Mistborn and FTL

[Link he/him]

So after seeing the trailer for the new movie Interstellar, and all the related articles popping up discussing the science behind it (like this one here) I have been wondering about the whole FTL being built into Allomancy. The science behind these "time warp bubbles" is really complicated so go read the article to get a better idea of how it works, but it talks about positioning compressed space/time before you, and expanded behind, making a kind of jump, or something like that. So I was thinking could this be the key to FTL travel given the presense of space bubbles within Scadrial, and our answer to transporting characters around the Cosmere in a more futuristic setting?

[Tempus]

That article doesn't actually describe much or any of the science behind it at all, unfortunately. It's full of chock. That says, it's chock based on the real thing - there is a faster than light drive that uses those principles, and it is being researched by NASA, and it's called an Alcubierre drive.

 

And I have a theory on it.

 

 

A brief explanation, the science (like most good science) is easy to understand at the general level, and hard when you try to figure it out up close. Basically, the universe as we know it can be described in terms of spacetime - basically time and space together at the same time. Spacetime can be warped. The best example of this is a black hole, which deforms spacetime as it approaches the central gravity mass. All good so far.

 

So, the interesting thing is that if spacetime deforms, you can move without moving. Instead of moving within spacetime, you can simply warp spacetime around you directionally. You don't move, the universe moves around you. This is where it starts to get weird. To accomplish the warping of spacetime in such a manner, you need a field (any field would do, but a bubble is easiest) where the direction you want to go in has extremely high positive mass, and the other direction has a type of exotic matter known as negative mass (not proven to exist yet). And then it's basically like running your hand through bathwater: on one side you get a lot of spacetime (the wave in front of your hand), and behind your hand the water rushes in the fill the void. Same thing, except it is all of time and space instead of sudsy hot water. 

 

Anyway, long story short, the key to warping spacetime is control of mass, not time. Though it does make me question the nature of those allomantic time bubbles.

[M'Hael]

That article doesn't actually describe much or any of the science behind it at all, unfortunately. It's full of chock. That says, it's chock based on the real thing - there is a faster than light drive that uses those principles, and it is being researched by NASA, and it's called an Alcubierre drive.

 

And I have a theory on it.

 

 

A brief explanation, the science (like most good science) is easy to understand at the general level, and hard when you try to figure it out up close. Basically, the universe as we know it can be described in terms of spacetime - basically time and space together at the same time. Spacetime can be warped. The best example of this is a black hole, which deforms spacetime as it approaches the central gravity mass. All good so far.

 

So, the interesting thing is that if spacetime deforms, you can move without moving. Instead of moving within spacetime, you can simply warp spacetime around you directionally. You don't move, the universe moves around you. This is where it starts to get weird. To accomplish the warping of spacetime in such a manner, you need a field (any field would do, but a bubble is easiest) where the direction you want to go in has extremely high positive mass, and the other direction has a type of exotic matter known as negative mass (not proven to exist yet). And then it's basically like running your hand through bathwater: on one side you get a lot of spacetime (the wave in front of your hand), and behind your hand the water rushes in the fill the void. Same thing, except it is all of time and space instead of sudsy hot water. 

 

Anyway, long story short, the key to warping spacetime is control of mass, not time. Though it does make me question the nature of those allomantic time bubbles.

          While I do believe this is how it could happen, there is a slight problem in that theory. The only way we know of to distort space is by placing and condensing a central mass in an area of space to connect the area around it. By doing that though all matter in it the compressed area is crushed to the point of dust (maybe even less) and to traverse said singularity of mass, you would have to be moving at a speed faster than light so as not to get sucked in (which is where allomancy comes in.) I would best describe as a spread blanket (only it's a four-dimensional blanket). If you drop a bowling ball in the middle, it will warp the matter around it causing the traversal in between to cost less time. If you were to roll a toy car over the horizon of the singularity condensing this space, you would have to either go around, or roll it fast enough to fly over the hole to get to the other side, effectively forcing the need for allomancy to compress to time and, to an extant, energy to do so.

 

         If you could answer, I have a few questions for you in terms of the allomancy. How big of a bubble could you create if you were to use duralumin with cadmium? By any chance is there a metal that allows you to link your powers with other allomancers to make traversal possible? And another thing, how far into the timeline would this trilogy be, considering they might just have the technology we lack to warp without those risks? Au revoir! ☺☺☺

[Tempus]

As to the psychics of the Alcubierre drive, I have no particular comment. I took first year physics and first year chem in uni as electives, so I'm not exactly an expert. But if NASA believes it is viable (or maybe viable), they've probably got a better group of people working on it than little ol' me.

 

The Allomantic bubble issue is way more sticky. Allomantic time bubbles have very limited information, but a lot of issues to overcome for general FTL use. As far as duralumin cadmium goes, we don't have any good predictions as to size yet. We believe they can vary in size, but don't have significant examples to form any sort of extrapolation. Flaring a temporal metal seems to increase the time dilation effects, rather than change the size of the bubble. I'm not super up to date on my bendalloy/cadmium theories so I might be mistaken on some of this. Kurk would be the one to ask - he's looked at FTL involving time bubbles a lot.

 

There are no known ways to 'link' allomantic powers such as you describe, but other forms of allomancy and time bubbles do have some interesting rules for interactions (and probably many we are unaware of). 

 

As far as timeline goes, trilogy two is set 1980's tech, I believe. The third trilogy is listed as 'space opera', no known time scale that I can recall. The gap between trilogy one and trilogy two is about 400 years, though. Alloy of Law (prequel to Trilogy 2) is set 341 years after HoA. Presumably we can extrapolate a rough guess of 100-500 years assuming it will follow similar jumps. Another point is that most books in the Cosmere timeline follow a similar sort of jump between them.

[Swimmingly he/him]

Brandon has said that there are Allomantic abilities we haven't been introduced to yet; presumably a pair of those creates something like a time bubble but acting on space. This seems like it could be part of the solution.

[Lightsworn Panda he/him]

...

 

I went through most of this thread thinking that we were talking about the game FTL.

[Asperity he/him]

I figure it will probably involve a variation of an Alcubierre Drive. Maybe with that one movie featuring it coming out soon, it'll get more attention.

[Tempus]

I'm not so certain it will involve the drive. I think the drive is quite plausible in the Mistborn universe, but as Kurk states in my thread, Brandon has specifically said that it involves an unknown allomantic ability, and the lost energy from certain thermodynamic issues in allomancy, and has called a theory involving time bubbles as 'getting closer'.

 

That said, I'm still hopeful that my theory will prove to be a working alternative to the one Brandon may have developed.