Time-Bubble FTL

[Ashertliden]

There's a decent chance this had been done before but here goes anyway:

Facts:

1.) Bendalloy time bubbles make time pass more quickly for the inhabitants of the bubble.

2.) Bendalloy can compress 2 min into 15 seconds or 8x speed (I've heard it argued sliders can create bubbles going greater than 1000x speed. 

3.) When multiple bubbles occur in the same place, their effects are multiplied. Source below: 

Spoiler

Questioner

So what happens if you have a Bendalloy bubble, and then another Bendalloy bubble inside of it?

Brandon Sanderson

It will compound and double, and it will multiply. Bendalloy is one of the metals from Alloy of Law if you haven’t read it, as this person obviously has, or has read the Ars Arcanum, you’ll find out what it does.

4.) A Bendalloy savant could anchor the time bubble to themselves. Source:

Spoiler

Questioner

So my quick question: Can you use Identity (I love the speed bubbles!) to anchor speed bubbles to yourself?

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, this is possible. That's less a matter of Identity. What’s gonna happen there, like, the more someone uses the powers, the more familiar and intermingled with their soul the powers become, and they are able to accomplish things that others can't. This would be like a Mistborn learning to hover a coin, right, which they can do, but most think you can't. That's the sort of level we're going with.

Necarion

So a savant could?

Brandon Sanderson

A savant could totally do that. The problem is, things moving in and out of a speed bubble, there's a transference of energy. This is how we keep speed bubbles from irradiating people when light moves through them, right, red shift. And so there's a transfer of energy directly from the Spiritual Realm, which means that moving with a speed bubble, you're gonna run into that, and it's gonna be, it's gonna cause all kinds of problems, but it would be possible.

5.) When an object leaves a time bubble, it's kinetic energy is stripped to that of the speed it would be going if it had never been in the time bubble. Source:

Spoiler

Peter Ahlstrom

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.

 

FTL using allomancy should be possible using only Bendalloy. Given that the average human can can typically run a mile in 7-10 minutes, and an allomancer has other advantages such as Pewter, I'll be assuming for simplicity purposes that a mistborn can run a mile in five minutes. Therefore, in 15 seconds a mistborn could run roughly 40% of a mile (2112 ft) in 2 minutes, or 15 seconds outside a time-bubble that was anchored to themselves using bendalloy savantism. Since the use of several time-bubbles multiply their effects, if an allomancer was to be within two time bubbles, they could run 16896 ft in 15 seconds of out of the bubble time. (OTBT) The acquiring of multiple time bubbles could be done through the use of Ettmetal, (more likely) or by attempting to cram multiple bendalloy savants into the same time bubble. (less likely, albeit more fun) The multiplication of time bubbles for an increase in distance over the same amount of time could feasibly increase until an allomancers was inside of 10 individual overlapping time bubbles. At this point, the allomancer would be running at a speed of 1889785610 or 1.88*10^10 feet per second in OTBT, which is marginally greater than 9.836*10^8 ft per second, which is roughly equivalent to the speed of light. Now that the allomancer has attained the speed of light relative to the people outside the bubble, they simply need to leave the bubble and they would be stripped of kinetic energy, returning them to the speed of 2112 ft per 2 minutes. (Assuming the noise the bubble makes when you leave it that fast doesn't kill you outright)

 

Edit: 300th post apparently

Edited October 31, 2018 by Kal-Eldin

[Calderis]

Well, yes, technically it could. You would send a ship to get somewhere, and the ship would seemingly arrive on the other end in a blink. 

The problem, is that for everyone on board, they'd have lived through all if that time frame as if traveling at normal speed, so for any interstellar travel, at seemingly normally attainable speeds, you're still spending a couple of generations on a ship, and the people who arrive at the destination are not the same crew that left. Some (or depending on the distance/speed, perhaps all) will have died, and (hopefully) others will have been born.

If there is a deadline that must be beat to intervene in some atrocity, you could do this and succeed at a very steep cost... But as far as an effective means of travel it fails. 

