Regarding Compounding weight

[Cloak he/him]

So a friend of mine asked me this question, and I was unable to find any related discussions or WoBs on it. Want to know what you all think of it. 

Is there any upper limit of storing weight? I mean, an Iron Twinborn compounding weight could get so much weight that it turns into a blackhole...

[Cloak he/him]

via user 'Seonid' 

So this is the closest WoB I could find so far, but I can't make heads or tails of it with respect to my friend's question.

[Spoolofwhool]

Theoretically, yes, you can. However, it would require such a fantastically huge charge that it would more than likely be completely unfeasible to do. I'd have to do some math to determine the mass someone would have to be tapping at to turn into a black hole, but I'm pretty sure it would be over a few tens of orders of magnitude. I'll get back when I have a number. 

[Scriptorian he/him]

Assuming a spherical feruchemist with a radius of about 1 meter, I calculate that you'd need to tap "only" about 100 earth masses. No idea on how much metal you'd actually need to compound to get that, much less the size of the metalmind required to hold it. But, you know, cosmologically speaking, this isn't that much. 

Disclaimer: tapping 100 earth masses at once may result in spontaneous neutronium compression. The 17th Shard is not liable for any personal injury, planet wide devistation, or naked singularities that may result. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

As I cannot speak to the interactions with a planet's gravity as you approach an earth-mass, I can only speculate as to where the line gets drawn, but I feel like the physical limit is far below black hole level unless you are in the middle of space.

That said, the practical limit would be when you are too heavy to feasibly move around in a planet's gravity, and will likely discourage any black hole experiments.

[DocHoliday he/him]

Let's keep in mind Feruchemical iron doesn't toy with mass....

[Calderis he/him]

4 minutes ago, DocHoliday said:

Let's keep in mind Feruchemical iron doesn't toy with mass....

That's a whole can of worms. It does and it doesn't... It's wonky

Edit: it effects mass without effecting density which is... Weird. 

It effects mass via investiture with actually changing the physical mass. Does that make sense? 

Edited June 30, 2017 by Calderis

[DocHoliday he/him]

1 minute ago, Calderis said:

That's a whole can of worms. It does and it doesn't... It's wonky

I know. What we understand though,  is that there is an interaction between the Feruchemist and the plant while actively storing.

Put simply, I dont think a blackhole effect is even physically manifestable with that onus.

[Calderis he/him]

2 minutes ago, DocHoliday said:

I know. What we understand though,  is that there is an interaction between the Feruchemist and the plant while actively storing.

Put simply, I dont think a blackhole effect is even physically manifestable with that onus.

I don't think it actually involves the planet, and that's why I think it has to be investiture converting mass. 

Realmatically you should be able to store in space where there is no measurable interaction with a planet. 

I think the idea of the planet interaction is an understandable but flawed in world explanation. 

For example, if a Iron Ferring were to store while on Roshar, which has 0.7 gravity, would they only have 70% of the storage they get on Scadrial? I don't think so. 

I think they do effectively store mass, so that storage is a constant percentage across all worlds. 

[+Extesian he/him]

Yeah it's one of the things that is playing the loosest with science, but it is mass (which of course the planet is irrelevant to). Here are some WoBs in chronological order. 

Quote

QUESTION

Does Iron store mass or weight?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Excellent question. The thing is it really does involve mass, but I’m breaking some physics rules, basically. I have to break a number of physics rules in order to make Magic work in the first place. Those whole laws of Thermodynamics, I’m like “You are my bane!” (laughter) But I try to work within the framework, and I have reasonings built up for myself, and some of them have to be kind of arbitrary. But the thing is, it does store mass if you look at how it interacts, but when a Feruchemist punches someone, you’re not having a mass transference of a 1000 pounds transferring the massinto someone else.

