Spaceships in Shadesmar!

[Honorless he/him]

48 minutes ago, Steeldancer said:

Edit: huh. I did some reading on Threnody... and Brandon says there isn't a perpendicularity. I'm... not sure what to make of that, other than perhaps it just indicates that what's going on there isn't necessarily a permanent piercing of realms, but rather something on a smaller scale due to the death of Ambition? A more recent WoB talks about it being more a circumstance... so I'm not sure. I guess if we're defining a perpendicularity as a mark of a shard having invested there, it makes sense, because no shard ever invested in Threnody, so it wouldn't make sense for a permanent perpendicularity to be there. Weird. 

I think the current theory is that the Perpendicularity is on the sun. That... that would make travel difficult, yes.

 

Of the unpublished works, the Aether world had two Perpendicularities but the rewritten version might do away with that and have no Shards present at all, and make the Investiture system pre-Shattering. Maybe some of the Aethers would still grant Transportation style powers.

Yolen has knowledge of atoms, who knows where they might be scientifically now.

Investiture and anti-Investiture knowledge on Roshar might help. Hell, war advances technology in Earth, the arms race on Roshar might very well do the same on Roshar and revolutionize everything. Investiture and anti-Investiture as fuel maybe? (yeah, I watched a lot of shows where spaceships used anti matter fuels, it's not actually viable afaik)

Ashynite magic might be useful here. And the Silence Divine is supposed to be set in the latter half of the Stormlight Archives. Whatever magic keeps those upside down floating cities working might be very interesting to an enterprising Roshar. 

 

The idea of Spiritual CRISPR is very interesting. That would certainly make magics that directly interact with Spiritwebs very important: Forgery, Hemalurgy, Spiritual Feruchemy quadrant, Spiritual manifestations of the Surges, possibly AonDor can program something to that effect, possibly Dakhor (side-eyes using death as fuel to breach the Realms: Moelach does it to access futuresight, Dakhor uses it to teleport, Threnodite macabre spontaneous Perpendicularities might be of a similar nature), the Old Magic... Lift's Boon of turning food to Lifelight could be invaluable! 

Edited September 22, 2021 by Honorless

[+Oltux72 he/him]

2 hours ago, VeryNiceName said:

She probably is, given that Warbreaker happened several generations before Stormlight and she looks about the same (though the Royal Locks can let her alter her apparent age so she could be 90 and healthy because of Breath I guess)

Yes, but they are still in need of supplies. Vasher needs his weekly Breath and Vivenna needs to eat and drink. Hence the caravan they are taking needs to carry supplies and a useful payload so large that regular trade between worlds is feasible. Practically we are talking about weeks of subjective time as an upper bound here.

8 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

In the current era of the cosmere, there are only 4 ways into the cognitive realm that we are aware of. Dying, Elsecalling, Oathgates, and the perpendicularities of the Shards, (plus some other weird perpendicularities we don’t really know all the details about, like on Threnody).

• Spren are doing it
• Ishar did it
• However Ashyn got evacuated
• Aon Tia presumably
• The Shards themselves can do it

There is also the case of Dalinar opening perpendicularities. He does not contain all that much Investiture. He does it with Connection. Can Ferrings do it if they knew the trick? Aons?

1 hour ago, Steeldancer said:

Edit: In regards to my earlier tangent, I did some brief research. Brandon describes the investiture storm over Sel as "Plasma". And plasma is well known for cutting metal. 

I'm fairly certain nobody is going to want to fly a fancy spaceship into that. 

Well, no. You got that backwards. These cutters are plasma because they are so hot. Basically if you really go down to basics at a certain temperature entropy will win and chemical bonds will break down. The property of being plasma itself is fairly harmless. A fluorescent lightbuld contains plasma technically. You can touch them. The only danger of breaking them is mercury poisoning, nothing spectacularly hot or cutting.

2 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

But that's beside the point you're making, and I see your point. While we don't actually know how much the compression is, I'd agree that most likely it is compressed more than the distance of 10 light years for sure. 

