Magic system exploits (free electricity)

[aetherbound he/him]

I was just in spanish class, thinking about Cosmere stuff, when I realized that Forgery can be used as a power source.

First, you build something that looks like this

Spoiler

Red = Soulstamp

Blue = string

Brown = wood

Silver/Grey = metal

You want to attach the lighter Soulstamp last, after stamping the wood directly below it. Your machine will change so you built it like this.

Spoiler

The metal part scrapes off the original, while the darker Soulstamp hits a different part of the machine. The string pulls the crank and generates power. Meanwhile, the machine thinks you built it like this.

Spoiler

That will repeat the cycle, and you now have free energy.

What other magic systems can be exploited in this way? Are there any actually good power sources?

[alder24]

33 minutes ago, Aetherbound said:

I was just in spanish class, thinking about Cosmere stuff, when I realized that Forgery can be used as a power source.

First, you build something that looks like this

  Hide contents

Red = Soulstamp

Blue = string

Brown = wood

Silver/Grey = metal

You want to attach the lighter Soulstamp last, after stamping the wood directly below it. Your machine will change so you built it like this.

  Hide contents

The metal part scrapes off the original, while the darker Soulstamp hits a different part of the machine. The string pulls the crank and generates power. Meanwhile, the machine thinks you built it like this.

  Hide contents

That will repeat the cycle, and you now have free energy.

Sorry, but I really don't understand what any of this does.  What is it meant to do, what movement is happening there, what soulstamps are meant to do?

But just in case, the law of thermodynamics are applied in Cosmere with addition of third state of matter, perpetual motion machine is not possible to make.

 

33 minutes ago, Aetherbound said:

What other magic systems can be exploited in this way? Are there any actually good power sources?

Awakening. 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

8 hours ago, alder24 said:

Sorry, but I really don't understand what any of this does.  What is it meant to do, what movement is happening there, what soulstamps are meant to do?

But just in case, the law of thermodynamics are applied in Cosmere with addition of third state of matter, perpetual motion machine is not possible to make.

 

Awakening. 

Yes. Awakening is the best way to do this on general. Single breath lifeless van basically work and move forever. The idea of electric hamster wheels has been shared before. 

Cloth rubbing together to generate heat as well. My big question there is would it be possible to turn that heat into energy. I guess it still isn't truly perpetual because of wear and tear as well as the fact that breath eventually decays. 

I wonder how many miles a lifeless could walk or run with frequently updated equipment before the joints get destroyed and bones wear away? Would a lifeless stay functional if you replaced all joints with good new hardware or would it stop functioning in those areas?  

[alder24]

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Yes. Awakening is the best way to do this on general. Single breath lifeless van basically work and move forever. The idea of electric hamster wheels has been shared before. 

No, they can't move forever, only for a few years as long as their body is in a good shape.

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Cloth rubbing together to generate heat as well. My big question there is would it be possible to turn that heat into energy. I guess it still isn't truly perpetual because of wear and tear as well as the fact that breath eventually decays. 

Heat is energy, but why bother with heat when you can just Awaken a belt to rotate a magnet in a coil - that is what every power plant is doing to produce electricity.

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I wonder how many miles a lifeless could walk or run with frequently updated equipment before the joints get destroyed and bones wear away? Would a lifeless stay functional if you replaced all joints with good new hardware or would it stop functioning in those areas?  

The more damage it accumulates, the more replacements you make the harder it is for the Breath to function. If you replace Lifeless' joints it would stop functioning at all, unless you give it another Breath.

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Three

Vivenna and the Mercenaries Wait in the Safe House after the Lifeless Attack on the Slumlords

Why does Jewels bother sewing up Clod? Why fix Lifeless at all? Denth's answer is a fairly good one, but it could use some more explanation.

You see, when one makes a Lifeless, the reason the Breath stays and won't come back is because the body of a recently deceased person is too "sticky" for Breaths. One Breath attaches to it, and because the body so clearly remembers being alive, it can use that Breath to power it. (Assuming you have the right Commands and can picture them correctly in your head when you make the Lifeless.)

However, the more the Lifeless is damaged, the less like the shape of a living person it is, and the more difficult it is for the Breath to keep that body going. Powering a body with only one Breath is hard—it requires the body to work mostly on its own. When you power a cloak or something like that, the Breaths need to provide a lot of energy, since there's no real muscles to use or skeletal structure to rely on.

So the more wounded a Lifeless becomes, the less well its Breath can keep it going. Eventually you'll need to stick a second Breath into it, then a third, all the way up until that Lifeless is nothing more than a bunch of bones you've Awakened. At that point, you might as well be using sticks or cloth.