[HSuperLee]

Calling arcanists, where are we at on aluminum blocking the effects of time bubbles? Because this idea has a lot of merit if allomatic spaceships have an aluminum outer layer, with an ettmetal ring around the main body of the ship. If I remember correctly, aluminum blocks the time bubble, and thus you could achieve the warp effect while protecting the passengers from hyper-aging.

[Ashertliden]

6 minutes ago, Calderis said:

The problem, is that for everyone on board, they'd have lived through all if that time frame as if traveling at normal speed, so for any interstellar travel, at seemingly normally attainable speeds, you're still spending a couple of generations on a ship, and the people who arrive at the destination are not the same crew that left. Some (or depending on the distance/speed, perhaps all) will have died, and (hopefully) others will have been born.

That's a valid point. This may be an unhealthy instinct, but I'm inclined to keep throwing time-bubbles at this until the problems go away. As far as I can tell, Cadmium bubbles would be a valid solution to this problem. If a chamber were to be created out of many ettmetal panels, it should be able to create 10+ cadmium bubbles, negating and/or exceeding the effects of the bendalloy. At this point the vessel would be moving from point A to B incredibly quickly due to the bendalloy, and to the people inside the chamber the time would appear to pass more or less in a blink of an eye. Furthermore, the inhabitants would be able to give themselves more or less time to prepare for their end destination by adding more or less cadmium bubbles.

9 minutes ago, HSuperLee said:

Calling arcanists, where are we at on aluminum blocking the effects of time bubbles?

Not an arcanist, but aluminum and time bubbles don't seem to work too well together:

Spoiler

Questioner

What would happen--

Imagine I had-- imagine Wayne is standing near the end of an aluminium tube. He tries to set up a speed bubble such that he radius would go through the tube, what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Okay standing at the end of an aluminum tube, well I don't know--

Oh I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I think that if it's trying to be set up through aluminum it's gonna' disrupt it, you're gonna' have that sort of the "backlash" that you get when-- yeah.

Questioner

Oh so you can't even set it, it won't be there *inaudible*--

Brandon Sanderson

I don't think you can set it up, I think it's gonna' cause it to collapse the second that it tries to pop up around the aluminum.

Questioner

Okay that makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

[...]

Yeah, it's probably gonna' act like you tried to set up a speed bubble on something that's too small and moving.

 

[Quantus]

4 hours ago, Kal-Eldin said:

That's a valid point. This may be an unhealthy instinct, but I'm inclined to keep throwing time-bubbles at this until the problems go away. As far as I can tell, Cadmium bubbles would be a valid solution to this problem. If a chamber were to be created out of many ettmetal panels, it should be able to create 10+ cadmium bubbles, negating and/or exceeding the effects of the bendalloy. At this point the vessel would be moving from point A to B incredibly quickly due to the bendalloy, and to the people inside the chamber the time would appear to pass more or less in a blink of an eye. Furthermore, the inhabitants would be able to give themselves more or less time to prepare for their end destination by adding more or less cadmium bubbles.

Not an arcanist, but aluminum and time bubbles don't seem to work too well together:

  Hide contents

Questioner

What would happen--

Imagine I had-- imagine Wayne is standing near the end of an aluminium tube. He tries to set up a speed bubble such that he radius would go through the tube, what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Okay standing at the end of an aluminum tube, well I don't know--

Oh I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I think that if it's trying to be set up through aluminum it's gonna' disrupt it, you're gonna' have that sort of the "backlash" that you get when-- yeah.

Questioner

Oh so you can't even set it, it won't be there *inaudible*--

Brandon Sanderson

I don't think you can set it up, I think it's gonna' cause it to collapse the second that it tries to pop up around the aluminum.

Questioner

Okay that makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

[...]

Yeah, it's probably gonna' act like you tried to set up a speed bubble on something that's too small and moving.

 

If Im reading the WOB phrasing correctly, it sounds like a critical part of that equation is that the table was across the bubble boundary as it formed, popping it in a similar but more violent way as if Wayne had walked out of hte bubble himself.  I think we've seen Wayne hold small bits of aluminum inside the bubble at least, he's carried some of wax's aluminum bullets around for a while and I want to say he used his bubble during those scenes.