So there are a few little tweaks. You can go talk to Peter, because Peter has the actual math. Oh Peter’s back

Quote

QUESTION

Metalminds: if you store weight, how does that work, do you decrease your mass?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Storing weight actually plays with your mass, because if you look at how we do the physics of it… This one is really screwy. Because we are changing massand playing with it… [Wax example] There is conservation of momentum and stuff like that, but how can you store your mass… Well, in the magic system it works, but it’s one of the weirdest things we do. We kind of play loose and free with the physics sometimes. Like the example that I often cite is Wayne doing a speed bubble, I choose to make light from inside not get a redshift. We kind of look at what is good storytelling first, and then work the physics around it.

Quote

QUESTION

When Wax changes his weight, is that weight or mass?

BRANDON SANDERSON

He is...he is changing...so he is actually changing his mass, in a weird...It's kind of halfway in between, is really what it is. But it follows the laws of conservation of momentum, so it's not just weight. It's timidly half-stepping in between.

 

[Calderis he/him]

6 minutes ago, Extesian said:

Yeah it's one of the things that is playing the loosest with science, but it is mass (which of course the planet is irrelevant to). Here are some WoBs in chronological order. 

 

Thanks @Extesian, I'm all out of upvotes or you'd have earned another one from me. 

Like I said, I think the only reason this is possible is due to realmatics. Because rather than just matter and energy, we have matter,  energy,  and investiture. So the investiture involvement is allowing for the effective change in mass without actually have a change in the density of matter. It's an impossibility in real world physics, but you know... Hooray magic. 

[+Extesian he/him]

 interesting @Calderis, that could be right. And feruchemically it's not shuttling abilities through time, it's converting your own mass into specifically attuned investiture when you store and converting out back when you tap. 

[DocHoliday he/him]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

 

For example, if a Iron Ferring were to store while on Roshar, which has 0.7 gravity, would they only have 70% of the storage they get on Scadrial? I don't think so. 

I think they do effectively store mass, so that storage is a constant percentage across all worlds. 

I'm pretty sure that is exactly how it would work on Roshar actually.

Clone a Feruchemist. Place one on Roshar, one on Scadrial. Both Feruchemists are storing a % of their weight, but that same Feruchemist weighs 2 different amounts depending on what planet they were on. You've effectively created a greater storage in the one.

No different than Feruchemical brass. Have one overheat in a desert, and one sit still in the Himalayas. Their environment actively affects what they're able to Store.

[Calderis he/him]

1 minute ago, DocHoliday said:

No different than Feruchemical brass. Have one overheat in a desert, and one sit still in the Himalayas. Their environment actively affects what they're able to Store.

They are different effects though. In the brass example, an external force is changing the actual temperature of the body. 

In the iron example, the perceived weight is an entirely external manifestation of the exact same internal value. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

8 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

Both Feruchemists are storing a % of their weight, but that same Feruchemist weighs 2 different amounts depending on what planet they were on. You've effectively created a greater storage in the one.

Given the information we currently have, Calderis is correct.

Quote

Mass Vs. Weight

Mass is a measure of how much matter is in an object. It is a tally of the quantity of atoms present, and it is the same whether a person is on Earth or in space. Weight, on the other hand, measures the effect of gravity on the mass of an object. That means your weight on Earth is a combination of how much mass is in your body and how hard the Earth is pulling you down toward the ground. On the moon, there is only about one-sixth the gravity of Earth, and so the astronaut weighs much less.

Defining Density

Density and mass are related concepts. Density is the amount of matter per unit of volume. For example, an astronaut might have a volume of 65 liters and a mass of 68 kilograms. If you divide her mass into her volume, you reach a density of 1.05 kilograms per liter. Not so coincidentally, this happens to be very close to the density of water, which is 1.00 kilograms per liter. You have probably heard that humans are more than half water, so it makes sense that they have about the same density.

Short Answer ... No

Using those concepts, look at what happens to the astronaut who ventures from the Earth to the moon. Moving from the gravity of the Earth to the gravity of the moon, the astronaut’s weight certainly changes, but his mass remains the same. There is less air pressure in space, but astronauts don’t blow up like bubbles once they leave Earth’s atmosphere, so you can safely assume that the astronaut’s volume doesn’t really change either. If the mass and the volume don’t change on the moon, you can deduce that the astronaut’s density would be the same.

