Why exactly do objects change trajectory when they go in/out time bubbles?

[kroen]

It seems like a deus ex machina to me, a way to prevent Sliders from being overpowered. I can understand the reasoning: If objects didn't change trajectory, a Slider could shoot a bunch of people from within his time bubble at an insanely fast rate. But the thing is, if that's really the reason, I don't think it's overpowered at all. Considering bendalloy burns extremely fast, and that it's ludicrously expensive, I don't think an artificial balancing factor is needed.

Edited May 5, 2013 by kroen

[Random man]

Not sure if it's what Brandon reasoning is, but I would think it would be similar to why bullets go crazy when they alternate from supersonic to subsonic while in flight. The forces acting on the bullet change at such a rapid speed that it can cause the bullet to veer off course. I would imagine going from inside the bubble to outside would cause enough of a change in the physics acting on the bullet to work in a similar way. But again no idea if this is Brandon's reasoning or just my own.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

It's part of allomantic FTL apparently.

[Lady_Yasha]

Could be because you're forcibly altering the speed of the bullet. Like light travelling through one medium to something more or less dense (like from air to water) will refract. The dilution of time outside the bubble would be thicker outside the bubble than in, so to account for that variable something has to change.The force on the bullet is still the same, only its trajectory can be altered.

[kroen]

Could be because you're forcibly altering the speed of the bullet. Like light travelling through one medium to something more or less dense (like from air to water) will refract. The dilution of time outside the bubble would be thicker outside the bubble than in, so to account for that variable something has to change.The force on the bullet is still the same, only its trajectory can be altered.

Then why is the trajectory change seemingly random? Light refracting in liquids is pretty much the same for each liquid type. Objects entering/leaving time bubbles, however, don't seem to have any pattern.

[Kurkistan]

First of all, I don't think "deus ex machina" is really the right term here. Even if Brandon did institute the rule for purely convenient reasons or, beyond that, it somehow violates Realmatics, that doesn't really qualify as a deus ex machina. At worst, it's a contrivance.

 

Second, the "randomness" could come down to a variety of factors. It may well be a case of predictable refraction, but it all amounts to the same thing when you're trying to shoot someone with a gun, so "random" will cover it so far as Wax's thought processes go. The "refraction" might also depend on a number of highly changeable factors: the "compression factor" of the bubble, the speed of the bullet, some cosmic flux going on in the background, etc. In the end, the deflection probably is law-like, but not predictable in any useful sense.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Lady_Yasha]

Wax describes it at random because he doesn't understand the physics behind Realmatics. I'm thinking it's always refracted at the same angle ratio no matter where in the bubble it passes through. And with the curvature of the bubble you may observe wider or narrower angles of refraction from your perspective.

 

There probably IS a pattern; Wax just isn't noticing it.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Wax describes it at random because he doesn't understand the physics behind Realmatics. I'm thinking it's always refracted at the same angle ratio no matter where in the bubble it passes through. And with the curvature of the bubble you may observe wider or narrower angles of refraction from your perspective.

 

There probably IS a pattern; Wax just isn't noticing it.

After all, you aren't getting any redshifting or blueshifting of light, so something funky is happening at the interface.

[king of nowhere]

could be that it is because when the projectile leaves the bubble, it is sudenly traveling superfast compared to air, so it slams against a wall of air and gets some random deviation from this impact. That also would explain why it is not deviated when going from outside to inside. In fact, now that i think about it, the projectile should be so fast when it leaves the bubble that it should burn with attrition and be totally harmless.

 

I don0't think it makes sense to talk about refraction, a bullet is not a wave.

I also think, since in scadrial they know the scientific method, they would have noticed if the angle of refraction was constant, and wax would have known it. after all, scientists have been experinmenting with the metallic arts.

[Lady_Yasha]

After all, you aren't getting any redshifting or blueshifting of light, so something funky is happening at the interface.

 

Well you're essentially passing from one medium where time is faster/slower than that of the one within the bubble. So if you imagine time being stretched or compressed you are changing the relative property of time itself. Bullets change trajectory if you shoot it into a denser medium than air (like water), so you just have to imagine that inside the bubble is water, or vice versa but the analogy would need further explaining if I said it's like firing through water into air

 

EDIT: King of nowhere: When I'm referring to refraction I'm not talking about the kind that affects photons, but a physical object leaving one medium to enter another in the same way light travels across mediums. You are going to get similar effects due to the curvature of a bullet head and the angle it strikes the medium boundary. If the second medium is dense enough it can affect the trajectory significantly.