So we need to look at round trips or trips over multiple destinations to establish upper bounds, as a single trip cannot give us the time passing for an outside observer, while a round trip can. But we have such trips:

• Khrissalla - she went from Scadrial at the Catacendre to Roshar and back to Scadrial in time to meet Waxillium for a dance
• Nazriloff - the same route, even earlier so that he could be at the Ghastly Gondola
• Vasher - he went from Nalthis to Roshar and back in the time period between Vo (the first Returned) and the Manywar (they designed Nightblood after a Shardblade)
• Hoid's letters - here we hit a jackpot. He sent them after arriving on Roshar and got a reply from Harmony in time for Rhythm of War

These examples leave room for considerable time dilation, but not enough for an outside observer to keep them slower than light.

 

[mathiau he/him]

14 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

...I really don't want to argue too much, but the first point... yeah no that's explicitly untrue. Relativity (although altered) is still a thing in the cosmere, and if people in the cognitive realm were going at faster than light comparatively to the physical realm... Adolin and Shallan and Kaladin would have been in Shadesmar for literally seconds in Oathbringer. And that clearly does not match the narrative of the story. Now, it is true that space is compressed, but that doesn't mean you're moving faster than light just by walking. Now, if you were to go fast enough, the space compression would mean that relative to light in the physical realm, they are going faster than the speed of light. But that's a lot faster than anything in the cosmere is currently capable of going.

As other people noted, I never said walking in the CR was always FTL, just that for a certain meaning of the world FTL walking between planets in the CR is FTL.

Also, about the distance question, remember that the Ire's fortress is close enough of both Scadrial and Threnody for CSs to come over.

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And, I literally addressed that very thing in my post, and my question. The entire point is how the minor shardworlds can get FTL without needing to steal rosharian or allomantic tech, which is why brandon gave the response he did.

And my point was that there's nothing better than a plane as far as travel through the CR is concerned in that case

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I was hoping for some alternate thoughts about how easy access to the cognitive realm could be achieved,

And I'm arguing that Brandon never said there was one, which sound slightly important to the debate.

And as far as the actually theory go, I have nothing to say. Otherwise I'd have say it.

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so please at least read my whole post. 

I did.

13 hours ago, VeryNiceName said:

This pretty strongly implies to me that walking in Shadesmar is FTL. The reason Adolin, Shallan and Kaladin don't go FTL is because not all of Shadesmar is compressed the same amount, and even a space ship travelling the path they took wouldn't have reached FTL, because they were moving the exact same distance that a person in the Physical would. 

Only if you parse the sentence in a way I didn't intend. Which I guess is on me for making a sentence that can be parsed in two ways.

13 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

 I define worldhopping, which we know plenty of characters do, (heck there's even a whole city of humans just chilling somewhere in the cognitive realm!) very differently than I do FTL tech. I'll admit, I didn't think about the degree of compression, but I'd be hard pressed to believe worldhopping currently occurs faster than light can travel from one star system to another. 

The way you define FTL doesn't matter. What matter is what Brandon thought you meant by FTL

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Brandon Sanderson

I didn't say--did I say FTL?

And he didn't understand you.

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I got overly frustrated about this because I spent the past 4 days thinking really, really hard about this. The spirit realm and FTL is a passion project of mine that I care very much about. I genuinely don't want to attack anyone's ideas, but I disagree that worldhopping is inherently the same as going faster than light.

If it wasn't in the context of that WoB, I'd agree. But we are speaking in the context of that WoB.

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Edit. And additionally, whether or not walking is defined as FTL, which... I guess the response he gave could be interpreted that way, that still doesn't change the point of most of my post: the fact that in order to make "FTL" viable, whether walking or not, you need to be able to mechanize a way into the cognitive realm, because there just isn't a way to do that currently. That's what I was hoping to inspire discussion about. 

Perpendicularities?

18 hours ago, mathiau said:

Brandon was probably just talking about bringing material through a Perpendicularity and building planes in the CR.

I still don't see why that idea wouldn't work

13 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

it's actually quite possible Vivenna might be immortal... a lot of worldhoppers gain some form of immortality

Also Vivenna is heavily implied to have reach at least to the 9th Heightening at some point so she could very easily still be 5th Heightening

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But that's beside the point you're making, and I see your point. While we don't actually know how much the compression is, I'd agree that most likely it is compressed more than the distance of 10 light years for sure.

By the way, the main reason we don't know how much the compression is is because it's the same everywhere.

