An Observation on Light

[StanLemon]

So thinking about Anti-Light I realized something. Despite being the opposite of Odium's Investiture, Anti-Voildlight was able to pass through Raysium without issue. Assuming Raysium like other godmetals is just the Shard's Investiture in solid form then it when it encounters Anti-Voidlight it should be destroyed. This means that there is still a fundamental difference between the different states of Investiture as well from when they are solid, liquid, and gas.

[+Weux082690]

That is a good point. Makes me wonder if there is an Anti-Raysium, and how would one go about making it? Also, is there a way to convert Voidlight into Raysium, or would that require some Shardic intervention?

[Lightspine]

14 hours ago, StanLemon said:

So thinking about Anti-Light I realized something. Despite being the opposite of Odium's Investiture, Anti-Voildlight was able to pass through Raysium without issue. Assuming Raysium like other godmetals is just the Shard's Investiture in solid form then it when it encounters Anti-Voidlight it should be destroyed. This means that there is still a fundamental difference between the different states of Investiture as well from when they are solid, liquid, and gas.

Wow, this is a really good observation but also quite puzzling. Does this mean that the cognitive shadows of the Fused are somehow in the "voidlight" state? And that spren like Phendorana are somehow in a "stormlight" state? Otherwise, anti-voidlight or anti-stormlight wouldn't work on them.

I think a better answer might be surface area and rate of reactivity. If anti-voidlight and voidlight/Odium's investure need to physically contact in order to react, then their ability to mix is very important. For example, if you're trying to make a really big, fantastic explosion with hydrogen gas, you want it to be mixed well with oxygen first. A piece of wood contains a lot of energy to be released in burning, but it takes several minutes to burn fully because only the surface can react with oxygen. If you had a gas or liquid that held that amount of energy, or a solid that contained its own oxidizer (like most high explosives do) then it would react nearly instantly and cause an explosion instead of a long-lasting fire. (Minute physics actually has a new video that pretty much covers this exact topic, except they compare TNT and marshmallows).

That means that, if we think of this in terms of typical chemical reactivity, it makes sense that a solid would react much slower than a liquid or gas (I actually think "Light" is a supercritical fluid from Navani's description, which is a state that has properties of both liquids and gasses, but that's not really important for the topic at hand). Therefore, it's possible that the Raysium dagger was being corroded (and releasing some heat) while in contact with the anti-voidlight, and Navani didn't notice.

However, this explanation only works if the Raysium is conducting the anti-voidlight along its surface. If, somehow the anti-voidlight were inside the Raysium then... well I don't really have an analogous situation in real life for that, but it sounds like that should be a condition that allows for fast—and explosive—reaction. Therefore, you would be correct that they anti-voidlight can only react with Odium's investure in the "voidlight" form.

Edited November 23, 2020 by Lightspine
corrections

[seriodor]

I think this could maybe be a result of the properties of Raysium (do we still call it that?). Raysium channels investiture from one source to another. Maybe whatever spirit realm mechanism it uses to do that allows anti-voidlight to pass through without touching the Raysium. Or if there's a physical channel that the investiture passes through, maybe only the innermost layer was destroyed as it passed through.

[AirsickHighlander]

1 hour ago, seriodor said:

Raysium (do we still call it that?).

Yes! The term was canonized in RoW

[seriodor]

Just now, AirsickHighlander said:

Yes! The term was canonized in RoW

That was before Rayse died though. Wouldn't it be Taravangium now? It's not like he would make a different type of metal if he made his Investiture solid.

[AirsickHighlander]

1 minute ago, seriodor said:

That was before Rayse died though. Wouldn't it be Taravangium now? It's not like he would make a different type of metal if he made his Investiture solid.

A good point, but I think the metal already in existence continues to be Raysium. I wonder if there's any reason that Taravangium would behave in a distinct way from Raysium though.

[Myrovyn]

7 hours ago, Lightspine said:

Wow, this is a really good observation but also quite puzzling. Does this mean that the cognitive shadows of the Fused are somehow in the "voidlight" state? And that spren like Phendorana are somehow in a "stormlight" state? Otherwise, anti-voidlight or anti-stormlight wouldn't work on them.

I think a better answer might be surface area and rate of reactivity. If anti-voidlight and voidlight/Odium's investure need to physically contact in order to react, then their ability to mix is very important. For example, if you're trying to make a really big, fantastic explosion with hydrogen gas, you want it to be mixed well with oxygen first. A piece of wood contains a lot of energy to be released in burning, but it takes several minutes to burn fully because only the surface can react with oxygen. If you had a gas or liquid that held that amount of energy, or that contained its own oxidizer (like most high explosives do) then it would react nearly instantly and cause an explosion instead of a long-lasting fire. (Minute physics actually has a new video that pretty much covers this exact topic, except they compare TNT and marshmallows).

That means that, if we think of this in terms of typical chemical reactivity, it makes sense that a solid would react much slower than a liquid or gas (I actually think "Light" is a supercritical fluid from Navani's description, which is a state that has properties of both liquids and gasses, but that's not really important for the topic at hand). Therefore, it's possible that the Raysium dagger was being corroded (and releasing some heat) while in contact with the anti-voidlight, and Navani didn't notice.

