Qubits and Pandora Gates

Thu, 2010-09-09 01:03

#2

root

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

root@Qubits and Pandora Gates [hr] What? Please explain the time dilation you are referring to.

—

[ @-rep +1 | c-rep +1 | g-rep +1 | r-rep +1 ]

Thu, 2010-09-09 06:07

#3

icekatze

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

hi hi The simplest explanation I can give you is that, due to relativity and the lack of a privileged frame of reference in the universe, time is relative to the observer. For more information, you can read the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation]wikipedia article about the Lorentz Transformation.[/url] or if you like helpful graphs and layman's terms [url=http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html]Richard Baker has some nice diagrams.[/url]

—

[url=http://knhauber.phpwebhosting.com/]Nothing Important[/url]

Thu, 2010-09-09 06:23

#4

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

"Instantaneous" travel and communication implies time communication (I have pointed this out in several threads, including how to use it to rule the stock market). Since space and time are the same thing, there is no reason to think Pandora gates just move you in space. They could just as well give you time travel. Now, icekatze's calculation doesn't sound right to me. But I don't see any reason why the gates couldn't allow even bigger breaches of causality. Normal wormholes do. One way of solving this is to have the gates only open portals to places in a causally consistent way. This means that if you go to Barnard's star through a gate, you will end up 6 years in the future, and if you go to Andromeda you end up 2,500,000 years into the future. Going back returns you to your time. But now imagine meeting some Andromedan aliens from a system 10 lightyears away from your destination system. You become friends, and you go back with them to their homeworld, ending up 2,499,990 years in the future - suddenly you are outside your original future lightcone and causality-violating hijinx can occur. To actually create a really consistent gate network one needs to define a hyperbolic empire time as in this essay: http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Tech/Space-Time/wormholes.html

—

Thu, 2010-09-09 12:56

#5

root

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

root@Qubits and Pandora Gates [hr] I don't understand it yet, but I'm reading up on it. I'll be back soon with my freshly-informed understanding to make incorrect proclamations and sophomoric observations.

—

[ @-rep +1 | c-rep +1 | g-rep +1 | r-rep +1 ]

Thu, 2010-09-09 16:35

#6

Rhyx

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

In my opinion the last thing EP really need is time travel. I understand that relativity is at the heart of this specific type of time traveling (in a way similar to the events in Forever War except that the whole galaxy is moving away). Me personally, I have a very funny and cynical view of time travel. I think (forgive my language) that the universe doesn't really give a shit. You go back in time and kill your Grandpa and come back to the present your dad never existed and by extension you never existed but you ARE there because you forcibly inserted yourself in the future, so you become a kind of space/time orphan not recorded anywhere and the universe could care less about the paperwork that entails. So yeah in weird way time travel is every bit as relative distance. But I also think that just for the dramatic effect of EP it's not something that needs exploring. The Fall is the Fall and that's that, EP is about the future and how humanity will evolve, not about a bunch of intrepid heroes that pass through a gateway and end up in Roswell 1947 (where ALL the time travelers from space seem to end up) trying to stop the Fall form happening... Dramatically speaking time travel has always been a redemption/forgiveness fanatsy that gives humanity the opportunity to "do over". But in my personal philosophy, which will be reflected in my game of course, "gonna do" beats the crap out of "should have, could have". The past is good for learning from, not meddling with. Coming back to Qbits. I guess it all depends if you see some kind of relativistic lag. I thought that the reason why Qbits work in the first place is because they are in a sense the same piece of matter that exists in two place at once. Is that prone to realtivistic lag? I have no idea I'm no physicist. So I'm gonna ask straight out: do you want Q-lag? Will it enrich your story? Does it have a specific place in what you want to do? Will it be a useful and significant plot point? If so, by all means go right on ahead, if it doesn't why worry? Edited to preserve good relations.

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/A_Rep.jpg[/img] 2 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/R_Rep.jpg[/img] 7 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/C_Rep.jpg[/img] 2
[img]http://i.imgur.com/qtBZ9.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/AT25J.jpg[/img]

Thu, 2010-09-09 14:02

#7

icekatze

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

hi hi My calculations might very well be off, but I'll explain how I got there and you can see if I made a stupid mistake. I originally borrowed the numbers for the time dilation factor off of a chart, but I made a few mistakes so I went back and did the equation from scratch to make sure I had the right values...and I still made a mistake, so I went over it again. (I have a bad habit of inputing the wrong values and not noticing) The equations I used are: γ = 1 / sqrt (1 - (v2 / c2)) t = d - (γ • distance) Where: γ = the time dilation factor v = velocity relative to home c = speed of light in a vacuum d = distance between the two objects t = time travelled during instant communication The way I figured that the Pandora Gates prevented causality disruptions is this: every time you step through one you are first teleported to a central processing station that exists somewhere far removed in space and time, it calculates your destination and accounts for time dilation before sending you on your way. However, that is just my guesswork, based on an old sci-fi that I saw once. The problem isn't in the gates though. Someone in you destination system could alter their frame of reference with a space ship and then send the message. A courier could change it's velocity by 1,600 km/s before sending the message back. Also, if Pandora Gates sent you into the future, your counterpart wouldn't be getting their message any time soon according to their frame of reference. ----- Rhyx: EP has faster than light communication, therefore it has time travel. If you don't like it, you could always say that Qubits get disentangled when they go through a gate, but whatever. You are right, the universe doesn't give a [expletive deleted]. The universe is a non sentient entity, that doesn't change the facts about how it mechanically behaves. Dramatically speaking, time travel has [b]not[/b] always been about redemption, but if you only want to reference overused Hollywood tropes, I'm not going to stop you. Personally, I would rather play in a universe that doesn't devolve into a degenerate mass of self-contradictory fantasy trying to cover itself in technobabble. "They're hacking our qubits sir, quick, invert the polarity!" I think one of the hang-ups that most people get with time dilation is that everyone keeps making references to "the speed of light." as if the photons themselves somehow govern the universe. Perhaps it would help your understanding relativistic effects to conceptualize it fundamentally not as "light traveling at the speed of light," but rather that "light travels at the speed of space and time." It isn't [i]lag[/i], it isn't an illusion, time is actually happening differently. P.S. I find your analogy to be in bad taste.

