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Moving planets.


Sauceborn

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Do you think it would be possible if, having gathered enough coinshot twinborns with the ability of altering their weight, they could move a planet, focusing on its metal core? Of course, for experimentation's sake, let's pretend each of them had an infinite well of weight to tap into, and they all used duralumin.

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I'd say no, but I can't prove it.

If a 50lb person steelpushes against a 100lb wall, the person gets shot backwards.
If a different 50lb person pushes against a 100lb wall, they would get shot backwards.
If those two 50lb people push against the same 100lb wall, I still see it as 50vs100 and 50vs100.

Until such point as it's shown to not be that way, that's just how I see it.

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Better luck with a bunch of iron compounder all tapping massive amounts of weight on one spot on the planet to throw of the world's center of gravity and knock it of its normal course. 

Edited by Calderis
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If you're heavy enough that you push the core instead of yourself (which, for the record, still includes pushing yourself because otherwise you're going in the same direction which kind of breaks the laws of nature, baron Von Munchaussen style), I would argue you're also heavy enough to attract objects around you, and probably even heavy enough to make those objects together become spherical around you.

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Guest Breaker

Fun question: if someone with F-Iron, A-Iron, and A-Duralumin were to conpound enormous quantities of weight, then get to the earth’s iron core and store that, over and over, and then draw out that insane store of weight all at once, could you make a black hole? 

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24 minutes ago, Breaker said:

could you make a black hole? 

The force required to make a black hole would implode any and all barriers preventing the Metalborn from being crushed from outside, and the sheer weight would also crush and kill said Metalborn, so I'd say maybe not. (Although, if there was absolutely no limit on tapping rate... I suppose the split instant you'd be alive could be long enough)

Either way, you get points for ingenuity by using the Iron Core as a Metalmind though. That's clever.

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3 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

I'd say no, but I can't prove it.

If a 50lb person steelpushes against a 100lb wall, the person gets shot backwards.
If a different 50lb person pushes against a 100lb wall, they would get shot backwards.
If those two 50lb people push against the same 100lb wall, I still see it as 50vs100 and 50vs100.

Until such point as it's shown to not be that way, that's just how I see it.

I'd say yes (although only very slightly).  Don't Newton's laws still apply?  

If a 50lb person steelpushes against a 100lb person, both people get pushed backward (the lighter person gets pushed back more)

If two 50lb people pushed against the same 100lb person, the heavier person would get pushed back twice as much.  

 

I don't even think that they would need to increase their weight.  As long as they could "see" the planet core, any amount of force on the planet's core is going to "move" it (although by a minuscule amount).  

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1 minute ago, Scion of the Mists said:

As long as they could "see" the planet core, any amount of force on the planet's core is going to "move" it (although by a minuscule amount).  

I suppose that's fair, even if I think the extreme weight differential between them and a planet is gonna make the movement beyond minuscule.

4 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

I'd say yes (although only very slightly).  Don't Newton's laws still apply?  

You'd be right. My sample weights were too similar for the point I was trying to make, and ended up giving the wrong impression. Example Attempt 2: Coinshots push off of several coins at once, and unless they run into something, they don't feel any blowback at all. That's what I see Coinshots vs Planet as.

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I'd say someone like TLR or Kelsier might be able too, given that they have very long lifespan, which allows for much weight-gathering. They should be able to gather up enough weight and then push (maybe assissted by duralumin). The fact that they can compound should help as well.

A normal guy like Wax though? Nope.

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Weight of the Earth (approximating for Scadrial as I don't know how much Scadrial weighs): 5.972 × 10^24 kg (about 6 septillion)
Weight of an average Earth human (again approximating for a Scadrial human): 62 kg
Number of humans needed to match the weight of Earth: ~1 x 10^23 (100 sextillion for those who are interested in the term)

I, uh, frankly, cannot even begin to imagine how many people that is. For the sake of the discussion, let's assume that one A.Steel and F.Iron twinborn can safely tap, and hold for some amount of time, the weight of 100 humans (6,200 kg or ~13,700 lbs). You would now need ~1 x 10^21 twinborns to simply equal the weight of the Earth much less have more weight to push it (edit: the preceding sentence is poorly worded and I address that in caveat #2 below).

