Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.

Closed timelike curve mining?

19 posts / 0 new
Last post
Fri, 2013-09-20 11:46
#1
Decimator Decimator's picture
Closed timelike curve mining?
Since we already have wormholes in the setting, and FTL travel enables time travel, I've been working on a concept that the ETI might be using to prevent its own demise. The ETI has constructed a macroscale wormhole that allows it to send machines back in time to gather resources. These machines gather some resources, then return home. Once home, they discard some amount of resources, then head back through the wormhole and eat themselves. In this way, the total amount of material available to the ETI increases, without actually depleting resources. This also neatly explains why the ETI hasn't Von Neumanned everything.
Top
Sat, 2013-09-21 00:09
thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture
How is it you conclude that
How is it you conclude that FTL automatically permits time travel? While moving at close to the speed of light creates differences in the flow of time going faster than light wont reverse the flow of time. Instantaneous FTL travel (such as is offered by the Pandora gates) creates some apparent time travel but only on a relative reference frame. In terms of achieving something it is about as useful as spinning around to achieve FTL (if you’re not familiar with that one go and look at the moon. Now spin on the spot moderately slowly, 10 RPM is plenty. Remember that your rotating frame of reference is just as valid as any other frame of reference and measure the speed of the moon. It is moving faster than light, it’s not very useful) That said the ETI could have access to time travel and the time travel recursive mining is attractive but it may not work. Consider this scenario
Spoiler: Highlight to view
On Wednesday I set up my time travel apparatuses and high speed mining robot and locate a valuable asteroid. On Thursday I send the robot to Tuesday it mines the asteroid and returns laden with valuables. On Friday I send the robot to Monday it mines the asteroid and returns laden with valuables. Unfortunately on Tuesday the robot found a mined out husk of an asteroid and returned to Thursday empty.
The paradox only gets worse if I need the resources from the Thursday to Tuesday trip to make the Friday Monday trip
Spoiler: Highlight to view
On Wednesday I set up my uranium powered time travel apparatuses and high speed mining robot and locate a uranium rich asteroid. On Thursday I use all of my uranium send the robot to Tuesday it mines the asteroid and returns laden with uranium. On Friday I use the uranium that arrived on Thursday the robot to Monday it mines the asteroid and returns laden with uranium. Unfortunately on Tuesday the robot found a mined out husk of an asteroid and returned to Thursday empty. Having no uranium on Friday I could not send the robot to Monday. Because I did not send a robot to Monday the asteroid was intact on Tuesday and the robot returned to Thursday laden with uranium I use that uranium on Friday to send the robot to Monday, it returns to Friday laden with uranium. Unfortunately on Tuesday the robot found a mined out husk of an asteroid and returned to Thursday empty. Having no uranium on Friday I could not send the robot to Monday. Because I did not send a robot to Monday the asteroid was intact on Tuesday and the robot returned to Thursday laden with uranium I use that uranium on Friday to send the robot to Monday, it returns to Friday laden with uranium.
It is for reasons like this that I do not include time travel in and serious game
Top
Sat, 2013-09-21 10:52
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
thezombiekat wrote:How is it
thezombiekat wrote:
How is it you conclude that FTL automatically permits time travel?
There are many threads in the archives and tutorials on the wider net about this. You can have two of causality, relativity or FTL, but not all three. The problem is that if you can get out of your lightcone, then you can use relativistic effects to arrange another QE communication/FTL jump/wormhole trip back in that will arrive earlier.
Quote:
It is for reasons like this that I do not include time travel in and serious game
It is a headache to do right, and also undermines the seriousness of events if they can be undone. When I saw the thread title, I rather thought the ETI were mining CTCs, which might be a limited resource that only formed during the Big Bang when spacetime chaos inflated. CTCs are amazingly useful just because of their computational capabilities: time travel also implies some *very* powerful forms of computation.
—
Extropian
Top
Sat, 2013-09-21 14:33
Decimator Decimator's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:There are
Arenamontanus wrote:
There are many threads in the archives and tutorials on the wider net about this. You can have two of causality, relativity or FTL, but not all three.
Exactly this. We have experimentally verified relativity, and the pandora gates are FTL devices. Therefore, we discard causality. I should note that I have discarded FTL quantum entanglement communication; we know how that works, and it doesn't work the way the setting uses it. So, here is the idea I'm developing: Standard pandora gates are subatomic-scale wormholes wrapped in a femtoscale matter assemble-disassembler. The gates transfer energy from place to place, including data. Since gates can connect to multiple other gates, they must have a hub somewhere, likely a place with access to significant energy like a spinning black hole(a galactic core would be perfect). When a physical object passes through a gate, the gate disassembles it, passes the data to the hub, one of the ETI's subroutine performs causality protection, data assimilation, and threat assessment, and forwards it on to the destination. The galactic wormhole the ETI uses for sending physical objects would be different. It needs a large wormhole to prevent tidal forces from spagettifying objects apart when they pass through. So it uses the big wormhole as a power source, physical timetravel device, and a method to prevent its own eventual demise, as it can exist perpetually at the moment of the wormhole's creation.
Top
Sun, 2013-09-22 03:08