—

[url=http://knhauber.phpwebhosting.com/]Nothing Important[/url]

Thu, 2010-09-09 14:22

#8

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

icekatze wrote:
The simplest explanation I can give you is that, due to relativity and the lack of a privileged frame of reference in the universe, time is relative to the observer.

Fred Alan Wolfe wrote an excellent layperson's description of time and relativity thereof in the book [u]Parallel Universes[/u].

—

[img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/info_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [url=https://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/blankbadge.png][img]http://drwho.vir...

Thu, 2010-09-09 16:10

#9

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Overall, I think the key issue is how you want to treat causality in the game: 1. Time travel or communication are possible, but self-consistency principles prevent paradoxes. This is closest to what I think modern physics would say, given the existence of gates and QE, but it leads to tough role-playing situations. 2. Time travel or communication are possible, but weird things are allowed to happen (paradoxes, inconsistencies, branching worlds etc). This is easier to role-play, but easily becomes arbitrary and ruins some of the mood. 3. Time travel or communications are impossible. This is inconsistent with the gates and QE, but maybe the players won't notice. Maybe they can be handwaved away (gates have chronology protection, the relativistic speeds needed to really make QE time communications useful are hard to achieve), maybe they are put in the "please don't think about it" category. 4. Time travel or communications are impossible, and there are no gates or QE. This changes the setting a bit, but not fatally. Few things in EP *require* the Pandora gates or QE, they just conveniently expand the setting. Like psi, another problematic aspect I feel one can drop if needed. Which one you select depends a bit on GM style and what you want to do. Personally I like all but alternative 2. But one needs to be consistent about it. [In many of my campaigns I start out by declaring the physics and level of hardness: "We obey conservation of energy in this setting, but FTL is OK, I have added at least one extra force of nature, "quantum" is not an OK excuse but I allow extreme chaos control."]

—

Thu, 2010-09-09 17:28

#10

Rhyx

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Hmm I did a little looking, not too much you know, to keep my reptile humanities brain intact. But so far in an effort to be helpful here's what I dug up: it seems like even the big wigs are grasping at straws with that one saying that it's not truly faster than light for two reasons: The information translation process isn't faster than light because the process isn't faster than light even if traveling through the quantum channel might be at least 10,000 times faster That and, that it's more a question of inferring what the other entangled particle spin is. So you're not really going past the speed of light you are going at the speed of guess, which looks to be the speed that everything in quantum physics seems to be going at since it's all fields anyway and no one is really sure. No wonder Einstein thought it was rubbish because from my angle it looks an awful lot like magic. To me what that says is that they don't really know what's going on and it sound strangely like: "They're hacking our qubits sir, quick, invert the polarity!". Scientists do that too, they just bury it under more formulas. So let's get back to more "usual" physics then. You say that time is not a constant therefore logically speaking that means that even the time frame that the message is sent is different since time is subjective. Meaning that even if it were instantaneous the time of receiving the message and the time of sending the message is in different time frames. So you answered your own question when you said that time itself was not a constant. There's going to be lag even if it happens at the same time and that lag isn't even from the entangled pair. P.S See Icekazte I erase-ted my yucky tasting analogy so we can continue to frolic through the fields in slow motion! Take it and the actual little bit of research I did for the olive branch it is.

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/A_Rep.jpg[/img] 2 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/R_Rep.jpg[/img] 7 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/C_Rep.jpg[/img] 2
[img]http://i.imgur.com/qtBZ9.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/AT25J.jpg[/img]

Thu, 2010-09-09 18:42

#11

babayaga

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Rhyx wrote:
Hmm I did a little looking, not too much you know, to keep my reptile humanities brain intact. But so far in an effort to be helpful here's what I dug up: it seems like even the big wigs are grasping at straws with that one saying that it's not truly faster than light ...

Rhyx, you are correct in regards to that - according to current understanding, entangled qbits do *not* allow faster than light communication of "classical" information in the "real" world (as opposed to that of Eclipse Phase). Essentially, you have some weird "faster than light" interactions, but in no way you can send anything as simple as a yes/no statement faster than light through quantum entanglement. Short of the "quasi magical" science of the TITANs and higher intelligences, this is the largest departure of the EP world from physics as we understand them today.

Thu, 2010-09-09 18:45

#12

babayaga

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

It is interesting to note that time travel in the EP universe requires only "qbit" instantaneous communication, not Pandora gates nor even particularly fast spaceships. You can do it just using items orbiting around the sun. The time dilation factor for v much smaller than c can be simplified into a simpler 1+0.5(v/c)^2. For two objects in Earthlike orbits (orbital speed approx. 30Km/s) with opposite angular velocities, this is very approximately 1+2*10^(-8). If you stretch it over a distance of approximately 1AU (Sun-Earth distance, approx. 500 lightseconds), this means that you can travel approximately 10 microseconds back in time. (Interestingly, this quantity does not depend on the orbit's radius - at least assuming it's more or less circular: increasing the radius will decrease the square of the orbital speed by the same factor!) 10 microseconds may seem very little, but remember that in 1 microsecond light can travel 300 meters and one can perform quite a serious amount of computation even with today's equipment. And if a single hop (and two pairs of qbits) can take a classical bit a few microseconds back in time, you can repeat the process and send a single classical bit an hour back in time with perhaps 1Gigaqbits, and over a month back in time with 1Teraqbits.

