To Infinity and Beyond

[Kurkistan he/him]

I await your input (and I do enjoy hijacking topics... ). Just a note: I referenced the Alcubierre drive as simply an example of something that is "effectively" FTL without actually involving velocities greater than c. There aren't many other similarities in my theory beyond that.

 

I would guess that the future trilogy is just "effectively FTL", for all the reasons we've been going on about in this thread. Really, we still have issues with causality and all, but at least c isn't broken.

[happyman he/him]

Kurkistan:

 

Upvote for being sane.  I really, really like the idea that Feruchemy/Allomancy mess with space and time directly, and that that is what allows FTL to happen.

 

Why?  Because it's the only Handwavium that would work in the "real" world.  The only "real" theories of FTL travel involve general relativity and things not yet known to either exist or not exist.  All you need is a little magic to fill the "not yet known not to exist" gap, and there you are.  Much much easier than trying to work around using the basic Allomancy and Feruchemy we've already been given.

[Morsk he/him]

Why? Because it's the only Handwavium that would work in the "real" world. The only "real" theories of FTL travel involve general relativity and things not yet known to either exist or not exist. All you need is a little magic to fill the "not yet known not to exist" gap, and there you are. Much much easier than trying to work around using the basic Allomancy and Feruchemy we've already been given.

Doesn't it not matter for what the OP is trying to do? He wants time travel, and general relativity methods aren't any less problematic. Even completely magical "instant cell phones" with no mechanism at all would cause time paradox. Worldhopping would too.

I figure there has to be a preferred reference frame, and some requirement of getting away from the planet, and at rest with respect to the preferred frame, to use FTL. Then whether it works by stretching space, or just by instantaneous jumps, is mostly a special effect. What matters most is that it doesn't cause time paradox.

[king of nowhere]

Also, the absolute zero analogy doesn't hold.  Absolute zero is the point at which atomic motion stops.  This means no phononic interaction between atoms which means there is an absence of thermal heat. 

 

In contrast speed goes from zero to c IRL.  But, since Brandon says FTL is possible using the systems on Scadrial (including those systems or methods of using the systems we do know which we have not yet been introduced to) we must accept that with the help of magic, you can exceed the speed of light in the cosmere.  This means that the real life maximum speed of c, doesn't apply to this discussion.

 

Edit: As to air friction, it has been rightly pointed out that you'd fry at those velocities.  However, as I said before, I am speaking strictly theoretically.  There is no practical reason that I can see for a steel ferring to even attempt it.  Since it is theoretical, let us assume that air friction is zero.  Or if you must have an actual setting, in a very large warehouse which is perfectly sealed and has a perfect vacuum maintained within it and the ferring has a fancy suit with a self-contained breathing apparatus.

 

As to maximum storage and how much speed needs to be stored.  Recall, I am talking about using a complete storage in an instant.  So I can go 100 mph for 10 min or 200 mph for 5 min. or c for 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 sec. (note, this is not actually calculated.  I am merely using this obscenely short period of time as an example.  So please, don't bother to count the zeros and do the math.)

 

As to Kurk's wounded soul, I will read that 'Yet another FTL' thread again and get back to you.

 

It still would not work. Because of the acceleration involved. Clearly, if you want to run at the speed of light, you have to start from zero. You have to accelerate all the way from there. Such an acceleration is impossible in more ways than i can describe. For example

1) your shoes would not have enough grip on the floor. Your legs would move very fast, but they would just skid on the floor. In fact, simple attrition between your legs and the floor mayb be enough to set you on fire.

2) assuming 1) do not apply, your legs would accelerate so much that they would rip themselves apart from the rest of your body. In general, since the force is applied by your feet on the floor, it must go from there to the rest of your body to convey acceleration, and such an acceleration would rip you apart. It would be like hitting with the feet a running train, only thousands of times faster.

3) assuming 1) and 2) do not apply, the acceleration would be such, that all of your brain would end up as sub-atomical glue pasted on the back of your skull. the acceleration from a car crash is already enough to damage the brain, nd this is millions of times worse.