Even if you get real, real weird with the Feruchemy and claim that a single twinborn can safely tap, and hold for some amount of time, the weight of 1,000,000 humans, you would still need ~1 x 10^17 twinborn (that is 100 quadrillion which is the name given to stupidly big numbers after trillion). Please note that in the entire existence of Earth it is estimated that a only measly ~1x10^11 (100 billion) humans have existed.

For further math fun, let us assume that the twinborns would require a total of 10s to tap, push, and move Scadrial. How long would it take a single twinborn to store enough weight to effectively equal their weight x 1,000,000 for 10s? Please note that this part I am less sure on as I know there are weird interactions with Feruchemy storing/tapping at higher rates, especially when that tapping occurs over small periods at high rates.

Someone storing 100% of their 62 kg every second and needing to tap that weight at a rate 1,000,000 times for 10 seconds would require, at a minimum, 10,000,000 seconds of storing. This would require the twinborn to maintain weightlessness for about 4 months (give or take a few days). Not too bad, eh? If they wore weight belts or something to keep them from being too inconvenienced then this might work! Unfortunately, we still need ~1 x 10^17 twinborn. Hmmm, from this post we have a guesstimate that 1 out of every 2500 people (most optimistic) is a twinborn. Earth's population is about 7 billion so that would leave us with 2.8 million twinborn. There are 256 combinations of twinborn so 1 out of every 256 twinborn will be correct for our purposes. (We could do some A.Iron + F.Iron combos and stick them on the opposite side of the planet to have them pull but then compounding happens and I have NO idea how to account for that haha) So, generously, Earth has ~11,000 A.Steel and F.Iron twinborns! To make up for the missing ~99+ quadrillion other twinborns, each of our Earth twinborn would need to store 100% of their 62 kg for, uh, like 40 trillion months (I think). That is, about 3 and 1/3 trillions years.

So, I would hazard a guess and say that it is probably impossible, especially in Era 1 or Era 2, for there to be enough Crashers (A.Steel and F.Iron twinborn) to move the Earth/Scadrial in any effective way. There are, of course, a TON of caveats to the above:
1]: My math may be super wrong haha. I wrote this up real quick while at work
2]: You might not need to have enough Crashers to equal the weight of the Earth as the Earth is not fixed in place like a wall. With a smaller, but still significant, number of Crashers you could, theoretically, move the Earth/Scadrial out of its orbit.

 

tl;dr - No. (?)

Edited by CaptainRyan
unclear sentence
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19 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

Weight of the Earth (approximating for Scadrial as I don't know how much Scadrial weighs): 5.972 × 10^24 kg (about 6 septillion)

I think you only need to consider the weight of the core of the planet, as that's the part that's metal.  However, this would only reduce the weight by a factor of ~3, so it won't actually affect the calculations that much.  

 

19 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

You would now need ~1 x 10^21 twinborns to simply equal the weight of the Earth much less have more weight to push it (edit: the preceding sentence is poorly worded and I address that in caveat #2 below).

...

2]: You might not need to have enough Crashers to equal the weight of the Earth as the Earth is not fixed in place like a wall. With a smaller, but still significant, number of Crashers you could, theoretically, move the Earth/Scadrial out of its orbit.

This is the point I was making up above.  You don't have to weigh more than the other object to apply force to it.  Any amount of force will be enough to impart some velocity to the planet.  The bigger question is how big of a force do you need for it to be noticeable?  

 

19 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

For the sake of the discussion, let's assume that one A.Steel and F.Iron twinborn can safely tap, and hold for some amount of time, the weight of 100 humans (6,200 kg or ~13,700 lbs).

This is as good as a guess as any, but could drastically affect the calculations.  Brandon has mentioned that there are some kind of limits, but (AFAIK) hasn't detailed what they are.  I imagine there must be a limit to the magnitude of weight increase or the rate of tapping.  

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7 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

I think you only need to consider the weight of the core of the planet, as that's the part that's metal.  However, this would only reduce the weight by a factor of ~3, so it won't actually affect the calculations that much.  

I think you have to consider the weight of the entire planet as you are not moving the core alone but everything connected to it, right? E.g. If you were to steel push on the barrel of a gun then you still need to consider the weight of the wooden stock. Or a wooden ball with a core of lead; the Allomancer would need to consider the total weight when pushing on the lead, no?

