Distortion of Light in Time Bubbles

[Charlie.x.3000]

I find it weird that bullets deflect when exiting time bubbles but light doesn't. Why I says this is because no one in the series remarks about changes in landscape, etc. This is due to my theory:

Bullets don't actually bend when exiting the bubble, but light entering the bubbles do. This is akin to stabbing a fish underwater with a spear.

When you try to hit something underwater, the reason why things appear to deflect is because light bends while the object doesn't. The same could be applied to the time bubbles and bullets.

So maybe the characters need to start compensating by aiming higher/lower and from the center of the bubble?? (I highly doubt the deflection is completely random)

[Your3rdShadow he/him]

Well, in MAG there's a stunt for slider's and pusler's that basically says they've learned to account somewhat for the deflection of their bubbles, and thus become more accurate. So presumably it could be something like that, although I don't think it's likely. Also there's a WoB where he explains he did not actually have a concrete reason for the bullet deflection effect of the time bubbles. So until he says otherwise, or someone informs me of a quote I missed, technically, it could be any of dozens of different things.

[Eki]

Something weird is going on with light and time bubbles, because it should be red shifted. So there definitely is evidence that light behaves differently from other things.

 

If the deflection wasn't random, Wax would have learned how to shoot through Wayne's bubbles long ago, I think. 

 

 

 

In the end, the reason bullets deflect is probably just to stop shooting inside a time bubble from being too overpowered - if Wayne could slow down time while Wax just picked off every opponent with careful shots, the books wouldn't be as interesting.

[Asperity he/him]

Something weird is going on with light and time bubbles, because it should be red shifted. So there definitely is evidence that light behaves differently from other things.

 

If the deflection wasn't random, Wax would have learned how to shoot through Wayne's bubbles long ago, I think. 

 

 

 

In the end, the reason bullets deflect is probably just to stop shooting inside a time bubble from being too overpowered - if Wayne could slow down time while Wax just picked off every opponent with careful shots, the books wouldn't be as interesting.

There's a WoB that talks about how the lack of redshifting is a personal choice since it would fry everybody in a certain radius or some such. I'm sure it'll be posted eventually since there have been an amount of threads about this topic recently.

[Oversleep]

Have you read BoM? There is some Lampshading there.

Khriss specificially says that she wondered why there is no redshift in time bubbles.

[Yata he/him]

As fas as I remember It's a choice of Mister Sanderson, He know that it would be red/blue shift... but someone make him notice that if the Light was influenced by the bubble, the being at its inside will burn from microwave and similar other elettrcomagnetic waves 

[Charlie.x.3000]

One thing is that medium does not effect frequency. So there would be no redshift because while the speed of light is reduced, the frequency remains unchanged. Like, the thing being changed is speed of light, which is still to fast to have a noticeable change to the characters. Just like speed of light changes in water, but red stuff is still red, etc.

[natc]

. . . so I'm not a physics person, but it sounds counterintuitive to be able to change the speed at which light waves past a certain point in space and have the frequency be exactly identical?

[Charlie.x.3000]

Umm... well I could post some sources from the internet here, but I'm not sure of that's allowed. But speed of transmission does not effect wavelength.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Charlie.x.3000

[Yata he/him]

Umm... well I could post some sources from the internet here, but I'm not sure of that's allowed. But speed of transmission does not effect wavelength.

Well the bubble doesn't change the apparent Speed of Light (the light outside travels at speed of light) and when it enter the bubble it remain of Speed of Light but to the bubble's time reference.

 

The Frequence instead will change, because if, for example you are in a Cadmius Bubble with a x4 time difference... When the light hit the bubble, the amount of light will be "compressed in 1/4 of the time" every maxima of the wave will be pushed near in the time... in the end the frequency of the light will be fourh time the original one.

 

(Probably I didn't use the right words, but physics in another language is quite a challenge to me XD)

[Stormgate he/him]

Technically, the speed of light does change depending on the medium. This is where we get the prism effect. Light goes in, is slowed down and bent, then goes slightly slower/faster, then exits the prism and returns to its previous speed. In prisms, the light doesn't in-separate. The speed of light is constant relative to everything else in the medium.

Perhaps the speed bubble counts as a different medium, and thus distorts the light like heat coming off of pavement in the summer.

[Eki]

Technically, the speed of light does change depending on the medium. This is where we get the prism effect. Light goes in, is slowed down and bent, then goes slightly slower/faster, then exits the prism and returns to its previous speed. In prisms, the light doesn't in-separate. The speed of light is constant relative to everything else in the medium.

Perhaps the speed bubble counts as a different medium, and thus distorts the light like heat coming off of pavement in the summer.

Well, light going through anything other than vacuum is complicated... Photons don't really slow down - anything without a rest mass will move at the speed of light. That's in fact what the speed of light really is - the speed things will go if mass doesn't slow them down. What's really happening is that the photon (which is an oscillation in the electromagnetic field) which is passing through the medium kind of... jiggles all the surrounding charged particles. When they jiggle, they send ripples through the electromagnetic field, and all of those ripples, together with the original photon, add up to something that pretty much works like a slower photon. So I guess that you really can say that light slows down, but the actual photons... are complicated. Sixty Symbols on Youtube has a video about it somewhere.

 

Kind of a tangent, sorry

 

(Also, wikipedia says that the wavelength does change when light slows down in a medium. I don't think the frequency does though)

[natc]

Judging from units, wouldn't the speed of light be wavelength multiplied by frequency? Proportionate to at the very least.

You have to change both if you change one.

[Eki]

Judging from units, wouldn't the speed of light be wavelength multiplied by frequency? Proportionate to at the very least.

You have to change both if you change one.

Right, that's what I gathered from wikipedia. v = lambda / f, and when light goes through a medium the wavelength and velocity decrease, but the frequency is unchanged.

 

 

Frequency does however change in gravitational wells, for example. Like, if you fall into a black hole, one of the many things that will kill you is the onslaught of massively high frequency photons blasting you from behind.

[PandACT he/him]

What I assumed was that the bullet ended up ricocheting against itself, since part of it is going a different speed from the other. If it was only partially inside the bubble, the front would be going much slower/faster than the other side, and it would push and pull against itself in odd ways. I don't know what that would do with light, but I assume it would be much more free to pass through than solid metal.

Edited November 18, 2017 by PandACT

[Master_Moridin he/him]

What I assumed was that the bullet ended up ricocheting against itself, since part of it is going a different speed from the other. If it was only partially inside the bubble, the front would be going much slower/faster than the other side, and it would push and pull against itself in odd ways. I don't know what that would do with light, but I assume it would be much more free to pass through than solid matter. I'm thinking of this on terms of relativity... probably.

 

Objects can only be in or out of a bubble.

 

Kurkistan

Time Bubbles:

If you are standing inside of a time bubble, and throw a spear out of the bubble, what happens to that spear as it traverses the border of the bubble? Are different parts of the spear ever in different "time zones," going fundamentally different speeds?

On that line of reasoning, what would happen to a train and its occupants if Marisi stood next to railroad tracks holding up a Cadmium bubble while that train sped by?

Brandon Sanderson

In general, a large object going through a time bubble is not going to notice. An object is either in or out, and it depends in part on how the object views itself. People inside the train would be inside of its influence, and wouldn't notice the bubble. The spear would go from one to the other, but would never be in both.

(source)