theory Lights, Intents and physics

[Serack he/him]

As Raboniel and Navani discuss the polarity of individual "axi" in chapter 97, I'm interested in exploring investiture "light" in terms of Fermion and Boson particles.

[Silarn]

It's a bit hard to know what they're talking about here. Keep in mind that in many ways our science is ahead of most science in the Cosmere (at least with published material). There was a time that we believed atoms were the smallest particle. Then we came to understand those were made up of more particles, and those were made up of yet more particles still. It's possible their 'axi' are akin to atomic particles. It's hard to say. But I'd guess this is largely referring to electrical charge.

That being said, I think it would be reasonable to perceive investiture as something akin to a superposition, with intent as an added requirement. The rigidity of the intent is interesting, though. Two individual investitures will only combine in the presence of the combined intent and rhythm in their environment. Further, Navani and Rabioniel were only able to create the anti-light by introducing 'intent-less' light in a closed system to the anti-intent they wanted it to adopt.

Edited December 1, 2020 by Silarn

[LewsTherinTelescope]

3 hours ago, Silarn said:

Further, Navani and Rabioniel were only able to create the anti-light by introducing 'intent-less' light in a closed system to the anti-intent they wanted it to adopt.

I would note that, while it was in the tube, it was still described as Voidlight, and no change was mentioned. So I imagine it retained its Intent.

[LordTheodore]

22 hours ago, beewall said:

Based on Phendorana dying, doesn't seem like a custom mix is needed.

Unless Honorspren are 100% Honor and 0% Cultivation in which case anti-stormlight would work and wouldn't necessarily mean that anti-stormlight would work on other spren.

Edited December 2, 2020 by LordTheodore

[LewsTherinTelescope]

Just now, LordTheodore said:

Unless Honorspren are 100% Honor and 0% Cultivation in which case anti-stormlight would work

They might claim that, but Brandon has said there is disagreement in-world over the "closest to Honor" thing, and if one was verifiably "pure" Honor I doubt this would be the case. He has also generally couched his statements in "well, the honorspren would claim" when he talks about them being the most Honor.

Also, the odd thing: anti-VL flows through raysium, so the anti-Lights aren't anti-everything-of-that-Shard. So does this mean spren are Light?

[Blackwarder]

On 2020-11-23 at 1:51 AM, KandraAllomancer said:

I'm not sure about this, as we have 16 Shards and just 7 colors of the rainbow... Plus, Shardic colors are complicated. Voidlight is hyperviolet, the corresponding rainbow color is violet (with an extremely broad band) and the color of Rayseium, also used by Odium in his visions, is gold and white.

Also, we haven't seen Ruin's or Preservation's Lights, just their godmetals (solid state), Shardpools (liquid) and mists (gas), while Lights seem to be something between liquid and gas

Than a unique Adonalsium spectrum fully harmonized.

[Harfyn]

On 11/22/2020 at 5:51 PM, KandraAllomancer said:

I'm not sure about this, as we have 16 Shards and just 7 colors of the rainbow... Plus, Shardic colors are complicated. Voidlight is hyperviolet, the corresponding rainbow color is violet (with an extremely broad band) and the color of Rayseium, also used by Odium in his visions, is gold and white.

Also, we haven't seen Ruin's or Preservation's Lights, just their godmetals (solid state), Shardpools (liquid) and mists (gas), while Lights seem to be something between liquid and gas

Might also just be that the light isn't only emitting what is visible to human eyes - other shards could go further out of the visible light spectrum than hyperviolet.

I'd also agree with some others saying that it's unlikely Ruin and Preservation are each other's anti-lights. I think they are maybe as close as a shard could be to having that, though - like each of them might have a rhythm that is very close to the other's anti-rhythm/frequency/wavelength. What Vin is doing seems to me what almost any shard-attack would look like - each shard is "equal" and infinite, so a direct attack will cause annihilation of both. (though, that idea makes me wonder how odium splintered Aona + Skai 1 vs 2)

[Turtle373 he/him]

8 hours ago, LordTheodore said:

Unless Honorspren are 100% Honor and 0% Cultivation in which case anti-stormlight would work and wouldn't necessarily mean that anti-stormlight would work on other spren.

