2nd most powerful order

[alder24]

14 hours ago, therunner said:

Yes that is true. But if the atoms can decay and one of the products is neutron, this neutron can then induce fission of other atoms, leading to fission.

And thank you for correcting me on U236, I have somehow confused it and though it was fissile. I think I meant to talk about Pu238 again, but somehow uranium came to my mind. Apologies on that.

Yes, you can, so either you have to find fissile material that decays by releasing neutrons, or make 2 elements, one is fissile/fissionable, the other is neutron emitter.

However Pu238 is not fissile, it's fissionable. It can be split only with fast neutrons but can't sustain chain reaction, so it's not fissile like Pu239 or U235. But we are talking about artificially sustained chain reaction, so as long as we have investiture, we can create more elements by using weak force, necessary to sustain our chain reaction. So any fissionable material can be used as we can suround it with a neutron emitter.

14 hours ago, therunner said:

I wonder just how destructive that would be Probably not very, now that I think about it. It would quickly decay, however there would be any repulsive force actually, so it would not be that interesting most likely :/

It would be useful to study neutronium matter properties though!

It would be extremely radioactive. It isn't held by degeneracy pressure so by beta decay it would just decay into H and break away and release energy. But an atom made just out of neutrons would look so pretty!

14 hours ago, therunner said:

But taking Iron atom Fe54, and turning all neutrons into protons so that we now have 'xenon' isotope with no neutrons to stabilize the nucleaus would probably lead to fun outcome

YES!  I don't know how much proton radiation is comparable to neutron radiation in terms of danger. But still so much energy! 

14 hours ago, therunner said:

Well true, but that energy is there in a very specific form (mass defect) and is released in a very particular way.
So you either have to induce the particle exchange/fission through some particle interaction, or by adjusting the force directly (i.e. manipulating its coupling constant, which for strong force would have a bunch of knock-on effects).

The above is presuming that while Invested art allows for manipulation of PR forces, it does so through pre-existing interaction channels, or at most through creating fictitious particles to interact with (like the fake supermassive object for Lashings in Gravitation Surge).

14 hours ago, therunner said:

Yeah, but the somehow is doing quite a lot of lifting there, in my mind

The energy is only there because of 1) existence of strong force and associated charges 2) presence of particles carrying those charges.
So to manipulate that energy you have to either a) change the particles (like weak/strong/em forces allow) b ) change the coupling constant of the strong force directly

Those are the only options, if we assume that the Invested art has to use/fake pre-exisiting interaction pathways (like Gravitation lashing and its fake mass).

I see your point. You are saying that by manipulating strong force you manipulate force carrying particles - gluons for holding quarks and pions for proton-neutrons I think? So how can you manipulate strong forces?

1. reduce the range of strong force interactions - nucleus breaks apart and release the energy that was holding it
2. reduce the strength of strong force - nucleus can't be held together and breaks apart releasing the energy
3. play with gluons/pions - with this you can just do whatever you want

Trying to explain gravitation lashing with particle physics - lashing is using graviton particles that bind Windrunner to Roshar and "change" their source of interactions. Half strength lashing, creating weightlessness, would take half of gravitons and "bind" them in the opposite direction. 1g lashing upwards would take all gravitons and bind them in interactions between Windrunner and "up". 2g would use investiture to create gravitons (or increase the energy carried by them?) to strengthen interactions etc. I think that is a better explanation than creating a fake mass. But using General Relativity, lashings would sort of manipulate local gravity well (spacetime curvature) for a Windrunner, but here are the problems - why only Windrunner is affected by this, and immense amounts of energy it would take to do so with the gravity well of the whole planet. I'm not sure how to explain lashings with General Relativity.

So if gravitons can be manipulated this way, and can be made with investiture, then gluons/pions can also be manipulated that way. You can create those particles and create a strong force between something that doesn't have it. If you can create them, you can also destroy those particles, freeing the energy that they are holding and "breaking" the strong force between particles. Even without destroying them, you can change the subatomic particles they interact with to those outside of their range. Because gluons/pions can’t "go" that far, it would “break the bond” and release the energy.