 

As it is we're still not sure if Einstein's theory of Relativity is proofed. We know it works, but we're just now on the verge of testing the limitations of the theory. Do Scadrians know enough of Realmatics and physics to say with concrete surety what is happening to a bullet when it passes the boundary of a time bubble?

 

Also, the bullet cannot travel superfast since it retains a constant rate of deceleration even while passing through the bubble. The force on the bullet does not change, only the relative impression of the speed of the bullet from those in and outside the bubble.

Edited May 6, 2013 by Lyrebon

[Kurkistan]

could be that it is because when the projectile leaves the bubble, it is sudenly traveling superfast compared to air, so it slams against a wall of air and gets some random deviation from this impact. That also would explain why it is not deviated when going from outside to inside. In fact, now that i think about it, the projectile should be so fast when it leaves the bubble that it should burn with attrition and be totally harmless.

 

That's not the case because it regains its "normal" speed when it exits the time bubble. Word of Peter and clear implication from the book on this.

 

I don0't think it makes sense to talk about refraction, a bullet is not a wave.

I also think, since in scadrial they know the scientific method, they would have noticed if the angle of refraction was constant, and wax would have known it. after all, scientists have been experinmenting with the metallic arts.

 

Once again, even if projectile-deflection from bubbles is law-like, and even if Scadrians are aware of this, and even if they have worked out exactly what these laws are and how they apply, it could still be the case that, for all intents and purposes, a man with a gun in the middle of a firefight is just going to go ahead and call it "random."

[king of nowhere]

That's not the case because it regains its "normal" speed when it exits the time bubble. Word of Peter and clear implication from the book on this.

An object is either all in or all out a time bubble. So the bullet, when it comes across the boundary, for a small moment is still affected by the bubble, but its tip is touching the air outside the bubble. Or at least there's enough to make a case for it. I find it much more convincing that the alternatives.

Also, if it worked like rifraction, but with objects, bullets would also be deflected when going it. There's a scene in the final fight when push is firing at him, and wayne put a bubble just in time, and they look at the bullet going towards them and duck. when the bullets comes into the bubble, it do not deviates the trajectory, but passes through the air where wax was an instant before. If time compression caused some refraction-like effect on objects crossing the boundary, then it would have deviated.

Also note that my explanation works pretty well for why bigger objects are less affected.

 

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure brandon will rule that the deviation out of the bubble will also happen in vacuum, and so the future trilogy will probably disprove me. Because, let's be honest about it, that deviation exist to keeo people killing everyone in a heartbeat from inside a bubble. As much as we can try physicla justifications for it, it's plot-based.

 

 

Once again, even if projectile-deflection from bubbles is law-like, and even if Scadrians are aware of this, and even if they have worked out exactly what these laws are and how they apply, it could still be the case that, for all intents and purposes, a man with a gun in the middle of a firefight is just going to go ahead and call it "random."

wax is not "a man with a gun". wax has education. he has studied, he get informed. he can improvise a laboratory of metallurgy in his home. I'm sure once he started going around with wayne he have looked for that kind of informations.

[Lady_Yasha]

wax is not "a man with a gun". wax has education. he has studied, he get informed. he can improvise a laboratory of metallurgy in his home. I'm sure once he started going around with wayne he have looked for that kind of informations.

 

And even the most intelligent men in a firefight don't have time to analyse the mathematics of bullet-bubble trajectory. Wax has probably never thought to do experiments of his own outside metallurgy.

[Kurkistan]

An object is either all in or all out a time bubble. So the bullet, when it comes across the boundary, for a small moment is still affected by the bubble, but its tip is touching the air outside the bubble. Or at least there's enough to make a case for it. I find it much more convincing that the alternatives.

 

So you're essentially saying a still-super bullet hits a "wall" of slow moving air for some period of time?

 

Also, if it worked like rifraction, but with objects, bullets would also be deflected when going it. There's a scene in the final fight when push is firing at him, and wayne put a bubble just in time, and they look at the bullet going towards them and duck. when the bullets comes into the bubble, it do not deviates the trajectory, but passes through the air where wax was an instant before. If time compression caused some refraction-like effect on objects crossing the boundary, then it would have deviated.