Well all radiants (except lift) use stormlight no matter their order, so I think anti stormlight would work on any spren. Also in shadesmar when high storms pass the spren are rejuvenated so I think stormlight is more connected to spren than lifelight, or at the very least more connected to spren who are bonded to radiants.

[Stormgate he/him]

On 11/22/2020 at 4:51 PM, KandraAllomancer said:

I'm not sure about this, as we have 16 Shards and just 7 colors of the rainbow... Plus, Shardic colors are complicated. Voidlight is hyperviolet, the corresponding rainbow color is violet (with an extremely broad band) and the color of Rayseium, also used by Odium in his visions, is gold and white.

Also, we haven't seen Ruin's or Preservation's Lights, just their godmetals (solid state), Shardpools (liquid) and mists (gas), while Lights seem to be something between liquid and gas

One thing I learned in Chemistry is that every element and chemical compound has its own spectra, that is, pattern of light frequency that the element creates when a lot of energy is pushed through it to make it glow. This principle led to helium being discovered in the Sun before it was discovered on Earth. I was under the impression that these patterns were the basis for the different lines for the different Investiture sources. Also, I don't believe that any two Shards are the opposite of each other like that. They were one being in Adonalsium, and opposite energies in a single being like that would annihilate each other like we see in RoW. I'd posit that Navani discovered that Investiture can have a value (the Intent or Shard of origin) but also a charge (positive or negative.) When Preservation and Ruin killed both the hosts, it was more like two stars colliding and causing their mutual collapse. 

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

On 1.12.2020 at 7:12 PM, beewall said:

I mean, it's literally the exact same thing as Odium's tone, with some Spiritual nonsense added on top. Personally, I'm pretty sure its Intent is still just Odium. Keep in mind, it doesn't destroy everything Odious - it gets conducted by raysium just fine. However, the actual thing it is "made" of reacts with Voidlight and destroys it. No reason for it to be anything but Odium.

That's a valid point, but there's a possible explanation - Raysium simply conducts Investiture really well and the kinetics of reaction is much faster between Lights than between Light and godmetal, explaining why it was Voidlight that was destroyed

On 1.12.2020 at 7:12 PM, beewall said:

(Also, it would be really weird for Ruin and Preservation to have the same sound, but that's a gut feeling argument rather than evidence.)

On the other hand, Vin, despite using Bronze enhanced by Hemalurgy, finding the Well of Ascension with Ruin trapped within and fighting atium users, never seems to hear any pulses that are so distinctly different than the others that the could easily be attributed to Ruin's Rhytm

On 2.12.2020 at 6:02 PM, beewall said:

They might claim that, but Brandon has said there is disagreement in-world over the "closest to Honor" thing, and if one was verifiably "pure" Honor I doubt this would be the case. He has also generally couched his statements in "well, the honorspren would claim" when he talks about them being the most Honor.

I also doubt that Honorspren are purely of Honor, but they might have enough Honor's Investiture in them for anti-Stormlight to be deadly. I wonder how it would work on Cultivationspren

On 2.12.2020 at 7:06 PM, Harfyn said:

I'd also agree with some others saying that it's unlikely Ruin and Preservation are each other's anti-lights. I think they are maybe as close as a shard could be to having that, though - like each of them might have a rhythm that is very close to the other's anti-rhythm/frequency/wavelength. What Vin is doing seems to me what almost any shard-attack would look like - each shard is "equal" and infinite, so a direct attack will cause annihilation of both. (though, that idea makes me wonder how odium splintered Aona + Skai 1 vs 2)

