Kurkistan

That's not quite the whole picture. The in-bubble observer, because of wonkiness, actually sees everything else, including the allomancer, go by at .9c heading in the direction of the allomancer's travel. This'll end up with the in-bubble observer essentially "teleporting" the width of the bubble in an eye-blink, moving at .9c relative to the allomancer and .9c*(cf) relative to the outside-observer (FTL lies there, btw). You got it (though I'm not up on the mechanisms of frame-dragging). The inside-observer moves, relative to the outside, at .9c*(compression factor of the bubble) in the opposite direction of that travelled by the allomancer/bubble. The weirdness I posit for motion makes it so that inside motion really isn't that normal, since we're hijacking objects' vectors through space for the duration of their occupancy in the bubble. Is this making sense, or is Science shaking its head? Ha! Got it.

"The Thread Voidbringers are coming!"

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." — Douglas Adams

Translation: "It's all perfectly sensible, Kurk! Keep up the scientifically-acceptable work!" Yes. That. Let's go with that. 0.9c. Kind of the whole point of "movement is relative to the frame of reference of the bubble." And if that runner-bubble encountered a "stationary" object, the object would appear from the outside to move in the opposite direction of the bubble at (compression factor)*.9c until it exited the bubble, and would itself have the experience of the watching rest of the world suddenly lurching away from it at .9c, all without (I don't think) any experience of acceleration. The runner would see an object moving at .9c towards him, as opposed to how the rest of the stationary objects outside the bubble look to be moving towards him at .9c/(compression factor) A very important question, I agree, but not the only one. The mechanics I outline are just dealing with what happens to normal objects that get whammied by bubbles. Unless I'm just very much an overblown writer, I would say that figuring out how bubbles affect objects—independent of how they go about "capturing" and "releasing" them—is thus a non-trivial pursuit. A tragic mistake. I shall rectify it post haste! Hm, can't seem to find the other one...

Silly Aetae: It's always been about math!

@Shardlet Okay, I'll be waiting. @Sats Mostly I just wanted to know if I'd run afoul of science somehow. I'll take your incomprehension as a good sign. 1. I agree. That's why I decouple the passage of time from movement. How much time passes for the object bears only a passing relation to how it moves in a bubble. 2. Nope. That's a question about how borders work, which I need some more thought on. 3. Where'd I get it wrong?

Well now don't I feel sheepish? It's a database of Brandon and Robert Jordan quotes, usually lagging a few months behind on signings and whatnot. You search for key words, then if you want to link to an individual question you have to click on that question's signing, find the question again, and add "#<question's number>" to the end of the url. Yes, it's annoyingly complicated. But easy enough, once you get it down.

Yes, but Stroniax or another member a month from now might not know how easy it is and/or a good methodology. That was also a gentle chiding for not citing it yourself, especially since the quote in full has slightly different implications from your paraphrase of it and Stroniax explicitly requested more information on the quote's source.

Always best to link to the signing in question, Argent . (Method: Theoryland, search for "Adonalsium", skim down signings looking for shattering) Source: As I've said before, the opposition to Adonalsium could have been a group of people (Rayse and co., perhaps?) or organization, as opposed to some cosmic force. The question even remains as to whether that opposition played a real role in Adonalsium's Shattering; and if it did, to what extent. Furthermore, opposing Adonalsium needn't be a matter of "strength": Vin & Co. were certainly no match for Ruin, in terms of strength, but could still "oppose" him.

That would be serius wicked I like it =) Rand, Natans, HIDE! FEATHER IS COMING FOR YOU!

Thanks? I'm fairly sure Peter's actually the one who I'd be giving nightmares to, actually. He's "the math guy" and all. Ooh, I forgot to talk about how, if the bubble overtakes j from behind, it will result in counter-intuitive stuff like the object travelling backwards for a bit...

*Whistles* .

@Darnam I'm glad to see your madness is bearing fruit, Darnam. Welcome to the club: It's always fun here. Some thoughts (not necessarily full critiques of the theory or the like, just things to keep in mind): I was the one to suggest the feather vs sledgehammer for emotional allomancy (and Tineye's blocking themselves out, actually: wow, I'm good ), and I'm not so sure that was the right tack now that I think more on it. It implies, as you discuss, that Allomantic copper can go around trying to block out Lurchers. Reading about "ripples" and "drum beats" and whatnot that are the side effect of using Investiture seems to suggest that Allomantic copper could just be operating on another level. That level could posibly include where power is used for emotional Allomancy, but maybe not where it's used for Physical or the like. Something to keep in mind. Also, I question the extent to which this "white noise" is completely and utterly unremarked upon, especially when it's "upped" by Allomantic copper. Just because you live with the sound of the ocean all your life doesn't mean that you don't notice when a hurricane comes aknockin'. Just trying to poke some holes and/or see to make sure you can fill them. I'll need to mull over the theory as a whole for a bit before I can do anything more.

Yes, quite cruel. Though I prefer arms...

