Refraction and Bendalloy Bubbles *SPOILERS*

[Deus Ex Biotica]

I suppose that makes sense, though deflection that powerful really seems like it ought to harm humans, or at least destroy guns/clothing they have at the time, if they pass through.

[Vine]

I've been thinking about this problem for a while now, and the only solution that I can come up with is that temporal bubbles don't affect a geometric sphere of space. They are more like a field with the property that any 'object' that is all or partially inside the field is affected by the temporal change. When an 'object' passes through the boundary of the temporal field it transitions to the new reference frame all at once. This avoids the pancaking that really should happen if the bubble is a hard boundary. And because 'objects' passing through the barrier do decelerate to match the world frame, they experience the 'jostling' that Wax felt when they fell through the bubble. That could also explain the deflection of bullets as they pass through.

Another plus for this theory is that it could explain why there are no red shifting effects. Because light is not an 'object,' it is not affected by the temporal field.

Now, this whole theory hinges directly on how we define the word 'object,' and I don't have a good formal definition, but I suspect that it has something to do with both the physical and cognitive aspects of objects. I also have some unformed theories about how this relates to spren, but that requires more thought.

[Arcanist Lupus]

I've been thinking about this problem for a while now, and the only solution that I can come up with is that temporal bubbles don't affect a geometric sphere of space. They are more like a field with the property that any 'object' that is all or partially inside the field is affected by the temporal change. When an 'object' passes through the boundary of the temporal field it transitions to the new reference frame all at once. This avoids the pancaking that really should happen if the bubble is a hard boundary. And because 'objects' passing through the barrier do decelerate to match the world frame, they experience the 'jostling' that Wax felt when they fell through the bubble. That could also explain the deflection of bullets as they pass through.

Another plus for this theory is that it could explain why there are no red shifting effects. Because light is not an 'object,' it is not affected by the temporal field.

Now, this whole theory hinges directly on how we define the word 'object,' and I don't have a good formal definition, but I suspect that it has something to do with both the physical and cognitive aspects of objects. I also have some unformed theories about how this relates to spren, but that requires more thought.

Object: n. Anything that falls when dropped.

More seriously, though, I like your suggestion. It might resolve the problems we've been having.

[Deus Ex Biotica]

Elegant and logical, Vine. I shall use that until I see something more official - thanks!

Edited November 30, 2011 by Deus Ex Biotica

[Aiken Frost]

I've been thinking about this problem for a while now, and the only solution that I can come up with is that temporal bubbles don't affect a geometric sphere of space. They are more like a field with the property that any 'object' that is all or partially inside the field is affected by the temporal change. When an 'object' passes through the boundary of the temporal field it transitions to the new reference frame all at once. This avoids the pancaking that really should happen if the bubble is a hard boundary. And because 'objects' passing through the barrier do decelerate to match the world frame, they experience the 'jostling' that Wax felt when they fell through the bubble. That could also explain the deflection of bullets as they pass through.

Another plus for this theory is that it could explain why there are no red shifting effects. Because light is not an 'object,' it is not affected by the temporal field.

Now, this whole theory hinges directly on how we define the word 'object,' and I don't have a good formal definition, but I suspect that it has something to do with both the physical and cognitive aspects of objects. I also have some unformed theories about how this relates to spren, but that requires more thought.

That's was always how I saw it too. I agree wholeheartedly.

[happyman]

Object: n. Anything that falls when dropped.

More seriously, though, I like your suggestion. It might resolve the problems we've been having.

Technically, in our world, light falls when dropped. It just doesn't drop very far under human-livable circumstances. Doesn't say much about the Cosmere, of course.

[Arcanist Lupus]

Technically, in our world, light falls when dropped. It just doesn't drop very far under human-livable circumstances. Doesn't say much about the Cosmere, of course.

Good point. How about this:

Object: n. Anything with a Cognitive aspect.

Edited November 30, 2011 by Ookla the Insatiable

[Deus Ex Biotica]

Technically, we have no idea whether light has a Cognitive Aspect.

[Aradel]

Wax and Marasi exited a time bubble during the assassination attempt.

Page 164

...Waxillium grabbed Marasi, pulling her over with a yelp. He rolled onto his back, holding her tightly atop him...

...He amplified his weight...

