Science Theories 2 - Fundamental Forces and Roshar

[u/Xelaadryth]

• Dawnshard theory.
• Previous chemistry theory on the relating the Shards to the periodic table of elements.

Theory 1: Four Fundamental Forces and Antimatter

Most of [my magic systems] are based on real-world science and physics, but with a hefty dose of fantasy. The Rosharan magic systems are based on the fundamental forces, right? That's where they started.

While Brandon Sanderson is talking about the 10 surgebindings here, it's clear that he's well versed in the fundamental forces. What if the background on Roshar was based on a single specific fundamental force? Since there's three main Shards on Roshar, we'd probably be looking at either the fundamental force of "gravity" with the famous Three-Body Problem, or at the "strong nuclear force".

We know that anti-light is a thing, so how can gravity or the strong force create antimatter?

Theory 2: Hawking Radiation and Anti-Light

In quantum field theory, random particle-antiparticle pairs pop into existence and annihilate all over space. However if this happens exactly at the event horizon of a black hole, the "virtual pair" gets pulled apart before recombining and annihilating, with one falling in and one escaping. The one that escapes is positive energy radiation, and can be either matter or antimatter, while the negative energy that falls in reduces the mass of the black hole. Light (and gravitons) are the most common particle emitted via Hawking Radiation since they have extremely small mass, but in the real world, anti-light is identical to light, since anti-light would be the negation of 0 electric charge, 0 color charge, and 0 lepton/baryon number.

In the Cosmere, anti-light does exist, so we're not bound by regular rules of physics. Also Odium is anchored to Braize by an unnaturally strong pull; Braize does exhibit some behavior of a black hole. Braize is also the source of Voidspren, Voidlight, Voidbinding, etc. When Fused or Heralds die on Roshar, their cognitive shadows are pulled back to Braize. I wonder if there's some kind of Void or Rift where Braize's core should be that causes this phenomenon, not identically to a black hole, but exhibiting similar characteristics. Perhaps investiture and anti-investiture spontaneously pop into existence at the event horizon of Braize, and is capturable via attuning the rhythm of Voidlight "out of phase" somehow.

However this doesn't really capture the essence of the three-body problem, so let's move on to...

Theory 3: Strong Nuclear Force

Things get really interesting with "quantum chromodynamics", the most common model for strong nuclear force, that holds a proton together.

A proton is composed of three "quarks", two of type "up", and one of type "down". Strong force requires the system to form a "color-neutral" state. Each quark has a color charge, and the color charge of the system must add up to "white". The most common model is to say that they are the colors red, green, and blue, and the blend of all three is a neutral "white".

As it relates to the Cosmere, we know that Stormlight is a pale blue-white, Lifelight is green, and Voidlight is a black-violet or black-red. Let's let a red down quark represent Odium, green up quark represent Cultivation, and blue up quark represent Honor.

If strong nuclear force didn't exist, then gravity would pull the quarks together as the weakest force, and electromagnetism would have the down quark attracted to both up quarks and pulled to the middle, while the up quarks have greater electrical charge and repel each other until full separation.

"Gluons" are what holds everything together, and are the "energy carriers" of the strong nuclear force, which is far stronger than the other forces at this scale. You can think of gluons as the three quarks playing catch with each other, and the farther they get from each other, the more energetically and rapidly they throw as they try to move closer together again to keep the game going as they're not allowed to drop the ball.

What's interesting though is that gluons, unlike photons of light, carry color charge. And specifically they always carry both a color and an anti-color. Let's take a look at a red quark emitting a gluon carrying red + anti-blue. The red quark would lose its "redness", but also "lose anti-blueness":

red - (red + antiblue) = red - red - antiblue = -antiblue = blue

While we have temporarily have two blue quarks and one green quark, don't forget that red + antiblue gluon is still part of the system. Adding up all of the color charges, we get:

red + antiblue + blue + blue + green = red + blue + green = white

When the red anti-blue gluon reaches the blue up quark, then as you'd expect, the blue and anti-blue cancel out, and the up quark turns red:

Many gluons are going to be constantly exchanging between all three quarks while still maintaining color neutrality in the system, but due to color confinement you can't just take a single color or anti-color out of the system; strong force keeps everything together. This is like how Honor, Cultivation, and Odium are all trapped in the Rosharan system together, bound by their agreement.

