Trying to hack conservation of energy

[PandACT he/him]

This is my first topic... (hooray!) So if I'm overlooking something completely obvious, feel free to point it out. I think it would also be fun to add ideas from everyone.

 

 

Stormlight Archive

 

 

1) Shardblade drop

 

 

Shardblades have been summoned over extremely large distances with little or no effort. You think the command, and the shardblade appears. It presumably comes through shadesmar, based on how other things have been doing that and the fact that it's a (dead) spren. Now, what if you were to go to a VERY high place and summon your shardblade? The energy output would be greater than the input. You could even power a generator by repeatedly dropping a shardblade on it! Could this be draining some sort of energy resevoir from the cognitive realm... or is it draining power from the gemstones? If it needs stormlight, then the gemstones or the radiant could easily feed it that.

 

 

 

 

2) Antigravity lashing

 

 

This has the same concept as #1; an object comes back down with more energy than it went up with. Say you were to do a reverse lashing of half an object's weight upwards. You then launched it somehow with a ton of energy. The object would go much higher than it normally would with the same amount of energy. However, when the stormlight ran out, the object would come plummeting back to the ground with more energy than it was sent up with. Yes, this uses stormlight, a type of investiture. However, if stormlight consumption is based on time, you could still have a higher energy output with a large enough force sending it upwards. This implies that there's a complex formula for how fast stormlight is consumed.

 

 

 

 

3) Spren = mass?

 

 

Spren supposedly come from a thought. If a thought allows spren to be CREATED, and that said spren bonds with a radiant, and that spren takes a form of something, wouldn't it add mass to the world from a thought? You could generate mass (and therefore energy) by thinking! Granted, the thought takes some level of energy... but you could theoretically have a higher output. However, it's more likely that there's a very complicated process to spren and bonding that we just don't know about yet.

 

 

 

 

Mistborn

 

 

1) Compounding

 

 

You simply come out with more energy than you put in. That's very simple... Store the heat of a fireplace, turn it into the heat of a supernova! I've read another topic talking about how it can draw power from shards, so that's resolved.

 

 

 

 

Warbreaker

 

 

1) Awakened breath consumption

 

 

Awakening an object lets it run for a long time on a single breath. Awakening can convert breaths to kinetic energy. Apparently, awakened objects stop working eventually. Could this be using up the breath or the objects energy? Either way, would a harder task demand more of that energy source? If not, (which is less likely) you could make a monkey rapidly turn a crank for a very, very long time and convert very little breath into A LOT of energy. In that case, awakened objects probably use up breath or their stored energy based on how hard what they're doing is.

 

 

 

 

2) Color=Energy...

 

 

Color is either pigment or the wavelength of light. It's almost garunteed to be pigment, as there are a bunch of problems with light. There's bound to be some problem with converting pigment to energy, but I don't know enough formulas to think of something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I want to know what you think! I need someone who knows what they're doing!

 

Edited November 22, 2017 by PandACT

[Master Elodin]

The energy comes from the Shards.

[Dracnor he/him]

When you speak of "conservation of energy", do you speak of our kind of energy? Or does Investiture count as energy? For if it's the latter, then I suspect that it'd be impossible do hack the conservation...

[Vissy]

A safe assumption is that Investiture from the various Shards is what makes up most of the extra energy output. Where Adonalsium received its power from, we can only speculate. 

[PandACT he/him]

I guess that explains it! Thanks!

 

But NOW I'm curious what the shards think of their power being drained! It's not infinite...

[Vissy]

Well, a sixteenth part of infinity is still infinity... and from what we know, Adonalsium was basically infinite. 

 

Of course, mathematically, some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Varangian

[Dracnor he/him]

Well, a sixteenth part of infinity is still infinity... and from what we know, Adonalsium was basically infinite. 

 

Of course, mathematically, some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Is there a WoB concerning this infinity?