 

Also note that my explanation works pretty well for why bigger objects are less affected.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure brandon will rule that the deviation out of the bubble will also happen in vacuum, and so the future trilogy will probably disprove me. Because, let's be honest about it, that deviation exist to keeo people killing everyone in a heartbeat from inside a bubble. As much as we can try physicla justifications for it, it's plot-based.

 

As far as inward-bound bullets being a threat goes, there are multiple possible explanations for this.

 

1) As you say, time bubbles don't mess with stuff going into them. This is marginally supported by Wayne being able to dodge bullets and by Wax's fear that Marasi would be shot if any of Miles' henchmen were outside the bubble to notice its effects.

 

2) As a tweak to the above, bubble's only don't mess with stuff going from slow-time to fast-time, so from outside to inside for Bendalloy and the opposite for Cadmium. This takes away the Marasi evidence supporting 1, though.

 

3) Refraction can happen both ways, but you're still in a lot more danger within the bubble because the bullet doesn't travel far enough for a small change in angle to have much effect.

 

I'm going with 3 here, though 2 would still be a case that doesn't provide evidence against timey-wimey effects on bullets going from fast- to slow-time.

 

In the case where we saw with Wayne dodging a bullet, recall that his speed bubbles are only a few strides across at most. Even if a bullet is deflected by several degrees, it's still going to hit in approximately the same area as it was before it was deflected. I would hazard that the problem with shooting out of a speed bubble isn't that the bullets go careening off at 50 degree angles, but that accurate shots are impossible at any real range. Wax's bullet is still going generally the right direction, when all's said and done.

 

As far as shooting a Pulser goes, I'm just going to appeal to quantity over quality here. You have an essentially still target and a large number of bullets: have at it, and you'll hit them fairly soon.

 

 

wax is not "a man with a gun". wax has education. he has studied, he get informed. he can improvise a laboratory of metallurgy in his home. I'm sure once he started going around with wayne he have looked for that kind of informations.

 

And even the most intelligent men in a firefight don't have time to analyse the mathematics of bullet-bubble trajectory. Wax has probably never thought to do experiments of his own outside metallurgy.

 

The key point here is that, in the context of a firefight, Wax is entirely defined in his roll as a combatant within that fight. Whether or not he has a full grasp of the conceptual knowledge necessary to predict a projectile's movement as it leaves a time bubble, he does not have the time to employ that knowledge during the course of any sequence of events in which it would be useful.

 

All I'm trying to say here is that his use of the word "random" is entirely fair given the context in which he says it, independent of whether the changes to trajectory time bubble's cause are truly random.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Jaaaaaade]

I don0't think it makes sense to talk about refraction, a bullet is not a wave.

I also think, since in scadrial they know the scientific method, they would have noticed if the angle of refraction was constant, and wax would have known it. after all, scientists have been experinmenting with the metallic arts.

It makes perfect sense. In physics class we treated light passing through mediums as cars going over different surfaces. If a wheel hits dirt for a moment while the rest of the wheels are on road, it goes slower and turns the car around. If it hits ice, it has the opposite effect, one wheel going faster turns the car the opposite direction. This is one of those things where matter and waves behave the exact same way.

 

One thing though, inside a Cadmium bubble the light from outside should be blueshifted, and inside a Bendalloy bubble the outside should be redshifted. By the amount that time is dilated, it should be a noticeable tinge. Also, because of the spherical shape of the bubble, there should be a lensing effect. Looking into a Cadmium bubble would be exactly like looking into a fishbowl. Now that I think about it, the lines of light should follow the same path as the bullets. Like aiming a laser pointer at a target through a glass of water. That means that something different is going on at the edge. 

 

Instead of being a wall of different speeds, it's probably a gradient that makes time accelerate as you enter it, making the light and bullet change speeds. If light inside and outside are still the same colour, the bullets must be travelling at the same speed in measured both outside and in bubble-time.

 

Something completely different must be happening to change the bullets course. It could be just metal, and something like a tennis ball would still travel straight, as if it gets pushed or pulled by entering the bubble. However aluminium bullets, which can't be messed with allomantically, still don't go straight, do they? I'm stumped. I hope Brandon's got a good solution to reveal, a better one than merely trying to prevent Bendalloy from being too useful and powerful.

[Kurkistan]

We're not sure about aluminum bullets, IIRC, and the fact that light isn't affected is the result of a deliberate and entirely authorial alloying of Handwavium with Cadmium and Bendalloy.