 

And to clarify, we can create fission just by using weak forces, but we need to create necessary elements first in proper combination. Turning every subatomic particle into just neutrons or protons would result in spectacular things. If we have very heavy elements, we can prepare it for a real fission. You made a great case for it.

 

13 hours ago, Frustration said:

This is why I love the shard.

Initial question: what's the second most powerful order?

The conversation: how do nukes work, and what happens when we turn everything into everything else?

Oh, so that was the original topic. Whoopsy  

Congrats on becoming a Sliver!

Edited February 12, 2023 by alder24

[therunner he/him]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

Yes, you can, so either you have to find fissile material that decays by releasing neutrons, or make 2 elements, one is fissile/fissionable, the other is neutron emitter.

However Pu238 is not fissile, it's fissionable. It can be split only with fast neutrons but can't sustain chain reaction, so it's not fissile like Pu239 or U235. But we are talking about artificially sustained chain reaction, so as long as we have investiture, we can create more elements by using weak force, necessary to sustain our chain reaction. So any fissionable material can be used as we can suround it with a neutron emitter.

Ah, alright, thanks for more information
And yeah, so long as we can use Investiture to source elements/neutrons we could bypass this limitation (i.e. do something like turn ~1% of mass into neutrons, and then the rest into fissionable or better yet fissile material. That could at least partially work out, no?

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

It would be extremely radioactive. It isn't held by degeneracy pressure so by beta decay it would just decay into H and break away and release energy. But an atom made just out of neutrons would look so pretty!

That makes sense, though the decay would take time on order of minutes (going by half-life of neutron), so in the mean time they could get captured by surrounding atoms (and possibly trigger fission, depending on kinetic energy they would gain).

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

YES!  I don't know how much proton radiation is comparable to neutron radiation in terms of danger. But still so much energy!

Probably less dangerous, due to charge it would not really split atoms so easily. Plus it would not cause neutron activation, so that is bonus.
I would wager the explosiveness would be nuclear-level, but there would be less fall out due to lack of neutrons and radioactive elements in the leftovers (as there would be only protons).

Though if there was enough energy some protons could be transmuted to neutrons, but that would require a lot of it to produce neutrino-antineutrino pairs.
 

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

I see your point. You are saying that by manipulating strong force you manipulate force carrying particles - gluons for holding quarks and pions for proton-neutrons I think? So how can you manipulate strong forces?

1. reduce the range of strong force interactions - nucleus breaks apart and release the energy that was holding it
2. reduce the strength of strong force - nucleus can't be held together and breaks apart releasing the energy
3. play with gluons/pions - with this you can just do whatever you want

Yes! That is what i meant! And yep, gluons for quarks/pions for hadrons in general.
Though my point was a bit more 'fundamental', the only thing controlling the strong force is the coupling constant and nothing else. So both the range and strength can only be controlled together (assuming you can 'control' strong force).
The range of the force is given by 1) Asymptotic freedom for original strong force  2) Mass of pions, which can be though of as resulting from the non-exactness of chiral symmetry.
Neither of these leave you anything to control outside of the original coupling constant of strong force.

If you can play directly with gluons (as in make them behave unphysically), that would be veery interesting. Though then we could also play directly with W+- and Z bosons for weak force with Stoneshaping, which would allow us to forcefully trigger a lot of stuff

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

Trying to explain gravitation lashing with particle physics - lashing is using graviton particles that bind Windrunner to Roshar and "change" their source of interactions. Half strength lashing, creating weightlessness, would take half of gravitons and "bind" them in the opposite direction. 1g lashing upwards would take all gravitons and bind them in interactions between Windrunner and "up". 2g would use investiture to create gravitons (or increase the energy carried by them?) to strengthen interactions etc. I think that is a better explanation than creating a fake mass. But using General Relativity, lashings would sort of manipulate local gravity well (spacetime curvature) for a Windrunner, but here are the problems - why only Windrunner is affected by this, and immense amounts of energy it would take to do so with the gravity well of the whole planet. I'm not sure how to explain lashings with General Relativity.