15 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

The bigger question is how big of a force do you need for it to be noticeable?

Right! Totally agree! Technically, *any* force applied to the planet "moves it". The OP's question is vague enough that the answer could be "jump up and down". That's why I just made up some arbitrary conditions to see how the math panned out.

21 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

This is as good as a guess as any, but could drastically affect the calculations.

Yeah, I just pulled that out of my... hat. :ph34r: I did one for what I, personally, felt was an appropriate number (100) and then I did an extreme one (1,000,000) to show that, honestly, it doesn't really matter because planets are so heavy it would take an insane amount of force to make any noticeable impact.

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16 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

I think you only need to consider the weight of the core of the planet, as that's the part that's metal.  However, this would only reduce the weight by a factor of ~3, so it won't actually affect the calculations that much.  

Be careful you don't end up pushing the core out of the planet.

...I now have horrible visions of planet-destructing apocalypses.

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23 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:
23 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

I think you only need to consider the weight of the core of the planet, as that's the part that's metal.  However, this would only reduce the weight by a factor of ~3, so it won't actually affect the calculations that much.  

I think you have to consider the weight of the entire planet as you are not moving the core alone but everything connected to it, right? E.g. If you were to steel push on the barrel of a gun then you still need to consider the weight of the wooden stock. Or a wooden ball with a core of lead; the Allomancer would need to consider the total weight when pushing on the lead, no?

I only meant that with respect to to total force generated and the distribution of the force between the two objects.  That is, the pushing interaction takes place between the metallic object and the Allomancer; however, the resulting movement of the object (i.e. the planet) does take into account the additional mass.  Although maybe this gets into the fuzzy anchoring side of things (which is the part that makes the least sense to me).  

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35 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

That is, the pushing interaction takes place between the metallic object and the Allomancer; however, the resulting movement of the object (i.e. the planet) does take into account the additional mass. 

I think we are saying the same thing? Maybe?

The Allomancer pushes on only the metal portions of an object but the entire mass of the object (both metallic and non-metallic) is used to calculate the force exerted. This force applies equally to both the object and the Allomancer.

MobjectAobject MallomancerAallomancer

In this equation, the Mass of the object is the mass of both the core and the rest of the planet which means the force that ends up being equally exerted against the Allomancer is also related to the full mass of the planet and not just the core. So, even though the Allomancer is "only" pushing on the metallic core, the Mass used to calculate the Force is the Mass of the entire object. Or, at least, I think that is how it works. Thoughts?

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I always think of it as an inverse square force (like gravity or electromagnetism):

  • |F| = k*mallomancer*mcore / r^2
  • aplanet = |F| / (mcore + mrest)

However, I'm not sure that this is consistent with how anchors work in the books.  The issue I have with anchoring (i.e. counting non-metallic/non-allomancer mass) is how do you determine what counts as an anchor?  If I'm standing on the ground, do I also get to push with the full weight of the planet?  

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1 hour ago, Scion of the Mists said:

how do you determine what counts as an anchor?

An "anchor", as I understand it, is just a throw away term for whatever helps hold a metallic object, or the Allomancer, in place while force is being exerted.

If a lantern is attached to (i.e. screwed into) the wall of a building then the wall becomes part of the equation because when the Allomancer pushes against the metal lantern they are also now pushing against the wall. This is what causes the Allomancer to move away from the lantern despite the lantern being lighter than the Allomancer; the weight (read: mass) of the wall becomes part of the equation so the Mass on one side is bigger so the Allomancer's Acceleration must go up to match.

1 hour ago, Scion of the Mists said:

If I'm standing on the ground, do I also get to push with the full weight of the planet?

