Bendalloy in a Moving Reference Frame

[supersciguy]

Simply put, a planet is in motion. Therefore a speed bubble has to be moving with the current (planitary) reference frame. Would the same apply for a spaceship? Cadmium bubbles would allow survival of space flights at non relativistic speeds but Bendalloy moving in a different reference frame would allow travel great distances apparently instantaneously.

[Flywinged he/him]

This is genius. No idea if this is how Sanderson plans to make space travel work in future books, but this is something I never picked up on. Upvote for you!

 

Edit: because I have more thoughts on this and don't want to double post

 

So if there was a way to add bubbles together, as in, put to bend alloy bubbles inside of each other, the ship could reach almost anywhere apparently instantly. Just put 4 of those suckers on top of each other, and poof, the outside world basically stops moving, allowing virtually in ship to travel faster than light apparently to the outside world. All you would need is 4 overlapping cadmium bubbles where the people are staying on the ship to counteract the affects of aging on the people inside, and boom, faster than light travel. (I think this is basically what supersciguy was going for, but just in case, I clarified what I was thinking)

Edited October 29, 2014 by Flywinged

[Kurkistan he/him]

Good idea, I would say.

 

@Fly

 

Be careful to be sure that the bubbles are moving relative to the ship, otherwise the ship's motion won't be affected at all.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Curiosity he/him]

Hum... a revocation of a Spiritual bond to a planet... Remind anyone of Basic Lashings? Except now we're looking at reference frames, not gravity.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Hum... a revocation of a Spiritual bond to a planet... Remind anyone of Basic Lashings? Except now we're looking at reference frames, not gravity.

 

Yup, reminds a few people.

[Flywinged he/him]

 careful to be sure that the bubbles are moving relative to the ship, otherwise the ship's motion won't be affected at all.

 

 

[spoilers for WoK/WoR]

 

 

I actually have a thought on this. Of course the bubbles would have to move with the ship, or else nothing would happen, but Brandon is very insistent that many things happen because of what the people performing the magic think should happen. The best example are with shardblades  from Roshar. Because people like Shallan thought it should take 10 heartbeats for her to summon her blade, it did. Similarly, because cadmium and bendalloy mistings think their bubbles should stay put (relative to the planet spin and move through space) it does. So merely shifting their perspective to make it stay motionless relative to ship *could* do the trick.

 

Actually, didn't Brandon say something about the southern half of Scadrial having a different group of people who harness the shard's power differently? For some reason I feel like he said it was through machines. Does that ring a bell for anyone else? If so, maybe a machine which constantly makes this bubble would do a better job as it could repeatedly move the bubble by timing it correctly.

 

 

edit: spoilers

Edited October 29, 2014 by Flywinged

[Kurkistan he/him]

Stormlight/WoR spoilers, Fly. (in my post too, now)

 

--

 

That said, I think you may be slightly off track.

 

The fundamentals of how the magics behave isn't the kind of thing that "thinking it should work that way" seems to affect. More so the nuances and implementation aspect. We wouldn't expect that Shallan thinking that her Blade couldn't cut wood (as a random example) would suddenly make it incapable of doing so. We wouldn't expect the mad Lurcher to suddenly be able to Push on metals. And so on.

 

That said, I agree it's possible that perspective might be enough to get away with "anchoring" bubbles on space ships. But then again it's not quite so simple, as time bubbles staying put is "linked up to the spiritual gravitational bond between the planet".

 

That aside, you have the fundamental problem of why a stationary (relative to the ship) speed bubble should cause the ship contained within it to move any faster through space. The ship, so far as the bubble is concerned, is travelling at 0 meters per second. Make it do that for 10 seconds to every 1 on the outside and it's still moved 0 extra meters.

 

Here's the "mechallomancy" quote.

[Flywinged he/him]

The fundamentals of how the magics behave isn't the kind of thing that "thinking it should work that way" seems to affect. More so the nuances and implementation aspect. We wouldn't expect that Shallan thinking that her Blade couldn't cut wood (as a random example) would suddenly make it incapable of doing so. We wouldn't expect the mad Lurcher to suddenly be able to Push on metals. And so on.

 

Sorry if I was unclear here. I know you can't just think a certain way, and the magics will work that way. But a moving bubble seems right on the edge of one of those nuances that could possibly be affected by how the user perceives the magic to behave. There might just need to be something else to make it work too, though. Or maybe it just isn't possible.

 

 

That said, I agree it's possible that perspective might be enough to get away with "anchoring" bubbles on space ships. But then again it's not quite so simple, as time bubbles staying put is "linked up to the spiritual gravitational bond between the planet".

 

Thank you for linking this! I've never read that before. So assuming its not possible to move a time bubble, (I'm with you in that there has to be some way to make a moving bubble, I just don't know what it is yet. maybe its just perception, or maybe it has to do with how Sanderson has said you can use shard powers of some planets on other planets, but only if you know how. Which kinda leads into using the shard power in space. Those seem like similar concepts to me which shows it's possible in my mind) couldn't this same concept work with stationary bubbles?

 

So assuming the mechanical manifestations of the Shard power work in a similar way to the human manifestations, you could just put a machine on the front of a ship that makes a bendalloy bubble with a radius slightly larger than the ship. Once the ship moves to the other side of the bubble and the nose is about to poke out, the machine lowers the bubble and creates another one to allow, essentially, a tube (not continuous of course, because it keeps getting broken and remade in spheres) of bendalloy bubble to travel though. Because we don't know exactly how bubbles within bubbles work, we can't say for sure this is a valid way to do it, but with 7 or 8 of these machines on the front of a ship, practically instantaneous travel anywhere is possible. (paired with a similar setup with cadmium for the passengers again so they perceive the instantaneous travel affect)

 

Of course, if it is possible to move the bubble with a moving ship, then the machine would just be placed in the middle of the ship and it would have the same affect.

 

Sorry if this is worded confusing, I nerd out and ramble when talking about anything sic-fi-y.

 

 

 

 

 

edit: I forgot to include something because I'm a dork

Edited October 29, 2014 by Flywinged

[Kurkistan he/him]

Re: "thinking to make it so"

 

Ah, my mistake in my reading of you, then. Specifically, I was concerned that you thought frame of reference concerns could be brushed aside by perception.

 

--

 

In regards to the rest...

 

Well first of all, in my mind at least, the bendalloy bubbles not staying stationary relative to the ship isn't a bug, it's a feature. Otherwise no speed advantage. The trick is doing this while also making the cadmium bubbles stay stationary relative to the ship so that they don't slow down its movement.

 

We do know what happens when bubbles overlap, also: they overlap multiplicatively like Venn diagrams.

 

This and many more fun quotes await you at the bottom of the OP of this thread here.