There is actually WoB basically explaining Lashing in terms of fake masses. The lashing basically created a fictitious supermassive object in the desired direction, that exists only in the spiritual realm and only the Windrunner is connected to it. And at the same time temporarily 'severs' the connection to planets gravity. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/305/#e11455 and https://wob.coppermind.net/events/406/#e14101 )

How this relates to gravitons is an open question, as any particle is basically just a smallest possible disturbance in given quantum field, but any classical field configuration cannot really be though of in those terms. (i.e. electrical field is not a bunch of actual photons moving back and forth, though it can be mathematically described using non-physical interaction with virtual particles).

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

So if gravitons can be manipulated this way, and can be made with investiture, then gluons/pions can also be manipulated that way. You can create those particles and create a strong force between something that doesn't have it. If you can create them, you can also destroy those particles, freeing the energy that they are holding and "breaking" the strong force between particles. Even without destroying them, you can change the subatomic particles they interact with to those outside of their range. Because gluons/pions can’t "go" that far, it would “break the bond” and release the energy.

So from Windrunner example any manipulation of other force would work by creating a fake spiritual illusion with given charge , that would act as if real for given other particle. So you could create 'fake particles', but not directly manipulate pre-existing ones. The only manipulation would be through this spiritual facsimile you could create.

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

And to clarify, we can create fission just by using weak forces, but we need to create necessary elements first in proper combination. Turning every subatomic particle into just neutrons or protons would result in spectacular things. If we have very heavy elements, we can prepare it for a real fission. You made a great case for it.

Thank you for the compliment

This is a very fun discussion for me

And apologies to @Frustration for derailing .

[alder24]

16 minutes ago, therunner said:

And yeah, so long as we can use Investiture to source elements/neutrons we could bypass this limitation (i.e. do something like turn ~1% of mass into neutrons, and then the rest into fissionable or better yet fissile material. That could at least partially work out, no?

Something like that. As long as those neutrons have enough energy and are sent into fissile material it will work.

25 minutes ago, therunner said:

Probably less dangerous, due to charge it would not really split atoms so easily. Plus it would not cause neutron activation, so that is bonus.

Bonus? I want it to be more dangerous! Making whole exposed body radioactive is a bonus! Neutrons are the best type of radiation!  

29 minutes ago, therunner said:

es! That is what i meant! And yep, gluons for quarks/pions for hadrons in general.
Though my point was a bit more 'fundamental', the only thing controlling the strong force is the coupling constant and nothing else. So both the range and strength can only be controlled together (assuming you can 'control' strong force).
The range of the force is given by 1) Asymptotic freedom for original strong force  2) Mass of pions, which can be though of as resulting from the non-exactness of chiral symmetry.
Neither of these leave you anything to control outside of the original coupling constant of strong force.

Well, here I'm lacking. We're digging deeper and deeper into physics. Looking at Yukawa potential it looks like only that coupling constant can be changed like you said. 

There is also a boring explanation that investiture directly provides energy to protons/neutrons to break them apart, releasing energy from strong nuclear forces. But that isn't manipulation of strong force and it's just... lacking physics? 

29 minutes ago, therunner said:

If you can play directly with gluons (as in make them behave unphysically), that would be veery interesting. Though then we could also play directly with W+- and Z bosons for weak force with Stoneshaping, which would allow us to forcefully trigger a lot of stuff

Oh yes that would be just beautiful  

46 minutes ago, therunner said:

There is actually WoB basically explaining Lashing in terms of fake masses. The lashing basically created a fictitious supermassive object in the desired direction, that exists only in the spiritual realm and only the Windrunner is connected to it. And at the same time temporarily 'severs' the connection to planets gravity. (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/305/#e11455 and https://wob.coppermind.net/events/406/#e14101 )

How this relates to gravitons is an open question, as any particle is basically just a smallest possible disturbance in given quantum field, but any classical field configuration cannot really be though of in those terms. (i.e. electrical field is not a bunch of actual photons moving back and forth, though it can be mathematically described using non-physical interaction with virtual particles).