Page 165

...The wood crunched, then burst, exploding downward. Waxillium dropped out of Wayne's bubble of speed and hit real time, the shift jostling him....

Jostling implies some kind of kinetic energy exchange. Since he didn't hit anything physical and the only kinetic energy involved was his own momentum, something about moving from "compressed time" to "real time" disrupted his momentum.

... the only solution that I can come up with is that temporal bubbles don't affect a geometric sphere of space. They are more like a field with the property that any 'object' that is all or partially inside the field is affected by the temporal change....

...Another plus for this theory is that it could explain why there are no red shifting effects. Because light is not an 'object,' it is not affected by the temporal field.

Temporal bubbles *have* to affect a geometric space. Space and Time are inseparable. Also, Photons are objects too. The easy answer for the red-shift is that light moves at *THE SPEED OF LIGHT* twenty seconds of compressed time is nothing to a photon.

(Paraphrasing Peter Because I can't find the post again.) "It has something to do with the conservation of momentum."

My theory (with my limited understanding of physics, so don't take it for granted.) is that the "edge" of the bubble is a kind of microscopic "stretched" area of space-time because the Slider is compressing all the space-time inside the bubble. When something hits that "stretched" portion it's like something being weightless and suddenly the gravity's turned back on. Suddenly there's space-time interaction that wasn't there before and has to be taken into account.

Note that "turning the gravity back on" is not the same as falling into a gravitational pull. That would be a gradual change in space-time. Crossing the "edge" of a bendalloy or cadmium bubble is sudden.

Also I think a few people have asked how you could get shot at from outside a cadmium bubble if bullets are deflected. The easy answer is that they keep shooting until one hits you, they have all the time in to world.

[Arcanist Lupus]

Temporal bubbles *have* to affect a geometric space. Space and Time are inseparable. Also, Photons are objects too. The easy answer for the red-shift is that light moves at *THE SPEED OF LIGHT* twenty seconds of compressed time is nothing to a photon.

In this universe. The Cosmere doesn't necessarily play by the same rules ours does.

[Aradel]

In this universe. The Cosmere doesn't necessarily play by the same rules ours does.

Wait, Scadrial has magical light too!? I draw on the power of

! (sorry couldn't help it, warning about mild language in the link.)

I think the Cosmere breaks as few of our laws of physics as possible. I haven't run the math on if there really should be a red-shift or not, but I'm willing to accept the speed of light answer for myself.

[Arcanist Lupus]

Another random thought. If the bullets deflect to an intrinsic principle of crossing the edge of the time bubble, wouldn't that mean that light should be similarly scattered and/or refracted?

If my logic above is correct, then this could implie that the refraction of the bullets is caused by an interaction with the air at the edges of the bubble, not the bubble itself.

Edited December 1, 2011 by Ookla the Insatiable

[Aradel]

Another random thought. If the bullets deflect to an intrinsic principle of crossing the edge of the time bubble, wouldn't that mean that light should be similarly scattered and/or refracted?

If my logic above is correct, then this could implie that the refraction of the bullets is caused by an interaction with the air at the edges of the bubble, not the bubble itself.

Wow, good call. That would make a lot more sense. The bullet, while transitioning back to normal time, hits "slow air" and gets deflected slightly.

[Arcanist Lupus]

Also, could this be explained as a bizarre manifestation of the uncertainty principle?

If interacting with the edge of the bubble defined the location of the bullet (or the atoms in the bullet) as being on the surface of the bubble, this would reduce the uncertainty of the position of the bullet, and therefore cause the velocity to become extremely uncertain, i.e. cause strange ricochets.

[Deus Ex Biotica]

Also I think a few people have asked how you could get shot at from outside a cadmium bubble if bullets are deflected. The easy answer is that they keep shooting until one hits you, they have all the time in to world.

Do they? Once the bullet is in the bubble, you'll notice it in short order, and drop the bubble. They might get one or two more shots, but Wax could take quite afew shots at people outside the bubble, too, and never bothers - with the defraction, it seems that even firing a dozen shots is no assurance of accuracy, and nobody mentions trying this even when the enemy is at close range (like Push, who would have been unlikely to be Allomatically prepared for the man he just shot in the head to magically empty a revolver into him), so I do not think that the defraction setting in at close range is the issue, either.

