Flying Aes Sedai

[JenLenaMom]

How can you tie off a thread that you're using to propel yourself? What would you tie it to? The effects of the OP get less noticable the further from the channeler you get.

The structural weaves Bob mentioned could be tied to you, the ones to protect or support you. Why would you get away from it? You can create disguises of the power around yourself. And it's not like Liandrin walked away from the shield Moghedien tied around her.

 

That still leaves the threads to keep you off the ground, the threads to propel you forward and the threads to guide you as you went forward. None of those could be tied off and you would need at least two probably three threads for guidance. That's 4-5 threads at a minimum that you would have to not only maintain, but manipulate.

 

[Mandragoran]

The one power can easily defy gravity when it comes to other things.

An aeroplane can defy gravity. Gravity doesn't stop working, you just have more thrust pushing you up than there is gravity pulling you down. When standing on a platform of air and lifting it, what provides the thrust? What is holding you off the ground?

Did you not read my rocket chair theory? Or are you suggesting it is inconceivable to invent the weave that would generate the thrust to propel such a platform upwards?

 

That still leaves the threads to keep you off the ground, the threads to propel you forward and the threads to guide you as you went forward. None of those could be tied off and you would need at least two probably three threads for guidance. That's 4-5 threads at a minimum that you would have to not only maintain, but manipulate.

Rand could provide a rocket thrust with his bare hands. Heck if he ties the weaves off to pads of air on his hands and feet, he could fly like Iron Man :D

 

 

[JenLenaMom]

Upwards is entirely different than flying as you would in a plane, unless the characters just wanted to blast into outer space.

 

And again after a certain height is reached the weaves are not as effective, so you would start loosing altitude.

 

what sort of weaves would you suggest Rand could "tie off" to be able to fly like iron man, not counting the fact that iron man also has propulsion thruster in his boots, and the ones in his gloves are for steering.

[Mandragoran]

what sort of weaves would you suggest Rand could "tie off" to be able to fly like iron man, not counting the fact that iron man also has propulsion thruster in his boots, and the ones in his gloves are for steering.

Anything that can generate a constant narrow stream of fire for thrust. The kind Dashiva used against him to propel him backwards did enough explosive damage to make it overkill. It shouldn't take too much to lift up a single man as compared to a fighter jet.

 

 

[JenLenaMom]

The amount of heat you would need to generate for the thermal drafts to lift you off the ground if all you were using was small pads attached to you hands and feet would likely incerate you before you got moving. rockets do not go up because the fire it hot; they go up because the force of the fire shooting in a directed manner acts by newton's first law (equal and opposite reaction) to push the rocket off the ground. My point stands, at a certain height, the weave would not be effective at pushing against the ground and you would fall.

[Mandragoran]

The amount of heat you would need to generate for the thermal drafts to lift you off the ground if all you were using was small pads attached to you hands and feet would likely incerate you before you got moving. rockets do not go up because the fire it hot; they go up because the force of the fire shooting in a directed manner acts by newton's first law (equal and opposite reaction) to push the rocket off the ground. My point stands, at a certain height, the weave would not be effective at pushing against the ground and you would fall.

The heat wouldn't touch Rand because the power doesn't directly affect the person channeling it, or he'd be able to pick himself up. Rand can freely hold a sword of fire that cuts everything else to bits.

 

I don't think the thrust is always applied at the ground, it also acts on the air beneath to keep someone up. At a certain height, the air would thin enough for this to no longer be effective but in either case it wouldn't mean he'd fall. He'd simply stop gaining height after a certain altitude. And lateral thrust would keep him going if he uses his hands to orient himself. With thrust dependent on the weaving, speed should be a manageable issue. Jetpacks rise slowly because they aren't powerful.

 

 

[JenLenaMom]

The weave itself may not affect him but the effect of heating the atmosphere around him would certainly give him a bit of trouble.

 

 

Now your right back to being able to manage several weaves at once. You would have to reorient your "lift" weave once you move otherwise it would shoot you off at an angle. Have you read Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn books?

 

I'm done with this circular arguement.

 

[Mandragoran]

The weave itself may not affect him but the effect of heating the atmosphere around him would certainly give him a bit of trouble.

Somehow I don't think so. Rand doesn't appear to lose his balance in an earthquake caused by him. And with narrow directed jets, heating the atmosphere shouldn't be too likely. Besides, he can handle heat without thinking, he's almost always surrounded by fire in any battle of the power. A female Aes Sedai on the other hand might want to use weaves of compressed air jets instead of fire to be on the safe side.