Yes, I vaguely recall that question. That answer is also a natural conclusion of the entire world not blowing up when something enters or exits a time bubble, as it turns out. This is due to calculus and whatnot. Ask Sats. No, sorry. i) It's not Spiritual identity, but Cognitive. "[H]ow the object views itself" is pretty firmly Cognitive, given Shai's definition of the Realms. You start off on the right track with talk of how the object views itself, but you run into trouble when you start talking about bindpoints. ii) Working off center of mass makes sense, I agree. Sadly, it doesn't work for living things, as "any living thing touching the bubble is affected by the bubble." *Cracks knuckles* (but seriously, I did. Mostly for typing and all, but also the dramatic effect) And here you're (kind of) right. I phrased myself very poorly—downright misleadingly, if not even incorrectly, even—in my post. Time bubbles are most certainly not a "straight effect" on the Physical space-time of the Cosmere. Their interaction with Cognitive aspects, let alone movement's relation to frames of reference, make this patently obvious. Actually, a full account of this deserves a thread. Have a thread.

Back when Shardlet asked those questions about time bubbles, I said that "this means that bubbles are almost certainly a straight effect on local space-time, rather than an effect on local objects that happens to be roughly spherical in shape." gnimhey was kind enough to point out that that is a very stupid thing to say (in much more diplomatic terms). I started typing up a reply to him, then started thinking about some other time bubble related stuff, and then... Well, you guys know me well enough by now to guess what happened next. Thread: My comment that time bubbles were "a straight effect on local space-time" was specifically getting at an earlier theory of mine where I suggested that time bubbles weren't actually a spherical area of effect, but instead simply an incidentally spherical manifestation of the limits a bubble reaches when it "runs out of the power" making everything around it experience time differently. The fact that the presence and absence of air particles has no impact on how "far" bubbles can reach almost certainly throws such a model out the window, and that was what I was attempting to emphasize. (And yes, I do recognize the irony that the founding post for my overarching theory of everything came to a fundamentally incorrect conclusion on the topic that I had been trying to address from the beginning.) Fuller Explanation: Alternatively, a more nuanced theory can still make bubbles fundamentally spherical, but say that there size is a function of how much "energy" they have to put into altering objects they affect. So a Slider can cast a bigger bubble if it has fewer objects to worry about than if there are a lot. Under that model, there should be a measurable difference in the maximum size of a bendalloy bubble cast around a pool table full of billiard balls versus that same table when its empty. That second theory also goes out the window, since the atmosphere is the fullest pool table you can imagine, chock full of pool balls bouncing around and whatnot. If you can get rid of it and have absolutely zero effect on the size of a time bubble, then that casts near mortal doubt onto any theory that bases the size of time bubbles on how much "energy" they have to put into the objects they affect. -- Something energetic is still happening with encompassed objects, though. It's just that the bubble doesn't seem to care at all about the costs of that energy. It follows, then, that time bubbles don't directly affect the objects they contain, but instead affect areas of space-time (here I quite explicitly mean to include that area's Cognitive and Spiritual components), with the effects on objects trickling down. --- NOTE: It occurs to me at this very moment that the maximum compression factor (how much it alters the flow of time) of the time bubble could still be affected by the objects it contains. We know that flaring a metal can get you a higher factor, but not necessarily a larger bubble. I've been assuming the energy costs of the two to be somehow proportionate, or at least that larger bubbles cost more energy, but I could be wrong. I'll keep acting like making a bigger bubble is of the same "cost-type" as raising that bubble's compression factor, because I think it reasonable, but that's not a certainty. ---- Regardless, I phrased myself poorly and misleadingly, and now gnimhey has gone and given me an excuse to discuss the remaining possibilities for how time bubbles work, given our current evidence. Time Bubble Mechanics (not Realmatically, but just on a brute-force Physical level): First, some facts: Time bubble overlap is multiplicative. Time bubbles overlap like Venn diagrams, they don't just "cancel" one another. Atmosphere has no effect on bubble diameter. Aside: Time bubbles accelerate or slow objects as a function of some frame of reference, independent of how they influence the passage of time for that object. -Just my own reasoning, not WoB. It's solid reasoning, though, and necessary once you think of it. --- I infer from these facts about time bubbles that they directly impact an area of space-time (once again including all the Realms), rather than the objects within that area of space-time. Otherwise we would get exploding bubbles when they overlapped, and overlap would really have to be additive rather than multiplicative. Not to mention all my analysis on what the atmospheric answer tells us. Specifically, I would posit that time bubbles essentially alter space-time in the Cosmere such that: Time passes at t*x speed for objects in this area of space; and these objects move at v*x velocity along their vectors relative to <the bubble's frame of reference>. :With 't' defined as the rate of the passage of time before the bubble's existence. :And 'x' as the bubble's compression factor. -Either x>1 or x<1 depending on whether it's a Bendalloy or Cadmium bubble, respectively. This rather