Salt and Spores

[Ashbringer he/him]

So spores can be killed by two different things. Silver, which has shown up on Threnody and has been hinted to have other abilities. And also salt.

Do we know why salt kills aether spores? Is it just a biological thing, where salt kills the actual spore instead of severing some Connection? Or is there a reason in the magic system, and have we seen anything like it before?

I don't really have any theories, although I don't think it's biological (as salt in the air killed spores around the Rock, which is strange... especially because salty air is usually salt from water, and water definitely does not kill spores ).

[Leuthie]

Salt acts on many proteins to expose their hydrophobic regions. Spores need water. Introduce salt and the hydrophobic regions of the spores will cause them to lose the water they have, causing death. Like snails or slugs.

[FollowYourMuse she/her]

20 hours ago, Leuthie said:

Salt acts on many proteins to expose their hydrophobic regions. Spores need water. Introduce salt and the hydrophobic regions of the spores will cause them to lose the water they have, causing death. Like snails or slugs.

I like this biological reason. I was thinking that as far as magical system Salts can also be metals, like Sodium Chloride (salt), or Nickel Chloride, Copper sulfate. Magnesium sulfate... 

[lacrossedeamon]

54 minutes ago, FollowYourMuse said:

I like this biological reason. I was thinking that as far as magical system Salts can also be metals, like Sodium Chloride (salt), or Nickel Chloride, Copper sulfate. Magnesium sulfate... 

Not sure how important this would be since the the chemical make up of polestones on Roshar don't seem to effect how it interacts with the Investiture systems

[Leuthie]

18 hours ago, FollowYourMuse said:

I like this biological reason. I was thinking that as far as magical system Salts can also be metals, like Sodium Chloride (salt), or Nickel Chloride, Copper sulfate. Magnesium sulfate... 

Salt as a general term refers to the result of an acid-base reaction, where the hydrogen is replaced by another cation, usually a metal. That fact could be significant, and might even be something that could be explored in the future with Scadrial magic systems. But I think the salt referred to in spore deaths is sodium chloride and Brandon means the death of the spores to be the same reaction as snails and other water sensitive creatures when in contact with sodium chloride.  

[nerpspren]

I was wondering this too, but also why salt is never really mentioned again after we leave the rock? You'd think there'd be some uses for it, assuming it's more plentiful/cheaper than silver as it is on our world 

[lacrossedeamon]

1 hour ago, nerpspren said:

I was wondering this too, but also why salt is never really mentioned again after we leave the rock? You'd think there'd be some uses for it, assuming it's more plentiful/cheaper than silver as it is on our world 

Probably because its not as durable as silver so it most likely has more niche applications

[Brgst13]

Also our planet has large amounts of readily available salt because it is dissolved in our oceans.  Lumar does not have a saltwater ocean, so salt is likely not as easily obtainable.

[lacrossedeamon]

2 hours ago, Brgst13 said:

Also our planet has large amounts of readily available salt because it is dissolved in our oceans.  Lumar does not have a saltwater ocean, so salt is likely not as easily obtainable.

Hence why the miners weren’t allowed to leave Diggen’s Point. Too rare and valuable to not have a guaranteed workforce.

[king of nowhere]

salt is relatively common in the universe, because both sodium and chlorine are relatively common elements. we have it in the ocean in our world because, salt being soluble, whatever rock salt we had was melted by the rain and carried to the ocean (some rare exceptions for salt that was trapped under watertight stone, hence the salt mines). Since on lumar there are locations where it never rains, it would be perfectly natural to find rocks made of salt in those locations.

 

besides its use on the spores, salt is also useful for food preservation, and it is a necessary nutrient - every living cell contains some of it. So, salt mines have an economic value in any case.

 

narratively, I think it was salt because we can accept an island made of saltstone, especially after we're told that it never rains over it.

An island made of silver? not so much. on a cosmic scale, it's over 1000 times more rare. And on a planetary crust, it's even more rare, because it's dense and it tends to sink to the bottom, while sodium and chlorine are light and float. and those  abundances are related to cosmic constant on how difficult each nuclide is to make, so they would hold true for the cosmere as well. some individual variations, yes, depending on the individual supernovas that seeded each protoplanetary nebula. But silver is always going to be a lot more rare than sodium chloride.

[Frustration he/him]

2 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

salt is relatively common in the universe, because both sodium and chlorine are relatively common elements. we have it in the ocean in our world because, salt being soluble, whatever rock salt we had was melted by the rain and carried to the ocean (some rare exceptions for salt that was trapped under watertight stone, hence the salt mines). Since on lumar there are locations where it never rains, it would be perfectly natural to find rocks made of salt in those locations.

 

besides its use on the spores, salt is also useful for food preservation, and it is a necessary nutrient - every living cell contains some of it. So, salt mines have an economic value in any case.

 

narratively, I think it was salt because we can accept an island made of saltstone, especially after we're told that it never rains over it.

An island made of silver? not so much. on a cosmic scale, it's over 1000 times more rare. And on a planetary crust, it's even more rare, because it's dense and it tends to sink to the bottom, while sodium and chlorine are light and float. and those  abundances are related to cosmic constant on how difficult each nuclide is to make, so they would hold true for the cosmere as well. some individual variations, yes, depending on the individual supernovas that seeded each protoplanetary nebula. But silver is always going to be a lot more rare than sodium chloride.

There are other salts as well.

I wonder if they would also be effective.

[king of nowhere]

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

There are other salts as well.

I wonder if they would also be effective.

well, I was going by the classic layman definition of salt.

the chemical definition opens up other issues. for example, dolomite is a carbonate of calcium and magnesium, so it's a salt. but it's also a rock. do we count it as salt, or as rock? many rocks are technically salts, and if those had any effect on spores, they'd have found out.

there is also the issue of abundance. as I said, sodium chloride is abundant because its elements are abundant on a universal level. most other elements are more rare, but some are similarly abundant. iron is very commonplace, do iron salts work on spores? how about calcium? magnesium? potassium?

all in all, on lumar they are advanced enough to distinguish those salts. if they worked on the spores, they would have found out. possibly some rare element would also work and they never discovered it, but it's unlikely.

[Leuthie]

Salt in oceans is the result of runoff from land and openings in the sea floor. Salts are ubiquitous in rocks, and happen to be the primary chemical compound that can be dissolved from rocks. As rainfall runoff runs over land, it dissolves things, and the primary things it dissolves are salts, and the bulk of these salts are Alkali metal salts, primarily Sodium Chloride. If they're mining salt on Lumar, then the oceans below the layer of spores are salty oceans. It's just how huge containers of runoff work.

A good number of salts create osmosis effects in cells in the same way table salt does. But not all of them. Based on the fact that water is the most important thing to Aethers and their spores, I'd put all my money down on the osmosis effect of table salt being the mechanic that causes spores to die, not on some magical metal reaction thing.