 

Now your right back to being able to manage several weaves at once. You would have to reorient your "lift" weave once you move otherwise it would shoot you off at an angle.

All he'd have to do is reorient his arms or feet to alter direction. I thought we had established that obvious bit with the Iron Man scenario. Why would the weave have to be reoriented?

 

 

[Yllek]

Things are only impossible until the first person finds away around what everyone knows to be true.

No. Things are impossible because they cannot be done. If someone figures out how to do something, it is not impossible. You cannot figure out how to do the impossible, the impossible, by definition, cannot be done. You can do something believed impossible, but that is not the same thing at all.

 

Kinda like healing someone whose been stilled, right?  IMPOSSIBLE said everyone, even the forsaken, with all their knowledge from the Age of Ledgends.  Up until the moment stilling was healed.  The didn't say "improbable", they said "impossible".  Humans fying to the moon?  Impossible, it was said in the '40s, but yet, we do it all the time now, don't we?  This is what I mean by my statement and I stand by it.  And, if you feel that way about overcomming the impossible, .... ah, I'll leave that one alone...Let's just say I won't be asking you to problem-solve anything important. 

[chuckievi]

I can say something is impossible until I am blue in the face, that doesn't make it impossible.  By the way, it is impossible that I am ever wrong.  Now go ask my wife exactly how much credence me saying that has.

[a great fantasy fan]

Mr Ares was merely stating the definition of "impossible." and nothing you say in your last quote did anything to change anything.

Things are only impossible until the first person finds away around what everyone knows to be true.

No. Things are impossible because they cannot be done. If someone figures out how to do something, it is not impossible. You cannot figure out how to do the impossible, the impossible, by definition, cannot be done. You can do something believed impossible, but that is not the same thing at all.

 

Kinda like healing someone whose been stilled, right? IMPOSSIBLE said everyone, even the forsaken, with all their knowledge from the Age of Ledgends. Up until the moment stilling was healed. The didn't say "improbable", they said "impossible". Humans fying to the moon? Impossible, it was said in the '40s, but yet, we do it all the time now, don't we? This is what I mean by my statement and I stand by it. And, if you feel that way about overcomming the impossible, .... ah, I'll leave that one alone...Let's just say I won't be asking you to problem-solve anything important.

 

Did you not read what he said??? Since you so obviously did not comprehend his meaning, i will expand on what he said. If you call something impossible, like planes and rockets, it does not make it impossible. The truly impossible, like flapping your arms and flying without any mechanical assistance (and any known possible mechanical assistance) that is what we call impossible. Now try to focus on the actual problem, not dither on what a word means. Even if the way you mean the word does not match how it is defined. Especially then.

 

Now, i believe that, if tried, you could make a balloon of air and fill it up with air-and-fire hot air, and that possibly might give the nessisary propulsion to briefly lift off. But It would be too exhausting for you to do it for any useful period of time. There is just not enough energy in a human body to lift itself, i believe.

 

I am not talking power here, which in this case would be the strength in the power of the person in question. No, I am talking about energy, the force that makes and then directs the power. And the Power is directed by the body and the energy to support the weave is taken from the body. Not the entirity of the energy though. Just the amount to support the weave.

 

For instance, to make lightning, you manipulate the atoms of the air in a way that makes the lightning happen. Positively charge this, Negatively charge the target. The actual 10,000,000 volts are made to come from the air, not the body. It is harnessing the raw power of electricity. You can keep up negatively charging the targets for a long time, but eventually the weaves that do the charging would exhaust you. And the fireballs are pure weaves of flame that are created, hurled, and expand as they fly. The fire is the power of the weave, not the pure force of the energy from you. It would be impractical then. But they use it all the time for battle. Simplest harmful weave ever. That indicates that its easy to do, so definately NOT pure energy from the body

 

I guess that was a little off topic. But that puts the rest in context.

 

But then comes the test. Will the chamber of hot air and solid air actually fly, or is it anchored to where it is? Seems to me that that hot air weave that Rand did in that ice hut thing in Sehenchan was locked in place.... i dunno tho... probably some way to make it go free and maintain it....

 

Anyway, even if you made enough to make the hot air act like hot air and try to lift away from the surrounding cool air that no longer shares a density with it, there is the nature of the container. Is solid air something that you have to think about and move with you, or is it like other solid objects and you can tie it off?

 

All told, even if you can get it to work perfectly and manipulate it so you can steer it up and down and side to side, how much energy would it take for you to do it? And how many flows would you have to divide large amounts of the power by? I guess it might be possible, but there are too many ifs to say strait out that it can be done. Simply that it may be slightly possible.

