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Theory: Pandora Gates actually lead to Simulspaces

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Thu, 2017-06-29 08:38

DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture

Theory: Pandora Gates actually lead to Simulspaces

How much tweaking would it take to make this theory compatible with the evidence available to PCs? "The Pandora Gates aren't actually wormholes, and they don't send anyone to other stars at all. All they really are are very efficient nano-disassemblers, nano-assemblers, and computronium. What happens when someone goes 'into' one is their body and mind are broken up and recorded, and a copy of them is run in a simulspace set up to look like a world around another star; and when they come back, they're just rebuilt with their brand-new memories. The Gates have their own comm network that uses clever tricks to keep from being detected, so if someone goes on a trip through several Gates, they just egocast the gatecrasher to be rebuilt by another Gate. The people who've built physical starships and are crawling along at a fraction of lightspeed are going to take centuries until they can transmit the evidence that this is the case... and in the meantime, who knows what secret psychosurgery might be performed on gatecrashers when they're rebuilt?"

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Thank you for your time,

Fri, 2017-06-30 01:15

ubik2

I wasn't aware that any route

I wasn't aware that any route from one solar gate back into a different gate in the solar system was known, so they may not need to do any egocasting. Once you go in, all the gates after that could just be simulated. People are recovering things from these gates, but if you've got TITAN level tech in the gates, it's possible it's just creating those items at the interface with those nano-assemblers (as it rebuilds the body that went into the gate). TITANs are certainly smart enough to fool us.

Spoiler: Highlight to view

It's possible the Prometheans should be able to figure this out, though. They've done a lot of work learning how to operate the gates.

Fri, 2017-06-30 03:53

CordialUltimate2 CordialUltimate2's picture

I'm pretty sure there was

I'm pretty sure there was enough time for light from the closest exosolar settlements to reach Sol and therefore confirm their physical existence through telescopes. Distributed array telescopes could easily reach effective apertures of kilometers especially with EP tech. With such optical apparatus you could possibly make "satellite" maps of exosolar planets from the comfort of your Mars office. They would be out of date due to the light lag but I think enough time has passed to see some of the closest gatecrashing activities. Can't remember the gates discovery date.

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Fri, 2017-06-30 03:58

DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture

ubik2 wrote:I wasn't aware

ubik2 wrote:
I wasn't aware that any route from one solar gate back into a different gate in the solar system was known

In the back of my copy of Gatecrashing is a map, which includes such routes as going through the Mars gate to Babylon, and then from Babylon out the Pandora gate.

Quote:
People are recovering things from these gates, but if you've got TITAN level tech in the gates, it's possible it's just creating those items at the interface with those nano-assemblers (as it rebuilds the body that went into the gate). TITANs are certainly smart enough to fool us.

My thoughts exactly. Though that does bring up a possible approach to test this theory - see how much mass can be shoved into one gate, or pulled out of another, and use some gravitational instruments to see if the gates increase or decrease in mass. (I'm under the impression that some present-day lab experiments are sensitive enough to be disturbed by the mass of the water in a nearby lawn-sprinkler system.) The real trick here would be figuring out how to keep the gate from cheating up some false readings, such as by covertly hacking the instruments' software, or the egos of the scientists. :)

Quote:
Spoiler: Highlight to view
It's possible the Prometheans should be able to figure this out, though. They've done a lot of work learning how to operate the gates.

Spoiler: Highlight to view

Maybe they do know; it's not like they're hesitant to keep secrets.

—

Thank you for your time,

Fri, 2017-06-30 04:02

DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture

CordialUltimate2 wrote:I'm

CordialUltimate2 wrote:
I'm pretty sure there was enough time for light from the closest exosolar settlements to reach Sol and therefore confirm their physical existence through telescopes. Distributed array telescopes could easily reach effective apertures of kilometers especially with EP tech. With such optical apparatus you could possibly make "satellite" maps of exosolar planets from the comfort of your Mars office. They would be out of date due to the light lag but I think enough time has passed to see some of the closest gatecrashing activities. Can't remember the gates discovery date.