Baalbamoth Baalbamoth's picture
ARRGG!
Whyyy you hurt brain I?
—
"what do I want? The usual — hundreds of grandchildren, complete dominion over the known worlds, and the pleasure of hearing that all my enemies have died in highly improbable accidents that cannot be connected to me."
Top
Mon, 2013-09-23 14:21
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Decimator wrote:So, here is
Decimator wrote:
So, here is the idea I'm developing: Standard pandora gates are subatomic-scale wormholes wrapped in a femtoscale matter assemble-disassembler. The gates transfer energy from place to place, including data. Since gates can connect to multiple other gates, they must have a hub somewhere, likely a place with access to significant energy like a spinning black hole(a galactic core would be perfect). When a physical object passes through a gate, the gate disassembles it, passes the data to the hub, one of the ETI's subroutine performs causality protection, data assimilation, and threat assessment, and forwards it on to the destination. The galactic wormhole the ETI uses for sending physical objects would be different. It needs a large wormhole to prevent tidal forces from spagettifying objects apart when they pass through. So it uses the big wormhole as a power source, physical timetravel device, and a method to prevent its own eventual demise, as it can exist perpetually at the moment of the wormhole's creation.
I like! This makes perfect sense! I especially like that it does causality protection deliberately: if you had the right access you could do time travel, but only the ETI sysops are allowed. Of course, to the ETI the wormhole assembler/transport network is just a peripheral to the awesome computing system the core CTC-network actually represents. In a way the ETI are encoded in the wormhole infrastructure. One thing the ETI might care about is long-term survival. In about a trillion years the galactic superclusters will become isolated from each other due to the accelerating expansion of the universe. So before that, it is important to send probes carrying wormholes far and wide to be able to interact with them/use them for energy. So part of the wormhole network leads to tiny ultrarelativistic probes in intergalactic space. (To stop brain from hurting, hit with textbooks. Repeat until numb. No guarantee of understanding, but numbness works almost as well.)
—
Extropian
Top
Mon, 2013-12-23 12:23
Crazy Tom Crazy Tom's picture
Conservation of Matter
Hmmm... neat idea on the assembly/disassembly. The only issue is that transhuman scientists would be able to tell is that was the case. If you were taken apart, then there would be molecular/atomic remains at the departure gate and matter would be harvested at the arrival gate (from the atmosphere or whatnot) which would be noticeable. Another idea might be that the system actually encloses each traveller in an Alcubierre style warp bubble (the bigger-on-the-inside kind) and moves them through a nanogauge wormhole that way.
Top
Sun, 2013-12-29 07:57
Rallan Rallan's picture
Wait I'm not seeing how that
Wait I'm not seeing how that would work. If they're going back in time to get materials they're currently short of, then aren't they [i]causing[/i] the shortage? ETI FOREMAN: Boys, we mined the last of this planet's Raritanium last week! I want you to go back to two weeks ago and pick up some fresh Raritanium. ETI BOYS (in unison): You got it boss! [i]BOYS vanish into gate and return a few seconds later with bucket of Raritanium[/i] FOREMAN: Good work boys. We've been in a bit of a tight spot ever since we mined the last of this planet's Raritanium two weeks ago. [i]BOYS give confused look to each other. Musical sting plays.[/i]
Top
Sun, 2013-12-29 13:48
Decimator Decimator's picture
Rallan wrote:Wait I'm not
Rallan wrote:
Wait I'm not seeing how that would work. If they're going back in time to get materials they're currently short of, then aren't they [i]causing[/i] the shortage? ETI FOREMAN: Boys, we mined the last of this planet's Raritanium last week! I want you to go back to two weeks ago and pick up some fresh Raritanium. ETI BOYS (in unison): You got it boss! [i]BOYS vanish into gate and return a few seconds later with bucket of Raritanium[/i] FOREMAN: Good work boys. We've been in a bit of a tight spot ever since we mined the last of this planet's Raritanium two weeks ago. [i]BOYS give confused look to each other. Musical sting plays.[/i]
Your comment actually made me distill the concept to its bare essence. You build a bot with all the resources you want. You send it back in time and it hangs around until the present. Then you send it back in time again, but there's already a bot there! So they wait until the present, and now you have two bots. Send both of those, and you have 4. Then 8, 16, 32, and so on. Once you have a bunch going through the cycle, you start keeping some bots back and dismantle them for resources.
Top
Fri, 2014-02-21 10:27
Dareon Dareon's picture
Why brain why?
Except you've always had this bot sitting around insisting it's waiting to be sent back in time, why would you need to build a new one? And hey, that hopper full of grade-A Duratanium would sure be handy for finishing off my patio.
Top
Tue, 2014-03-11 20:40
Kassil Kassil's picture
'Mine it backwards in time'
'Mine it backwards in time' works just fine, if you append it with the split-timeline model of time travel. You send the robot to mine the asteroid on Tuesday from Thursday, then send it back to Monday from Friday - and it never turns up on the asteroid on Tuesday, because you've now split off from the original timeline. Of course, this does some nasty things to matter/energy conservation from the standpoint of a single universe, but across a multiversal cosmology it still evens out. And then the TITAN or ETI comes along and harvests you and the huge resource stockpile it detected. :D
—
"Don't eat the jelly, that's a protoplasm someone sleeved into."
Top
Wed, 2014-03-12 04:35
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Decimator wrote:Since gates
Decimator wrote:
Since gates can connect to multiple other gates, they must have a hub somewhere
This doesn't follow. It's entirely possible that the gates use a peer-to-peer networking protocol, rather than a server-based architecture.
—