Fri, 2010-09-10 00:37

#13

icekatze

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

hi hi In reality entangled quantum bits don't allow information to be transmitted faster than light, but this is science fiction so I'm willing to let that one slide. Even if the "why things work," part gets glossed over, it would be nice if the "how things work," part remained consistent. For a post-singularity, post-human setting, I think causality is a theme that could use some casual exploration, by which I mean how it is used in everyday life as opposed to a narrative cheat for doomsday scenarios. Humanity may need to step outside of it's 3d linear perspective, but it isn't unthinkable given what the TITANs are capable of. For all we know, the TITANs sent themselves messages from the distant future. Rhyx, I didn't mean to suggest censorship, my meaning was that I couldn't bring myself to work with your analogy as part of an argument given it's connotations. I think more is a better solution than less when confronted with bad discourse. I think if I was running a game where the players sent a message back into the past, I might immediately go back to the moment they receive the message and then keep iterating the loop until they reach an equilibrium where sending the message doesn't alter any past events. As long as things are happening differently, it can still be engaging game-play. Could set you up for a sort of groundhog day scenario. However, I'm not sure if other people would appreciate that approach, or if someone else has a better one. One workaround for horrendous abuses of time travel is to say that a message cannot travel back to a time before they qubits were first entangled, and any attempt to step into a reference frame where one side of the communicator hasn't been entangled yet will dis-entangle them. However, this will likely happen a lot in Pandora Gate travel, especially as you get farther away from the solar system.

—

[url=http://knhauber.phpwebhosting.com/]Nothing Important[/url]

Fri, 2010-09-10 03:40

#14

Rhyx

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Quote:
Rhyx, I didn't mean to suggest censorship, my meaning was that I couldn't bring myself to work with your analogy as part of an argument given it's connotations. I think more is a better solution than less when confronted with bad discourse.

Yeah but I re-read and I didn't like it either (it's what happens when you write something first thing when you wake up). I usually will not censor myself unless I say something I regret, it's actually one of the good things about the internet, being able to go back and undo something you've said. However since you're graciously giving me an opportunity to reorganize my thoughts into something more coherent, I'll gladly take it. What I mean to say earlier was an actual criticism of how something as complex as time traveling can be totally misused and turned into a morality tale as if the universe itself had a will to "set things right". When used time traveling becomes a heavy handed deus ex machina. Since I've rarely (if ever) seen time travelling done right I usually frown upon it's use, legitimate or not. Which is why I mentioned that it might not have it's place in EP. For a storyteller there are much better devices built into the game to explore the past, using a virtual AR environment and using XP to relive a past experience are two examples of how the story can dwell into the past without using actual time travel. Also my question was how exactly having "qubit lag" makes a story stronger? I'll give you a somewhat unrelated example: A friend of mine when he gamemasters loves the idea of languages and played a lot with the fact that many of our character did not have a common language so others would have to act as interpreters, in the beginning it was a lot of funny situations but as time went on it became a real problem in game because planning took two to three times as long because we were busy playing telephone. So he put something that was a legitimate real life problem in the game but it did not enrich the experience. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of hard physics might not detract from the over all gaming experience. Not to mean that it should be space opera a la Star Wars or Traveler. I actually enjoy the fact that most ships will not have any gravity except for maybe a habitat ring and many pirate ships might not even bother with pressuring their hulls because the crew will be 100% informorph jammers and synths. These are fun challenges! But there also exists such a thing as too much detail.

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/A_Rep.jpg[/img] 2 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/R_Rep.jpg[/img] 7 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/C_Rep.jpg[/img] 2
[img]http://i.imgur.com/qtBZ9.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/AT25J.jpg[/img]

Fri, 2010-09-10 03:55

#15

root

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

root@Qubits and Pandora Gates [hr] Rhyx, I agree with you that hard physics can seriously detract from the game experience. But that's only true for most groups. The thing that is fantastic about how Eclipse Phase is published is that we can come up with different rules sets to use, tailored for individual games. Discussion and argumentation are good (and good fun), but we should always remember that we aren't working with an exclusive-or logic.

—

[ @-rep +1 | c-rep +1 | g-rep +1 | r-rep +1 ]

Sun, 2010-09-12 23:14

#16

Rabbitz

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

@Arenamontanus: I first came about the discussion about FTL = Time travel when running a mostly improvised* game at a con this summer and after discussing about it for a while I ended up going with "please don't think about it" (but I called it "suspension of disbelief"... You scientists got your fancy names for things, us writers have ours...). The way I see it, breaking a bit the laws of physics gives us a far more interesting scenario, as FTL communication can be used as a very useful tool in this setting (warnings of x-risks, which would move STL, coming your way spring to mind**). Considering it from a direct narrative perspective, I don't really like your scenarios 1 and 2 for EP. The thing about time travel is that it changes the rules of the game in so many ways that if you do allow time travel in your setting, the stories would naturally evolve into time-travelling stories. This is of course an exaggeration, and 1 deals with it better than two, but as you pointed out, it's easy to lose control in both (1 is too tough and restrictive, 2 too random, doctorwhoish and strange). Scenario 4 is too restricted. Gates add a nice touch to the setting: the feeling of hope for a new home planet versus fear of the unknown. I want to keep that in my games, and I don't mind breaking a few laws of physics to tell a better story, which means I'm going with scenario 3. :) On the other hand, I might end up spouting some technobabble about how constant time and n-dimensional Minkowski spacetime might allow teleportation and avoid Lorentz transformations if any other player asks... ---- *Mostly improvised ment that the time traveling scenario came along not only while I was explaining the setting, but once again when one of my players pointed out that the mercs they met had been unconscious for over two days after an attack, due to a miscalculation on my part. On my behalf I'll point out that all in all, the adventure had like 10 minutes of prep work on it. **Adventure seed: Players are talking with an exoplanet via Pandora gate when all comms became lost and the link breaks, leaving the players with the sense that something awful has happened thousands of light years away, and no way of knowing what it is.