I remember reading a thread here that mentioned that the nearest Gate destination was fifty-ish light-years away. I also recall that the Gates were discovered post-Fall, as some people suspect they were made by the Titans, so there's a few decades to go before any light-speed confirmation would be possible.

—

Thank you for your time,

Fri, 2017-06-30 10:16

o11o1

DataPacRat wrote: Though that

DataPacRat wrote:
Though that does bring up a possible approach to test this theory - see how much mass can be shoved into one gate, or pulled out of another, and use some gravitational instruments to see if the gates increase or decrease in mass. (I'm under the impression that some present-day lab experiments are sensitive enough to be disturbed by the mass of the water in a nearby lawn-sprinkler system.) The real trick here would be figuring out how to keep the gate from cheating up some false readings, such as by covertly hacking the instruments' software, or the egos of the scientists. :)

I suspect that the Pandora Gates have inconstant gravity / mass signatures just sitting still, much less while actively transmitting.

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A slight smell of ions....

Tue, 2017-07-11 06:18

BalazarLightson BalazarLightson's picture

Third Point Reference Check

A fairly simple reference check of fluctuations of output of third star systems could be done to verify the reality of the Gates (or possibly amazingly good forcasts by Titantech)

Tue, 2017-07-11 10:13

o11o1

BalazarLightson wrote:A

BalazarLightson wrote:
A fairly simple reference check of fluctuations of output of third star systems could be done to verify the reality of the Gates (or possibly amazingly good forcasts by Titantech)

Yeah, but there's still the speed of light delay since if you reach a start 12 light years away, it's going to be 12 years before telescopes can confirm-deny what you saw. Now, if the light arrived to earth and the results are then found to be wrong....

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A slight smell of ions....

Thu, 2017-07-13 09:48

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

I like the idea but it does

I like the idea but it does poke some holes in the canon as it stands. But your table I say go with it

Tue, 2017-07-18 08:08

#10

BalazarLightson BalazarLightson's picture

o11o1 wrote:BalazarLightson

o11o1 wrote:
BalazarLightson wrote:
A fairly simple reference check of fluctuations of output of third star systems could be done to verify the reality of the Gates (or possibly amazingly good forcasts by Titantech)
Yeah, but there's still the speed of light delay since if you reach a start 12 light years away, it's going to be 12 years before telescopes can confirm-deny what you saw. Now, if the light arrived to earth and the results are then found to be wrong....

By building a triangle of stars, with earth at one corner, at a slightly longer edge to the edge that ends where the Gate star is, I'm sure you could cut the delay down to a few months at most if you wanted.

Tue, 2017-07-18 10:03

#11

o11o1

BalazarLightson wrote:o11o1

BalazarLightson wrote:
o11o1 wrote:
BalazarLightson wrote:
A fairly simple reference check of fluctuations of output of third star systems could be done to verify the reality of the Gates (or possibly amazingly good forcasts by Titantech)
Yeah, but there's still the speed of light delay since if you reach a start 12 light years away, it's going to be 12 years before telescopes can confirm-deny what you saw. Now, if the light arrived to earth and the results are then found to be wrong....
By building a triangle of stars, with earth at one corner, at a slightly longer edge to the edge that ends where the Gate star is, I'm sure you could cut the delay down to a few months at most if you wanted.

The whole point of the experiment is to check if the information out of the gates is accurate, any experiment that does it's confirmation from an exoplanet is going to be suspect.

—

A slight smell of ions....

Tue, 2017-07-18 20:38

#12

BalazarLightson BalazarLightson's picture

o11o1 wrote:

o11o1 wrote:
The whole point of the experiment is to check if the information out of the gates is accurate, any experiment that does it's confirmation from an exoplanet is going to be suspect.

