[OB] Extrapolating from the perpendicularity

[FuzzyWordsmith]

So, I have a bit of a science background, and the scene where Dalinar goes Super Saiyan and summons a perpendicularity by uniting the realms, my first thought was: Singularity? 

It makes a certain amount of sense. That merging of the realms has a distinct similarity to black holes and singularities in general, with a lot of stuff compressed into a very small point. That got me thinking. We have multiple WoB that in the cosmere, the law of conservation is mass-energy-Investiture.

Scientifically, you could express this as E=mc^2=xi, with x being a simple conversion factor for Investiture(i). While we don't know the exact details, we can surmise that larger masses cause more Investiture. We know that Shards can fudge with that to some extent. They can convert Investiture to matter and energy. It doesn't really make sense that it wouldn't go the other way. We know from this WoB that Investiture is Finite, which suggests the Shards have a finite amount of Investiture. We also have an idea from Bavadin that a Shard can be a sun.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/96-orem-signing/#e3188

chasmfriend's son

Is there a finite amount of Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

The reason I brought up black holes, is that it seems plausible that if a Shard were to invest a black hole enough to create a perpendicularity in the singularity, the would get a reasonably substantial boost of Investiture by eating it. While that may or may not make a difference, there IS a supermassive black hole at the centre of every galaxy, and even if the Cosmere is a dwarf galaxy, it would have one unless we get WoB otherwise. If I was a shard, Investing that supermassive black hole and possibly eating it/converting the mass to Investiture seems like it might give me a leg up over the competition. What do you guys think? I haven't slept in like 23 hours, so I could just be jabbering nonsense, but I feel like this is an angle to be explored.

[Calderis he/him]

Not disagreeing with any of your points. I think they're all fairly well established. 

Just wanted to add a WoB for some perspective on the sheer scale we speaking of when discussing shards and amounts of investiture. 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/188/#e3925

Quote

emailanimal

From a very recent signing, we have this new Word of Brandon...

chasmfriend's son: Is there a finite amount of Investiture?

Brandon: Yes.

chasmfriend's son: So is Nightblood consuming it?

Brandon: Yes. Very, very slowly.

This worries me somewhat because of the following observation.

Nightblood consumes Breath (and other Investiture, but let's limit ourselves to Breath for a second).

Every person on Nalthis is born with one Breath.

Populations tend to grow. Which means that under normal rules of demographics, population of Nalthis should keep increasing.

This in turn means that under normal circumstances the number of people with Breath on Nalthis should be growing.

I can see the following possible explanations to this:

1. Endowment can give Breath to many morepeople than are currently living on Nalthis. So, the exponential population growth has not yet reached the level at which Endowment's ability to award a Breath to each Nalthis-born human is seriously challenged. When it happens though, things will not go well.

2. There is some built-in mechanism controlling population growth on Nalthis, making certain that the population stays within the limits. Nightblood's consumption of Breath makes these limits smaller, and overall may lead to Endowment's inability to grant Breath to Nalthis-born, but not for a while (essentially, Endowment controls population trends at she sees fit).

Thoughts?

Brandon Sanderson

Just as a point you should understand, the amount of MATTER in the cosmere is finite too. As is the amount of energy.

Worrying that Endowment will run out of Breaths to give is a little like worrying that the amount of carbon on Earth will run out because people keep being born.

 

[FuzzyWordsmith]

Perfectly valid. However, I would like to point out, that supermassive black holes are REALLY massive. And the cosmere is just a dwarf galaxy. To put things into perspective relative to our world, it would only take 8604 years for humanity growing at its current rate to use up all the matter in the observable universe. Source:

Spoiler

 

Which is a LOT bigger than one dwarf galaxy, so running out of matter is actually a much more valid problem than I think Brandon is saying. 

[PhineasGage]

Ok, I am not good at physics so I'm just going to summarise my very limited understanding of what this means to make sure I'm on the same page.

Matter, energy and investiture are essentially the same things but humans perceive them differently because we are basically just fat apes. Bit like time/space is one thing but we arbitrarily divide it into 2 because we just aren't that clever. 

A singularity is a point of infinite density because a given mass is compressed into 0 volume. This creates a curve in space time and this causes the black hole. I believe you are suggesting that pushing more matter/energy/investiture into the singularity you would be able to get a return on that investment because of the way the singularity would cause the three aspects to shift and allow it all to become investiture ready for use. Not quite sure I understand how you would access that invetiture though - please explain for me?

I was under the impression that this was "classical theory" and that it doesn't really hold up with quantum physics theory - but as it's quantum I cant even understand the basics so I'm going to ignore it for now.

So, I can kind of see how this works, if I understand the theory properly, and I can see that it wouldn't destroy the laws of conservation. This could suggest a sensible mechanism to gain enough power to destroy a shard which I would imagine requires a huge amount of power?