As for speed gradients: no. Take a moment to consider what calculus tells you about adding up infinitesimal accelerations as each atom of an object accelerates relative to the rest of the bullet. Also, Brandon has said on several occasions that objects are either entirely inside or entirely outside of speed bubbles.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

As for speed gradients: no. Take a moment to consider what calculus tells you about adding up infinitesimal accelerations as each atom of an object accelerates relative to the rest of the bullet.

 

Actually, it's entirely possible to get something to turn when it enters a medium that it travels at a different speed in.  But yeah, that's sorta irrelevant since things are either 'all in' or 'all out'.

 

 

But what time is it?  That's right, quotetime!

 

Bubbles are almost certainly involved in FTL travel, and the weird border interactions are probably part of that.  The redshift thing is a total handwave though.

 

Q.Zas678- I’ve got a question kind of based off of the train fight. If you have a time bubble, and you were to make it while you are on the train, would the time bubble move with the train, or would it stay at the same spot relative to the planet?
A. Time bubbles don’t move, so it would pull you out of it, then it would vanish.
Q. (Mi’chelle)- If you were to pop up a time bubble and someone were to be stuck halfway in and halfway out, would they go splooch?
A. No, they would be in the time bubble. The time bubbles will move with the planet but not with the train.
Q. Yeah, I always thought it was relative to the person creating the time bubble.
A. No, you’ll see Wayne create one, then he’ll walk up to the perimeter, but if he leaves it, it ruins the time bubble.
Q. Zas678- So is that because it’s linked up to the spiritual gravitational bond between the planet?
A. Yes, and you’re digging very deeply into stuff that I now can’t answer. Time bubbles have some weirdness to them that I don’t want to dig in too deeply, but yes.

 

Q. What happens if you create a time bubble in a time bubble?
A. Lots of people are theorizing about that. The time bubble would not collapse, I’ll answer that much.
Q. Zas678- I think that you said at the Alloy release that it was mul- de(I couldn’t remember the word. I knew it was based off of “multiply”, but that was it)
A. Multiplicative?
Q. Zas678- Yeah.
A. I may have given an answer to that- or not. I’m not going to say anything about that. Time travel and find out.

 

Interview: Nov 8th, 2011

Alloy of Law Release Q&A (Verbatim)

Brandon Sanderson

Watch for what happens when something leaves a bendalloy bubble.

Footnote

He later said "Ha, that won't make sense for about 10 books," leading many to believe this has to do with FTL travel.

 

Not really. A bullet shot out of a speed bubble IS robbed of kinetic energy—not all of it, but just enough to slow it down to the speed it would have been moving at had it been fired outside the bubble in the first place.

 

ERICPETERS (14 NOVEMBER 2011)
You mentioned friday night in #Seattle Allomacy has "FTL" built into it, any more hints you can share on how that would work

BRANDON SANDERSON (14 NOVEMBER 2011)
It involves where the lost energy from thermodynamic issues goes in certain Allomantic interactions.

 

 

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if allomantic ftl ended up being like bunny hopping in quake.  You know, exploiting glitchy physics to get absurd and strange accelerations to zoom around places.

[Kurkistan]

Why dost thou torment me, cruel Phantom? Seeing the old quotes always tempts me toward my old ways. . .

Edited June 12, 2013 by Kurkistan

[happyman]

One thing though, inside a Cadmium bubble the light from outside should be blueshifted, and inside a Bendalloy bubble the outside should be redshifted. By the amount that time is dilated, it should be a noticeable tinge. Also, because of the spherical shape of the bubble, there should be a lensing effect. Looking into a Cadmium bubble would be exactly like looking into a fishbowl. Now that I think about it, the lines of light should follow the same path as the bullets. Like aiming a laser pointer at a target through a glass of water. That means that something different is going on at the edge.

 

As one of the folks who was involved with the "time bubbles interact with light" thread when it first popped up, you are quite right about what the effects should be.  The real trouble is, you don't take it far enough.  Realistic red- and blue-shifting in time bubbles would make time bubbles unusable in the real world without serious preparation.  For instance, in Alloy of Law, the characters would have gotten dangerous doses of radiation during Marasi's little trick at the end.  You would be unable to see things outside/inside the bubble.  None of it works at all well, and directly contradicts the notion of allomancy as being intuitive to the practitioners.