-- Deus Ex Biotica

P.S. Hitting someone in the bubble they do not wish to would be a factor, as well, though obviously that doesn't matter when the bubble has two targets, and Miles Hundredlives.

[Aradel]

Do they? Once the bullet is in the bubble, you'll notice it in short order, and drop the bubble. They might get one or two more shots, but Wax could take quite afew shots at people outside the bubble, too, and never bothers - with the defraction, it seems that even firing a dozen shots is no assurance of accuracy, and nobody mentions trying this even when the enemy is at close range (like Push, who would have been unlikely to be Allomatically prepared for the man he just shot in the head to magically empty a revolver into him), so I do not think that the defraction setting in at close range is the issue, either.

-- Deus Ex Biotica

P.S. Hitting someone in the bubble they do not wish to would be a factor, as well, though obviously that doesn't matter when the bubble has two targets, and Miles Hundredlives.

I guess it would depend on how much time was stretched. If you compare the timeshift to bendalloy bubbles. I remember reading twenty seconds in near an instant? How many bullets could a gunner get off in twenty seconds? By the time you notice the first bullet, there could be a lot more.

And the hostage thing is a good point too. I suppose it's only plausible to shoot inside the bubble if you don't really care who gets hit.

[Arcanist Lupus]

It might be a distance thing. If you're in the bubble, shooting out, then the bullet will get deflected very close to you, and very far from your target. If you're outside the bubble, shooting in, then the bullet will get deflected very close to your target. Therefore, a bullet shot inwards and deflected at the same angle as a bullet shot outwards will be much more likely to hit the target than a bullet shot outwards.

[Deus Ex Biotica]

As I mentioned, though, Wax (who is very experienced with speed bubbles) never tries to shoot even nearby enemies out of Wayne's bubbles (and if he could he certainly would have done so against Push, since catching that man off guard was a major goal of his through out the fight). Therefore, I think that even at close range, the deflection must be too severe.

[Vine]

Temporal bubbles *have* to affect a geometric space. Space and Time are inseparable. Also, Photons are objects too. The easy answer for the red-shift is that light moves at *THE SPEED OF LIGHT* twenty seconds of compressed time is nothing to a photon.

My theory (with my limited understanding of physics, so don't take it for granted.) is that the "edge" of the bubble is a kind of microscopic "stretched" area of space-time because the Slider is compressing all the space-time inside the bubble. When something hits that "stretched" portion it's like something being weightless and suddenly the gravity's turned back on. Suddenly there's space-time interaction that wasn't there before and has to be taken into account.

Note that "turning the gravity back on" is not the same as falling into a gravitational pull. That would be a gradual change in space-time. Crossing the "edge" of a bendalloy or cadmium bubble is sudden.

I don't think that we can use the compression of space time to explain what we are seeing. First, Photons are fundamentally different from objects. Photons are Bosons, carriers of the electromagnetic force. 'Objects' as we commonly use the term are composed of Leptons and quarks (electrons, protons, and neutrons). They are different, See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model . Plus the way that most people think about photons is wrong, it's not like a stream of little balls, it's a stream of wave packets. And for situations like this, where we have light traversing a boundary, its much easier (and more accurate) to just think of it as a wave.

So on the red-shifting, if I'm reading you correctly you are saying that over a 20:1 (20s inside, 1s outside) boundary, there won't be much red-shifting. Unfortunately, that is not the case. To simplify, let's think of it as a 10:1 boundary. Say you have a bucket of 10 oranges, and you throw them out of your speed bubble. If you throw them at 1 per second (1Hz) they will emerge from the outside at 10 in 1 second (10 Hz) that's an order of magnitude jump in frequency. Say we have a simple light source, a candle, one component of the light has a wavelength of 666nm, or a frequency of 450THz (4.5*10^14 Hz). Coming out of the bubble, the frequency will be increased by the same factor as the oranges, so 450THz becomes 4500THz. This is 67nm, or in the near UV range. Going the other way, the same red light on the outside would become 45THz, or 6700nm, or in the mid IR range. That's some significant red-shifting.

So, if we accurately treat this as a hard geometric boundary, there should be loads of red-shifting, and some serious pancaking/spagetification as objects move through the boundary. But, these are not the affects that we have seen, so some other system must be at work. Thus my theory about the boundary treating 'objects' differently.