And if there power is infinite, how could small differencies like between Ruin and Preservation be so significant? Infinite, even deprived of a small part of itself, still is infinite. The Mathematic stuff is that there's different kind of infinite: it's a question of nature. So I'd rather think that Shard/Adonalsium power isn't infinite, but juste far more extended than other entities power.

[Vissy]

Probably not infinite, then. Infinity would screw with a ton of stuff regardless.

 

Regardless, the original question was about why Shards aren't concerned about losing their Investiture to the magicks performed by Invested people. The answer is, we don't know, but we speculate that the Investiture is just automatically returned to the Shard (or harvested by it).

[Master_Moridin he/him]

Probably not infinite, then. Infinity would screw with a ton of stuff regardless.

 

Regardless, the original question was about why Shards aren't concerned about losing their Investiture to the magicks performed by Invested people. The answer is, we don't know, but we speculate that the Investiture is just automatically returned to the Shard (or harvested by it).

 

We have confirmation that this is the case for at least two of the systems.  On Nalthis if someone dies their Breath just returns to the system, and in Allomancy the Investiture that an Allomancer uses returns to Preservation.

[BrightVoid he/him]

We all have to remeber that you cannot take earth physics and place it into the cosmere, for reasons such as magic (duh) and the nature of matter.

[Samaldin he/him]

We all have to remeber that you cannot take earth physics and place it into the cosmere, for reasons such as magic (duh) and the nature of matter.

Actually i think we can generally assume that the physics are the same as on earth. With the different magic-systems we get effects which obviously wouldn´t work on earth but how these effect interact with the world follows our rules of physics.

[Eccentric Hero he/him]

I think when you use the magic from shards, you basically circuit it through your spiritweb and the power returns to the shards as you channel it.

[Knotai]

It seems like each system of investiture is closed e.g. changes in investiture on one planet do not have effects outside of that planet. That said investiture is universally compatible to different degrees across the cosmere.

 

The 2nd Law of thermodynamics still applies as well e.g. entropy of the Cosmere will increase when a spren turns into a shardblade. IMO the 1st law is not being violated because no matter is being created or destroyed, only converted using energy taken from the environment/Shard, when a spren turns into a Shardblade or something like that. Because matter is being neither created or destroyed and we use the matter-energy paradigm we use today in relative physics, we can assume that neither the First nor the Second Law is violated in the Cosmere.

[Ari he/him]

Brandon's confirmed in WoB before that investiture follows conservation of energy, it just does so with at least one additional category of "energy." So there's some energy input needed for investiture to recharge, (such as Atium being generated over time, or Preservation's pool periodically refilling) we just don't know exactly what's used to do this "recharge".

[Vissy]

Just like in the real world, if something doesn't seem to add up, we just have to assume that there is a natural explanation for it. And then find it.

[Irkutsk he/him]

One conservation of energy hack that doesn't appear to draw energy from a shard or anything would be abusing iron feruchemy.

Place several iron ferrings on a large wheel, like a Ferris wheel (or should I say Ferrous wheel, haha... Okay...) Anyways, the ferrings on one side store weight while the other side taps. The wheel is imbalanced, causing it to rotate. As long as those movin down tap and those moving up store, it will continue to rotate, which can turn a generator.

Feruchemy is supposedly end-neutral as well, so this idea seems to generate energy from nothing...

[PandACT he/him]

How did I not think of that? You are significantly more brilliant than I am! Maybe they ARE still drawing from the shard... That's pretty much the go-to answer regardless of how it works. It makes you wonder how Brandon himself thinks about this.

Edited November 18, 2017 by PandACT

[ZenBossanova]

That would mean, Feruchemy is not truly end-neutral.

There is a recent WOB at the JordanCon RAFOlympics about things people on Scadrial call end-neutral, really aren't.

 

 

Q: So for the Old Magic, in this classification system of end-positive, end-neutral, and end-negative, where would that fall under?

