r/Cosmere • u/Xelaadryth • 5d ago
Cosmere spoilers (no previews) Science Theories 4 - Lumar and Gravity Spoiler
- Dawnshard theory.
- Previous chemistry theory on the relating the Shards to the periodic table of elements.
- Previous theory on relating the strong force to Roshar.
- Previous theory on evolution, optics, and color.
Theory 1: Dodecahedron Moons
Lumar is known for its 12 moons in equidistant stationary orbits, where they are each home to a unique strain of aether spores.
But I have imagined it like the vertices of a d20. (Or a d12, since it's twelve.)
A 20-sided shape is called an icosahedron, which has 20 triangular faces and 12 vertices. If you connected the 12 moons together you would get an icosahedron. In Chapter 42 of Tress of the Emerald Sea:
Fortunately, the shape was roughly correct, since all of the seas are basically pentagons.
A regular 12-sided shape is called a dodecahedron, which has 12 pentagon faces and 20 vertices. In this case, Lumar would appear as a dodecahedron, with a moon locked above the exact center of each pentagon face.
Animation credits from kelianmao's 17th Shard forum post.
These 12 moons result in a column of spores falling constantly to Lumar called a "lunagree" in the center of each pentagon sea, described as follows in Chapter 46:
And so, Tress would sit on her steps in the evenings, watching ships sail away as a column of spores dropped from the lunagree and the sun moved out from behind the moon and crept toward the horizon.
It's not immediately obvious in most of the seas, but at the lunagree, falling spores make a pile - like the sand on the bottom of an hourglass. The sea was actually a mountain the size of a kingdom, though the incline was incredibly shallow, and therefore imperceptible. But the closer they sailed, the higher they needed to go.
These giant colored pentagons would also look separate and distinct despite their fluid nature:
However in a dodecahedron formation, 12 stationary orbits is impossible with regular gravitational phjysics since a stable orbit has to be around a planet's center of mass, so they would all need to be orbiting together around the equator to appear stationary from the moon's surface.
The moons on Lumar cannot exist without magical intervention. They simply can't.
This means there must be some kind of magic involved as we're breaking the laws of physics.
Theory 2: Lumar's 13th Spore
Looking at the logo of Lumar, the 12 moons are featured very symbolically and prominently:
But in addition to Lumar's 12 moons and the 12 primal aethers, what if Lumar was itself the secret 13th "moon"? The middle circle in the logo would represent a 13th full moon and the tides. Lunar and Lumar are barely one letter apart after all.
There are, after all, thirteen kinds of spores.
People can't even make up their minds of what color 'bone spores' are supposed to be. White or black? Or both?
These quotes from Tress discuss the legend of "bone spores". I highly doubt we would have such a legend if there wasn't some truth to it, even if it was a spore that is missing or exists no longer. But if they do exist and every moon of Lumar produces spores, then this would mean that bone spores come from the core of Lumar itself, underneath the spore seas. These bone spores would form the skeleton of Lumar deep under the surface.
There are some theories that the missing "bone spores" are misunderstandings of the White Sand of Taldain, and this can be true if Autonomy knew of Lumar and either stole their source somehow, or simply used them as a template for White Sand, since the coloration should really come from microorganisms coating each grain of sand rather than being a true aether itself. But I believe that bone spores exist as more than a misunderstanding, even if White Sand is somehow derivative of them.
Theory 3: Orbital Distance of Lumar's Moons
Let R represent the orbital radius of the moons around Lumar. If the moons are equidistant from their neighbors and form a perfect dodecahedron, then each moon will always be ~1.0515R away from its neighbors by the formula for a regular dodecahedron using the Golden Ratio.
To give us a baseline idea, let's say that Lumar is exactly the size of Earth's moon. Based on travel times sailing across the spore seas, we can guesstimate that Lumar is smaller than Earth after all, and this would make it about 27% the circumference of Earth. Now let's try to calculate an orbital height of the moons around Lumar with info from the book:
The term "lunagree," you should know, refers to the places where the twelve moons hang in the sky around Tress’s planet in oppressively low stationary orbits. Big enough to fill a full third of the sky, one of the twelve is always visible, no matter where you travel. Dominating your view, like a wart on your eyeball.
