I must know or I shall not sleep

[Dilly honor spren she/her]

So lift doesn't need stormlight to for her powers to work because she uses food or what not so if she went off world would she potentially always be able to use her powers? And if stormlight somehow dispersed would she still be able to??? I need answersssss *aggressively throwing science textbook*

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Dilly honor spren said:

So lift doesn't need stormlight to for her powers to work because she uses food or what not so if she went off world would she potentially always be able to use her powers? And if stormlight somehow dispersed would she still be able to??? I need answersssss *aggressively throwing science textbook*

Yes and yes. Lift can't even use Stormlight like normal Radiants, instead she converts food directly into Lifelight (Cultivation's investiture) and because of that she can do it anywhere in Cosmere. It's similar to how Mistborn can burn metal anywhere and they draw investiture directly from Preservation. WoBs:

Spoiler

Gary Singer (paraphrased)

Could Lift convert food from other cosmere worlds into Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes. Lift's Spiritweb has something changed about it to allow converting mass to Investiture directly.

Out of Excuses 2016 (Sept. 23, 2016)

 

Spoiler

Purple Song

Does Lift converts food to Stormlight, Lifelight, or something else?

Brandon Sanderson

Lift uses Lifelight. Good question.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 1 (Dec. 17, 2020)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Is there any relationship between the Lift’s ability to eat food and create Stormlight [Lifelight] and Scadrians’ ability to eat metal and burn it?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Dragonsteel Nexus 2024 (Dec. 5, 2024)

 

[Dilly honor spren she/her]

thank youuuu

[Joltizard1337 He/Him]

shouldnt she be making a TON of energy because of E=MC^2? or is investiture not quite energy?

 

Edited May 11 by joltizard1337

[Nitpicking]

17 hours ago, joltizard1337 said:

shouldnt she be making a TON of energy because of E=MC^2? or is investiture not quite energy?

 

She isn't converting all the matter to energy or she'd be vaporized, or really reduced to individual subatomic particles, you're right. I think it's more like how the allomancers of Scadrial burn metals. They aren't converting them to energy, they're using the physical stuff they make disappear as a way to Connect to the Shard that actually grants them the abilities. Per Brandon, IIRC, the matter itself eventually returns from the Spiritual Realm to the Physical.

It's actually very much like how drinking water lets an Aetherbound get Investiture effects from the Aether.

Should this maybe be moved to Discussions?

[alder24]

19 hours ago, joltizard1337 said:

shouldnt she be making a TON of energy because of E=MC^2? or is investiture not quite energy?

In Cosmere, investiture is a third state of matter and energy and one can be turned into the other according to a modified version of E=mc^2 that includes investiture conversion. What Lift does is she metabolizes energy/calories straight into investiture instead of sugar. So no, she shouldn't get a ton of energy because she doesn't convert matter into energy. 

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

Argent

Does Lift turn food into Investiture directly or is it similar to the metals on--

[...]

Brandon Sanderson

She can metabolize-- She can draw-- It's not actually the food, it's-- It's not like the metals, not exactly. It's not-- What she can do is she can metabolize into Investiture instead of sugar. Does that make sense?

Argent

Yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

We metabolize food into sugar. She can metabolize it into Investiture. Does that make sense?

Argent

That makes a lot of sense. So if she eats--

Brandon Sanderson

She's got to have a blood sugar spike.

Argent

So if she eats like a cake it will give her more Investiture--

Brandon Sanderson

Faster. It will give her faster.

Argent

Whereas if she eats a vegetable...

Brandon Sanderson

Vegetable... More calories is going to equal more. But the better comparison would be a sausage and bread. Because bread is a fast blood sugar spike and the sausage is not. And that's how I'm working in my head. It's kind of a magical version of a blood sugar spike and I have it happen to her faster than it could happen. Like normally you eat a piece of bread and your blood sugar spikes in a half hour, it's going to go faster for Lift.

Argent

Hers is like five minutes.

Brandon Sanderson

Hers is like five minutes, but a sausage would be slower.

Firefight Chicago signing (Feb. 20, 2015)

 

[Verdance he/him]

Do you think it’s plausible we’ll get an official e=mc^2 equation with investiture factored in?

[alder24]

5 minutes ago, Verdance said:

Do you think it’s plausible we’ll get an official e=mc^2 equation with investiture factored in?

Probably, they do run math to figure out how much energy/investiture is needed for what's happening in the books and Brandon did ask physicists to make Cosmere equations for him. 

Spoiler

Questioner

How much have you thought about the mathematical relationship between Investiture and energy/matter? Is there a cosmere E=mc^2?

Brandon Sanderson

I've thought about the concepts a lot. The numbers, I actually tried to get some mathematicians... There are some lovely folks, I'm like, can we come up with a standardization? And it kind of broke their brains, not because they aren't smart people, they're very smart people, but they're like, "Brandon, where do we even start? How much energy is being expended?" and this sort of thing. I would like to get a unit of measurement, how much Investiture equals how much energy, but at the same time, the work being done by the various magic systems, it's going to be too constrictive to put too much math on that, I feel like. I would like to. It is a much bigger project than you might imagine it being. How much energy is stored in a sphere? That's kind of where we started. A sphere stores Investiture, obviously some of that Investiture is being lost as energy, it is transferring energy as the sphere releases light. That is happening automatically, it's decaying and radiation is happening. How much is it therefore losing, how much could it do, how much of that can be transferred to doing work with a Lashing... All of this stuff, I have thought about way too much, and we have no answers for you yet because it is a really big project. Maybe we will someday, or maybe we'll just say, this is too big a project to even be able to mathematically quantify. I'm sure if you have suggestions, you can post thoughts on the subreddits, and perhaps that will get to the various arcanists who are helping me with this.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

*inaudible* also storing Stormlight. Did you decide the value of the gems first?