—

Destroyed and Reborn by Yours Truly Rabbitz [img]http://i.imgur.com/pUbYKh.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/Y3Ivbh.jpg[/img]

Mon, 2010-09-13 01:19

#17

icekatze

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

hi hi You don't need to justify handwaving relativity away, I get that it isn't intuitive for everyone. I was hoping more that people would have some examples of how it [i]did[/i] work. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers. For the most part, it only comes into play with Pandora Gates, but do the players always have access to those things? Maybe, maybe not. The people who do have access to them on a regular basis, however, might end up using future knowledge against the players. A decent example of how that sort of scenario played out was in Minority Report. It might be an interesting challenge for the players to come up with a plan that they know will work even if their enemy knows it is coming. Premonitions like that are used in a wide variety of literary scenarios from prophecies in fantasy to foreshadowing dream sequences in horror flicks, a decent example was the Oracle in The Matrix. (a movie that is widely recognized for being good.) The game already allows forking, but there could be some interesting events that happen involving people that have been split in time. Like say someone sends a message back from an exoplanet, but then their original character doesn't go through the gate in the first place. But since that is outside the light cone of person on the exoplanet, they are perhaps unaffected. When that gate is finally opened, they come back to a strangely different copy of themselves.

—

[url=http://knhauber.phpwebhosting.com/]Nothing Important[/url]

Mon, 2010-09-13 09:20

#18

babayaga

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Sorry, double post ... please ignore.

Mon, 2010-09-13 09:19

#19

babayaga

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Rabbitz wrote:
The way I see it, breaking a bit the laws of physics gives us a far more interesting scenario.

I think the problem is not so much about breaking the laws of physics, but of breaking them in a consistent way. Suppose Eclipse Phase had written something along the lines "yeah, transhumanity found a way in which space-time can be bent so as to temporarily shorten the distance between two points, so the speed of light limit is no longer a practical limitation". I would not have been enthusiastic (I really like "realistic" science fiction and one of the greatest strengths of EP is how it extrapolates from current science without great leaps of faith) but would not have minded it so much. Neither am I upset that the artifacts of some vastly superior intelligence can do it, while transhumanity still cannot. What I have trouble with is how the setting in some ways operates as if some limitations were not in place, and in other ways it operates as if they were in place. It's a little bit like if one had a fantasy setting where mind-reading is automatic (i.e. everyone knows what everyone else knows) and yet it's a hotbed of conspiracy and treachery. Individually, both the "groupmind" feature and the "treachery" feature are ultracool. Together, not so much. The same goes with FTL communication. If relativity holds, even if you do not bring Pandora gates into the picture, one can easily build *with*existing*technology* a "precognition device" that allows one to peer into the future. If relativity does not hold (and, say, the more intuitive Newtonian physics hold instead), well, a ton of limitations that *are* explicitly in place in the EP universe have no reason to be there.

icekatze wrote:
You don't need to justify handwaving relativity away, I get that it isn't intuitive for everyone. I was hoping more that people would have some examples of how it [i]did[/i] work. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers. For the most part, it only comes into play with Pandora Gates, but do the players always have access to those things?

Actually, even in the Solar system instantaneous communication can cause issues and allow one to build time-travel devices; even it seems possible "fix" QE communication so that it absolutely prevents time travel while at the same time allowing "almost" istantaneous communication (there's an open thread on this one). With Pandora gates, I was wondering - if: 1) a Pandora gate is effectively the entrance to a series of wormholes that make entrance and exit effectively very close to each other, and 2) Pandora gates only open on worlds whose inertial frame is relative close (say, within 100Km/s) to ours ... ... then, would "almost" istantaneous communication create any more difficulties than between two spaceships within the Solar system whose relative velocity is less than 100 Km/s? It's true that even a small inertial shift over a very long distance can allow serious time travel, but isn't the distance between the two endpoints of a Pandora gate effectively very small? After all, distance is the length of the shortest route, and the shortest route, the one through the wormhole, is very short.

Mon, 2010-09-13 11:41

#20

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

I think EP has effectively gone the route of saying "theory of relativity is wrong. There is an objective, universal clock all things abide by." I guess when they did those experiments with jets flying around the planet they just forgot to adjust for daylight savings. I have tried running a game without things like qbits. It does get a very different flavor when it takes an hour to ask about the weather on Mars and all day to exchange a quick hello with Neptune. However, I think as I play it more, it'll get more comfortable. Qbits in that case serve only to verify that data has not been intercepted in the middle (working against man in the middle attacks). Pandora gates haven't entered into it because the distances are so far that no one has managed to send a message to Sol the old-fashioned way.

Mon, 2010-09-13 13:05

#21

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Relativism makes my head hurt... To be honest, when I GM Eclipse Phase I tend to side on the softer side of SF when it comes to all things TITAN/*The You Know Whats*. It is easier that way. As such, for some reason that Transhumanity does not quite understand, Q-Bit transmissions do not allow for time travel shenanigans (But some TITAN tech that they find on an Exoplanet might!).

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
I have tried running a game without things like qbits. It does get a very different flavor when it takes an hour to ask about the weather on Mars and all day to exchange a quick hello with Neptune. However, I think as I play it more, it'll get more comfortable. Qbits in that case serve only to verify that data has not been intercepted in the middle (working against man in the middle attacks). Pandora gates haven't entered into it because the distances are so far that no one has managed to send a message to Sol the old-fashioned way.

Really? I have never really had trouble with my players using Q-Bits, what with them being stupidly expensive and difficult to use. The only people I can see using Q-Bits for such trivialities would be the Hypercorp Elite and maybe the higher up You Know Whats in FIREWALL.

—

-

Mon, 2010-09-13 13:39

#22

Rhyx

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Hmm would I be totally off my rocker to think that it would be possible to determine binary from entangled pair spin direction. Let's say they decide, arbitrarily, left spin is 0 and right spin is 1. wouldn't it be much easier to communicate? However that means that information would use up an entangled pair for every 1 or 0 sent. But that would have QE comms basically use easiest and least information intensive form of communication possible to save on qubits so you would end up texting? I think that in a world where you are used to everybody communicating in simulspace, video conferencing or making a beta fork and sending it off to have a chat, something as bare bones as texting would have this hollow haunting feeling to it. No bells and whistles, just words without emotional inflection to back it up.

