Conservation of Energy with investiture and authoritarianism?

[DrPhysics he/him]

Sorry I'm late to this thread, it's been a busy semester.

On 2/13/2024 at 7:43 PM, heliovox said:

I actually.... very much hope we do not get a cosmere physics book.  regardless of how good a job they do, something will get messed up, and it is a lot easier to handwave retrospectively.

I'm in this camp. I've tried running the numbers on a few things, and while general principles seem to hold, there just isn't enough detail and/or consistency to come up with any reasonable numbers.

 

On 2/13/2024 at 8:38 PM, heliovox said:

I may need to yell at DrPhysics for this one (or maybe alder will save us), because, yeah, the answer to both of those questions is just 'that's how physics works, if it didn't work that way, the world would be different in hilarious ways, and that isn't the world the cosmere presents us with'.

I don't know how much I can add to this conversation, but I will say that based on how we see lashings work, the "rods from God" thing could work, with one big caveat: we don't see anyone using any comparable amounts of stormlight in the stories, so there may be some unknown limits to lashings. Also, Investiture seems to be infinite in the sense that it collects itself again after being used so that you will never run out, but that doesn't mean that an infinite amount is available at any given time. 

 

Also, there are two rules of thumb you should use when discussing physics in the Cosmere (#1 I see referred to all the time and I see #2 frequently ignored):

1. Cosmere physics matches our physics unless investiture is involved (I know there's a WOB on this, but I can't find it at the moment).
2. Above all, physics relies on observations and describing how the world works. If something happens in the books, that's how the universe works, even if it contradicts what we'd expect based on our own physics. 
   So, when I run into things like the energy released by Kaladin's flight post (barring bad physics - acceleration is zero at terminal velocity, among other errors) we have to compare the predictions to what actually happened. Releasing that much energy would leave at very least a superheated column of air behind Kaladin and create a thundering boom as he traveled. Since those things didn't happen, investiture can't work the way suggested in that post.

[PurpleZebra5]

To be fair, the "Rods from God" idea isn't actually that far-fetched - (TSM spoiler)

Spoiler

Nomad ends up possibly going fast enough to undergo reentry heating. (The sunlight DOES NOT cause this as far as I know - I don't think that he was between the planet and the sun at that point, but I may be wrong.)

 

[CtrlAltDepressed]

On 4/4/2024 at 6:41 PM, DrPhysics said:

I'm in this camp. I've tried running the numbers on a few things, and while general principles seem to hold, there just isn't enough detail and/or consistency to come up with any reasonable numbers.

Agreed. At a certain level of detail, Brandon will have to say 'this is the magic part, this is just magic and thats the explanation'