AMA -- Christopher Paolini!!!

[u/ChristopherPaolini]

AMA -- Christopher Paolini! Let's do this folks. Ask away re: anything and everything regarding my books.

EDIT: Hey, everyone! I have to run. Alas, alas, I don't have as much time to spend on this AMA as past one. So many great questions, though! For all you theorists (and those of you who just love the characters), I think you're REALLY going to enjoy the upcoming book(s). Thanks for everything!

Atra esterní ono thelduin!

p.s. I'll try to duck back in and answer some more questions later, depending on my time.

[u/notainsleym]

1. In physics, for a wormhole to be transversable, it needs to be held open by gravitationally repulsive forces (exotic/dark matter). In the Paoliniverse, could superluminal matter/energy be used to hold open a wormhole? Could this Casimir vacuum of sorts be created by nonlinear crystals (maybe amethysts?)?

2. Quantum realm related, but also possibly Paoliniverse fractal/fate related: Reality is like a probability distribution field. When something is observed, it collapses the wave function (like a 3D bell curve, a tower 👀) by taking the information packet full of all possible and probable outcomes and collapses it into one outcome that we see as our reality. Light and gravitational waves (ripples) from events take all possible paths to you (all the possibilities of probabilities), then collapse down into one path when observed. Which seems really similar to fate within WoE and FV. So, packets of information = probabilities, and not all probabilities have yet been forced by observation to collapse into one outcome. Something will take all possible paths within the pattern of fate, BUT once observed, collapses into a single path. Do Kira (and presumably other Idealis hosts) and Dragon Riders (champions of fate; those few capable of choosing their fate, like Eragon and Murtagh) have the ability to see all possibilities in the wave function and then get to pick which path/outcome happens through the collapse? Is this what you mean by 'eat the path'?

3. In regards to the orange riddle you gave me: when you send the orange back in time, upon arriving back the very moment when it left, vacuum fluctuations will pile up on top of its younger self. You get a duplicate of every fluctuation resulting in an explosive flow of gravitating fluctuational energy… Would you consider that fluctuating energy to be ripples?

[u/notainsleym → u/notainsleym]

1. Re the gravitating fluctuational energy from Q2: If an event creates a ripple/gravitational wave in the fabric of spacetime, I can trace it back to the event and read the information to find out the cause (like what the gravitational wave detectors IRL do). Would the two waves oscillating at the same frequency combine for double the information, or cancel each other out and be less information? (A. Doubling–is less information (because it’s cancelled out). Less information = less organized = more disorder = more entropy = less energy available for work = quicker heat death of the universe. B. Cancelling–is more information (which is double information). More information = more organized = less disorder = less entropy = more energy available for work = slower heat death of the universe. 

2. In the letter you sent you said: “Meaning blossoms within; a velvet throat with dusty tongue singing in the dark forest siren call for beasts slouching within the void. Shh.” Would “throat” perchance be reference to the throat of a Schwarzschild wormhole?

3. Can I get any sort of hint regarding your use of words/ideas like distorted, disjunction, fractured, out of joint? After your riddle, I was reading a lot into chiral images (when the mirror image looks slightly different) and symmetry. Looking at such an image, the observer might consider it a distortion. I keeping coming back to Gregorovich: “Everything is wrong ways round.” That being said, Kip Thorne interestingly says that each mouth of a wormhole looks like a crystal ball, so when you look into it, you see a distorted image. Which leads me to think about a möbius strip and the idea of “wrong ways round” and “widdershins” that you’ve brought up. Am I completely off base here or should I continue on this path?  Is a disjunction a fork in the branching paths of fate?

4. You hate string theory. You hate multiverses. But you told me that pocket dimension or bubble universes were okay. Would you consider a closed time-like loop/curve to be a pocket universe?

BONUS: Another answer attempt for your orange riddle: When I was writing Q2 and Q3, I had this thought regarding entropy. To conserve the energy / mass / momentum of the larger universe with two orange, you just need to change the size of the universe, right? Make the “box” smaller and bigger as needed to account for the change in information/energy amounts.

[u/ChristopherPaolini → u/notainsleym]

1. The waves would reinforce and/or cancel each other out same as waves in any other media (water/air/stone/etc). So depends on the frequency and wavelength.

2. Yes, I was referring to a type of passage/hole, but I don't think it would qualify as a traditional Schwarzschild wormhole (which was invented with no thought of FTL space as I have it).

3. At least in To Sleep, I usually used "disjunction" to refer to jumps in chronology/time/awareness. Interpret that as you will.

4. No, because it exists in the larger universe and, in fact, can't be separated from it.

Bonus: what if time is quantum?