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But worldhopping still doesn't solve the primary issue, being that you can't control where you end up.

I don't see where Brandon said the FTL method he was talking about didn't have this issue

13 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

(although, I'm a bit more unsure of this one, do they need to be Scadrian to use unkeyed metalminds? I'm honestly unsure)

You don't but there are other issues to creating new unkeyed metalminds from other unkeyed metalminds.

 

 

13 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

Edit: In regards to my earlier tangent, I did some brief research. Brandon describes the investiture storm over Sel as "Plasma". And plasma is well known for cutting metal. 

I'm fairly certain nobody is going to want to fly a fancy spaceship into that.

Depend on what specific type of plasma, the ones in gas cookers wouldn't do much to a plane

12 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

Edit: huh. I did some reading on Threnody... and Brandon says there isn't a perpendicularity. I'm... not sure what to make of that, other than perhaps it just indicates that what's going on there isn't necessarily a permanent piercing of realms, but rather something on a smaller scale due to the death of Ambition? A more recent WoB talks about it being more a circumstance... so I'm not sure. I guess if we're defining a perpendicularity as a mark of a shard having invested there, it makes sense, because no shard ever invested in Threnody, so it wouldn't make sense for a permanent perpendicularity to be there. Weird. 

There is no permanent perpendicularities but there are unstable temporal ones

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This is an area deserving of more research. Unfortunately, visiting the planet is difficult, as there is no stable perpendicularity—only very unstable ones that cannot be predicted easily, and have a somewhat morbid origin.

As for what that mean, I don't know

11 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

However Ashyn got evacuated

I think there's a WoB that they used something similar to an Oathgate

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Aon Tia presumably

Do you have a source? The only WoB I remember about Tia Worldhopping could be interpreted as "the transportation range is really long"

11 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

There is also the case of Dalinar opening perpendicularities. He does not contain all that much Investiture. He does it with Connection. Can Ferrings do it if they knew the trick? Aons?

Dalinar is bad example, he's connected to the smallest non-Shard mass of Investiture

Ishar on the other hand...

Though both of them are kind of cheating with Spiritual Tension

[Zoey she/her]

Well, the only way I can think of without Magic, and without uber advanced technology, is just normal Worldhopping.

 

We could tell from other WoBs that the "FTL" isn't going to be true FTL, but rather be like an Alcubierre Drive taking advantage of Bendalloy and Chromium, which I believe will somehow be made to effect space itself, as Time and Space are basically the same, so it makes sense if it is able to effect Space somehow. Maybe through using Duralumin or Nicrosil, or maybe just Intent. This can let one bring about both the expansion and compression required to fit the Metric. 

Alcubierre Drives would produce a lot of heat, which could be dealt with by Brass Feruchemy. 

 

[mathiau he/him]

1 minute ago, Zoey said:

We could tell from other WoBs that the "FTL" isn't going to be true FTL, but rather be like an Alcubierre Drive taking advantage of Bendalloy and Chromium, which I believe will somehow be made to effect space itself, as Time and Space are basically the same, so it makes sense if it is able to effect Space somehow. Maybe through using Duralumin or Nicrosil, or maybe just Intent. This can let one bring about both the expansion and compression required to fit the Metric.

Alcubierre Drives are true FTL

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Alcubierre Drives would produce a lot of heat, which could be dealt with by Brass Feruchemy.

They do?

[Zoey she/her]

9 minutes ago, mathiau said:

Alcubierre Drives are true FTL

They do?

1: No, they are not. They get from one point to another faster than light would, but this is due to changing spacetime geometry around them to reduce the distance that they travel. Therefore, it does not break the Laws of relativity and is a valid solution to Einstein's Field Equations. Therefore, it is not true FTL, it only seems FTL compared to standard Spacetime geometry. 

2: From what I read they produce a great degree of heat, I would have to find the papers I found on it. Nevermind, easier than I thought, it got mentioned on wikipedia as well. "A 2009 article by Carlos Barceló, Stefano Finazzi, and Stefano Liberati uses quantum theory to argue that the Alcubierre drive at faster-than-light velocities is impossible mostly because extremely high temperatures caused by Hawking radiation would destroy anything inside the bubble at superluminal velocities"

[Honorless he/him]

22 minutes ago, mathiau said:

Also Vivenna is heavily implied to have reach at least to the 9th Heightening at some point so she could very easily still be 5th Heightening

Vivenna might simply be wielding that blade and might have had no direct involvement in its creation, we don't really know. Maybe Yesteel made it and/or Vasher or someone else.