I really like this idea. We know that Stormlight changes its Rhytm somehow before merging with Voidlight, while still being Stormlight at that point. So maybe instead of one Rhythm, we have some spectrum of Rhythms assigned to each Shard, depending on the Intent of a person holding Investiture. For example, Vin wants to kill Ruin, which changes the Rhytm slightly, so that Preservation's power becomes anti-Ruin; Sazed does something opposite to both Shards

[LewsTherinTelescope]

24 minutes ago, KandraAllomancer said:

That's a valid point, but there's a possible explanation - Raysium simply conducts Investiture really well and the kinetics of reaction is much faster between Lights than between Light and godmetal, explaining why it was Voidlight that was destroyed

I suppose that could be possible, but it sounds very strange to me that something could be conducted by something if they explode on contact.

24 minutes ago, KandraAllomancer said:

On the other hand, Vin, despite using Bronze enhanced by Hemalurgy, finding the Well of Ascension with Ruin trapped within and fighting atium users, never seems to hear any pulses that are so distinctly different than the others that the could easily be attributed to Ruin's Rhytm

Two answers I can think of. One, it's still Allomancy, and so still gives off Preservation's tone. Two, Brandon hadn't thought of this yet and it's another "why can atium be Pushed and Pulled" situation, lol. (Or both.)

25 minutes ago, KandraAllomancer said:

but they might have enough Honor's Investiture in them for anti-Stormlight to be deadly.

Yeah, this is my stance too. Was just arguing against the idea a custom mix is needed for each spren.

26 minutes ago, KandraAllomancer said:

I wonder how it would work on Cultivationspren

I imagine it'd still work. Brandon's said that Shardblades are "alloys" (well, not Physical alloys, but weird Spiritual stuff) of Honor and Cultivation's metals, and that, while the types aren't all the same exact mix, many would call them the same "alloy" as each other. This makes me think that the proportions are all relatively similar, even in so-called honorspren and cultivationspren.

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

4 minutes ago, beewall said:

I suppose that could be possible, but it sounds very strange to me that something could be conducted by something if they explode on contact.

The explosion only occurs if the Investiture is under any kind of pressure; otherwise it's simply annihilation

[Frustration he/him]

On 12/1/2020 at 0:48 PM, Silarn said:

It's a bit hard to know what they're talking about here. Keep in mind that in many ways our science is ahead of most science in the Cosmere (at least with published material). There was a time that we believed atoms were the smallest particle. Then we came to understand those were made up of more particles, and those were made up of yet more particles still. It's possible their 'axi' are akin to atomic particles. It's hard to say. But I'd guess this is largely referring to electrical charge.

That being said, I think it would be reasonable to perceive investiture as something akin to a superposition, with intent as an added requirement. The rigidity of the intent is interesting, though. Two individual investitures will only combine in the presence of the combined intent and rhythm in their environment. Further, Navani and Rabioniel were only able to create the anti-light by introducing 'intent-less' light in a closed system to the anti-intent they wanted it to adopt.

yes but it is said that Odium can see them, so I think they are the smallest.

[Silarn]

On 12/2/2020 at 11:02 AM, LewsTherinTelescope said:

They might claim that, but Brandon has said there is disagreement in-world over the "closest to Honor" thing, and if one was verifiably "pure" Honor I doubt this would be the case. He has also generally couched his statements in "well, the honorspren would claim" when he talks about them being the most Honor.

Also, the odd thing: anti-VL flows through raysium, so the anti-Lights aren't anti-everything-of-that-Shard. So does this mean spren are Light?

Keep in mind that antiparticles only annihilate similar particles. Antiprotons and protons. Electrons and positrons.

Interestingly, photons are considered chargeless and therefore are their own antiparticles and do not actually have a particle that will annihilate them. So the investiture seems to act as a type of charge, which means that the 'photons' of investiture are not actually chargeless like photons are. Their intent/rhythm/tone is a type of charge.