+1 r-Rep , +1 @-rep

Top
Wed, 2014-03-12 09:35
Decimator Decimator's picture
nick012000 wrote:Decimator
nick012000 wrote:
Decimator wrote:
Since gates can connect to multiple other gates, they must have a hub somewhere
This doesn't follow. It's entirely possible that the gates use a peer-to-peer networking protocol, rather than a server-based architecture.
It follows if we assume they're wormholes. As far as I'm aware, wormholes are the only plausible method of point to point FTL in modern theory(caveat: I am not a physicist). There's also the alcubierre drive, but that isn't a point to point method. I'm attempting to extrapolate from the behavior of the gates themselves.
Top
Wed, 2014-03-12 10:20
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Decimator wrote:nick012000
Decimator wrote:
nick012000 wrote:
Decimator wrote:
Since gates can connect to multiple other gates, they must have a hub somewhere
This doesn't follow. It's entirely possible that the gates use a peer-to-peer networking protocol, rather than a server-based architecture.
It follows if we assume they're wormholes. As far as I'm aware, wormholes are the only plausible method of point to point FTL in modern theory(caveat: I am not a physicist). There's also the alcubierre drive, but that isn't a point to point method. I'm attempting to extrapolate from the behavior of the gates themselves.
What? That makes no sense. Have you ever studied networking before? The [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model]OSI model[/url] is basic stuff, man. The method a network exchanges addressing information is independent of the medium that they use to communicate; it doesn't matter whether you're using electrical cables or fibre-optic cables or wormholes, the networking protocols are all basically analogous above the first two OSI layers, and that's where peer-to-peer vs server-based networking resides.
—