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/A_Rep.jpg[/img] 2 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/R_Rep.jpg[/img] 7 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/C_Rep.jpg[/img] 2
[img]http://i.imgur.com/qtBZ9.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/AT25J.jpg[/img]

Wed, 2010-09-15 09:40

#23

Railgun

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Can someone tell me what "instantenous" means, since simultaneity is frame-dependent?

—

"What do monsters have nightmares about?
-Me!"
-Mme. De Pompadour and The Doctor, the Girl in the Fireplace, Dr. Who.

Wed, 2010-09-15 20:20

#24

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

I just had a new idea for how to handle the gates. Gamemaster section spoiler warning. The gates are not gates to other locations, but actually scanners/cornucopia machines linked to simspaces. All those exoplanets are actually simulated at such a high resolution that transhuman scientific instruments cannot tell the difference yet. The gates link to the ETI counterpart of the Mesh, an unfathomably powerful system running on the quantum vacuum across the universe. The ETI probably retired there after becoming sufficiently advanced using their Planck-scale control over matter and energy. The gates are simple I/O devices that automatically scan objects and places their information in a simspace (note that the Plancktech can even handle quantum entanglement) or allow the printing of objects from the ETI-mesh. Transhumans have so far only managed to find recordings of exoplanets and have not found the settings for processing speed, access to simspaces not based on our universe or other functions. Once they do all hell is going to break loose. The TITANs discovered the ETI network and entered it, likely using primitive devices like the gates. They then caused the appearance of the Pandora gates to act as more sophisticated I/O - you can "print" a cubic meter of antineutronium or a Plancktech warship if you have the blueprint. But soon the TITANs were consumed by the exsurgent virus or simply lost interest in the physical world: the ETI network is so much larger. They are still in there, unfathomably evolved. Note that this fixes the most glaring time travel problems. The gate network likely obeys causality, only allowing slower than light travel between gates in the solar system (it might feel instantaneous, but going from Mars to Caldwell takes more than 10 minutes from the outside). It also keeps exoplanets while making the whole colonization project much scarier: they are really inside a transcendent computer run by godlike sysops that can do *anything*. If they want to turn half of Echo IV into fractals and make the human explorers five-dimensional they can do it. Of course, right now everything looks fine. There are a few anomalies like the time differences of different teams arriving on Luca from the Vulcanoid and Fissure gates, and researchers are curious about gate control settings but usually prevented from tampering by the gatekeepers. But sooner or later someone discovers an "exoplanet" where time does run at a different rate - thanks to QE comms this will be very visible. Soon other anomalies will be noticed (maybe those physics measurements on Nótt were not just due to faulty equipment - the physical constants are different there) and researchers will begin to realize what is going on. Maybe a glitch causes the same gatecrasher team to emerge twice from the same gate. Then the challenge will be how to handle the much weirder and more frightening universe: if any fraction figures out how to use some of the features of the ETI network such as speedups, blueprints for alien supertech, multidimensional simspaces, counterparts to forking or search systems etc. they could get a tremendous advantage. The gates do not just lead to alien worlds, but for all practical purposes alien universes. Some which are likely inhabited by very dangerous things. Note that the Factors concerns make sense here. The Factors think reality is much better than virtuality and doesn't like to see civilizations vanish into the ETI network (at least not before they have profited). They also don't think anybody should interact with the ETI network since occasionally it triggers responses - civilization killing responses.

—

Mon, 2010-09-27 15:46

#25

raverbane

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

I am not nearly as learned as many of the folks posting here. But, I tend to use the KIS rule when GMing my game. To help maintain the sense of danger and mystery about gatecrashing. Qubits simply become out of sync when they are put through the gate. So, the exporers are really cut off until they get back through the gate. And that is the reason the gate corps cant use RPV's through gates using quantum comms.

Sat, 2010-10-02 13:17

#26

The Sandman The Sandman's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

I'm not in any way a physicist, so I expect I'm missing something here, but I don't see why time travel is implied by qubit use and the Pandora Gates. In both cases, it seems to me that the point in spacetime occupied by one end of the Gate or one of the entangled particles is linked directly to the other end of the Gate or other particle by the Gate mechanism/entanglement. Information transfer issues therefore don't apply; the information moving through our normal 3+1 universe is superseded by the information moving through the (3+n) + (1+n) framework our universe is one part of. From a causality perspective, the existence of the connection means that both objects are now in the same frame of reference. As for how usable information is being transmitted, I would say it's not transferred directly. With qubits, for example, the information isn't being transmitted by the state of the particle, it's being transmitted by exciting the particle at one end and then letting the person at the other end read the energy release when the entangled particle drops back to its previous energy state, without ever measuring any aspect of the particle itself. Bitrate is incredibly slow because you're basically using morse code. Similarly, the "information transfer" of the Gates is the reconstruction of the material traveling through it, with no external observer necessary to carry out the program that reconstructs the shipment.

Sat, 2010-10-02 13:33

#27

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

The Sandman wrote:
I'm not in any way a physicist, so I expect I'm missing something here, but I don't see why time travel is implied by qubit use and the Pandora Gates.

Because FTL information exchange allows you to affect points outside your lightcone, and such points can get transformed arbitrarily far into the future or the past by being viewed in a moving coordinate system: give me two qubit pairs and a pair of fast-moving spaceships and I can set up a chain of communications that tells me information about an event before the event happens. Trust me, FTL implies time travel (or at least time communications). There are plenty of pages trying to explain why. Just google them, or even better, sit down with the equations and check.