I don't think we ever see her issuing Commands to stone or metal either, only cloth. And even if we did, that's not necessarily indicative of a Heightening. Awakeners are capable of Life Sense before reaching the Fourth Heightening and Command Breaking before the Eighth Heightening, and as we know of the Lifeless, skill with Commands can decrease the Breath cost of Awakening. All together, it's not easy to judge what Heightening Vivenna is.

[Zoey she/her]

2 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Vivenna might simply be wielding that blade and might have had no direct involvement in its creation, we don't really know. Maybe Yesteel made it and/or Vasher or someone else.

I don't think we ever see her issuing Commands to stone or metal either, only cloth. And even if we did, that's not necessarily indicative of a Heightening. Awakeners are capable of Life Sense before reaching the Fourth Heightening and Command Breaking before the Eighth Heightening, and as we know of the Lifeless, skill with Commands can decrease the Breath cost of Awakening. All together, it's not easy to judge what Heightening Vivenna is.

It also might be possibly something like, a organic material blade coated in metal or something. Though that seems doubtful. 

[mathiau he/him]

2 minutes ago, Zoey said:

1: No, they are not. They get from one point to another faster than light would, but this is due to changing spacetime geometry around them to reduce the distance that they travel. Therefore, it does not break the Laws of relativity and is a valid solution to Einstein's Field Equations. Therefore, it is not true FTL, it only seems FTL compared to standard Spacetime geometry.

I think you're confusing alcubierre drives and wormholes, what an alcubierre drive does is make a patch of space time move faster than light compared to the space time around it, which does not break the laws of relativity because the "nothing goes faster than light" applies to objects in space time and not to space time

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2: From what I read they produce a great degree of heat, I would have to find the papers I found on it. Nevermind, easier than I thought, it got mentioned on wikipedia as well. "A 2009 article by Carlos Barceló, Stefano Finazzi, and Stefano Liberati uses quantum theory to argue that the Alcubierre drive at faster-than-light velocities is impossible mostly because extremely high temperatures caused by Hawking radiation would destroy anything inside the bubble at superluminal velocities"

Well that's an issue. Especially since Hawking radiation is not just heat but also gamma rays and high speed particles

Just now, Honorless said:

Vivenna might simply be wielding that blade and might have had no direct involvement in its creation, we don't really know. Maybe Yesteel made it and/or Vasher or someone else.

I don't think we ever see her issuing Commands to stone or metal either, only cloth. And even if we did, that's not necessarily indicative of a Heightening. Awakeners are capable of Life Sense before reaching the Fourth Heightening and Command Breaking before the Eighth Heightening, and as we know of the Lifeless, skill with Commands can decrease the Breath cost of Awakening. All together, it's not easy to judge what Heightening Vivenna is.

It's true. My point is if Vivenna is indeed ageless I don't think anyone would be shocked.

 

[Zoey she/her]

1 minute ago, mathiau said:

I think you're confusing alcubierre drives and wormholes, what an alcubierre drive does is make a patch of space time move faster than light compared to the space time around it, which does not break the laws of relativity because the "nothing goes faster than light" applies to objects in space time and not to space time

Well that's an issue. Especially since Hawking radiation is not just heat but also gamma rays and high speed particles

It's true. My point is if Vivenna is indeed ageless I don't think anyone would be shocked.

 

No, I have read into them a lot. What they do is compress space in front of them and expand it behind them. 

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"Rather than exceeding the speed of light within a local reference frame, a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel."

 

[Honorless he/him]

1 minute ago, mathiau said:

It's true. My point is if Vivenna is indeed ageless I don't think anyone would be shocked.

Yup, in retrospect that came out a bit harsh, sorry about that.

Hmm... Worldhoppers might have other means of extending their lifespans too, so yes, it's very likely. Also, who knows the full extent of the so-called Royal Locks, their Returned heritage can apparently allow a lot more than changing the colour of one's hair. Vivenna might've gone full Melisandre for all we know. I don't really remember roughly how many years are supposed to be between Warbreaker or Nightblood (the sequel, not the sword) and Stormlight.