neatly tells us how an area reacts to both "competing" time bubbles (Bendalloy vs. Cadmium) and "cooperating" bubbles (B+B or C+C). Just multiply whatever 't' you find (1 if the area of space is normal, 1*x if one other bubble is affecting the area, 1*x*y if there are 2...) by your bubble's compression factor and that tells you about the passage of time. -Though you probably have to account for relativistic effects a bit, so far as passage of time goes. Sats, HELP! The movement of objects is a bit more complicated, essentially creating a single vector based on the clash of overlapping bubbles' frames of reference and compression factors. It's end up with objects going off at weird angles (Ex. two competing right angle vectors resulting in the object going off at 45 degrees), I think, but not necessarily being torn apart or the like. --- Realmatics of the all: Of course, none of this means anything unless you incorporate something to account for Cognitive aspects determining whether something is in or out of a bubble. Hence why I was careful to phrase everything in terms of "objects" up above, not space. This still leaves room for significant discussion of how exactly the surfaces of time bubbles work: Do they distend, or suck in people who touch them, or something else? Is there even really a "surface" worth talking about? It's an open question, so far as I can think of it at the moment. -- But, so far as the bubbles' impacts on all three Realms: Obviously they rely on Cognitive aspects to some extent to determine their occupancy. That judgement can likely to outsourced to the objects that enter the bubble: the bubble queries them to ask whether objects think they're "in" some given area, and gets a reply and reacts accordingly. So that deals with occupancy. But how do we model the actual effect these bubbles have on objects that are "in" them? I'll call back to the Spiritual again, though using a slightly different implementation than I've historically said (that model was rather off-the-cuff, to be fair). So we have two fundamental things to alter once an object enters the bubble: Its experience of the passage of time and its movement through space. Now, obviously, the two are rather closely linked the majority of the time. But we can't rely on that anymore because of frame-of-reference shenanigans. Time is easy enough: Just alter the object's passage through time to be t*X (the totality of all bubble effects) rather than the normal t. At the same time, though, we'll have to decouple the object's normal movement from the passage of time. Illuminating Thought Experiments: What this all means for movement: We can do vector math just as easily for multiple bubbles and three dimensions as we just did for one bubble and two dimensions, so let's leave that for now. How do we implement all of this, though? We may need some physics-brain for this. However, I do have a thought, if you'll bear with me for just a few more moments. Every object sees itself as at rest relative to itself, but that's boring and unuseful. More importantly for us, I think it fair to say that every object (at least on a planet, and likely elsewhere) also sees itself as in motion relative to something else. What if, then, it's that simple? Just reach into each object's Spiritual aspect and tweak it to change exactly one thing: From "you're moving at vector V relative to frame F" to "you're moving at vector V' relative to frame B", with V' as the object's vector as the bubble's frame of reference B perceives it. Can it be that simple? If "motion" is stored in (or at least tweak-able by) Spiritual aspects, I think it can. Maybe throw on a bit of extra oomph to make sure that any Physical or "real Spiritual" whining about "real" vectors is ignored until you get out of the bubble. Then just let the previous motion-rules come back into force, plus or minus any additional energy that was applied along any vector while the object was contained in the bubble. Satsuoni? Want to murder it? Conclusion: So that's about it. I'm very very open to suggestions on how to Realmatically solve the problem of motion once we decouple it from normal time; I do not have full confidence in my model as it stands. I'm also somewhat concerned that we may be using too much energy still, looking at individual objects rather than trying to change "Realm-space" to get general effects. P.S. A (rather horrifying, given how sure I've been about the way I model it, so far) thought: What if frame of reference isn't decided by the bubble, but by the object? So the object decides whether and how it's moving, then does a simple velocity*time accordingly. I don't think that'd end up very pretty (objects with different frames of reference could suddenly start colliding with each other or the like), but it could still work, technically. Any other thoughts?

Actually, Brandon is bucking that trend with the Stormlight Archive. Source:

As I said on the other thread, an interesting idea. You could stand to give a little love to the other Cosmereical Allomantic copper thread to back up/clarify/differentiate your claims about its mechanism, though.

*Puts hat on stick, pokes it around corner* Man, that Renarin, how about how lame... um, those glasses are? *Drops stick and runs after MadRand*

@marianmi I agree that it's not likely, but why so sure? @Theorymaker No problem, just about everyone has problems getting the spoiler tag to work.

No comment. Also, to torment you: I did not in any way hide, edit, or otherwise obscure the post in question at any point after having first made it.

Well, "Weight" is mass, so no, he would not be able to do any fun-and-games with Feruchemical iron.

The post where I made the oath is publicly accessible. Also, I seem to use that phrase a lot.

I'll only eat a hat (after procuring one) if you can find the actual instance. Hint: You won't.

@Sats Sorry, didn't mean to ignore you there. That too, though I imagine that it's still going to come down to whether something with an internal power source is allowed to be "end-neutral" (spoiler: yes ).