Black Holes and other strange things in the cosmere.

[BrechioSwordMouse he/him]

What if there are black holes in future cosmere books? Could this be the destruction of nightblood? Could supernovas take out a planet? This is just an idea but I thought it should be voiced.

If there is anything wrong with how I did tags or labeled this I'm sorry I joined just to put this out there.

[Aredor]

Welcome to the shard.

This is a very interesting idea! However, I seriously doubt that Mr. Sanderson would end his planets in such a way. I do think that having the ending to a book or a series could very well be a star threatening to explode, and a wall of investiture or something has to be put up to block it. Possibly a shard has to sacrifice themselves to block it. 

Your query brings up the very interesting question of what would happen if nightblood touched a black hole. 

[BrechioSwordMouse he/him]

I wouldn't think that a shard would die immediately but it would be interesting if something about the shard changed.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

Makes me real glad that Ruin died, since he could have easily destroyed most of the Cosmere by just making Scadrial's sun go supernova if he had won.

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, Ym and Cenn need love said:

What if there are black holes in future cosmere books? Could this be the destruction of nightblood?

I think that you could at least get rid of Nightblood this way, even if (somehow) the black hole can't technically destroy it; black holes warp spacetime so badly that just going near one can potentially send you into the far future, effectively deleting you from the rest of the universe even if you aren't technically destroyed. 

But who knows, the Spiritual Realm and Investiture do weird things to time, so perhaps such time dilation from the black hole wouldn't be as bad as one would think for a deifically Invested object.

[BrechioSwordMouse he/him]

Great point Trusk'our. I think it would be cool even if this is improbable that nightblood could somehow merge with the black hole and the black hole would start sucking up investiture.

1 hour ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Makes me real glad that Ruin died, since he could have easily destroyed most of the Cosmere by just making Scadrial's sun go supernova if he had won.

Yeah that would have been bad. 

[alder24]

14 hours ago, Ym and Cenn need love said:

What if there are black holes in future cosmere books? Could this be the destruction of nightblood? Could supernovas take out a planet? This is just an idea but I thought it should be voiced.

If there is anything wrong with how I did tags or labeled this I'm sorry I joined just to put this out there.

Certainly black holes can not only exist in Cosmere, but also influence time in CR (WoB) and can be even created by invested arts (WoB). But would sticking Nightblood into a black hole destroy Nightblood - well, that's an interesting question, I would guess that’s possible, but there are easier ways to do so (give it to a Bondsmith - WoB). Although would it destroy Nightblood, or would Nigthblood destroy the black hole? Nightblood consumes everything, just like a black hole does. At one point Brandon called pure investiture, like Atium or Nightblood, a mini black hole (WoB), so throwing Nightblood into a black hole might work just like a black hole merger (what would gravitational waves released in such event do to a planet/star system closeby?)

Physics in Cosmere works almost in the same way as in our Universe, but with one addition - investiture is another form of matter andenergy. Therefore a supernova is just as deadly as it is here, and adding investiture to a star will affect it just like adding mass to it. Yes, it can take out a planet, unless a Shard intervenes and protects a planet from it, which is easily within Shard's capabilities. The Taldain system has a blue(-white) supergiant star, which lives for around 10 million years (which is very, very short) and can explode as supernova while being a blue supergiant (without becoming a red supergiant), therefore there is at least one candidate for a supernova in the near future of Cosmere, but Autonomy would most likely prevent it from happening, she is already keeping the system stable. I wonder, what would happen to the system if Autonomy were to get Splintered?

I personally always love the idea of weaponization of supernovae in sci-fi. What's better than a giant star exploding, outshining the entire galaxy?

14 hours ago, Aredor said:

I do think that having the ending to a book or a series could very well be a star threatening to explode, and a wall of investiture or something has to be put up to block it. Possibly a shard has to sacrifice themselves to block it. 

Shards can just ignore things worse than this, they exists in SR, where time and space are irrelevant:

Spoiler

faragorn

I recently saw on TV some info about some incredibly violent physical events in our universe, namely a collision between two black holes or a star quake on a Magnetar or Neutron Star. Is a shard holder sufficiently independent of the physical realm to be immune to even such mega-violent events, or would even one of them have a tough time shrugging it off?

Brandon Sanderson

Ruin and Preservation were, together, able to form a planet--so I'd say they could shrug that sort of thing off, depending on circumstances.

Stormlight Three Update #6 (Feb. 5, 2017)

 

13 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Makes me real glad that Ruin died, since he could have easily destroyed most of the Cosmere by just making Scadrial's sun go supernova if he had won.

True, it can be deadly to some nearby star systems (Cosmere is a star cluster, stars are much closer together than where Sun is), but Scadrial's star isn't massive enough, it's a sun-like star, it would have to be around 10 times more massive to go supernova - but a Shard can likely invest a star to make it more massive. However Scadiral's sun wasn't created by P&R so there might be some limitations to what Ruin can do with it (for example he can't just create a bunch of iron in a star's core). Realistically it would take a lot of time to make star go supernova. Realistically it would take a very long time to make a star go supernova, I doubt Ruin would want to wait that long. Plus I think that Ruin wouldn't do that - this is more like a mindless destruction, not a natural decay and entropy that Ruin represents.

12 hours ago, Ym and Cenn need love said:

Great point Trusk'our. I think it would be cool even if this is improbable that nightblood could somehow merge with the black hole and the black hole would start sucking up investiture.

Black holes already work like this in Cosmere - Investiture is the same as matter and energy. But black holes don't suck, things are falling into them, if there is any investiture near a black hole it will fall into it, just like matter or light will here. Everything that is some distance away from a black hole will be fine. Black holes don't suck, they are just massive gravity wells.  

Spoiler

Questioner

Is Scadrial losing mass when people burn metals?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, technically it is, but Investiture is another dimension to matter.

Questioner

So it doesn't lose mass, it becomes Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

It becomes Investiture... 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)  

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by alder24