So long as Raysium (I guess we still call it that?) is made of different types of particles than the anti/voidlight, it could flow and not cause annihilation. Though you would tend to expect it to flow opposite to how you were used to 'regular' voidlight flowing.

To address the question, I would guess that at least a major part of their being is Light-based. Assuming that the Light is a fundamental force that keeps them whole, annihilating that Light would destroy them pretty well - even if there were some other fundamental 'particles' that also give spren their structure.

I suppose that's not too different from the electrons in our own bodies. If we were suddenly bathed in positrons, things would not go well for us, but not every particle in our bodies would be annihilated, just the electrons.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Silarn

[LewsTherinTelescope]

47 minutes ago, Silarn said:

So long as Raysium (I guess we still call it that?) is made of different types of particles than the anti/voidlight, it could flow and not cause annihilation. Though you would tend to expect it to flow opposite to how you were used to 'regular' voidlight flowing.

That's true, I'm probably thinking of this in a too-simplified way.

48 minutes ago, Silarn said:

To address the question, I would guess that at least a major part of their being is Light-based. Assuming that the Light is a fundamental force that keeps them whole, annihilating that Light would destroy them pretty well - even if there were some other fundamental 'particles' that also give spren their structure.

I suppose that's not too different from the electrons in our own bodies. If we were suddenly bathed in positrons, things would not go well for us, but not every particle in our bodies would be annihilated, just the electrons.

Very good point, lol.

[Serack he/him]

On 12/1/2020 at 2:48 PM, Silarn said:

It's a bit hard to know what they're talking about here. Keep in mind that in many ways our science is ahead of most science in the Cosmere (at least with published material). There was a time that we believed atoms were the smallest particle. Then we came to understand those were made up of more particles, and those were made up of yet more particles still. It's possible their 'axi' are akin to atomic particles. It's hard to say. But I'd guess this is largely referring to electrical charge.

That being said, I think it would be reasonable to perceive investiture as something akin to a superposition, with intent as an added requirement. The rigidity of the intent is interesting, though. Two individual investitures will only combine in the presence of the combined intent and rhythm in their environment. Further, Navani and Rabioniel were only able to create the anti-light by introducing 'intent-less' light in a closed system to the anti-intent they wanted it to adopt.

I was working on a response to this that got so involved I ended up dedicating another topic to it.  

 

[Serack he/him]

On 12/2/2020 at 8:40 PM, Ookla the Turtle said:

Well all radiants (except lift) use stormlight no matter their order, so I think anti stormlight would work on any spren. Also in shadesmar when high storms pass the spren are rejuvenated so I think stormlight is more connected to spren than lifelight, or at the very least more connected to spren who are bonded to radiants.

I'll interject that Venli used Voidlight to power her Dawnsinging which is derived from her Radiant powers.  I also expect that pretty much all past Sibling Bondsmiths used Towerlight as much or more than pure Stormlight, and perhaps all the Radiant residents of the tower had ways to access it.  

Additionally, Brandon has said that Shardblades are an alloy of the Honor and Cultivation God Metals (with varying ratios), so I expect any radiant from the spren those blades are made of would be able to use any combination of Cultivation light and Stormlight if they were to find a source for it.  It just happens that Lift is able to generate her own.

 

Quote

Alpharho

The metal of Shardblades. Cultivationspren versus honorspren, for example. Are they different metals?

Brandon Sanderson

No, but good question.

Alpharho

Are all orders the same alloy, essentially?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. There's a little asterisk on there, but not in the way you're asking... You could call those all the same alloy. Because the mixture to different spren is different, I think that you could argue that each one is its own alloy.

Alpharho

So, different proportions of tanavastium?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but it doesn't quite work that way with these magics, right? I'm going to say that's up to the individual cosmerologist who is in the world, the arcanist, defining it. You would be able to find enough differences to legitimately call them different alloys if you wanted to.