Warbreaker Annotations (Dec. 9, 2010)

 

[Duxredux he/him]

On 2/2/2024 at 2:46 PM, Aetherbound said:

I was just in spanish class, thinking about Cosmere stuff, when I realized that Forgery can be used as a power source.

First, you build something that looks like this

  Reveal hidden contents

Red = Soulstamp

Blue = string

Brown = wood

Silver/Grey = metal

You want to attach the lighter Soulstamp last, after stamping the wood directly below it. Your machine will change so you built it like this.

  Reveal hidden contents

The metal part scrapes off the original, while the darker Soulstamp hits a different part of the machine. The string pulls the crank and generates power. Meanwhile, the machine thinks you built it like this.

  Reveal hidden contents

That will repeat the cycle, and you now have free energy.

What other magic systems can be exploited in this way? Are there any actually good power sources?

Okay... I think I get the general idea of the Soulstamp machine diagram. Essentially you wanted a machine that alternates between two Soulstamps to alter the dimension of a rod, shortening and lengthening it via Forgery, from there translate this motion into rotational energy. That sum it up?  There's a few obvious issues with the current design, first one is that Soulstamps require a 90 degree twist to activate them, and second one is there is no mechanism for reapplying ink to the Soulstamps. Now with some pins, slots, and springs, you should be able to make something that automatically and mechanically adds the rotation, but it breaks down without fresh ink. Without a method to reapply ink, this won't work in isolation, and trying to Forge more ink has non-trivial complications as well.

On 2/2/2024 at 3:30 PM, alder24 said:

But just in case, the law of thermodynamics are applied in Cosmere with addition of third state of matter, perpetual motion machine is not possible to make.

Well... you're not wrong, but this is asking for free energy, not perpetual motion. If by perpetual motion you mean constant power cycling through a system with no input, then no, that's not possible on a small scale, but the addition of power drawn from the Spiritual Realm or motion through the Cognitive and Spiritual realm complicates things. For example, if you place a photovoltaic cell next to the King's Drop, the gem will produce light and energy even if left in a vault for 200 years with no further intervention except maybe changing out the solar panel. That is effectively free power, but it does have the input of energy Brandon described as a lightbulb screwed directly into the Spiritual Realm. Unlike solar power, where a sun is technically not a renewable source and has a set lifespan, the Investiture belonging to a Shard operates on a cycle and naturally returns to the Spiritual Realm. So... I'm iffy on if this is perpetual motion at the scale of a Shard, but it is basically free energy. Granted, energy and Investiture is cheap on Roshar with it literally blowing through with every Highstorm.

I wouldn't call this perpetual motion either, but every Shardbearer with a Shardblade and 4th Ideal Radiant has freely summonable and dismissible mass at apparently negligible cost. Stick Kaladin at the top of a turbine and he can repeatedly summon a heavy pile of metal to spin the turbine with just a thought while he plays cards with Bridge Four. Basically no input of energy until he gets hungry and whatever it costs for him to have his neurons firing. The energy generated almost certainly far outweighs the energy it costs him. Probably no one would do this since using power armor and nigh-invulnerable swords that cut through anything to do a job that water, air, or dirt can do feels like a huge opportunity cost waste.

On 2/3/2024 at 12:06 AM, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

My big question there is would it be possible to turn that heat into energy.

Depends on the scale. A fair number of generators boil down to heating a gas or a liquid and capturing the motion generated by the heated objects expanding, becoming less dense, and rising by converting it into rotational energy and from there into electricity. Nuclear power basically is a giant boiler hooked up to a turbine, the advantages are in the density of the energy released per gram of material compared to other sources like natural gas or coal  as well as that we're getting better at refining the waste output. In this case though, friction is destructive by nature, so generating power through abrasion is very expensive and inefficient compared to other methods.

Power plants that use ambient sources like hydroelectric dams, windmills, and solar power have significant draw backs in that they are at the mercy of larger cycles that we don't directly have control over, namely the water cycle, weather patterns, and exposure to the sun. They are intermittent sources of energy, require significant land space, and have non-trivial constraints on where they can be located when civilization needs a constant source of electricity everywhere, thus a significant focus is placed on the ones that we have control over the inputs with nuclear reactor fuel, coal, or gas and do not need special consideration for location. It's not uncommon for intermittent power sources to put any excess energy into pumping water for storage since to a hydroelectric dam a lake is basically a battery.

