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The Allomantic Alcubierre Drive (FTL)


Steeldancer

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9 minutes ago, HSuperLee said:

I've seen this theory proposed more than once on this site. But yes, the general impression we've had is that the external temporal metals will provide Scandrian ftl. To my knowledge, Sanderson has RAFOed any further questions about it.

You've seen this specific theory multiple times?

We all know Scadrial will achieve FTL, but I have never seen the OP's theory on the "how" here before.

I like it though, I can't believe I hadn't thought of it before, it seems exactly something Brandon would do and the physics seems to work.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ok, I’ve done more thinking upon FTL tech in other parts of the cosmere. Roshar is pretty obvious, you should be able to create something like an alcubierre drive, using Gravitational fabrials. (Gravitation fabrial and an antigravity fabrial). Sel has a harder time of things due to limitation of their abilities by area, but with connection investiture like in secret history, so long as that investiture can still be used to power Aons or something of that ilk, they should have enough of variety in the magic system to pull off FTL (although, I’m not sure what Aons would be used). The one that stumped me is Taldain, which Brandon states would have been first to FTL if autonomy hadn’t interfered. Thing is, their magic systems are drastically underwhelming, and I haven’t yet thought of another FTL system that would really fit the bill for a world like Taldain. But, Yata pointed out one thing Taldain has going for it- sand. The sand would make a great investiture battery. I’m not sure what they’ll do with these sandy investiture batteries, but they’d be easy to store and refill. I’m sure this has something to do with how they could achieve FTL tech. 

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If Taldain would have been the first to achieve FTL, it would likely be due to Darkside technology rather than Cosmere magic. They had guns way before Scadrial gets them and Scadrial is the most technically advanced world us readers have spent much time in. Of course, we don't really know what magic looks like on Darkside. The most we know is that Darksiders can see into the infared spectrum (I think. Been awhile since I read WS prose).

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7 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

If Taldain would have been the first to achieve FTL, it would likely be due to Darkside technology rather than Cosmere magic. They had guns way before Scadrial gets them and Scadrial is the most technically advanced world us readers have spent much time in. Of course, we don't really know what magic looks like on Darkside. The most we know is that Darksiders can see into the infared spectrum (I think. Been awhile since I read WS prose).

We know just enough about darkside magic to know it is even less dramatic than Sandmagery. I very, VERY much doubt that their magic is what will allow them to achieve FTL tech. I'm currently basing this all on the assumption that the FTL tech they use will make sense, it won't be just "oh it's a hyperdrive, it just gets them faster than light," there's going to be a distinct reasoning behind each technology that will allow FTL, probably tied to investiture in some way or another. 

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  • 3 months later...

Hey everyone who commented on this thread, I asked brandon about it at FanX a week ago, and he basically confirmed it! I'll post the WoB on here once it gets uploaded to Arcanum, but I'm really fascinated to see what else there is to the alcubierre drive besides just the bubbles. 

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1 minute ago, xinoehp512 said:

That's true.

I wonder how that would stack up with crazy-nested bubbles...

Very radical changes, probably. A refraction on crossing each of the borders in a random direction would end up with some wild stuff, especially in something like a Gatling gun or some other rotary.

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  • 1 month later...

could ettmetal possibly fit into all of this?

 

could the aforementioned alcubierre drive be created with an ettmetal machine of sorts, or would it run out of charge early, like we see the ettmetal machine do in the bands of mourning?

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Ok, I was uncertain about it warping space, because I think the reason time is related to space is the speed of light or something, but since there is no redshift with speed bubbles, that screws my understanding of spacetime over. 

But if Brandon confirmed it, I’ll believe it.

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14 minutes ago, Ethan_Sedai said:

Ok, I was uncertain about it warping space, because I think the reason time is related to space is the speed of light or something, but since there is no redshift with speed bubbles, that screws my understanding of spacetime over. 

But if Brandon confirmed it, I’ll believe it.

Think of space like a conveyor belt.  Nothing on the belt can go faster then light but nothing governs how fast the belt itself can move.  When opening a bubble its like stretching the belt so that everything takes longer.  Excess energy is pulled into and out of the spiritual realm to account for Redshift at the boundary.

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30 minutes ago, Ethan_Sedai said:

Is that why there isn’t redshift? I never knew that.

I believe so.  At the barrier energy is pulled into or out of the spiritual realm(depending on bubble).  This is one of the reasons that shooting into or out of them is next to impossible to do accurately.

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37 minutes ago, Karger said:

Think of space like a conveyor belt.  Nothing on the belt can go faster then light but nothing governs how fast the belt itself can move.  When opening a bubble its like stretching the belt so that everything takes longer.  Excess energy is pulled into and out of the spiritual realm to account for Redshift at the boundary.

34 minutes ago, Ethan_Sedai said:

Is that why there isn’t redshift? I never knew that.

That might be it. We won't know for sure until Sandman tells us what his Fourth Law of Thermodynamics is that apparently explains all that stuff.

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Redshift only starts occurring at really really large distances. Like The-Universe-Expanding—Over-Hundred-Year’s distances. We can use redshift to measure how far away a thing is getting from Earth. But it usually isn’t visible to the human eye. It’s done with a spectrogram. 

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