I don't like the term supermassive, I hope there is no supermassive black hole in SR. It would complicate life for Shards  

But that can still work with gravitons. They mediate force of gravity, so the investiture "makes" an massive object in SR and ignores planet's gravity, binding you to that object, and gravitons would sitll work but now in SR. 

But trying to explain it from a general relativity perspective? Like Brandon said, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Gravity of objects in PR curves also CR (black hole have time dilation effects in CR as well as PR - https://wob.coppermind.net/events/467/#e14726). So it might also somehow disturb SR but it's timeless and spaceless so not really?  But if big amounts of investiture disturbs CR/PR like Shards, Stormfather etc. then that spiritual mass created by gravitation lashing would curve spacetime in PR/CR in a proper way. So that does make sense on an individual level, and that's good enough for me, so let's say connection can explain why it doesn't affect anybody else.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

So from Windrunner example any manipulation of other force would work by creating a fake spiritual illusion with given charge , that would act as if real for given other particle. So you could create 'fake particles', but not directly manipulate pre-existing ones. The only manipulation would be through this spiritual facsimile you could create

Yes, but if the same is applied to nuclear forces things get weird. Consider H2 nucleus, proton and neutron binded by a strong force. You create a spiritual neutron connected to the proton, and it changes the force to be binded to the proton and spiritual neutron. Real neutron is no longer bound by a strong force so it flies away. At this point no energy is released, as the "same" force is still being applied. Then you stop the surge, spiritual neutron disappears, strong force wants to come back and bind back the proton and the neutron, by the neutron is now gone, so it can't do that. And this is the moment when the energy from strong force is being released. Does it makes sense to you?

It works even better with He3, you seperate neutron from protons and you are left only with He2, and it just breaks apart. 

1 hour ago, therunner said:

And apologies to @Frustration for derailing .

Derailing? We hijack that train and shoot it straight into the skies escaping the Milky Way!

[cometaryorbit]

Relative Order strengths: IMO it really depends on the conditions of the fight, and probably also the Ideal level - some orders like Skybreakers don't get both Surges until 3rd ideal, but others like Windrunners do. Also, what powers are most effective will likely change based on whether the opponent has Plate or not  - specific attack powers (like Division or ranged Soulcasting) are probably less useful against opponents in Plate.

Even Bondsmiths, while they're clearly "the most powerful" Order in a broader sense, aren't necessarily the Order that would win a "cage match".

I'd argue that Elsecallers are the most dangerous Order in a lot of cross-Cosmere fights because of ranged Soulcasting, but Radiants holding a lot of Stormlight for a fight like this, and especially Radiants in living Plate, aren't really vulnerable to that.

Lightweavers are very powerful with prep time but not necessarily all that strong in a no prep close fight.

And we've seen very little of Dustbringers or Stonewards, which are both supposed to be pretty combative Orders. We also really don't know how effective Transportation is for Physical Realm mobility when used by a Radiant; it might not work the same as the Fused version.

The orders that might lose out in a no prep close fight are probably Lightweavers, Truthwatchers (though Renarin's surviving a thunderclast crush is impressive), and maybe Elsecallers/Willshapers (depending on how quickly they can use Transportation in the Physical Realm, and whether being chased off to the Cognitive but unharmed counts as a loss). The Edgedancer power set also doesn't seem to be all that combat focused, but supposedly historical Edgedancers were feared warriors.

 

Re Surgebinding and physics:

On 2/12/2023 at 2:31 PM, alder24 said:

But that can still work with gravitons. They mediate force of gravity, so the investiture "makes" an massive object in SR and ignores planet's gravity, binding you to that object, and gravitons would sitll work but now in SR. 