Alpharho

Would you say different ratios of the same two metals?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. They are not going to have a third one in them, if that's what you're asking. But it doesn't quite work that way. Like, if you were going to take brass, you could measure the exact percentage. In this case, it is a thing; it's not like you could divide it up and split them apart, because they are a thing. And that thing would be called one thing.

Alpharho

But you won't say what that thing is called?

Brandon Sanderson

No, I won't say what that thing is called. But I think you and the 17th Sharders and folks that are dividing them would prefer to call them ten different things, and I think their nomenclature would be relevant.

Skyward Denver signing (Nov. 15, 2018)

 

[Honorless he/him]

On 11/23/2020 at 3:51 AM, KandraAllomancer said:

I believe that the behavior of different Lights, their combinations and anti-Lights can be easily described using simple physics analogies.

Shardic Intents are pure states, that, like quantum states, can be added together in any proportions, creating custom Intents / Rhythms.

The easiest examples are Investitures of two different Shards mixed in 50%-50% proportions e.g. Harmony (ettmetal) = Ruin + Preservation, War (Warlight) = Honor + Odium, Science (Towerlight) = Honor + Cultivation

Rosharan spren are different mixes of X% Honor + Y% Cultivation, where X and Y add up to 100. This would, fortunately, make creating custom anti-Lights rather difficult.

Anti-Lights are Investitures of opposing Intents, for example Ruin and Preservation. As Odium seems to lack a directly opposing Shard, anti-Voidlight is some combination of other Intents that doesn't occur naturally. I would assume some mix of Honor, Devotion and maybe Dominion (since they share the Unity theme) and maybe others, mixed in the exact proportions that create the Rhythm exactly opposing that of Odium.

With this assumption, two planets of Cosmere (Scadrial and Roshar) correspond nicely to the behavior of two types of hadron particles: mesons and baryons.

Mesons are built from a quark and an anti-quark and are inherently unstable. Ruin and Preservation's Investitures being their own anti-Investitures explains a lot: the explosion of power that kills Vin and Ati, Ati being unable to splinter Preservation to Khriss' confusion, mists avoiding hemalurgic spikes. Ettmetal exists only because both powers are held by one individual, and, as mesons, is extremely unstable.

Baryons are made of three quarks, so neither can each other's anti-quark. They are bound together in a way that makes them confined together: pulling one quark would require more and more power the further you take it from the particle. It is exactly the same behavior that seems to bind Odium to Braize and H&C to Roshar, the latter described exactly by Mraize in his talk with Shallan

I was thinking their Rhythms would be close to each other's Anti-Rhythms, actual Anti-Rhythms... I don't know. I like how the idea slots into things but I think Brandon intended Investiture and Anti-Investiture to parallel matter and anti-matter. He did say that in the Cosmere instead of just matter and energy, they also have Investiture.

On 11/23/2020 at 5:21 AM, KandraAllomancer said:

I'm not sure about this, as we have 16 Shards and just 7 colors of the rainbow... Plus, Shardic colors are complicated. Voidlight is hyperviolet, the corresponding rainbow color is violet (with an extremely broad band) and the color of Rayseium, also used by Odium in his visions, is gold and white.

Also, we haven't seen Ruin's or Preservation's Lights, just their godmetals (solid state), Shardpools (liquid) and mists (gas), while Lights seem to be something between liquid and gas

Seven colours are not strict delineations or fundamental constituents of light. I mean, they do correspond to frequencies but it's not like there are seven fundamental colours. Our retinas don't measure the wavelengths of light hitting them. We have three kinds of photoreceptors and it's because of them that we see seven colours of the rainbow. Besides, the rainbow is continuous, it's not exactly that violet is the edge and after that lie colours not meant for mortal eyes (thanks, Lovecraft). There are many shades of colour there, which ones are you defining as the primary shades? Classification of colours is based on human perception. Green is a mix of yellow and blue, violet is a mix of red and blue (indigo is just a deeper blue than cyan blue).