Brandon Sanderson

So I actually retrofitted it. What we looked at is how much food does it create, how much is that equivalency in our world, what factors do we need to change, and things like that. And we retrofitted how much things were worth. There's also a measurement in there of how much-- amount of Stormlight there is and how much that is worth, how much energy and work that can do.

Questioner

*inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

I assign other people to do a lot of that these days. I say, "Here is the situation I want, run the math on this and come back and tell me how much I may use here or there."

MisCon 2018 (May 26, 2018)

 

Btw, E=mc^2 isn't even the full Einstein's equation, it's just for the mass at rest. The full one includes momentum: E^2=(mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2 (p is momentum). I would imagine investiture would be added in the same way as momentum is.

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

On 5/12/2026 at 9:31 AM, alder24 said:

Probably, they do run math to figure out how much energy/investiture is needed for what's happening in the books and Brandon did ask physicists to make Cosmere equations for him. 

  Hide contents

Questioner

How much have you thought about the mathematical relationship between Investiture and energy/matter? Is there a cosmere E=mc^2?

Brandon Sanderson

I've thought about the concepts a lot. The numbers, I actually tried to get some mathematicians... There are some lovely folks, I'm like, can we come up with a standardization? And it kind of broke their brains, not because they aren't smart people, they're very smart people, but they're like, "Brandon, where do we even start? How much energy is being expended?" and this sort of thing. I would like to get a unit of measurement, how much Investiture equals how much energy, but at the same time, the work being done by the various magic systems, it's going to be too constrictive to put too much math on that, I feel like. I would like to. It is a much bigger project than you might imagine it being. How much energy is stored in a sphere? That's kind of where we started. A sphere stores Investiture, obviously some of that Investiture is being lost as energy, it is transferring energy as the sphere releases light. That is happening automatically, it's decaying and radiation is happening. How much is it therefore losing, how much could it do, how much of that can be transferred to doing work with a Lashing... All of this stuff, I have thought about way too much, and we have no answers for you yet because it is a really big project. Maybe we will someday, or maybe we'll just say, this is too big a project to even be able to mathematically quantify. I'm sure if you have suggestions, you can post thoughts on the subreddits, and perhaps that will get to the various arcanists who are helping me with this.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

 

  Hide contents

Questioner

*inaudible* also storing Stormlight. Did you decide the value of the gems first?

Brandon Sanderson

So I actually retrofitted it. What we looked at is how much food does it create, how much is that equivalency in our world, what factors do we need to change, and things like that. And we retrofitted how much things were worth. There's also a measurement in there of how much-- amount of Stormlight there is and how much that is worth, how much energy and work that can do.

Questioner

*inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

I assign other people to do a lot of that these days. I say, "Here is the situation I want, run the math on this and come back and tell me how much I may use here or there."

MisCon 2018 (May 26, 2018)

 

Btw, E=mc^2 isn't even the full Einstein's equation, it's just for the mass at rest. The full one includes momentum: E^2=(mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2 (p is momentum). I would imagine investiture would be added in the same way as momentum is.

I disagree

 

I think there’s a separate conversion for Investiture <-> Energy and Investiture <-> Matter

Like

there would be three equations in total

and you would consider them separately

Momentum is there because of relativity n stuff—physics acts weird for observers of something when it goes fast

at least that’s how I understand it

 

 

Other tangent question, hedging onto WaT territory

Spoiler

Lift is now able to just pack up and leave Roshar, right? Was she able to do that before the Oathpact was remade, and after Cultivation left?

 

Edited Tuesday at 05:46 PM by Through the Living Shadow

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Through the Living Shadow said:

I disagree

I think there’s a separate conversion for Investiture <-> Energy and Investiture <-> Matter

Like

there would be three equations in total

and you would consider them separately

Momentum is there because of relativity n stuff—physics acts weird for observers of something when it goes fast

at least that’s how I understand it

It would be probably easier to do three separate equations, but at the same time also harder as they all need to work together. That's why I don't think there would be three equations, because energy, matter and investiture are the same thing and the Einstein's equation tells you how much total energy is there in the object/particle - mass is energy, so is momentum and energy curves spacetime (and that's why it's in the equation - at least that's how I understand it). That's why I believe there should be just one equation in Cosmere that tells you the same with the inclusion of Investiture cause it's also energy that needs to be considered.   

1 hour ago, Through the Living Shadow said:

Other tangent question, hedging onto WaT territory

  Hide contents

Lift is now able to just pack up and leave Roshar, right? Was she able to do that before the Oathpact was remade, and after Cultivation left?

WaT:

Spoiler

Yes, she can leave just like anybody else. This is because Dalinar has broken all Oaths made by Honor, including the one that bound Shards and their power to the system (it's not about the new Oathpact). The Oathpact was reforged minutes after Cultivation has left.