 

 

Having said all that, I'd like to ask a few questions and potentially expand the scope of this topic. First question: how useful is electricity in the Cosmere? You can build modern society with it, but I'm having a hard time identifying what Invested technology even utilizes electricity. Modern technology is nothing to sneeze at, but we don't have FTL, teleportation, summonable power armor, fabrials, speed bubbles, necromancy, etc. etc.. Elendel has it, but I'm not sure on Southern Scadrial or Roshar. Second question: do we know of any way to convert electricity into Investiture? Electricity is useful because of technology that is run solely on electricity (computers) and because we can convert mechanical power to electricity, transport it long distances, and then convert it back to mechanical power. Spend your Breath on a cloth to turn a hand crank, and sure it can generate electricity, but thus far we can't convert that power back into Investiture and power technology that only uses Investiture. For that reason Feruchemy, Lift, and Bondsmiths are very interesting as they are some of the few abilities that can actively generate their own Investiture or convert other substances into Investiture. Crack this conversion step and this conversation becomes a lot more interesting because then we can convert a huge variety of energy sources to electricity and from there to Investiture. At that point, figuring out if putting a Lifeless elephant on a treadmill generates more energy than it consumes is very interesting.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Well... you're not wrong, but this is asking for free energy, not perpetual motion. If by perpetual motion you mean constant power cycling through a system with no input, then no, that's not possible on a small scale, but the addition of power drawn from the Spiritual Realm or motion through the Cognitive and Spiritual realm complicates things. For example, if you place a photovoltaic cell next to the King's Drop, the gem will produce light and energy even if left in a vault for 200 years with no further intervention except maybe changing out the solar panel. That is effectively free power, but it does have the input of energy Brandon described as a lightbulb screwed directly into the Spiritual Realm. Unlike solar power, where a sun is technically not a renewable source and has a set lifespan, the Investiture belonging to a Shard operates on a cycle and naturally returns to the Spiritual Realm. So... I'm iffy on if this is perpetual motion at the scale of a Shard, but it is basically free energy. Granted, energy and Investiture is cheap on Roshar with it literally blowing through with every Highstorm.

I wouldn't call this perpetual motion either, but every Shardbearer with a Shardblade and 4th Ideal Radiant has freely summonable and dismissible mass at apparently negligible cost. Stick Kaladin at the top of a turbine and he can repeatedly summon a heavy pile of metal to spin the turbine with just a thought while he plays cards with Bridge Four. Basically no input of energy until he gets hungry and whatever it costs for him to have his neurons firing. The energy generated almost certainly far outweighs the energy it costs him. Probably no one would do this since using power armor and nigh-invulnerable swords that cut through anything to do a job that water, air, or dirt can do feels like a huge opportunity cost waste.

I didn't know what Aetherbound meant so this remark was made "just in case." As you said, energy in your examples comes from the SR, so they aren't PMM, just like a lightbulb powered by an electric grid isn't PMM. "Free" energy and PMM are two different things. And because laws of thermodynamics are applied in Cosmere, that means that in Cosmere entropy increases or remains constant as well - this includes SR and investiture as well.

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

First question: how useful is electricity in the Cosmere? You can build modern society with it, but I'm having a hard time identifying what Invested technology even utilizes electricity.

A little. You can combine them both and have something like Fort's tablet, which has an Awakened circuit and is solar powered. I think that this would be the same for all kinds of devices and AI in Cosmere - Awakened computers, powered by electricity. Or like the device in SotD is also probably some form of device using A-bronze, partially powered by electricity.

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Second question: do we know of any way to convert electricity into Investiture?

One stupid way is to have a brass Ferring sitting next to an electric heater  But that would be probably equally as hard as converting energy into matter.

Edited February 5, 2024 by alder24

[heliovox]

I have been thinking about this recently as well, from a conservation of energy point of view.

I thiiiiink I am going to do a separate post on that in a little while, because I think conservation of investiture may be more of a thing than we may think, but in the very short term, combining stuff from mistborn and roshar...

 

I think you could probably soulcast gasoline.... and then *burn* it.

There may be some problems with this, but gasoline is the second most energy dense thing in common use on the earth (https://xkcd.com/1162/)

So this would produce a *lot* of energy.

 

You may see where I'm going with this.

I'm not *sure* uranium is a thing in cosmere, but I don't think it is implausible that you could soulcast uranium.

Or..... ummmmmmm.... anti-matter (more problems here, but I don't think they can't be overcome).

 

That is a lot of energy.

[alder24]

14 hours ago, heliovox said:

I have been thinking about this recently as well, from a conservation of energy point of view.

I thiiiiink I am going to do a separate post on that in a little while, because I think conservation of investiture may be more of a thing than we may think, but in the very short term, combining stuff from mistborn and roshar...

 

I think you could probably soulcast gasoline.... and then *burn* it.

There may be some problems with this, but gasoline is the second most energy dense thing in common use on the earth (https://xkcd.com/1162/)

So this would produce a *lot* of energy.