 

And i do not really care to even try to go into the complexity of the "iron man-like flying" or even the "rocket Power." Where would you get THAT much energy? HOW many megatons of rocket fuel does it take to power a rocket to space?? even counting the fact that the weight is much less with just one comparitively small human being, how could you generate the force continuously enough to make prolonged liftoff??? In that instance, the power and energy is in the weave, but how do you do it??? And even assuming (coming to hate that word in other discussions) that you could produce the liftoff, how would you STEER IT?! I do not think that humans have the required hand eye cordination to steer a rocket, even mentally, to adjust the rattling of the air passing past you and turn with any quickness. (MAYBE a mile wide U turn) All in all, this is not even touching the surface of the complexity of the forces and steering and all the factors that need to be factored in. You are not flying with machines that maintain themselves and do their purpose without effort on your part. This is the True Source, Sadin and Saidar we are talking about here. And this is too complex. Too many weaves that need constant attention. Plus there is the matter of the completely nessisary bubble of air that would not let heat, deadly explosion force winds, and any birds that you might encounter in flight that might otherwise act as a bullet to a fast moving object such as yourself. Such a shield would not let in oxygen. Impractical and improbable to the degree that you might as well consider it impossible, if not completely full blown impossible.

 

Sorry for the length of this post. Didn't mean to make a post this long, just got too carried away to stop without completely scrapping it....

[David Hermes]

Since new Talents and abilities are being rediscovered, Rand or Egwene might be the ones to discover flying in The Memory of Light.

[Luckers]

No, they will not. Neither have the sufficient knowledge of physics to utilise the power in flight. Any attempt to do so would kill them.

[Mandragoran]

And i do not really care to even try to go into the complexity of the "iron man-like flying" or even the "rocket Power." Where would you get THAT much energy? HOW many megatons of rocket fuel does it take to power a rocket to space?? even counting the fact that the weight is much less with just one comparitively small human being, how could you generate the force continuously enough to make prolonged liftoff??? In that instance, the power and energy is in the weave, but how do you do it??? And even assuming (coming to hate that word in other discussions) that you could produce the liftoff, how would you STEER IT?! I do not think that humans have the required hand eye cordination to steer a rocket, even mentally, to adjust the rattling of the air passing past you and turn with any quickness. (MAYBE a mile wide U turn) All in all, this is not even touching the surface of the complexity of the forces and steering and all the factors that need to be factored in. You are not flying with machines that maintain themselves and do their purpose without effort on your part. This is the True Source, Sadin and Saidar we are talking about here. And this is too complex. Too many weaves that need constant attention. Plus there is the matter of the completely nessisary bubble of air that would not let heat, deadly explosion force winds, and any birds that you might encounter in flight that might otherwise act as a bullet to a fast moving object such as yourself. Such a shield would not let in oxygen. Impractical and improbable to the degree that you might as well consider it impossible, if not completely full blown impossible.

Megatons of fuel to lift a person off the ground? How fast do they really have to go and where does escape velocity even enter into the picture? If it's slow & low enough, would control and protection really be issues?

 

 

And that's not even counting the superhuman spatial awareness one acquires from the Oneness and from channeling the OP. Those of a certain calibre can channel multiple weaves without thinking, Rand & Nynaeve being a couple of known examples already mentioned. Those not as strong but with the Talents for the skills required could probably prove as accomplished.

 

Since new Talents and abilities are being rediscovered, Rand or Egwene might be the ones to discover flying in The Memory of Light.

You meant to say the Old Talents are being rediscovered. Siuan does state early on that Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends could fly.

 

No, they will not. Neither have the sufficient knowledge of physics to utilise the power in flight. Any attempt to do so would kill them.

Lews Therin probably does. All Rand has to do is remember. Or ask one of the captured forsaken. Even if they learned a little, they could piece it together to rediscover how it was done.

 

In the context of applied physics, boring into the fabric of space or manipulating it enough to have two disparate spatial locations mirror each other should be impossible but the power circumvents those limitations, that's how they rediscovered Traveling.

 

 

[t-bag]

This might be a load of bull but it seems to me most of this discussion is about overcoming gravity. Is it possible, using the power, to neutralise the effects of gravity?

[Bob T Dwarf]

The first step to doing that is to realize that gravity exists.  We haven't seen Isaac Newton anywhere, yet.

[Mandragoran]

This might be a load of bull but it seems to me most of this discussion is about overcoming gravity. Is it possible, using the power, to neutralise the effects of gravity?

