendtime twenty times faster than realtime. The candlestick, of course, is outside (Bendbubbles are much smaller). Wax tries Pushing on the candlestick for exactly one second. From now, I see four options:

(Cadmium gives us the direct inversion of these results)

 

 

 

A. Both the candlestick and Wax react as if they are in Bendtime.

1. If Wax Pushes for one second Bendtime (0.05 seconds realtime), the candlestick is flung in what seems, from Wax's point of view, like 5m/s. However, the candlestick, being in real-time, is actually moving 20 times as fast, which is 100m/s, because it is in a slower time.

 

2. If Wax Pushes for one second realtime (20 seconds Bendtime), the candlestick is flung in what seems, from Wax's point of view, like 100m/s. However, the candlestick, being in real-time, is actually moving 20 times as fast, which is 2,000m/s, because it is in a slower time.

 

Here, power is gained: Wax can accelerate objects to a the same velocity more quickly, but with the same expenditure of Steel and an added expenditure of Bendalloy.

 

 

 

B. Both the candlestick and Wax react as if they are in realtime.

1. If Wax Pushes for one second Bendtime (0.05 seconds realtime), the candlestick, being in real-time, is flung in 5m/s, and the Bendbubble has not affected a thing.

 

2. If Wax Pushes for one second realtime (20 seconds Bendtime), the candlestick is flung 100m/s. 

 

Here, power is lost: Wayne used up 20 seconds of Bendalloy and Wax used up 20 of Steel, but the power they got from that is equal to one second of Steel.

 

 

 

C. Each reacts in their own timeframe. This means that everything outside the Bendbubble is twenty times harder to affect.

1. The candlestick reacts like in B.

 

2. If we replace the candlestick by something that is the same weight as Wax, he is affected more quickly and, maybe, more forcefully.

 

If Wax is affected more forcefully, he can sit in a cart big enough to contain him, Wayne, and the outside of the Bendbubble, sit in the front, and with the bubble up, Push on a coin inside the cart but outside the bubble. Instant horseless (and engineless) carriage.

 

If he is not affected more powerfully, just more quickly, I have no idea what it will be remarkable about, but I am sure there is something. Either way, it is a good anti-PushPull tactic.

 

 

 

D. The candlestick, and everything outside the bubble, becomes Allomantically inert. The least interesting option (dare I say boring and upsetting?), but it avoids paradoxes and opinions (except ans being upset).

 

 

 

This is a major question, since not only Steel and Iron pair are affected by that, every External metal is. Demonstrations:

Can I seek inside a bubble?

Can I soothe someone outside?

Can I wipe someone outside? (assuming I can get a finger out without the Cosmere collapsing)

(Atium is relevant, too)

 

 

Thoughts?

Edited by Tal Spektor
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Objects are only ever fully-in or fully-out of bubbles, never "transitioning". So no need to worry about that. This includes people: anyone touching a bubble is affected by it.

 

There have been some discussions on affecting things in different "time zones" in this thread, if you'd care to take a look.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that it's either A or C. There's no mention of odd gravitational effects inside the bubbles, which implies that a continuous external force acts on the objects at the same rate in their reference frame as if they were not in the bubbles. Under Relativity, I'd expect that the planet will also experience the same apparent force in its reference frame, because Relativity does not have one reference frame be more "real" than another. However, Brandon has stated that Allomancy contains the capacity for FTL, so presumably temporal Allomancy contains some violation of Relativity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unless my physics-fu is farther off than usual, describing gravity as a "force" in this way is not  entirely accurate.

 

Gravity is a function of the curvature of space-time which manifests as a force, by my understanding, but is not a force as we normally describe it. So the "force" of pushing (or steelpushing) on a block is of a fundamentally different kind than that exerted by gravity.

 

Objects do experience "more" gravity when in speed bubbles and less when in slow bubbles, when you think about it. A falling ball will fall faster or slower, depending, and thus gain more or less energy relative to other objects outside the bubble.

 

Or maybe I'm just wrong. Physics tends to dislike me whenever I try to apply it.  -_-

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I won't go for the "violated Relativity" theory. For one, Relativity does not seem to bear a direct connection to our bubbles. Besides, violating physics seems wrong to me. Brandon said that the Cosmere has the same physics as our universe, so I hesitate to say it differs in it's laws of physics.

Of course, there is the fact that according to what I could gather, it could not have the same physics, but this is beside the point.

Kurk, what did you do to bait physics? It seems to have been on your side (at least from my perspective) at the time of your post, at the very least.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

See the "Victim of Auotpwail" in my member title? That stands for "actual understanding of the physical world and its limits". Suffice it to say that there have been a series of posts of mine that have left me open to the attacks of that vile foe. Talk to Satsuoni if you want the full story. :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unless my physics-fu is farther off than usual, describing gravity as a "force" in this way is not  entirely accurate.

 

Gravity is a function of the curvature of space-time which manifests as a force, by my understanding, but is not a force as we normally describe it. So the "force" of pushing (or steelpushing) on a block is of a fundamentally different kind than that exerted by gravity.

 

Objects do experience "more" gravity when in speed bubbles and less when in slow bubbles, when you think about it. A falling ball will fall faster or slower, depending, and thus gain more or less energy relative to other objects outside the bubble.

 

Or maybe I'm just wrong. Physics tends to dislike me whenever I try to apply it.  -_-

Well, gravity is by far the least understood of the four (three now?) fundamental forces/interactions : electroweak, strong and gravitation, so, in terms of general relativity as I understand it, you are correct - of course the very principle of relativity is that there is no difference between gravity and force acting on accelerated object, so force is good enough. It is also the dividing line between macroscopic (general relativity) and microscopic (quantum) branches of physics.

And, well, bubbles don't play well with either branch. They *should* fry/freeze anything inside, and suck air, etc, but they do not. They *should*, in theory, reflect most of the light or objects -  the refractive index of bubbles is *huge* compared to one of the highest indices in nature (diamond, around 2.5, and you could make a material with higher index) - but they do not, so refraction is not an explanation.

The "punching people outside bubbles" problem (and related,  like shoving/ metalpulling / falling beams /etc) is well known in bubble-discussing circles :) And there is, so far, no satisfying theory for it :( Presumably, Brandon is not sure himself, not being a math mind and all. I am thinking about a weird theory, but I am not sure if it would be viable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that at least some of the weird bubble physics occur because everything that enters or exits a bubble gets moved into the appropriate temporal zone, so generally things aren't interacting with stuff moving at different rates, and the interactions that do occur aren't locally noticeable. Even if the contents of a bubble get their gravitational pull multiplied by the time ratio, it'd take rather sensitive instruments to notice the difference. However, if Bendalloy bubbles did increase gravitational force outside the bubble, I'd expect Cadmium bubbles to increase the pull inside the bubble, which would be instantly obvious and quite possibly pull down buildings. And if the being inside a bubble is not analogous to being outside an opposite bubble that contains the rest of the universe, then relativity is violated.

 

So it would appear that forces projected over bubble boundaries get corrected as well, so exerting a constant force into a x10 bubble for one second of normal time would exert the same force for ten seconds of bubble time, for ten times the work done on the contents for the energy used exerting the force. This violates conservation of energy pretty badly, but Allomancy is literally all about violating conservation of energy. This would explain why people generally avoid the boundaries of the bubbles; any interaction would exert its peak force for much longer than normal in the bubble reference frame.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Chaos locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...