Speed bubbling evolution

[Commander Azure]

If people in the cosmere were to find a planet with, say, just molecular life, do you think they'd put a giant speed bubble over the whole planet (knowing Brandon, that's probably possible) and watch how life evolves? That could be amazing for science.

[Brgst13]

By molecular life, do you mean bare self-replicating nucleic acids?  Or are you talking about single-celled organisms?  For any photosynthetic organism, a speed bubble is likely to be difficult because they will be photosynthesizing at a higher rate relative to oncoming solar energy.  Effectively, sunlight could become an issue because the photons would be accelerated on reaching the edge of the speed bubble.  Therefore, they will be more spread out, which means a less regular supply for plants.  The other possibility is that the speed of the photons remains constant, but the reactions in the plants would be sped up.  This effectively results in the same issue.

If photosynthesis is constant (sunlight is still not limiting), then plants would be able to generate sugar faster, and produce more oxygen.  This would result in a higher atmospheric oxygen content, altering evolutionary paths and possibly creating a more severe "snowball planet" effect as carbon dioxide is more effectively removed from the atmosphere.

I also think that a planet-wide speed bubble would require a mass of Investiture that can only be achieved by mechanizing Dalinar's ability to open Perpendicularities.

Tl;dr: The effects of a speed bubble on sunlight would likely warp the path of evolution, assuming you could get enough Investiture to do such a thing.

[NameIess]

1 hour ago, Commander Azure said:

If people in the cosmere were to find a planet with, say, just molecular life, do you think they'd put a giant speed bubble over the whole planet (knowing Brandon, that's probably possible) and watch how life evolves? That could be amazing for science.

I don't think that Brandon would write this, for two reasons:

1. Speed bubbling the planet would significantly speed it up, but if it takes millions to billions of years for evolution to happen, it would require a very powerful speed bubble to speed it up enough that evolution would happen in a reasonable timeframe.

2. Brandon generally stays away from topics related to religion, and evolution is highly controversial to a lot of people.

That said, I'm guessing you probably posted this to see what we think of it, not for a statistical analysis of whether or not Brandon would write about it, so...

I think that, if I had the means, I definitely would, although, as @Brgst13 pointed out, there would be a lot of problems to work out. I would also fully expect nothing to happen aside from the single-celled organisms becoming more specialized for surviving in their native environments, as I personally don't believe in evolution. However, I believe that Brandon has canonized evolution in the Cosmere, so who knows what would happen?