Do Allomantic Iron and Steel Break the Laws of Physics?

[Mushroom Catalog he/him]

Just curious whether or not people think they do. I saw some threads about it, but it's been a while. (I may or may not have posted a few of those threads. They were not... well worded.)

[Karger he/him]

45 minutes ago, Mushroom Catalog said:

Just curious whether or not people think they do. I saw some threads about it, but it's been a while. (I may or may not have posted a few of those threads. They were not... well worded.)

Without spiritual mumbo jumbo they seem to.  With it they supposedly do not. 

[ftl]

They break the laws of physics as they exist in our universe, but not the laws of physics of the Cosmere, because magic/investiture is part of the physics there.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

Well, the question makes more sense if we treated them as forces discovered in another universe or in another region. Do they break existing physics?

Allomancy is remarkably nice in that regard. Steel and iron add energy to a system, but in exchange fuel vanishes. The same effect sort of applies to the other metals. In theory you couls swallow metals at a higher place, gain the energy from going down, burn off the metals (or use a metal to do so) and let the lighter you be transported back using less energy. Aside from that, which we also sort of have if we use nuclear reactions, we are good. Even bendalloy and cadmium are nice in avoiding a redshift meaning that you cannot use them to violate the second law of thermodynamics.

The real physics breaking stuff is in feruchemy, iron and bronze foremost. If you have them you have a perpeutual motion machine or can break the second law of thermodynamics. Gold is also bad as it allows you to create matter.

[Tglassy]

Yes.  They allow you to swallow bits of iron and steel and then basically generate a magnetic field that you can see (as a blue line) and manipulate that only affects one item that you choose.  That is most certainly not within the laws of physics as we know them.  

[+Artemos he/him]

In our world, they definitely break the laws of physics. There's no way you can replicate the processes of Allomancy with what our universe has to offer.

In the Cosmere, it's still sketchy. The laws of physics are defined by whatever the magic needs them to be, so kind of vacuously true that they adhere to the laws of physics.

I'd still say no - the way that two people Pushing on a coin between them and having it hover in the air makes no sense without some kind of magicky friction keeping it hovering, for example. The Rule of Cool matters more than the laws of physics in cases like that.

[SwordNimiForPresident the sword/that sword]

The laws of physics? Yes. The laws of the Cosmere? No.

 

it goes without saying that magic isn’t real and therefore breaks the laws of physics.