Edited January 26, 2021 by Honorless

[mathiau he/him]

On 22/11/2020 at 11:21 PM, KandraAllomancer said:

I believe that the behavior of different Lights, their combinations and anti-Lights can be easily described using simple physics analogies.

Shardic Intents are pure states, that, like quantum states, can be added together in any proportions, creating custom Intents / Rhythms.

If it was that simple you wouldn't need to change the frequency of tie Rhythm to fuse Stormlight and Voidlight

Quote

Anti-Lights are Investitures of opposing Intents, for example Ruin and Preservation. As Odium seems to lack a directly opposing Shard, anti-Voidlight is some combination of other Intents that doesn't occur naturally. I would assume some mix of Honor, Devotion and maybe Dominion (since they share the Unity theme) and maybe others, mixed in the exact proportions that create the Rhythm exactly opposing that of Odium.

 Isn't that contradictory to you're previous idea?

Quote

With this assumption, two planets of Cosmere (Scadrial and Roshar) correspond nicely to the behavior of two types of hadron particles: mesons and baryons.

Mesons are built from a quark and an anti-quark and are inherently unstable. Ruin and Preservation's Investitures being their own anti-Investitures explains a lot: the explosion of power that kills Vin and Ati, Ati being unable to splinter Preservation to Khriss' confusion, mists avoiding hemalurgic spikes. Ettmetal exists only because both powers are held by one individual, and, as mesons, is extremely unstable.

Baryons are made of three quarks, so neither can each other's anti-quark. They are bound together in a way that makes them confined together: pulling one quark would require more and more power the further you take it from the particle. It is exactly the same behavior that seems to bind Odium to Braize and H&C to Roshar, the latter described exactly by Mraize in his talk with Shallan

There are perfectly stable mesons just as there are perfectly unstable baryons, and most of the time the reason they're unstable is because their quarks are unstable, not because they're matter-antimatter compounds

On 23/11/2020 at 7:49 AM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Preservation’s color is White and Ruin’s is Black. The Mist is analogous to Stormlight, with both being the ‘gaseous’ form of Investiture.

It's not.

On 01/12/2020 at 7:12 PM, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Based on Phendorana dying, doesn't seem like a custom mix is needed.

I'd way to see Cryptics or Mistsprens die before coming to that conclusion

On 02/12/2020 at 6:02 PM, LewsTherinTelescope said:

They might claim that, but Brandon has said there is disagreement in-world over the "closest to Honor" thing, and if one was verifiably "pure" Honor I doubt this would be the case. He has also generally couched his statements in "well, the honorspren would claim" when he talks about them being the most Honor.

Brandon comfirmed Mistsprens were more Cultivation than Honour so they're wrong about that point. Also Spren most of Honour doesn't mean order most of Honour though it's similar

Quote

Also, the odd thing: anti-VL flows through raysium, so the anti-Lights aren't anti-everything-of-that-Shard. So does this mean spren are Light?

Godmetals don't exactly follow the same rules as the rest

On 04/12/2020 at 2:02 AM, KandraAllomancer said:

On the other hand, Vin, despite using Bronze enhanced by Hemalurgy, finding the Well of Ascension with Ruin trapped within and fighting atium users, never seems to hear any pulses that are so distinctly different than the others that the could easily be attributed to Ruin's Rhytm

That's because Atium's Rhythm is relatively close to gold's one, for RAFO reasons.

Also I doubt Atium's Rhythm will be exactly like Ruin's one, similar of course, but not identical

On 02/12/2020 at 7:06 PM, Harfyn said:

Might also just be that the light isn't only emitting what is visible to human eyes - other shards could go further out of the visible light spectrum than hyperviolet.