Let's say someone, in the spirit of Wile E. Coyote, drops a massive metal anvil (10,000 kg mass) towards an Allomancer. The anvil is falling towards the Allomancer and this silly Allomancer decides to try and push back against the anvil because they have the weight of the world behind them. What happens then? If we use the simple M*A = F formula without accounting for other factors then we might, mistakenly, assume that the Allomancer can send the anvil flying off due to the "anchor" mass that the planet provides. Unfortunately for our Allomancer, what happens instead is that, if they exert too much Allomantic power pushing against the anvil, they will be flattened as if the anvil had fallen upon them! But why? Because the Allomancer's frail body is not capable of withstanding the force! The same force that is exerted on the anvil by the Allomancer is equally applied to their own body! So, if they exert enough force to launch a 10,000 kg anvil directly away from themselves then an equal force is exerted back towards the Allomancer (and the ground). The body breaks, the Allomancer dies, and we all learn a valuable lesson in physics, no? :) 

You can see this when Vin uses Duralumin and does steel pushes. She also burns pewter at the same time to help cushion her body against the power of the steel push.

So, theoretically, if one has the weight of the world behind them as they steel push then yes, they push with the weight of the world. But remember that unless they are Atlas himself, their frail body cannot withstand the weight of the world.

(This is simply my thoughts on the subject and I am aware that I could be way off :) )

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On 02/04/2018 at 11:22 AM, Sauceborn said:

Do you think it would be possible...  they could move a planet, focusing on its metal core? 

When they push on the planet's core, they would move it (let's assume they figured out the logistics to make it work), but they would only move it a very small amount. So small that other forces acting on the planet are likely greater than it, and the net force acting on the planet would likely remain practically the same, especially if a meteorite or something counteracts the force of the push on the other side. But if the only goal is too move the planet, you can do it. You just won't notice because the planet has so much inertia that it will resist your push and disperse its force to the point where the applied force is negligible. 

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On 4/3/2018 at 3:28 PM, Zellyia said:

I.......I'm just going to give some upvotes for math and science skills.  

You people are awesome (crazy, but awesome).

If you want to see some really impressive math, go check out this other thread on steelpushing by @Pagerunner

 

17 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

The same force that is exerted on the anvil by the Allomancer is equally applied to their own body!

I believe this would mean that an Allomancer could accidentally flatten themselves by pushing against a coin as well, right?  

Additionally, how do you define what a single object is in terms of it acting as an anchor.  Why would the the entire planet be an anchor and not just the dirt around your feet.  Even if you're not standing on the ground, why does the air + planet not count as an anchor?  Everything to do with anchors has always seemed to turn into a wibbly wobbly timey wimey Congitive hand-wavey thing, which is unsatisfying physics-wise.  

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You CANNOT move the planet by pushing on it, no matter how much allomantic power you have, because you are standing on that very same planet. It's a similar reason why you cannot pick yourself up from the ground.

The law of conservation of the center of mass says that you pushing on the planet will never change the center of mass of the you+planet system. Just like astronauts can't move their spaceships by pushing on them (though at least mercury capsules were light enough for it)

You need to push something external to get motion. So, if you could propel yourself outside of orbit, that would actually move the planet - it would be the same principle of a roket, with the twinborn being the fuel. Or you could stand on another planet and push on scadrial, thus moving the two planets relative to each other. those are the only way.

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2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

It's a similar reason why you cannot pick yourself up from the ground.

It's called jumping...;)

 

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

The law of conservation of the center of mass says that you pushing on the planet will never change the center of mass of the you+planet system. Just like astronauts can't move their spaceships by pushing on them (though at least mercury capsules were light enough for it)

AFAIK, there's no such thing as the law of conservation of the center of mass.  Maybe you're thinking of conservation of momentum (which gets at the same thing).  Regardless, just because the center of mass of you+planet won't change, doesn't mean that both you and the planet stay fixed.  You can both move, just in opposite directions.  

Edited by Scion of the Mists
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18 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

It's called jumping...;)

 

AFAIK, there's no such thing as the law of conservation of the center of mass.  Maybe you're thinking of conservation of momentum (which gets at the same thing).  Regardless, just because the center of mass of you+planet won't change, doesn't mean that both you and the planet stay fixed.  You can both move, just in opposite directions.  

but you are going to fall back onto the planet, so you'll be back where you started. Unless, as I said, you could propel you enough to reach escape velocity. Or unless changing your mass while moving in an energy field lets you cheat energy conservation, which may be the case. In that case, make yourself heavier than the planet, push, the planet will move one meter away, then become light and stop pushing, you will fall back on the planet and the planet will have effectively moved. I'm sure we have wob about that, but I'm too lazy to search right now

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