However, this explanation only works if the Raysium is conducting the anti-voidlight along its surface. If, somehow the anti-voidlight were inside the Raysium then... well I don't really have an analogous situation in real life for that, but it sounds like that should be a condition that allows for fast—and explosive—reaction. Therefore, you would be correct that they anti-voidlight can only react with Odium's investure in the "voidlight" form.

This is a very interesting analogy. I would like to add that Odium's rhythm that is inside Voidlight, is Odium's Command that the Investiture works. Anti-voidlight basically has the Command to not be. Anti-voidlight's Command has to be the exact opposite of Voidlight's Command in order to counteract it. Since sounds are formed by vibration in a substance (air in most cases), these substances have influence over the frequencies of the sound. I like to compare it to how a voice sounds different under water from normal. Therefore the Command of Voidlight should be slightly different from the Command of Raysium (if Raysium even is similar to Voidlight in this) and Anti-Voidlight's Command won't be the exact opposite of Raysium's Command and therefore doesn't affect it in the same way. At least this is how I imagine it in my current understanding of these things.

[seriodor]

This has made me wonder if it's possible to store other forms of investiture in spheres. Or if maybe mixing it with ant othe Rosharan forms of investiture would allow you to.

Edited November 24, 2020 by seriodor
spelling

[KidWayne]

Energy is transmitted in waves. You can invert a wave and cancel it. To do this with matter, you need anti-matter. When matter and anti-matter meet, they annihilate one another and release energy.

IRL energy and matter are fundamentally the same thing. In the Cosmere, (according to WoB) energy, matter, AND investiture are all the same thing. However, you couldn't invert a sound wave (or a light wave), direct it at a solid object, and expect it to annihilate matter. You would first need to convert the matter into energy before you could use the inversion trick (unless you can create anti-matter). 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/360/#e10854

[humanchaos]

5 hours ago, KidWayne said:

You would first need to convert the matter into energy before you could use the inversion trick (unless you can create anti-matter). 

I agree. Stormlight and Voidlight seem best described as investiture in a gas-like state, so it would make sense to have a very negligible effect on the solid version. Now if you could find a way to take regular stormlight/voidlight, and then condense it into a solid state.... now THEN you'd have a real breakthrough. You'd be able to create your own sprenless shardblades and such.

[Master Silver]

I mentioned this on another thread but this is certainly the place for it. I was saying that investiture has different state (solid, liquid, gas, plasma). What we saw happen with anti-stormlight, was the result of the anti-stormlight (which was in a gemstone) being channeled and interacting with investiture in the same state. Syl is often described as a ribbon of light. So Radiant spren when not a shard blade are in some form of light. I would imagine that the only thing that can hurt a spren blade is Nightblood. We saw him chip an Honor Blade and of course what we saw him do to Odium. I imagine Radiant spren as a blade would be safe from this type of attack. Otherwise, Sanderson just rendered Shardblades as useless. We saw several of these blades (raydium daggers I think) towards the end of the book. 

[Honorless]

On 11/23/2020 at 9:42 AM, StanLemon said:

So thinking about Anti-Light I realized something. Despite being the opposite of Odium's Investiture, Anti-Voildlight was able to pass through Raysium without issue. Assuming Raysium like other godmetals is just the Shard's Investiture in solid form then it when it encounters Anti-Voidlight it should be destroyed. This means that there is still a fundamental difference between the different states of Investiture as well from when they are solid, liquid, and gas.

So... there's anti-liquid? anti-godmetal? Egad

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

On 11/23/2020 at 1:26 AM, seriodor said:

That was before Rayse died though. Wouldn't it be Taravangium now? It's not like he would make a different type of metal if he made his Investiture solid.

SPOILERS MISTBORN: 

Spoiler

We still call it atium even though Ruin's not held by Ati anymore, same with lerasium. I think it's named for the first vessel, not the current. So it's still Raysium.

 

18 hours ago, seriodor said:

This has made me wonder if it's possible to store other forms of investiture in spheres. Or if maybe mixing it with ant othe Rosharan forms of investiture would allow you to.

I could have sworn I remembered a WoB saying you could store Mist in a sphere, but I can't find that and coppermind doesn't say anything about it that I could find so maybe I'm misremembering (mistremembering?). I wonder if mist is roughly the same as stormlight though.

 

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

So... there's anti-liquid? anti-godmetal? Egad

I really want to see anti-godmetals. Does burning them produce a different effect for a mistborn? Can mistborn even burn them? Do you have to be an anti-mistborn? Can you alloy them with normal metals?

[Master Silver]

Someone else had mentioned that the anti-voidlight and anti-stormlight, is really just those substances at a different harmonic frequency. Thinking of light as a wave, they combine in such a way to cancel eachother out. Someone else also said something about canceling out the Shard's intent. With mistborn stuff, when they burn metal they are turning it into a form that can be used. Stormlight is already in that form. As far as I know Nightblood is the only weapon that acts in this way. Do we have any words of Sanderson on what happens to the stormlight Nightblood drinks and if he will ever be full (like full forever).