Ok, this was a bit more detail than I probably needed, but oh well. Anyway, your mass and volume are unchanged whether you are on Roshar, or Scadrial, or in Space. Your weight changes depending on gravity, but in all 3 WoB's posted by Extesian, Brandon mentions messing with mass. As your mass remains constant in all 3 places, the amount that you store remains constant as well.

---

Regarding the physics of the situation, a quote from the topic Cloak was so kind as to link to at the start:

Quote

I asked Brandon about Iron Feruchemy at the release party, though. I have had a pet theory about Feruchemical iron for a while - that it messes with the person's connection to the Higgs field. Brandon confirmed it in the signing line. Exact words will, I'm sure, be on the transcript, but I asked specifically if it involved Higgs field stuff, and he said yes.

For those who don't know - the Higgs field is a quantum field that interacts with various particles and gives them their mass. The force carrier of the field is the Higgs boson, recently discovered by the LHC.

So, by decreasing your interaction with the Higgs field, you could decrease your mass without messing with the amount of matter in you. How it interacts with density would be more subtle, but I think that it works out most of the kinks with Feruchemical iron and density.

F-Iron messes with your interaction to the Higgs Field, which is what gives your particles mass. As Seonid says, you can decrease your mass without messing with the amount of matter in you, which I think is where Brandon starts to cheat physics.(Oh, so I read further down that thread, his physics breaking is troublesome..)

[+Extesian he/him]

Ooh nice @The One Who Connects. I hadn't seen that and Higgs field manipulation hadn't occurred to me. That's very cool confirmation. Is there no end to the fun of the Brandon Particle. 

[Calderis he/him]

I did read that WoB, and it went completely out of my head.

But yeah, the Higgs Field explanation adds in some real physics to the investiture only mass manipulation. I have to go read the rest of the thread linked now though.

Edit: ah, so by @Gagylpus's explanation of the Higgs Field in that post, it would still have to rely on investiture fiddling. 

The kinetic energy producing mass in the movement of subatomic particles is stored directly? So once tapped more kinetic energy and thus more mass? 

Edited June 30, 2017 by Calderis

[+hwiles He/Him]

That doesn't sound quite right, as I'm pretty sure it would produce a bunch of other unwanted effects...

Basically, you're storing your body's property of having mass. This gets into hardcore field theory and relativity quickly, which I'm not up to exploring in this forum. Suffice it to say that an atom doesn't have mass simply by virtue of its being an atom. It's mass is like a derived property that it is granted to it by some combination of the fields and energy composing the space it appears to occupy.

In real life, I don't believe there is any known way by which an atoms mass can be significantly (keyword) reduced without destroying it. Ie, in the Cosmere, the property of mass is not as fundamental and immutable. We can conceive a universe where matter can be massless, it would just be different from what we're used to. (Like magic...) 

[Spoolofwhool]

11 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

Clone a Feruchemist. Place one on Roshar, one on Scadrial. Both Feruchemists are storing a % of their weight, but that same Feruchemist weighs 2 different amounts depending on what planet they were on. You've effectively created a greater storage in the one.

This doesn't explain the momentum shift that Wax undergoes though. Storing mass does, which is why it appears to be the most likely actual effect of iron, which Brandon has essentially confirmed.

 

[Nathrangking he/him]

On 6/23/2017 at 6:25 PM, Scriptorian said:

Assuming a spherical feruchemist with a radius of about 1 meter, I calculate that you'd need to tap "only" about 100 earth masses. No idea on how much metal you'd actually need to compound to get that, much less the size of the metalmind required to hold it. But, you know, cosmologically speaking, this isn't that much. 

Disclaimer: tapping 100 earth masses at once may result in spontaneous neutronium compression. The 17th Shard is not liable for any personal injury, planet wide devistation, or naked singularities that may result. 

And that is just about as honest an answer to this question as you will find.