—

Sat, 2010-10-02 18:12

#28

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

I think the ETI running a universal version of "The Matrix" has some novelty but, for me, the reasons why present just as big a problem to the game as the potential to send information back in time. Another problem would be; how do the Factors fit in that theory? I tried a couple times to copy the math in this thread but I can barely follow it let alone understand it on an intuitive level that would allow me to proof my results. However, I worry about the effect this would have on my game so I feel compelled to ask what is probably a stupid question; Might causality be maintained by the relativistic effects of motion on the devices and entangled q-bits themselves? If I recall and understand correctly someone mentioned that energetic particles with a very brief life span happen to reach earth from the sun due to the fact that in the particle's subjective time it has only existed briefly but has traversed a distance it takes light 8 minutes to cross. Could a similar or the same effect slow the transfer of information via q-bits? If that were completely wrong; how pissed would you be if I as your GM said that's how it works in my games?

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Sat, 2010-10-02 19:12

#29

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

OneTrikPony wrote:
If I recall and understand correctly someone mentioned that energetic particles with a very brief life span happen to reach earth from the sun due to the fact that in the particle's subjective time it has only existed briefly but has traversed a distance it takes light 8 minutes to cross. Could a similar or the same effect slow the transfer of information via q-bits? If that were completely wrong; how pissed would you be if I as your GM said that's how it works in my games?

Hmm, that is a good problem actually. I give you a qubit, and then rush off in my Very Very Fast Courier at high velocity to Alpha Centauri. By my standards the trip takes a mere month, but measured in your frame my trip takes years. When I arrive I send a success message with my qubit - what will your clock read when it arrives? Looking in your rest frame, the signal should occur after ~5 years. By my clocks on the other hand it should be after just a month. Relativity doesn't answer which is right because it simply states that if you have FTL signals you will get arbitrary results. Had this been a lightspeed signal, then we would both have agreed on when it arrived. I think I would in my game assume ships moving fast would produce slowed down qubit messages.

—

Sat, 2010-10-02 19:28

#30

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Gatecrashers cannot come fast enough, so that we hopefully get a canon explanation and I can stop reading this thread and making my brain itch :p Until then, the ETI magically did wibbly wobbly stuff that makes QBits work however the GM currently running the game wishes them too :D

—

-

Sat, 2010-10-02 22:57

#31

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Arenamontanus wrote:
Hmm, that is a good problem actually. I give you a qubit, and then rush off in my Very Very Fast Courier at high velocity to Alpha Centauri. By my standards the trip takes a mere month, but measured in your frame my trip takes years. When I arrive I send a success message with my qubit - what will your clock read when it arrives? Looking in your rest frame, the signal should occur after ~5 years. By my clocks on the other hand it should be after just a month. Relativity doesn't answer which is right because it simply states that if you have FTL signals you will get arbitrary results. Had this been a lightspeed signal, then we would both have agreed on when it arrived. I think I would in my game assume ships moving fast would produce slowed down qubit messages.

...! so you're saying I might be kinda right? Cool :) So does that mean that the implication is that information *might* not be able to travel back in time but real-time communication from Exo-places might also be impossible because there is no 'real-time' over truely vast distances? Codebreaker is right. These threads, this whole forum really, causes too much skull sweat. Damn you EP writers! I could be happily hacking my way through a DnD or Rifts campaign instead of conspiring against the singularity and all you high-brow transhumanists. ;)

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Sun, 2010-10-03 08:18

#32

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

OneTrikPony wrote:
So does that mean that the implication is that information *might* not be able to travel back in time but real-time communication from Exo-places might also be impossible because there is no 'real-time' over truely vast distances?

This big weird insight from relativity theory is that there is no such thing as simultaneous events. Depending on who watches and how they move they are going to see different ordering. This is normally not a problem since slow-moving stuff like our world have the right delays to force everything to make sense. But introduce FTL, talk of what is going on "now" on an exoplanet or similar things and stuff gets weird. There is indeed no "realtime" across interstellar distances - it is not well defined what is going on "now" at Alpha Centauri. Which is a headache in roleplaying FTL telephones.

—

Sun, 2010-10-03 10:57

#33

babayaga

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Arenamontanus wrote:
The Sandman wrote:
I'm not in any way a physicist, so I expect I'm missing something here, but I don't see why time travel is implied by qubit use and the Pandora Gates.
Because FTL information exchange allows you to affect points outside your lightcone, and such points can get transformed arbitrarily far into the future or the past by being viewed in a moving coordinate system: give me two qubit pairs and a pair of fast-moving spaceships and I can set up a chain of communications that tells me information about an event before the event happens.

I still have trouble understanding why would Pandora Gates imply FTL travel. I thought they instead simply pinpoint where space is "folded" so that two points that appear at a large distance are in fact at a short distance. Consider the following example. Suppose I have a "flatworld" formed by 2 spatial and 1 temporal dimension, where relativity works as in our world etc.etc., embedded in a "superworld" with 3 space dimensions (and the usual 1 time dimension). The "flatworld" world is flat, but it's folded like an origami, and some points that would be far away on the "unfolded" 2d sheet touch are actually in contact, and one can move through them. The actual distance between two points is not the one on the "unfolded" 2d sheet, it's the one on the folded sheet; and if you avoid travelling through contact points you are simply taking a more circuitous route. So you can't claim that this allows FTL travel more you could claim it by bending a 1 Km long optical fiber and connecting the endpoints through a 1 ns optical switch. Note that I totally agree that the *creation* of a connection might involve time travel. But once the connection is there, I fail to see why this would not work. What am I missing?

Sun, 2010-10-03 11:28

#34

The Sandman The Sandman's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

I'm not sure why no objective time-frame exists for the universe, given the existence of Planck time. If there is a smallest possible interval of time, defined as the interval in which a discrete packet of information moving at [I]c[/I] changes in any way, then an objective standard of time does in fact exist: the number of ticks since the Big Bang. Admittedly, we are not in a position to know how many ticks have occurred, and we may very well never know that number, but assuming that there is always an upper limit to how rapidly information changes (and even if [I]c[/I] isn't constant, it still is an upper limit) we should at least be able to state that such a figure exists.