[Zoey she/her]

2 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Yup, in retrospect that came out a bit harsh, sorry about that.

Hmm... Worldhoppers might have other means of extending their lifespans too, so yes, it's very likely. Also, who knows the full extent of the so-called Royal Locks, their Returned heritage can apparently allow a lot more than changing the colour of one's hair. Vivenna might've gone full Melisandre for all we know. I don't really remember roughly how many years are supposed to be between Warbreaker or Nightblood (the sequel, not the sword) and Stormlight.

He said a few generations, my personal timeline counts it as 25 year generations in Standard Years, and assumed 4-5 Generations. So 100-125 Years (90-113 Rosharan) IMO. Might be less. 

Edited September 22, 2021 by Zoey

[mathiau he/him]

Just now, Zoey said:

No, I have read into them a lot. What they do is compress space in front of them and expand it behind them.

Yes, it compresses a small zone of spacetime in front of it and expand a small zone of spacetime behind it which make the patch of spacetime between the compressed zone and the expanded zone move to faster than light speed compared to exterior spacetime and result in effective FTL travel without the object inside the bubble ever accelerating. Is this what you meant by "reducing the distance they travel"?

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

Yup, in retrospect that came out a bit harsh, sorry about that.

Don't worry, it did not

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Hmm... Worldhoppers might have other means of extending their lifespans too, so yes, it's very likely. Also, who knows the full extent of the so-called Royal Locks, their Returned heritage can apparently allow a lot more than changing the colour of one's hair. Vivenna might've gone full Melisandre for all we know. I don't really remember roughly how many years are supposed to be between Warbreaker or Nightblood (the sequel, not the sword) and Stormlight.

I think Brandon mentioned some were not at all immortals but used temporal dilation.

[Zoey she/her]

26 minutes ago, mathiau said:

Yes, it compresses a small zone of spacetime in front of it and expand a small zone of spacetime behind it which make the patch of spacetime between the compressed zone and the expanded zone move to faster than light speed compared to exterior spacetime and result in effective FTL travel without the object inside the bubble ever accelerating. Is this what you meant by "reducing the distance they travel"?

Yeah, as that is essentially what it is. And that is what I meant by not being true FTL, as light inside the geometry moves faster than it. 

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I think Brandon mentioned some were not at all immortals but used temporal dilation.

And yes, he did say that they experienced something like Time Dilation. Hoid and Heralds are the ones that displayed it the most. Vessels technically do, but they have like, full control over time it seems, and experience it slower and more completely. 

Think like how Nale was confused at food rotting after years, along with various WoBs about Immortal beings not experiencing all of the years they are alive. 

Edited September 22, 2021 by Zoey

[Humble_Knight]

Could you forge a perpendicularity? Assuming you had the proper Connection, and the right glyphs for the location, I feel like it would not be too hard to make up a reason for a shard pool to exist in a place. I feel like the initial Investiture requirement would be the biggest problem, because once it is open, the pool would provide the power to keep refreshing the stamp. If this could work it would be an extremely reliable way of creating passages to Shadesmar.

Selish magics are so cool. I feel like they are going to be awesome in the space age, where researchers arrive at a place, document everything they know about it, and then start to create catalogues of Aons or glyphs. I think the way you program "spells" is a really cool form of magitech

[Fezzik]

This is the one I was thinking about that says space in the cognitive realm will not become larger because people are visualising space.

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Questioner
In the Cosmere, as space becomes more developed...*inaudible* outer space.

Brandon Sanderson
It's an interesting question that I've had to ponder. Would the space race happen more slowly because there's an alternative, or would it happen more quickly because you know other planets are inhabited. I'm not going to answer what I came up with, because it's a plot point in the books. So I'll give you a RAFO card, but that's the question to ask yourself.

Questioner
That wasn't my question! My question was, in the Cognitive Realm, with the gap between planets...

Brandon Sanderson
Oh! Will the gap between planets get larger as more people travel in between it. So, barring things like space stations, there's going to be so few minds in between, that I don't expect space to become larger because of that.
I don't expect it to be a factor, except--barring--there will be possibilities of certain regions popping up.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/360/#e10853