[discipleofhoid]

So, if we accurately treat this as a hard geometric boundary, there should be loads of red-shifting, and some serious pancaking/spagetification as objects move through the boundary. But, these are not the affects that we have seen, so some other system must be at work. Thus my theory about the boundary treating 'objects' differently.

First, I love the word spagetification.

That said it makes a lot of since that that time speed up / slow down would have to do with more/something other then just the physical portion of the realmatic theory.

So far as we have seen the physical realm for the cosmere seems to more or less follow the physics that we are familiar with. But we have been completely ignoring the cognitive and spiritual aspect of the speed bubble. The spiritual aspects of the cosmere seem to have to deal with connections between objects/people/shards. So I don't think there would be much of a spiritual aspect(other then the power source) for speed bubbles.

However if the speed bubble is mainly a cognitive power with a reflection in the physical world, it could explain the way the borders of a speed bubble act. A cognitive presence would not take up space in the physical realm so when an objects cognitive presence passes the border of the bubble in the cognitive realm then the physical object suddenly slows to realtime causing the jostling/redirection. Because the border doesn't really exist in the physical realm there are no other physical consequences. Also because the cognitive aspect wouldn't really take up "space" the whole physical object slows at once so no spagetification.

This may also be how they can do FTL with the bubbles. If the energy lost when objects pass through the border is filtered into the Cognitive realm, maybe they can piggyback on the connection to move the speed bubble and everything inside of it to another location within the cognitive realm with the change being reflected in the physical realm.

I'm not quite sure if this thought works though so please pick it apart and let me know what parts wouldn't work/don't make sense.

[Lanscaper]

Umm, couldn't a simple explanation be that Marasi burnt some chromium, which negates Wayne's bendalloy...like she does it out of stress subconsciously?

[discipleofhoid]

Umm, couldn't a simple explanation be that Marasi burnt some chromium, which negates Wayne's bendalloy...like she does it out of stress subconsciously?

I don't think so - At least the way it is written implies otherwise. That said I suppose it could be possible. But that isn't near as interesting theory-wise.

The wood crunched, then burst, exploding downward. Waxillium dropped out of Wayne’s bubble of speed and hit real time, the shift jostling him. The next few moments were a blur. He heard the awesome sound of the explosion above—it hit with a wave of force. He released his metalmind and Pushed against the nails in the floor below them, trying to slow himself and Marasi.

Edited December 7, 2011 by discipleofhoid

[Arcanist Lupus]

Umm, couldn't a simple explanation be that Marasi burnt some chromium, which negates Wayne's bendalloy...like she does it out of stress subconsciously?

It would make far more sense for Wayne to have simply dropped the bubble. Even so, that's not what the text says. The text says they "dropped out" of the time bubble. This could be Wax misunderstanding exactly what is happening, but that's what the text says.

[Lanscaper]

It would make far more sense for Wayne to have simply dropped the bubble. Even so, that's not what the text says. The text says they "dropped out" of the time bubble. This could be Wax misunderstanding exactly what is happening, but that's what the text says.

Yeah, the text does not say that Marasi cancelled Wayne's bubble, but you do bring up a good point. What we read is Wax's viewpoint, and that is how he rationalizes the events, we don't know what Marasi was thinking, or Wayne for that matter, and thus we don't truly know what happened there.

I do forget though where Marasi and Wayne have that discussion of what happens when they are both burning their metals at once...Marasi quotes an University Study record is what I recall. But I remember that the two powers cancel each other.

The other thing that I can think of is that Wax's increased weight forces the distortion of the bubble to not warp him somehow...too 'massive' to break apart?

[Aeshdan]

I would think that the bubble would have the same frame of reference as it's creator. If you are on a train, the train appears stationary while the landscape moves; therefore, your bubble will move with the train. However you yourself don't appear stationary from your own point of view, when you take a step it appears as if you moved one step while the train stood still; therefore the bubble will not move with you. Basically when you create a bubble it will be rooted to whatever appears stationary from your frame of reference at the time you created the bubble.

So... I would guess it would move with a ship, which would be really cool if you could make one big enough to encompass the entire ship, but that would be a really tiny little ship.

This is my theory too.