Sun, 2010-10-03 12:59

#35

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

The Sandman wrote:
I'm not sure why no objective time-frame exists for the universe, given the existence of Planck time. If there is a smallest possible interval of time, defined as the interval in which a discrete packet of information moving at [I]c[/I] changes in any way, then an objective standard of time does in fact exist: the number of ticks since the Big Bang.

The Planck time is not a discrete clock tick, but a measure of at what scale quantum gravity effects start to become relevant. At scales shorter than the Planck time and length even flat spacetime likely has a nontrivial structure - lots of quantum wormholes, folds and weird shapes that make it unclear even what a time dimension means in those scales. Two observers can certainly disagree on the number of Planck seconds since the big bang. An observer riding a photon in the cosmic microwave background could even make the claim no time at all has passed until it hits an something. There is something called comoving coordinates that are roughly the universal time and space coordinates - an object at rest relative to the surrounding universe will have a constant comoving coordinate, and its comoving time will be increasing regularly. But an observer that moves will disagree on what events are simultaneous, even when they have the same comoving time.

—

Sun, 2010-10-03 15:33

#36

icekatze

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

hi hi In the example of the 1km long optical fiber, the actual origin and destination location are moved closer to each other. If a Pandora Gate physically moved an exosystem closer to the solar system when it opens its gate, that analogy might apply. However, if you are cheating the connection through another dimension, the distance still exists in the 3 dimensional world with all the normal rules that apply, meaning that the message could still go to any point in the destination's world-line. So in those regards, it isn't altering the perspective so much as it is forking it. That and the fact that Pandora Gates don't stay open forever.

—

[url=http://knhauber.phpwebhosting.com/]Nothing Important[/url]

Mon, 2010-10-04 12:28

#37

The Sandman The Sandman's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Perhaps the reason why Pandora Gates don't stay open forever is because of that issue? Within a certain amount of difference, the Gates can synchronize the time-like dimensions at either side so as to preserve causality. Eventually, however, it becomes too difficult to keep both sides in the same frame of reference, and that connection shuts down until the difference is once again small enough to allow a connection to be made without, for lack of a better term, crashing the OS of the local universe. This wouldn't be too inconvenient for the intended users of the Gates, a Kardashev 4+ civilization that probably exists and consciously moves across more than one time-like dimension; the wait between Gate connections would be about the same as one of us waiting for the next train to come in. For 3+1 beings like us, however, that wait presents a rather more daunting prospect. As for qubits, perhaps the issue with using them for precognition isn't that it breaks the universe so much as that it sets events in stone. If you observe an event in your future via qubit abuse, you can no longer change the event, no matter how hard you try, because the act of observing the event shifted the probability of its occurring to 1. I apologize if this part isn't too clear, but I'm honestly not sure how to adequately describe it.

Mon, 2010-10-04 13:22

#38

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

I quite like this explanation. It doesn't necessarily make physical sense, but it would likely *feel* like it has some physical sense within the game world. Even the ETI has constraints, but they are pretty obscure ones to us.

The Sandman wrote:
As for qubits, perhaps the issue with using them for precognition isn't that it breaks the universe so much as that it sets events in stone. If you observe an event in your future via qubit abuse, you can no longer change the event, no matter how hard you try, because the act of observing the event shifted the probability of its occurring to 1. I apologize if this part isn't too clear, but I'm honestly not sure how to adequately describe it.

I think this makes eminent sense. The only way out would be if some future sent you false information (see for instance Greg Egan's "The hundred lightyear diaries").

—

Tue, 2010-10-05 09:15

#39

raverbane

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

One of the reasons I decided to not have quibit stop being 'synced' when passed through a gate is to stay consistent with the callout on page 102. If quibits worked after going through a gate. Then why would "consistent communication was lost due to electromagnetic interference" happen if using quibit comms? And why would " an exploration drone, with a communication link back to the gate." need a link back to the gate when it could send data via a quibit comm? And why would they need a tethered drone for a hardline communications link?

Tue, 2010-10-05 11:44

#40

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Arenamontanus wrote:
I think this makes eminent sense. The only way out would be if some future sent you false information (see for instance Greg Egan's "The hundred lightyear diaries").

Or if the message is from an alternate (now inaccessible) timeline. Or if we accept that qbit messages in certain circumstances have a non-trivial chance of being incorrect.

Thu, 2010-10-07 12:44

#41

Marek Krysiak Marek Krysiak's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Quantum time paradoxes are not necessarily a bad thing as a story element. In transhuman space opera “Perfekcyjna Niedoskonałość” (Perfect Imperfection) by Polish writer Jacek Dukaj, transhumans send messages to their past by shooting streams of neutrino into massive singularities (natural black holes if I remember correctly). They literally get the news from future – and each faction’s got their own “Time Wells” – and they act accordingly to what they think (“know”) they opponents will do because of what they think (“know”) they will do because of… It’s a great branch of applied science, accessible only to superhuman intelligences: osca’s (Out of Space Computers – Dukaj’s AGI’s) and Phoebe’s (Post Human Beings). Too complicated for flesh stahs (Standard Homo Sapiens – Flats) brains thinking in only three dimensions. It’s incorporated into their reality – they act because they know they would, but they are not prisoners of their own future – they can change it and the do. Because it’s so complicated, it could be used by GM on purely arbitrary basis. Maybe TITANS and ETI constructed their own Time Wells, and this is why their actions are completely incomprehensible for transhumanity? (Really, if “Perfect Imperfection” ever gets English translation (Cthulhu make it be…) it should go lightspeed into EP references page. If anybody speaks Polish it’s a must-have. )

—

Sun, 2010-10-17 07:50

#42

Decivre

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Arenamontanus wrote:
Because FTL information exchange allows you to affect points outside your lightcone, and such points can get transformed arbitrarily far into the future or the past by being viewed in a moving coordinate system: give me two qubit pairs and a pair of fast-moving spaceships and I can set up a chain of communications that tells me information about an event before the event happens. Trust me, FTL implies time travel (or at least time communications). There are plenty of pages trying to explain why. Just google them, or even better, sit down with the equations and check.