+1 r-Rep , +1 @-rep

Top
Wed, 2014-03-12 10:58
Decimator Decimator's picture
I think you have
I think you have misunderstood me somewhere. I'm saying the physical wormholes need a hub, since wormholes only connect to one other wormhole. If you're just trying to say there could be multiple hubs connected in a ring or mesh configuration, you are correct.
Top
Wed, 2014-03-12 11:04
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Decimator wrote:I think you
Decimator wrote:
I think you have misunderstood me somewhere. I'm saying the physical wormholes need a hub, since wormholes only connect to one other wormhole. If you're just trying to say there could be multiple hubs connected in a ring or mesh configuration, you are correct.
No, judging by how they act in the books, they create entirely new wormholes every time they're turned on. They're basically like creepier versions of the Stargates from Stargate.
—

+1 r-Rep , +1 @-rep

Top
Wed, 2014-03-12 13:08
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
How a system looks might be
How a system looks might be very different from how it actually works. It could be that all gate transport just sends things passing through via Omega Point Grand Central Station in the utterly remote future, and then routes it back to the right gate and time. Or there could be a finite set of gate openings we are unwisely using up; the ETI carefully mined topological defects from intergalactic space to set up the network, and are going to be very cross when they find out we waste them on sending monkeys to the stars. The wormholes studied in physics are two-ended, but I think there is nothing in relativity that forbids multi-ended wormholes (in fact, a closed Friedman universe with a few black holes is at least topologically like that). It is just that (1) the math is hard, and (2) it wouldn't surprise me if there was some nasty curvature effects that make them hard to traverse.
—
Extropian
Top
Wed, 2014-03-12 16:09
Dareon Dareon's picture
Some sort of overarching
Some sort of overarching wormhole control protocol besides the gate controls themselves would make a handy explanation for the "transit time" experienced by asyncs occasionally. If we operate from the theory that the TITANs built the gates, we can further posit that the asynchronous brainwaves produced by Watts-McLeod are similar in nature to the TITANs' own communications protocols, but not sufficiently similar to match the handshake protocols used. However, the failed handshake attempts are picked up by the async's mind and turned into whatever sensory stimuli are reported.
Top
Wed, 2014-03-12 18:04
Kassil Kassil's picture
Dareon wrote:Some sort of
Dareon wrote:
Some sort of overarching wormhole control protocol besides the gate controls themselves would make a handy explanation for the "transit time" experienced by asyncs occasionally. If we operate from the theory that the TITANs built the gates, we can further posit that the asynchronous brainwaves produced by Watts-McLeod are similar in nature to the TITANs' own communications protocols, but not sufficiently similar to match the handshake protocols used. However, the failed handshake attempts are picked up by the async's mind and turned into whatever sensory stimuli are reported.
I like this idea rather a lot; given that the strain of the virus that produces asyncs might still be produced by the Bracewell Probe initially, you could still use this explanation even if the gates are of ETI origin. I kind of hope one of my players decide to make an async when we get to running an EP game, because I will gleefully manufacture a reason for them to go through the gates and have these anomalous side effects.
—
"Don't eat the jelly, that's a protoplasm someone sleeved into."
Top