Thermophile

Sazed says that the real difference between atium and other metals is that atium is composed of entirely Ruin, rather than half Preservation and half Ruin. Although it would make sense that the source of power differs slightly, the fact that toxic metals do not harm you after being burned (Kelsiers words) leads me to believe that other metals vacate the stomach as well.

The only difference between atium and other metals is that atium is completely composed of Ruin rather than half Preservation. I see no reason it would dissapear differentely from other metals. Besides, if other metals turned inert, wouldn't that affect pewter dragging?

As I said in the original post, I originally thought the metal was turned into an inert state, but in the scene with all the atium towards the end of the third book pretty much makes that impossible. As for entropy, that would break the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is probably the second most often broken law of physics in fiction. Although I personally believe that the First Law is being broken in this instance, there isn't any evidence either way.

First Law of Thermodynamics amounts to this: If energy exits an enclosed system, the energy in that system must decrease by that amount. This is the fundamental law that nealry all forms of magic in fiction break, as the magic is not permanentely consumed in the process. Again, this is fine, nobody should hold magic fully to the laws of physics. My point was that as the metal dissapears (as it seems to), the energy (or mass. The two are technically the same) in the enclosed system of the planet would reduce far more than it is increased by the use of allomancy. This is unusual for end-positive magic systems, which leads me to believe that the metal returns to the earth after use, just like atium.

Investiture is constant, but that's not what I was referring to. I was referring to Investiture that creates energy without permanently expending itself (meaning most forms of investiture).

Or perhaps what we see of Calamity is some sort of projection. Attacking a projection won't do much good.

Grimshell seems to think that they do return in some fashion, although I do not have access to WoB myself.

I'm pretty sure the governments could avoid the misunderstanding that nuking a hostile alien invasion was an attempt to start a global war.

Unless I misread this, I don't feel like you really addressed the point of this topic. I have heard that metal is more of a 'focus' for the allomancy, rather than the real component. The real component for allomancy is using the investiture you posses to cause an effect (which increases the total energy in the world). You don't lose investiture, otherwise, instead of becoming savants, people would become weaker. The energy generated by allomancy (unless you count compounding, but I think some sort of amplification is going on there) is much less than the energy contained in the matter. The law of conservation of energy would dictate that the energy has to go somewhere, and if the metal does return into the ground, that would allow there to be energy gained rather than lost. Unless less metal goes into the ground than was burned, but I don't want to get into that until I'm ready to make an argument that all magic systems are actually end-negative. Of course, I could have just completely misunderstood you, so if I did, sorry.

Matter is literally just a form of energy. All energy has mass, but only matter has enough to really matter (pun intended).

Sure it has to recharge, but the energy created through its use does not go away.

I'm not sure that's what end-positive means. Obviously, aeons create energy, as the shards aren't being consumed through use. With that logic, cars would be end-positive, since you didn't put in the work to create the fuel. I think end-positive means you're getting energy from nothing in particular. This breaks the Law of Conservation of Mass, but I'm not holding fantasy novels to that.

I don't see that being a problem. Calamity was close enough to be seen by a telescope as a person (although perhaps a very large one). A basic triangulation could easily determine it's distance. This was no doubt done before Epics started appearing. Unless Calamity was using some sort of massive psychic field to repress such an action, in which case that is likely how he avoided being attacked.

I totally pulled 150lb out of thin air. I was overestimating, since I didn't want to get below just on account of getting Vin's weight wrong (I was pretty confident about the numbers not matching up. Kenetic energy just doesn't have that much energy).

I see what you're saying, but I'm not solely referring to nukes. What about railguns? An advanced homing missile attached to a rocket? I can't imagine nobody trying to attack Calamity through some, or all, of these methods. Again, I can completely imagine him surviving, since he's basically a shard (I'm still kinda annoyed it isn't in the cosmere). I'm just saying we'd have heard about it.

Okay. Allomancy has been declared to be end-positive a lot of times. This means that it does not follow the Law of Conservation of Energy, causing more energy to enter the system then was originally there. This is okay, because this is magic. However E=mc^2 means that each kilogram of mass amounts to roughly 9 x 10^16. A metal flake is nowhere near a kilogram. Let's say a metal flake is a ten thousandth of a kilogram, to be conservative. That still means that a metal flake would need to give more than 10^13 joules. That's ten trillion joules. Yikes. Unfortunately, it is difficult to convert the energy used in allomancy due to the unusual outputs, scientifically speaking. However, there is one metal that transfers metal almost directly from allomantic power into calculable work: iron/steel. Now, the best chance we get (I think) to measure the energy potential of steel is when Vin is doing the horseshoe trick to get to Luthadel. She spent roughly five hours doing it and used 'almost all of her iron and steel'. I'm not going to be calculating iron, since she wasn't spending as much energy pulling in the horseshoes, and was probably wasting a lot of the energy potential. She was keeping herself aloft on average so that makes the energy output somewhat easy to calculate. Let's assume Vin weighs rougly 150 pounds, or 68 kilograms. This means it would take just over 666 watts to keep her afloat (yes, that is what I got). Over the course of 5 hours, this adds up to roughly 12 million, or 1.2 x 10^7 joules. This is six orders of magnitude away from the energy the mass of the metal contained. At this point, it seems like allomancy should be classified as end-negative. What's really going on here? At first, I thought that the metal may just revert into an inert state, or change into a different element. However, considering what happened at towards end of the third book, I find this unlikely. What I propose is that when metal is burned, the metal itself is returned into the earth. After all, it contains a bit of Ruin and Preservation, so the energy must return to its source, aka, the earth. This means that when an allomancer uses metal, that metal appears back in whatever mine it was taken out of. What do you guys think?

Yeah, but the government was still fighting against the epics for an unspecified amount of time. People of that day obviously assosiate Calamity with Epics, so somebody must have thought 'if we blew Calamity out of the sky, maybe the Epics would go away?' Maybe not, and perhaps it was an utter failure, but I find it unlikely that nobody even thought of trying to destroy Calamity.

I just want to know what would happen if somebody gathered billions of breaths through extended and complete domination of the planet. Would physical abilities be enhanced to rediculous levels? Would there be more than the ten awakenings? Could you awaken something made of aluminum?

I feel like they had bigger problems than radiation at the time.

Even if they couldn't observe Calamity directly to see he's an epic, I still see no reason the government wouldn't fire a nuke at calamity. Why haven't we heard about that?

I reload the 'my content' page. Is that the same?

I would have the power to animate objects to work and fight at my whim (not a High Epic). My weakness would be of being caught in a lie. I would be called The Architect, but I'd just wear whatever was comfiest. I'd have my automotons working my will, and genarally messing with peoples lives without me neccecarily having to even know about it.

That's why you'd have the arrowhead/spearhead/other aluminum weapon pard detach when the rest of it is pulled on. If it's messing with your regeneration (even if it wouldn't fully stop it), a full sized arrowhead would kill you fairly quickly, I'd imagine. With TLR being as OP as he his, I bet he'd just be able to overpower the heal resisting effects of aluminum, so unless you have a LOT of aluminum guns, this is going to just remain a guide on killing Steel Inquisitors. Very sad.

Tightened security against an Epic?