I'd also agree with some others saying that it's unlikely Ruin and Preservation are each other's anti-lights. I think they are maybe as close as a shard could be to having that, though - like each of them might have a rhythm that is very close to the other's anti-rhythm/frequency/wavelength. What Vin is doing seems to me what almost any shard-attack would look like - each shard is "equal" and infinite, so a direct attack will cause annihilation of both. (though, that idea makes me wonder how odium splintered Aona + Skai 1 vs 2)

We no Autonomy was involved in some way, might be that

On 09/12/2020 at 8:05 PM, Serack said:

I'll interject that Venli used Voidlight to power her Dawnsinging which is derived from her Radiant powers.  I also expect that pretty much all past Sibling Bondsmiths used Towerlight as much or more than pure Stormlight, and perhaps all the Radiant residents of the tower had ways to access it. 

Stoneshaping actually. Not that it changes anything to your point

[LewsTherinTelescope]

1 minute ago, mathiau said:

I'd way to see Cryptics or Mistsprens die before coming to that conclusion

Why?

1 minute ago, mathiau said:

Brandon comfirmed Mistsprens were more Cultivation than Honour so they're wrong about that point.

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying here, can you clarify?

2 minutes ago, mathiau said:

Godmetals don't exactly follow the same rules as the rest

Clearly. I'm just wondering why.

[mathiau he/him]

Just now, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Why?

Because for them it's sure they're not 90%+ Honour

5 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying here, can you clarify?

If Mistsrens are more of Cutivation than of Honour then not every sprens are 50% Honour

Quote

Clearly. I'm just wondering why.

No clue

[LewsTherinTelescope]

Just now, mathiau said:

Because for them it's sure they're not 90%+ Honour

At most, it would probably mean you'd need Lifelight for some and Stormlight for others, not a custom mix for each, since the death of Phendorana shows that it can kill something even if it's only partially of that.

1 minute ago, mathiau said:

If Mistsrens are more of Cutivation than of Honour then not every sprens are 50% Honour

Didn't say they were all exactly 50/50.

Also:

Quote

Alpharho

The metal of Shardblades. Cultivationspren versus honorspren, for example. Are they different metals?

Brandon Sanderson

No, but good question.

Alpharho

Are all orders the same alloy, essentially?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. There's a little asterisk on there, but not in the way you're asking... You could call those all the same alloy. Because the mixture to different spren is different, I think that you could argue that each one is its own alloy.

Alpharho

So, different proportions of tanavastium?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but it doesn't quite work that way with these magics, right? I'm going to say that's up to the individual cosmerologist who is in the world, the arcanist, defining it. You would be able to find enough differences to legitimately call them different alloys if you wanted to.

Alpharho

Would you say different ratios of the same two metals?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. They are not going to have a third one in them, if that's what you're asking. But it doesn't quite work that way. Like, if you were going to take brass, you could measure the exact percentage. In this case, it is a thing; it's not like you could divide it up and split them apart, because they are a thing. And that thing would be called one thing.

Alpharho

But you won't say what that thing is called?

Brandon Sanderson

No, I won't say what that thing is called. But I think you and the 17th Sharders and folks that are dividing them would prefer to call them ten different things, and I think their nomenclature would be relevant.

Skyward Denver signing (Nov. 15, 2018)

The spren are all similar enough in composition that when their essence is manifested Physically, it is close enough to be reasonably considered the same thing as any other Radiant spren (though it is not exactly the same).

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

4 hours ago, mathiau said:

If it was that simple you wouldn't need to change the frequency of tie Rhythm to fuse Stormlight and Voidlight

Yeah, I agree that is a decent counterargument

4 hours ago, mathiau said:

 Isn't that contradictory to you're previous idea?

Why? I see Intents as corresponding to quantum states here; some might be pure, some might be linear combinations of others

4 hours ago, mathiau said:

There are perfectly stable mesons just as there are perfectly unstable baryons, and most of the time the reason they're unstable is because their quarks are unstable, not because they're matter-antimatter compounds

I'm not aware of any fully stable mesons. As for baryons, my point was about confinement (which matches Roshar's situation quite well, in my opinion), not about stability