A: So, almost every magic in the Cosmere is end-positive, almost every magic is relying upon an external source of Investiture to power it. So that is mostly more relevant to Scadrial than anywhere else, because that concept is how I’m dealing with things like the laws of thermodynamics, and even what they call end-neutral is relying a little bit on the power of Investiture to facilitate. So even an end-neutral magic system as they define it on Scadrial is not actually end-neutral. What you put in you get out, but the power is facilitating that transfer. So that phrasing is kind of a....uh...Take that as a science on Scadrial that does not extrapolate well, and may not even be 100% accurate. [...] I look at it as, is there an Investiture externally powering the magic, and if you look at Allomancy, yes it is. You are drawing that power out. Feruchemy, you are putting Investiture in from your own body, it’s your energy transferring to Investiture, which is then stored, which you are then drawing out, and things like that. But that changing forms is facilitated by the magic. Whereas when you’re stealing stuff with - You could look for instance at the magic on Nalthis, you could look at that one as being, as kind of working as end-negative, meaning “I am taking it away from someone else”, or end-positive depending on if you’re the one receiving it or not. So again, it’s a phrasing that could be useful as a tool but doesn’t scale well to the other magics.

[Shardcellist]

Taking "Investiture Potential Energy" into account, it's all easily explainable.

Except for the hacks that mess with gravitational potential energy. Iron ferrings, like mentioned. In fact, the dropped Sharblade seems to have the same problem. Potentially the Oathgates as well.

The biggest conservation of energy question in the Cosmere comes from situations like these - the magic doesn't seem to add any more energy than normal, but more mechanical energy is gained because of gravity.

Any thoughts?

[Knotai]

If you consider it in terms of particle physics, you could imagine an iron metalmind almost like a graviton capacitor in a sense. In that case you could store gravitational potential energy...

[PandACT he/him]

Wait, steel is almost automatically an end-positive feruchemical metal! Simply jumping up while storing weight, then coming down while tapping it already uses energy. In fact, steel might be the only one with an end-positive result. Potential energy from gravity seems to be the thing screwing it all up... Is it at all possible that gravity has an underlying system?''

 

EDIT: I meant iron, yes

Edited November 18, 2017 by PandACT

[Eki]

Wait, steel is almost automatically an end-positive feruchemical metal! Simply jumping up while storing weight, then coming down while tapping it already uses energy. In fact, steel might be the only one with an end-positive result. Potential energy from gravity seems to be the thing screwing it all up... Is it at all possible that gravity has an underlying system?

You mean iron, I think. Steel stores physical speed.

I just want to point out that conservation of energy doesn't really seem to hold in our universe, since the expansion of space messes everything up. Two gravitationally bound objects technically gain potential energy as the space between them grows, and the wavelengths of photons are stretched out as they travel through expanding space. Not much to do with this topic I suppose, but interesting nonetheless!

[Vissy]

There are many, many things we can't understand even in our own universe. I think it's only fair that we extend the benefit of doubt also to the Cosmere; there may be some qualities to it that nobody yet understands. Things that just are that way. 

[happyman he/him]

You mean iron, I think. Steel stores physical speed.

I just want to point out that conservation of energy doesn't really seem to hold in our universe, since the expansion of space messes everything up. Two gravitationally bound objects technically gain potential energy as the space between them grows, and the wavelengths of photons are stretched out as they travel through expanding space. Not much to do with this topic I suppose, but interesting nonetheless!

 

I've heard different opinions on what happens to conversation of energy in an expanding universe.  By different opinions, I mean different opinions from physic professors who specialize in General Relativity, so I'd qualify it as "unknown."  The definition of energy gets kind of fuzzy there.

It's important to know, though, that "locally," energy is always conserved, which means we aren't going to be able to use it for anything here.  Unfortunately.  But with magic, and two other realms to slip into or out of, I dare say that energy can be conserved, and still have all the hacks we've been describing in this thread.  Besides, its fun!