But trying to explain it from a general relativity perspective? Like Brandon said, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Gravity of objects in PR curves also CR (black hole have time dilation effects in CR as well as PR - https://wob.coppermind.net/events/467/#e14726). So it might also somehow disturb SR but it's timeless and spaceless so not really?  But if big amounts of investiture disturbs CR/PR like Shards, Stormfather etc. then that spiritual mass created by gravitation lashing would curve spacetime in PR/CR in a proper way. So that does make sense on an individual level, and that's good enough for me, so let's say connection can explain why it doesn't affect anybody else.

I don't think the massive object is *actually* created - in the Spiritual Realm or otherwise - thus no gravitational effects on spacetime (or Cognitive spacetime equivalent). The Lashing-object only "exists" to the thing or person Lashed. It's more like a faked up Connection ("spiritual gravitational bond") to an object that doesn't *actually* exist (objectively, to anyone/anything else).

IMO Surgebinding is basically reality editing, and that's why some people (like Nikli) talk about other magic systems as "Surgebinding", and why Odium talked about other Shards attacking Roshar when they discovered the greater power of the Surges. It's most obvious and terrifying for an Unchained Bondsmith, but I think all Surges basically work this way. Syl says natural laws are basically just an agreement between friends ... and the terms of that agreement can be altered.

Gravitation is temporarily redefining an object's or person's normally felt force of gravity to instead be "accelerate toward <this direction> at <Lashing strength>". Abrasion is "my coefficient of friction is now 0". Soulcasting is "this rock is now smoke", and then the Physical molecules and atoms are forced to adjust to correspond to the higher level Spiritual and Cognitive change. Cohesion seems to be about weakening intermolecular bonds/forces, and Tension about strengthening them. And so on (with Progression and Transportation being imo the least "physics based").

Edited February 16, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[alder24]

42 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I don't think the massive object is *actually* created - in the Spiritual Realm or otherwise - thus no gravitational effects on spacetime (or Cognitive spacetime equivalent). The Lashing-object only "exists" to the thing or person Lashed. It's more like a faked up Connection ("spiritual gravitational bond") to an object that doesn't *actually* exist (objectively, to anyone/anything else).

That's ok, it doesn't have to actually exist, what's important is the effect it causes, just call it "virtual mass" and treat it as a real one for “calculations”.

59 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I don't think the massive object is *actually* created - in the Spiritual Realm or otherwise - thus no gravitational effects on spacetime (or Cognitive spacetime equivalent). The Lashing-object only "exists" to the thing or person Lashed. It's more like a faked up Connection ("spiritual gravitational bond") to an object that doesn't *actually* exist (objectively, to anyone/anything else).

IMO Surgebinding is basically reality editing, and that's why some people (like Nikli) talk about other magic systems as "Surgebinding", and why Odium talked about other Shards attacking Roshar when they discovered the greater power of the Surges. It's most obvious and terrifying for an Unchained Bondsmith, but I think all Surges basically work this way. Syl says natural laws are basically just an agreement between friends ... and the terms of that agreement can be altered.

Gravitation is temporarily redefining an object's or person's normally felt force of gravity to instead be "accelerate toward <this direction> at <Lashing strength>". Abrasion is "my coefficient of friction is now 0". Soulcasting is "this rock is now smoke", and then the Physical molecules and atoms are forced to adjust to correspond to the higher level Spiritual and Cognitive change. Cohesion seems to be about weakening intermolecular bonds/forces, and Tension about strengthening them. And so on (with Progression and Transportation being imo the least "physics based").

You're right. That's how you would describe it in Cosmere terms. It's magic after all, it doesn't have to obey physics. However what I tried to do is to describe the effects of Surges with our physics. Which is doable to some degree. Just like force of Gravity is carried by gravitons particles in quantum physics, but Gravity doesn't work like this at all, and there is no currently working and proved model combining Gravity with quantum physics, the same way we can describe how Surges work even if they don't work like that at all, but they produce the same effects as our approximations would do. And that's what I was aiming for - tweak our physics to produce the same effects as Surges do.

Transportation can be easily explained by real physics - Alcubierre drive (warp drive) - you aren't moving through spacetime, you are moving spacetime around you insead. Physics of this work, if you can provide exotic matter. Cosmere has investiture.