Here's the problem: we already know that entangled particles communicate random noise at faster-than-light capability, and are therefore already breaking the rules. Einstein himself stated that the standard model doesn't fit entanglement, because even the random noise that entanglement transmits has the potential to break causality. I think the problem is in how we view time in the Theory of Relativity. The current models claim that time itself is relative, which is why instantaneous travel leave open the possibility for time travel (if time itself is relative, and a second is different depending on the power of gravity and velocity, then time travel is possible through judicious shifting utilizing the relative nature of two bodies in different relative states). Temporally static models negate this concept, and instead presume that only the perception and effects of time are relative, and not time itself. These models posit that an object being affected by enough time dilation to be perceiving the universe at half the pace are literally doing so, rather than perceiving the universe at the same pace relative to their different velocity and gravity. Thus, dilation is a local event, while time itself is not... rendering time travel an impossibility.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Sun, 2010-10-17 08:02

#43

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Would that temporally static model be percievable in observations? Like the hubble deep field... actually wouldn't either model be observable in the hubble deep field?

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Tue, 2010-10-19 01:49

#44

Decivre

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

OneTrikPony wrote:
Would that temporally static model be percievable in observations? Like the hubble deep field... actually wouldn't either model be observable in the hubble deep field?

Sort of, but the issue there is the relativity of simultaneity. The speed of light is finite, so even one's visual measurement of a moment is always limited by latency. For instance, you perceive two lightning bolts striking at the exact same time, one being a mile away and the other being a few miles away. The speed of light is only so fast, so the closer event is still occuring sooner, because there is lag for the other lightning bolt's light to reach you. The only way that simultaneity could be truly perceived is if the two events occur at an equal distance from a relatively motionless observer.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Wed, 2010-10-20 06:16

#45

Gee4orce

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

I fail to see the problem. As far as I understand it, QBits will allow you to communicate to an earlier time with regard to your local frame of reference, but you cannot communicate back to an earlier time than when the QBits were entangled. Maybe I'm missing the point, but I don't see how it breaks causality because I can't communicate information back to it's point of origin to a time before that information was created. If I'm on Alpha Centauri and you communicate the Earth lottery results to me I could get rich because I know the numbers that will come up when they arrive a couple of years later by lightspeed. But I don't see how YOU could get rich by me sending that information back to Earth before the earth lottery occurred. Can anybody explain the error in my reasoning ? In any case, I don't think this is an issue that's going to keep me awake at night. The real setting breaker of EP is the transfer of consciousness when Farcasting.

Wed, 2010-10-20 09:41

#46

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Decivre wrote:
Sort of, but...

I get that. It's Einstein's train and mirror example. My thought was that deep field observation would allow us to observe it directly. Thereby proving one conjecture or the other. That's also the answer to the question of the poster above. Here's the link. http://books.google.com/books?id=875TTxildJ0C&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161&dq=eins... Got that? OK. Now give the guy on the train q-bits and make the train go a significant fraction of the speed of light and make all of the distances really far apart, and then make another train comming down the track really fast too--but in the other direction --and then... wait; Ok well the first guy with the mirror has to have some q-bits too, and an apple, so when the lightning strikes it happens at the same time right? and the guy on the first train see's it because he's going North and he says; Hey there's some lightning, I should tell my freind Jim. Well Jim was pretty pissed because no one remembered to give him any q-bits and he says; I don't even have any q-bits. What am I supposed to do; use Mind Bullets? I'm just trying to get to Liverpool you Twat! (Because he was a Limey.) And the first guy walked home in the rain thinking; Worst thought experiment Evaar! Hey! where'd this apple come from then?

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Thu, 2010-10-21 05:49

#47

Gee4orce

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

I did some extensive reading after posting my question, and kind of see the problem. But as I understand it, it requires several parties some of whom are moving at significant fractions of the speed of light. That's probably never going to be a practical problem in the EP game setting, and maybe it's a theoretical problem, but I'm still going to sleep OK at night.

Thu, 2010-10-21 12:33

#48

icekatze

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

hi hi It doesn't require significant fractions of the speed of light, although it does exacerbate the problem, and stars in different parts of the universe are traveling very fast relative to each other. The problem is also magnified by distance, which makes Pandora Gates particularly troublesome. Qubits in Eclipse Phase essentially work very little like anything in real life, that's fine by me, I can suspend my disbelief enough for that just as I can suspend my disbelief in Pandora Gates. Even if the messages can only go so far back as the qubits are entangled, you could still get a situation very much like in James Blish's short story "Beep," where you could be getting messages from hundreds of thousands of years in the future.

—

[url=http://knhauber.phpwebhosting.com/]Nothing Important[/url]

Fri, 2010-10-22 13:29

#49

Professor Tex Professor Tex's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

CodeBreaker wrote:
Gatecrashers cannot come fast enough

Ain't that the truth.

Mon, 2011-04-04 00:51

#50

InsidiousAlgorythm InsidiousAlgorythm's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

Arenamontanus wrote:
I just had a new idea for how to handle the gates. Gamemaster section spoiler warning. The gates are not gates to other locations, but actually scanners/cornucopia machines linked to simspaces. All those exoplanets are actually simulated at such a high resolution that transhuman scientific instruments cannot tell the difference yet.

Maybe it's all just a simulated museum of a long burned out universe. or perhaps the recordings of these places are simply trophies.

—

Mon, 2011-04-04 05:53

#51

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Qubits and Pandora Gates

InsidiousAlgorythm wrote:
Maybe it's all just a simulated museum of a long burned out universe. or perhaps the recordings of these places are simply trophies.

Maybe this is what the exsurgent virus was intended to do. In the past it would go out and archive the interesting parts of the universe, but now it has malfunctioned. A bit like the jarts in Greg Egan's "Eternity". The description of how they archived the Oikumene world is pretty chilling, and very suitable for Eclipse Phase.

—

Qubits and Pandora Gates

Pages