 

People talking about reaching speed of light in "normal" ways just have no sense of scale whatsoever. They don't understand how fast is the speed of light. If you wanted to accelerate to it, even assuming relativity would not apply, you would need 1g of acceleration  for a FULL year. And as much time just to decelerate and stop. If you try to accelerate faster than that, the human body probably can take 2g for prolonged times, maybe 3 or 4, but no more. It would kill you. Either you do some dimensional warping, or you have inertia dumpeners or other high sci-fi stuff, but you can't just put a roket and go to light speed like they do in star wars.

 

[aeromancer he/him]

This is Feruchemy we're dealing with, not traditional physics. A human body can't stand the kind of weight that Wax is so fond of dumping on it. Sazed says that Skimmers automatically have a corrected structure to maintain their increase bulk (and this, by the way, would explain why Feruchemy has the Law Of Diminishing returns. Part of the power goes to enabling your body to maintain the Tapped power.)

 

It is therefore quite reasonable that this applies to Steelrunning as well, giving you a a better "running structure".

[Shardlet he/him]

The answer is we don't know.  It is unlikely that we will ever have the answer to such a question.  In all my posts, I was abstracting the power from the human limitations as well as other limitations like friction.  I was merely thinking of the possibility of the power being capable of an instantaneous speed dump that would result in a speed in excess of c.  I apparently have not been explicit enough about this abstraction.

[aeromancer he/him]

Right, you definitely wouldn't be able to accelerate to said speed, but a massive speed dump might work. Once you go FTL, you can just travel in the 4th dimension of time, and ignore the three-dimensional barriers of "friction", "human limitations", etc.

(Yes, I most likely have no idea whether you can do this. This is why Mistborn is in the "fiction section")

 

I have reiterated some points I made beforehand, apologies.

[Shardlet he/him]

No, don't apologize Aero.  You're fine.  I personally don't see time travel, which you reported to be your original intent in the post.  But, I'd be interested in your underlying thoughts as to why that effect would be present/possible.  As to the acceleration, in HoA, during the big inquisitor throwdown, I did not get the impression that there was a whole lot of acceleration/deceleration involved.  I could be entirely wrong, but that was just my impression.

 

Edit: my previous post was a general vent, not a directed one.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Shardlet

[aeromancer he/him]

So, my idea was, once you go FTL, you can't physically move in our three-dimensioned universe. So the logical direction is through the fourth dimension. (Disclaimer: read a lot of Madeleine L'Engle. May have slightly influenced me.). 

 

The reason this doesn't happen in Star Wars, or with the "Bendalloy FTL theories" is because you aren't physically exceeding the speed of light, you are merely alternatively moving faster than it with tricks.

[Shardlet he/him]

It has been too long since I read A Wrinkle in Time et al. (25 years?).  So I am not familiar enough anymore with the tesseract concepts she writes.  It's hard for me to say really when my mind gets so bogged down with relativity.  Sometimes it is hard to mentally step outside that.  Personally, the FTL workaround that I like best is foldspace travel from Dune. 

[Swimmingly he/him]

Is it possible, given that the Shardworlds are all in the same dwarf galaxy, that FTL isn't actually required for manageable trips between Shardstars? What if only a significant fraction of c is required to accelerate to speeds that let one reach other stars within days/weeks/months/years? The cosmere stuff in the third trilogy does not necessarily have to include physics-breaking FTL, just manageable distances and speeds at around 0.5 c - difficult, but possible within normal physics.

[Shardlet he/him]

Dwarf galaxy or not, how close are we to our nearest star?  Proxima Centauri at 4.24 light years.  At 0.5 c the trip would take 10 years give or take including acceleration and deceleration.  Not exactly a convenient distance in any terms.

[Kurkistan he/him]

"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

[Shardlet he/him]

Precisely. Even if you cut the world down to just the United States, it will still take a very long time to get from Los Angeles to Vegas when you are crawling.