37 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Syl says natural laws are basically just an agreement between friends ... and the terms of that agreement can be altered.

Gravitation is temporarily redefining an object's or person's normally felt force of gravity to instead be "accelerate toward <this direction> at <Lashing strength>". Abrasion is "my coefficient of friction is now 0".

Huh, this gave me the idea - what if Lashings just tweak with gravitational constant? Force of Gravity is a vector, negative gravitational constant would switch direction of the vector to the opposite. Doing 2, or 3 lashings multiplies constant by 2 or 3 etc. It would work in directions up/down, not really for those forces pointing sideways.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

First, investiture isn't energy. I say it often myself, it's difficult to wrap one's mind around, but I cringed a few times while reading this otherwise awesome thread.

On 2/16/2023 at 0:16 PM, alder24 said:

Huh, this gave me the idea - what if Lashings just tweak with gravitational constant? Force of Gravity is a vector, negative gravitational constant would switch direction of the vector to the opposite. Doing 2, or 3 lashings multiplies constant by 2 or 3 etc. It would work in directions up/down, not really for those forces pointing sideways.

It could work for other direction by using gravatational forces of other objects and potentially even parts of your body. However, that isn't how it works.

On 2/12/2023 at 0:31 PM, alder24 said:

But trying to explain it from a general relativity perspective? Like Brandon said, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Gravity of objects in PR curves also CR (black hole have time dilation effects in CR as well as PR - https://wob.coppermind.net/events/467/#e14726). So it might also somehow disturb SR but it's timeless and spaceless so not really?  But if big amounts of investiture disturbs CR/PR like Shards, Stormfather etc. then that spiritual mass created by gravitation lashing would curve spacetime in PR/CR in a proper way. So that does make sense on an individual level, and that's good enough for me, so let's say connection can explain why it doesn't affect anybody else.

I wonder if the SR would be timeless/spaceless if the investiture wasn't there. 

[alder24]

7 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

First, investiture isn't energy. I say it often myself, it's difficult to wrap one's mind around, but I cringed a few times while reading this otherwise awesome thread.

It is, in the same way that matter is energy in our Universe.

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

[...] Basically, when you go into the cosmere, we've got matter, we've got energy here. You've got matter, energy, and Investiture there, and you can get things out of Investiture back into matter, and stuff like that. There's always energy, there's entropy, there's always diffusement... it's basically, add to the laws of thermodynamics a third item, and that's how we word it.

Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 (Sept. 21, 2017)

 

Brandon Sanderson

[...] I would not call it nuclear because it's not the same exact thing. But there is a Cosmere equivalent. To - I mean, you could do nuclear power just the same in the Cosmere, but since we have a third kind of state of matter, right? Matter, energy, Investiture. You have a third axis that, you know, you can release energy from matter, you can release investiture from matter, and things like that. So it's similar, but following its own rules that I have a little more - that are controlled by me, right, that are built on this idea. So once you add *inaudible*, matter now can exist in this third state, you get all sorts of weird things, which one of the things that happens is, you can get an energy release in sort of the same way. A reaction, I'm not going to call it a nuclear reaction, but of the same vein.

Boskone 54 (Feb. 19, 2017)

 

11 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

It could work for other direction by using gravatational forces of other objects and potentially even parts of your body. However, that isn't how it works.

Yeah, that could work if you manipulate the gravitational constant for each "distant" object separately. Planet for up and down, stars for every other direction.

12 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

I wonder if the SR would be timeless/spaceless if the investiture wasn't there. 

Who knows? The addition of Cognitive Realm and Spiritual Realm reminds me a bit of the String Theory, which works on 10-11 dimensions. Cognitive Realm would add 3 more space dimensions to 4 dimensions of Physical Realm. But Spiritual Realm would add 1? 0? I think 0, as that's a point. But what is a 0 dimensional place? Weird. But my 2 dimensional brain can't comprehend 11 dimensional Universe of the String Theory. Maybe Cosmere physics works like the String Theory, but we don't understand it yet because we think of it in too few dimensions? 