Very interesting actually. :) Aes Sedai can use Saidar to affect space and produce a Gateway, modifying one location to make it identical to another. Gravity results from a curve in space-time and if that inertial curve between two bodies could be straightened with the Power, gravity would be nullified.

 

 

[JenLenaMom]

according to Einstein gravity results from a curve in space-time according to quantum mechanics it results from graviton particles.

[chuckievi]

You meant to say the Old Talents are being rediscovered. Siuan does state early on that Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends could fly.

 

And Asmo said that they couldn't.  Who are you going to believe?  The one who has heard bits and pieces from the AoL or the one who LIVED IN THE TIME?

[Bob T Dwarf]

How about both?

 

Siuan probably would have interpreted "flying" as being able to personally levitate, having never seen any kind of flying machine.  Asmo having been there would have known that the Aes Sedai didn't fly, the Sho-wing did.

[zanotam]

Flying simply requires force and lift. I'm sure the Aes Sedai could easily achieve both, they aren't lifting so much as pushing, and then you have another AS on the thing being pushed who controls it, I mean, a little air here and there and they can somewhat steer. Of course, Flying is kinda stupid, skimming is obviously very easy (not as in travelling...), give a pair of AS a decent angreal and then they just lift eachother off the ground and push in the same direction, 10-13 Feet above the Earth would suffice in many instances and I'm sure they could weave a barrier if need be for forest travel or some such. But really, we're seeing hundreds of years of ingenuity pop up in a single academy, and some of those researchers would probably have no problems ordering around AS, which means you have a bunch of geniuses with massive amounts of power and money at their command, flying would be easy.

[a great fantasy fan]

Well... at least we are back on topic...

 

As stated before, it does not matter how much of the power that it takes to lift someone. If someone attemps to lift a person who is lifting them, then both are grounded, or the second lift fails to lift.

 

This is because of grounding. The people in Randland do not have much grasp of the laws of physics (possibly excluding the White Ajah at least partially) so they do not realise that the way that you lift with the OP obviously requires the lifter to be securely braced. Whether on the ground, or on a wall (in the case of siuan and Nynaeve) they must be braced against something solid. So no, you can't pair up and lift each other. Just like you can't levitate by having your friend lift you then while he lifts you you lift him. Impossible that way.

 

Anyway, this is hardly going to be the answer, considering it is the easiest and fastest reached solution, so it would be already tested and attempted, and if it was not impossible this way at least, then Asmo would have told Rand it was possible paired up. And some Aes Setai would have attempted it in all the years of tinkering with ways to do some things, ways to make ter'angreal do other things, etc. Since no Aes Setai have discovered a way so far in the Age of Legends AND the 3rd(?) age, it may just be impossible.

[Mandragoran]

according to Einstein gravity results from a curve in space-time according to quantum mechanics it results from graviton particles.

They're still working on a theory of quantum gravity. If it was better understood, there would be a way to counter gravity for us. Aes Sedai don't seem to share those limitations. Primitive as they are, they can alter reality itself, they understand folds and work with other realities/dimensions better than we do.

 

[quote author=chuckievi link=topic=44533.msg1183390#msg1183390 date=1246033020

And Asmo said that they couldn't.  Who are you going to believe?  The one who has heard bits and pieces from the AoL or the one who LIVED IN THE TIME?

Do you have a quote for that? Book & Chapter titles will do.

 

 

[Mr Ares]

Did you not read my rocket chair theory?

I did, I just didn't see it as worth responding to.

 

Kinda like healing someone whose been stilled, right?  IMPOSSIBLE said everyone, even the forsaken, with all their knowledge from the Age of Ledgends.

Exactly. They believed it to be impossible, but it wasn't. They just didn't know how to do it. The impossible, by definition, cannot be done. If it can be done, then it's not impossible. Impossible means it is not possible. It cannot be done.

[Luckers]

Quote from: Luckers on June 26, 2009, 05:07:43 AM

No, they will not. Neither have the sufficient knowledge of physics to utilise the power in flight. Any attempt to do so would kill them.

 

 

Lews Therin probably does. All Rand has to do is remember. Or ask one of the captured forsaken. Even if they learned a little, they could piece it together to rediscover how it was done

 

What makes you think that? Lews Therin was a politician, why would he have knowledge of aerodynamics? I mean even assuming the theory was taught to every Aes Sedai, the specific needs for the creation of sho-wings (or something of the form, which would be needed for flight even with the power) would be exactly that. Specific.

 

Even if Lew Therin had that knowledge the flow of information would not be enough to give it to Rand.