I hadn't realised that Investiture was finite. As a point, even without a singularity, presumably with the right settings/equipment, couldn't a planet be destroyed (for example) to release the energy and investiture?

[FuzzyWordsmith]

@PhineasGage So, the thing to remember here is space is HUGE. A planet is like a speck of dust compared to a star, and based on Scadrial and Taldain, we has seen that both are within a Shard's capacity. So a planet wouldn't add much. However, black holes count their mass in terms of stars. A large black hole will have hundreds of times more mass than a star. The Supermassive black hole at the center counts it's mass in the millions of stars.

As to accessing the investiture, the way I see it, we know things like metal in Allomancy can be burned to produce investiture from the Spiritual Realm. Based on OB, we know that a perpendicularity is where the three realms collapse to a point. On that note, the Spiritual Realm is already a singularity, given that time and space have no relevance there. In my mind, that means it's not much of a stretch to burn a black hole into Investiture in the same way an Allomancer burns metal. Another thing I cannot state enough is that while the numbers are huge, Brandon gives the example of comparing running out of investiture to running out of carbon for humans. If you take a look at the video in the spoiler tag, running out of particles in the observable universe is feasible for humans on Earth. I believe there are about thirty orders of magnitude less particles on earth, so it's actually frighteningly possible to run out of carbon. (source: https://education.jlab.org/qa/mathatom_05.html) A dwarf galaxy is going to have a LOT less matter than the entire universe. As a result, I think Brandon might be overestimating the amount of matter in a galaxy relative to the absolute cosmic scale.

Sorry if that was rambly. I'm happy to clarify any further points.

Edited November 24, 2017 by FuzzyWordsmith

[PhineasGage]

That's great. I think I have a much better understanding now. I see why a black hole would be more worth using. What I don't really understand is how a shard might be able to "eat" a black hole? Are you suggesting that they might be able to access it via the spiritual realm? 

I haven't had a chance to re-watch that video you linked but I watch numberphile fairly regularly so I have probably seen it before. It's late here so I need to rush to bed. Going to poke my SO to read this too because he gets physics in a way I don't and will almost certainly have views. I'll post again in the morning.

[FuzzyWordsmith]

By "eat" I mean convert to Investiture in a similar way to an Allomancer burning metal. We know they can convert Investiture into matter based on the creation of Scadrial. And we know matter can be converted to energy and vice versa. It just makes sense to me that you could convert matter into Investiture.

[kaellok he/him]

23 hours ago, FuzzyWordsmith said:

The reason I brought up black holes, is that it seems plausible that if a Shard were to invest a black hole enough to create a perpendicularity in the singularity, the would get a reasonably substantial boost of Investiture by eating it. 

Read and re-read the thread.  Still not understanding this point.  Given a finite resource (x), how does converting it to (y) and back to (x) increase the overall amount of (x)?  There would have to be greater than 100% efficiency ratios on that conversion, right?

[FuzzyWordsmith]

1 hour ago, kaellok said:

Read and re-read the thread.  Still not understanding this point.  Given a finite resource (x), how does converting it to (y) and back to (x) increase the overall amount of (x)?  There would have to be greater than 100% efficiency ratios on that conversion, right?

Well, it's more about usable form. If it is currently in the form of matter, that means it isn't usable as Investiture. Like fossil fuels. They provide no useful energy on their own when they are matter, so you burn them to produce energy in a form that is useful. Same idea, except black holes instead of coal or oil.

[DonnChadh]

@PhineasGage Pointed me here and we've had a bit of discussion about your idea

Wouldn't there be an issue with the event horizon in that although you could get tons of energy out of a black hole, crossing out of the horizon requires infinite energy?

So you could have all the power you wanted, but not be able to access anything in the rest of the cosmere

Another thing we came up with is that if a black hole is removing matter/energy from the universe, does that make a Perpendicularity a white hole?

We certainly saw that when Dalinar connected the realms, Investiture streamed in from the Spiritual Realm, so energy was added to the system

[Calderis he/him]

5 minutes ago, DonnChadh said:

We certainly saw that when Dalinar connected the realms, Investiture streamed in from the Spiritual Realm, so energy was added to the system

The energy already existed. Investiture cannot be created or destroyed. 

The Cosmere functions with the same physics as our world, there's just a third state of matter. 

Matter =energy =investiture 

Investiture may have been pouring into the physical realm, but it was already in the system. 

[FuzzyWordsmith]

15 minutes ago, DonnChadh said:

@PhineasGage Pointed me here and we've had a bit of discussion about your idea

Wouldn't there be an issue with the event horizon in that although you could get tons of energy out of a black hole, crossing out of the horizon requires infinite energy?

So you could have all the power you wanted, but not be able to access anything in the rest of the cosmere

Another thing we came up with is that if a black hole is removing matter/energy from the universe, does that make a Perpendicularity a white hole?