Spoiler

 

[IlstrawberrySeed]

22 minutes ago, alder24 said:

It is, in the same way that matter is energy in our Universe.

That's what I was refrencing, but I've never though of them as the same thing. Also, no one ever calls matter energy or vice versa AFAIK, so why do it for the cosmere? I agree with the rest of the post.

Edited February 22, 2023 by IlstrawberrySeed

[alder24]

24 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

That's what I was refrencing, but I've never though of them as the same thing. Also, no one ever calls matter energy or vice versa AFAIK, so why do it for the cosmere? I agree with the rest of the post.

Matter literally is energy:

Quote

For example, the sum of the mass of the three quarks in a nucleon is approximately 12.5 MeV/c2, which is low compared to the mass of a nucleon (approximately 938 MeV/c2).The bottom line is that most of the mass of everyday objects comes from the interaction energy of its elementary components.

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by alder24

[IlstrawberrySeed]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Matter literally is energy:

 

learn something new every day.

[Sky Breaker]

An elsecaller could travel to the spiritual realm and gain safety from all the fighting then they could soulcast beads into highly radioactive elements which would degrade very quickly and would let out a shock and heat wave rinse and repeat until they are completely destroyed 

edit: sorry didn’t see the bit about soulcast nukes above 

Edited February 25, 2023 by Sky Breaker

[alder24]

8 hours ago, Sky Breaker said:

An elsecaller could travel to the spiritual realm and gain safety from all the fighting then they could soulcast beads into highly radioactive elements which would degrade very quickly and would let out a shock and heat wave rinse and repeat until they are completely destroyed 

Elsecallers have big advantage, but they can't go into Spiritual Realm, just to Cognitive Realm. Ignoring the fact that right now they don't know about radioactivity, Soulcaster would have to create a tons of radioactive material, for decay heat to be this high. And all Radiants can heal or are protected by a Shardplate so this won't do much. Creating criticality events (radioactive material exceeding critical mass and shape, releasing extreme radiation) would still do nothing to Radiants as radiation poisoning kills in the long term, not immediately. There are far more practical methods of using soulcasting, like nukes, or soulcasting ground below Radiant into liquid, when he fell in and sank, soulcasing it back to lead, trapping him inside. 

But both Willshapers and Lightweavers can look or even transfer into Shadesmar, so Elsecallers are not invulnerable. I wonder if you can just cut in PR with a Shardblade and cut Elsecaller in CR, it should be possible, because Shardblade cuts in all 3 realms, and can cut lines manifesting in SR.

[Heilven he/him]

On 2/16/2023 at 2:16 PM, alder24 said:

You're right. That's how you would describe it in Cosmere terms. It's magic after all, it doesn't have to obey physics. However what I tried to do is to describe the effects of Surges with our physics. Which is doable to some degree. Just like force of Gravity is carried by gravitons particles in quantum physics, but Gravity doesn't work like this at all, and there is no currently working and proved model combining Gravity with quantum physics, the same way we can describe how Surges work even if they don't work like that at all, but they produce the same effects as our approximations would do. And that's what I was aiming for - tweak our physics to produce the same effects as Surges do.

 

On 2/16/2023 at 1:00 PM, cometaryorbit said:

Re Surgebinding and physics:

I don't think the massive object is *actually* created - in the Spiritual Realm or otherwise - thus no gravitational effects on spacetime (or Cognitive spacetime equivalent). The Lashing-object only "exists" to the thing or person Lashed. It's more like a faked up Connection ("spiritual gravitational bond") to an object that doesn't *actually* exist (objectively, to anyone/anything else).

IMO Surgebinding is basically reality editing, and that's why some people (like Nikli) talk about other magic systems as "Surgebinding", and why Odium talked about other Shards attacking Roshar when they discovered the greater power of the Surges. It's most obvious and terrifying for an Unchained Bondsmith, but I think all Surges basically work this way. Syl says natural laws are basically just an agreement between friends ... and the terms of that agreement can be altered.