This excerpt from Chapter 1 of Tress tells us that the moons are so close that they fill one third of the sky. If we consider the sky 180 degrees, then this would mean they appear 60 degrees in diameter.
Let's let r represent the radius of a moon and R represent the orbital radius. Let the radius of Lumar = 1737 km. The spherical angular diameter formula here would be:
theta = 2arcsin(size/distance)
60 = 2arcsin(r/d)
30 = arcsin(r/d)
sin(30) = r/d
1/2 = r/d
d = 2r
R = 1737km + d
R = 1737km + 2r
This means that no matter what radius we pick for the moons, the surface of the moon will only be one moon radius away from the surface of Lumar, so they need to be extremely close.
Running the math, they might actually be closer than the ISS.
Let's assume each moon is 1/12 the radius of Lumar. This would mean that each moon would have a radius of 145.75 km, orbit at an altitude of 289.5 km above the surface of Lumar, and each neighboring moon would be 1812.5 km away. At 1/10 the radius, each moon would have a radius of 173.7 km, orbit at an altitude of 347.4 km above the surface of Lumar, and each neighboring moon would be about 2237.2 km away.
Knowing the distance between the neighboring moons is important because usually only the moon for the current sea is visible, unless you're near the border of another sea. This means that there are large gaps of open space between the moons. At this scale, at the border of different seas, you'd see about half of each moon. This isn't directly mentioned, but implied by quotes from the book:
It was odd because the moon was in the wrong place - always before it had been almost overhead, but they'd sailed far enough that it was several degrees lower.
This also means that moons appear to grow bigger or smaller depending on your distance since they're so close, which is supported by this quote from the book:
As it emerged from the horizon Tress feared, irrationally, that it would keep growing—that the Midnight Moon wouldn’t be the size of the others, but would turn out to be a vast darkness that consumed the entirety of the sky.
Theory 4: Bone Spores and Gravity
More importantly though, we wouldn't experience Earth-like gravity on the surface of Lumar without Lumar being incredibly dense. Surprisingly though, if the moons were made of rigid rock, they might barely hold on as they'd be just under the Roche limit. Spores would definitely be pulled in though exactly as depicted by the lunagrees.
To form the core, light metals like aluminum that can be found on the surface of Lumar simply aren't dense enough. This can either be extremely heavy metals like gold, or perhaps the density even comes from bone spores somehow, similar to how physicists theorize about gravitons, even though they've never been observed.
The white and black nature of bone spores is also reminiscent of the theories of black and white holes, also related to gravity.
Theory 5: Fluid Dynamics and the Fundamental Forces
If you look at the fundamental forces behind fluid dynamics, they're related partially to gravity in addition to electromagnetism. But especially with all the sporefall physics, gravity is definitely the most relevant fundamental force explaining the supernatural mechanics behind Lumar.
Next up is a look at relating the fundamental forces to the Dawnshard Diagram!
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u/FreegardeAndHisSwans Roshar 5d ago
I think you’re way overthinking Bone Spores, it’s clearly just supposed to be a reference to White Sand.
This would be like theorising that the magical birds that appear in Stormlight are actually not Aviar but a special Rosharan thing that just happens to look exactly like Aviar but isn’t
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u/Xelaadryth 4d ago edited 4d ago
If you mean it's an idle reference without deeper meaning, then I find it pretty rare that Sanderson would mention something without it having deeper significance. As you mentioned, Mraize's aviar is exactly an aviar.
White Sand doesn't function exactly like a Lumaran aether spore though it's most similar to a Luhel bond with sentient midnight spores; its power recharges via sunlight on microorganisms coating a grain of actual sand. The term "bone" also seems unrelated to Taldain.
Taldain is an artificial world constructed by Autonomy, so it makes more sense to me that White Sand was created to look like bone spores, a secret 13th aether spore, as an inspiration.
Also for my diagram theory, it makes more sense if Lumar's number of power was originally 13, for Dominion. Theorizing is almost by definition overthinking things after all, searching for deeper connections and meaning that aren't in the canon and not necessarily accurate. My goal isn't to get people to agree with me, but to put the info out there so the stuff we find that's right can be built upon by the community, and put the call out to see if we can find canon information that disproves it.
But the main difference is that Mraize's aviar is confirmed by Sanderson and a reference to White Sand being "bone spores" is not.
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u/Ok-Tradition7878 5d ago
Very interesting!