We certainly saw that when Dalinar connected the realms, Investiture streamed in from the Spiritual Realm, so energy was added to the system

I don't think that would be a problem because the event horizon doesn't exist in the Spiritual Realm, where everything is one. We know Shards aren't as present in the Physical Realm. It should be within their powers to not be affected by the black hole's gravity. In addition, getting the Investiture out is mitigated by the Spiritual Realm. We know Shards do their business primarily there. If a Perpendicularity brings Investiture from Spiritual to Physical, the reverse should be possible. In that case, the Investiture never has to leave the event horizon. It can go straight from Physical to Spiritual. Finally, there's the most extreme case. If all the matter is converted to Investiture at once, the gravity disappears and there is no more event horizon.

[PhineasGage]

3 hours ago, Calderis said:

The energy already existed. Investiture cannot be created or destroyed. 

I think he meant "added to the physical realm" rather than added to the system as a whole. 

For one thing, we know perpendicularuties are, to all intents and purposes "wormwholes" where you can use the cognitive realm to travel great distance - in my mind this is a bit like subspace in Star Trek.

2 hours ago, FuzzyWordsmith said:

the Spiritual Realm, where everything is one

Do we know this or has it been inferred? Not arguing, I just didn't realise we knew that much about it,

2 hours ago, FuzzyWordsmith said:

If a Perpendicularity brings Investiture from Spiritual to Physical, the reverse should be possible. In that case, the Investiture never has to leave the event horizon. It can go straight from Physical to Spiritual.

Ok, so assuming that is true, wouldn't there be a bit of a problem with the idea of it never running out? I mean, in theory, you'd just make sure everything would end up in a black hole, set up the perpendicularity such that you change all energy/matter into investiture in the spiritual realm, then use that to recreate the system all over again? We have a concept of heat death in our universe, should there not be an analogue to this idea in the Cosmere?

I am still interested in the idea of the perpendicularities being possibly like white holes - if investiture is being converted from black holes and those singularities are/could be perpendicularities it would allow at least a bit of recycling to happen in the system.

 

[FuzzyWordsmith]

12 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

3 hours ago, FuzzyWordsmith said:

the Spiritual Realm, where everything is one

Do we know this or has it been inferred? Not arguing, I just didn't realise we knew that much about it,

 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/69-shadows-of-self-release-party/#e6129

Questioner

Mistborn travels to Roshar, what does he or she use to get Invested?

Brandon Sanderson

*pause* So. *pause* I think I've talked about this before on the 17th Shard, but I'm not 100% sure and so I don't want to anything right now, not knowing what I've said. But you can look it up. You can ask Peter. Hey Peter, have I talked about someone using-- Have I ever in an interview before talked about using metals... A Mistborn travels to Roshar and uses the metals there?

Peter Ahlstrom

I think that you have said that they could do it.

Brandon Sanderson

I said it.  Okay, so the thing about the metals you have to understand is the metals are a key, the metals are not magical themselves, except for specific ones. If I've already said that I can tell you, go to Roshar and you could use the metals that are there to power your Allomancy because the difference is in your soul and you're actually drawing directly from Preservation. Remember that on the Spiritual Realm, this is the big tidbit--they're listening. On the Spiritual Realm time, distance, and space are irrelevant. It's a place where time and space are compounded in one. So anything that exists on the Spiritual Realm, space doesn't matter for it.

Emphasis mine, we have confirmation.

12 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

Ok, so assuming that is true, wouldn't there be a bit of a problem with the idea of it never running out? I mean, in theory, you'd just make sure everything would end up in a black hole, set up the perpendicularity such that you change all energy/matter into investiture in the spiritual realm, then use that to recreate the system all over again? We have a concept of heat death in our universe, should there not be an analogue to this idea in the Cosmere?

As to infinite recycling, Brandon has said that entropy stands, meaning this conversion is not 100% efficient. As per this: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100-rbooks-ama-2015/#e3544

yurisses

You once said that Investiture follows its own version of the laws of thermodynamics. The first one is that Investiture is neither created nor destroyed.

Is the second law of Investodynamics that the amount of corrupted Investiture in the Cosmere cannot decrease?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, the idea is that there is a third item in the equations--matter, energy, and investiture. That's the basis of how they work.

Entropy is not corrupted Investiture. The second law stands as is. However, there is a fourth law that relates to Adonalsium, which I'm not going to talk about at the moment.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy can never decrease over time for an isolated system, that is, a system in which neither energy nor matter can enter nor leave. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics)

We so far have nothing that explicitly debunks the possibility of this.

Edited November 25, 2017 by FuzzyWordsmith

[Calderis he/him]

That pesky 4th law.

He's never told us what it is. 

[FuzzyWordsmith]

I admit that the fourth law may end up being what makes this unviable. It probably has something to do with how to make Investiture Finite but also renewable. Because it seems like the system as we know it has some loopholes by which shards might be able to grow more powerful than they're supposed to. There is also some room for some really crazy positive-feedback loops which seem problematic.