Gravitation is temporarily redefining an object's or person's normally felt force of gravity to instead be "accelerate toward <this direction> at <Lashing strength>". Abrasion is "my coefficient of friction is now 0". Soulcasting is "this rock is now smoke", and then the Physical molecules and atoms are forced to adjust to correspond to the higher level Spiritual and Cognitive change. Cohesion seems to be about weakening intermolecular bonds/forces, and Tension about strengthening them. And so on (with Progression and Transportation being imo the least "physics based").

So this actually gets me on what I think makes surgebinding different from other magic systems, because I actually don't think stormlight is used as an actual energy source. Rather, stormlight is used to manipulate spiritual and cognitive aspects, which then go on to affect the real world.

So for lashings, you use stormlight to Connect something to something else (with adhesion, which I also think is actually just Connection but that's another story), or Connect to a direction. So spiritually and cognitively you are no longer influenced by the gravity of the ground. This then bleeds into the real world, where you feel gravity in a different direction. But you don't get the energy from the stormlight, the stormlight exclusively holds the connection. That's why fused don't need continuous investiture when using gravitation, that energy instead comes from your surroundings in the form of heat (this is supported in a few different places, large uses of surgebinding is usually associated with frost or dew forming). The same is likely true for all surges, with the exception being transportation. Transportation just changes your position (either in the physical realm or shadesmar). This doesn't necessarily require energy, although I'm not sure I really understand ptp teleportation in the cosmere.

I do think there are exceptions, namely radiant healing. Although I think radiant healing is less of a feature of surgebinding and more of a feature of being heavily invested, similar to elantrians or returned. However for basically every surge I think it makes more sense that it is impacting the cognitive and spiritual natures of objects and people, rather than actively preforming work via investiture.

Fabrials definitely consume investiture tho, in fact that's likely a method by which work is done via surgebinding. You essentially feed the "spren" of an object investiture, and in return it does what you want with the surge you used.

SA5 released chapter spoilers:

Spoiler

This also explains why certain uses of surges stay forever now that Urithiru is powered up. I don't think it's the investiture being refreshed, but rather the investiture no longer bleeding out.

So yeah basically I think surgebinding has to do with altering things in the cognitive and spiritual realm, or put in other words, "rewriting reality". I think this is backed up by just about every example, but my memory has been known to be shaky so I could be missing a few examples.

[Letryx13]

Honestly, all of the orders have their own strengths, so it's kind of hard to rank them against each other.  I personally rank SoulCasting as the most practical and second most powerful ability after BondSmith powers, so I would call either LightWeavers or ElseCallers the second most powerful.  It's probably the most difficult to learn after BondSmith powers too.

On the other hand, pretty much all the orders have specific strengths that work in different situations, so it's hard to pin down a specific hierarchy of strength and power.  Aside from WillShapers and TruthWatchers, all of the orders have abilities that are useful in combat.  WindRunners, SkyBreakers, EdgeDancers, and DustBringers all have maneuverability, two of which also have the ability to melt rocks and burn through wood.  WindRunners also have a numbers advantaged, as some people in this thread have noted.  LightWeaves and ElseCallers can SoulCast, which is so versatile and powerful it's in a league of its own.  And StoneWards can manipulate inanimate objects into all sorts of things, giving them a lot of control of their environment.  Anyone without Gravitation is going to be in trouble there.  So it's really hard to gauge the orders against each other.

Yes, I know that TruthWatchers have access to Illumination; it's the order I belong to according to the Sanderson website quiz and I'm happy about that. But given how difficult it must be, since we've never heard of it happening yet with ancient radiants or modern, it's probably not something many people could do, even with the appropriate knowledge base.  My guess is the only person with access to Illumination that will be creating lasers anytime soon is Hoid.  And in order to really rank an order's strength compared to another, difficulty in learning and using an ability needs to be taken into consideration.  Otherwise, we're just talking about which order is potentially the most powerful.  This idea applies to SoulCasting as well, but I think that power still outweighs the difficulty of learning it, especially since lasers would be a specialized derivative of Illumination, not the core ability.