Investiture is energy, so nothing is lost and conservation of energy and investiture still applies here. Soulcasting uses investiture only as a fuel and that would circle back to the SR after a Soulcasting is done. The matter is conserved in the case of Soulcasting - the mass of the object you're Soulcasting is the same before and after it. For example 1 kg rock would turn into 1 kg of smoke.

So sure you can produce fossil fuels but that would cost you investiture, so you have to calculate if that's even cost efficient at all. You have to spend a lot of energy to "get" some energy. And because burning fossil fuels requires tons of material, I doubt it would be very efficient.

Does Roshar even need fossil fuels? What do you do with them? Burn them. What does it do? Boils water which spins magnets or coils. What does Roshar have? Fabrails that can move stuff. What does Roshar need to do? Use fabrials to spin magnets. Voilà - electricity fueled by investiture. They don't need to burn anything and this kind of a power plant would be more efficient than even a nuclear one, because heat is not lost in the process - there is no heat generated by Stormlight. Only friction is your problem, and imperfect gemstones.

Spoiler

Questioner

Your magic systems are very structured, and specific rules that dominate them. But are there any universal laws that apply to all of the magic systems in the cosmere together?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there's several of them. Basically, the most important one and relevant to people who enjoy real physics is that I consider something called Investiture to be a third state of matter and energy. So, instead of e=mc^2, we have a third thing, Investiture, in there. And you can change Investiture to matter or to energy. And so, because of that, that law that you can do this, is where we see a lot of the cosmere magics living.

[...]

ICon 2019 (Oct. 15, 2019)

 

Spoiler

Sorana (paraphrased)

Is Soulcasting volume- or mass-preserving?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It's mass-preserving, but there are some strange things going on and that's why we don't get as much explosions as we should. You can see a bit of what is going on when Jasnah Soulcasts air, there are some little reactions, but not as strong as you ought to get.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)  

 

14 hours ago, heliovox said:

You may see where I'm going with this.

I'm not *sure* uranium is a thing in cosmere, but I don't think it is implausible that you could soulcast uranium.

Or..... ummmmmmm.... anti-matter (more problems here, but I don't think they can't be overcome).

 

That is a lot of energy.

Yes, it's possible. Cosmere has the same periodic table as ours with the addition of god metals. 

Spoiler

Niceratops

Not to be too obvious about being a geology dork, but if you can make clear quartz easily with soulcasting as we've seen, and you can also make radioactive materials, wouldn't it be trivial to make smokestone since defects from irradiation are what make quartz black?

Brandon Sanderson

Making unstable plutonium or the like is theoretically possible, but not something that Rosharans are aware they could do.

Emerald and Heliodor are basically the same thing, chemically, but are very different substances on Roshar--with different soulcasting properties. Same goes for quartz and smokestone.

usuyami

Is there any significance to some of the gems being forms of aluminum oxide?

Brandon Sanderson

Not really, I'm afraid. I tried to work it in, and decided I was stretching.

Stormlight Three Update #4 (Oct. 19, 2016)

 

But why bother with any of this when you have investiture anti-investiture reaction, working in the same way as matter anti-matter annihilation? It's just annihilation with extra steps. Just combine Stormlight with Anti-Stormlight and you have a 100% release of energy.

[heliovox]

Haha, stormlight/anti-stormlight reactions are exactly where I want to go with this, but I haven't thought about it enough, so anything I say right now is going to be even more insane speculation than usual.

 

I'm in, insane speculation is the fun stuff.

 

I think Brandon may have made making anti-investiture too easy.  The amount of energy you can get from matter/anti-matter reactions is *staggering*.

25 grams of antimatter could destroy a quite large city.

Modern day humans have created ~15 nanograms of the stuff.

I'm not entirely sure how much anti-voidlight navani created, but it is probably more that thaaaaaat, because she could *see* it.

 

I'm not sure where that ends up, but it is not hard for me to envision anti-light suicide bombers who can just... destroy basically anything.  There are certainly powerful defenses on Roshar, but you don't even need to get that close to someone wearing the strongest defenses we have seen for this amount of anti-light to render their defenses completely meaningless.

 

Oh, also you could use it to generate electricity.

[alder24]

43 minutes ago, heliovox said:

I think Brandon may have made making anti-investiture too easy.  The amount of energy you can get from matter/anti-matter reactions is *staggering*.

25 grams of antimatter could destroy a quite large city.

Modern day humans have created ~15 nanograms of the stuff.

I'm not entirely sure how much anti-voidlight navani created, but it is probably more that thaaaaaat, because she could *see* it.

Well you need a specific container and investiture used to make it is a gas - not very heavy. You would need a lot of it to make such an amount of anti-light and that can be problematic because it won't fit into any container. Well, we'll see how Brandon resolve this in KoWT.