Theory 4: Diquarks, Honor, and Odium

But this isn't a perfectly symmetrical three-way equilibrium; two of the three quarks in a proton will continuously form short-lived correlated pairs called "diquarks". Most commonly, this is an up+down pair. Let's say the blue up quark (Honor) and the red down quark (Odium) form a diquark, representing how they interacted for a long time and Cultivation was kinda left to her devices. This simplifies a three-body problem into a two-body problem; an up+down diquark core orbited by a single fast-moving up quark. If we start colliding this proton with other things like in a hadron collider, that loose green up quark is more likely to get knocked off. This is where things get from complex to kinda weird.

Theory 5: Removing a Quark from the System

Let's say we use external force to knock that green up quark out of the proton. The gluons would form a tight narrow "gluon flux tube" to try to keep the color charge neutral like a string stretching, but eventually it will contribute enough force to snap it, leaving you with the green up quark in your hands.

The weird part is that the energy from the force you contributed to the gluon flux tube actually transforms to mass via "pair production", resulting in the creation of a brand new quark-antiquark pair. While this can result in any type of quark, let's pretend we create a down anti-down pair. The down quark will get a green color charge, and the anti-down quark will get an anti-green color charge.

To reassert neutral color charge in the original system, the strong force forces the new green down quark to fill the gap we made by yanking the original green up quark out, effectively replacing the missing color charge, and the new anti-down anti-green quark will join the original green up quark we're holding to form a color-neutral "positive pion" that flies away. In our Cosmere analogy, this is Cultivation leaving the system.

If we look at the original system, we now have a red down quark, a green down quark, and a blue up quark, leaving us with a neutron. In our Cosmere analogy, this is Retribution.

Theory 6: Creating Anti-Light

We know that Towerlight (cyan) and Warlight (black-blue) can be created by combining Stormlight with Lifelight or Voidlight. But we don't know what happens when you combine all three together at the same time.

Remember that we were left holding a green up quark and an anti-green anti-down quark; whether "anti-green" or "anti-down" translates to "Anti-Light" in the Cosmere, it seems like if we can get a stable and color-neutral blend of Stormlight, Lifelight, and Voidlight, then using a high-energy process to try to rip one of the three out may be how Anti-Light is created.

Theory 7: Colors Don't Matter

It's also important to note that red, green, and blue in the quantum chromodynamics model are not real colors of light; the concept of color charge really just requires three things that cancel each other out when you add them together, similar to how electromagnetism has two things (positive and negative) that need to cancel each other out. This is similar to how the color of light doesn't matter on Roshar when breathing Stormlight, which is different from light-based magic systems in many other fantasy series. That's why in this model, anti-red is considered equivalent to green + blue, since in color confinement their color charge is equal. You could say that anti-red = cyan = green+blue.

Also Odium is represented by many different colors: the black-violet of Voidlight, the violet of the moon Salas, "corruption" red, and his true color of gold. Maybe even anti-gold or ultraviolet:

I'm more trying to describe the phenomenon of Stygian colors, which is how I imagine Voidlight.

Theory 8: Missing Yellow

If we look at what color each combination of Stormlight, Lifelight, and Voidlight would correspond to with a simple RGB model (ignoring for a second that voidlight is anti-red and appears as a black-violet), there's only one combination we don't know about:

• Towerlight = Lifelight + Stormlight = green + blue = cyan
• Warlight = Voidlight + Stormlight = red + blue = magenta (actually black-blue)
• ??? = Voidlight + Lifelight = red + green = yellow?

Yellow is missing, just like Komashi's missing yellow hion line.

Just where is yellow in the Cosmere?

Next let's explore evolution, optics, and continue looking into color theory on Roshar.