Confirmation would be done from the Sol System, to verify readings from an exo-system. It's not hard to grasp. Perhaps I need to find a diagram to illustrate.

Tue, 2017-07-18 20:52

#13

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

That would probably work,

That would probably work, unless the gates were made by the ETI, who had advanced readings about the galaxy all over the place, but in that case just making them portals would be about as easy.

Tue, 2017-07-18 21:23

#14

ubik2

Not sure if this helps, but

Not sure if this helps, but to describe BalazarLightson's clever suggestion: Sol and the system at the other end of the gate are 12 light years apart. Find a star that is 7 light years from Sol and 6 light years from the gate system. That star will have fluctuations that can be measured from the gate system. When they are subsequently measured in the Sol system a year later, the readings should match. If they match, the intelligence behind the gates is either capable of faster than light observation, or has a sufficient understanding of the chaotic nature of the rest of the galaxy to predict the outcomes. Since those are unlikely, I would conclude that the gates are real if the observations matched up. Edit: If there aren't stars nearby like that (as DataPacRat mentions), you can pick a star 40 light years from the gate, and 41 light years from the solar system.

Tue, 2017-07-18 23:36

#15

DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:That

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
That would probably work, unless the gates were made by the ETI, who had advanced readings about the galaxy all over the place, but in that case just making them portals would be about as easy.

'Easy', that is, if it's physically possible to manipulate space-time to create such portals in the first place. Not all universes in which it's possible for Earth-like people to exist have physics that allow such. :)

ubik2 wrote:
Not sure if this helps, but to describe BalazarLightson's clever suggestion: Sol and the system at the other end of the gate are 12 light years apart. Find a star that is 7 light years from Sol and 6 light years from the gate system.

As I understand how EP is currently written, this particular step is the tricky part; as it's my understanding that the nearest star to Sol that's known to be accessible through the Gates is somewhere over 50 light years away.

—

Thank you for your time,

Wed, 2017-07-19 01:42

#16

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

You'd need some kind of

You'd need some kind of portal-ish tech to get the prediction right anyway, so if that's simply impossible, than accurately predicting events is probably not possible.

Wed, 2017-07-19 21:33

#17

Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture

A possible hitch in the

A possible hitch in the theory is the ill-fated team that was found with the Fissure Gate. Notably, it doesn't say where their origin point was though it could possibly be Pandora as this was shortly after the discovery of that gate. I'll also grant you that the gate could have manufactured the bodies from the information of their (presumed) disassembly. At that point however, the argument becomes kind of recursive. Thinking about it some more raises a valid question... What happens to all the stuff that goes in then?

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Current Status: Highly Distracted building Gatecrashing systems in Universe Sandbox!

Wed, 2017-07-19 22:46

#18

DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture

Plot bunny

Possible story idea: Firewall approaches the PCs' server for a mission: A deep dive through the Gate network has finally found a path to Ross 154, a red dwarf a mere 9.68 light-years from Sol. While one of Firewall's researchers was collating data on that star, they found an anomaly: certain records about that star, circa a few months before the Fall, that have been offline and inaccessible since before the Fall, don't match any other data about that star for those months. What caught the researcher's attention was that both versions appear to have valid hash-checksums. This means that it might not be a simple set of corrupted data. There are a few other offline archive sites spread across the Solar system, so it should have been a simple matter to physically send someone to check them... only it seems that one or more other groups have launched their own speedy craft on courses to those exact sites. If the PCs hurry, their local forks just might be able to make it to one such archive before anyone else gets there, at which point useful tasks may include collecting that particular data, destroying the archive to keep anyone else from getting a copy of its data, laying a trap for whoever or whatever is on the craft that will arrive soon after the PCs, and/or gathering whatever intel is possible from said craft... ... Anyone care to write a Chapter Two? :)

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Thank you for your time,

Mon, 2017-07-24 20:39

#19

BalazarLightson BalazarLightson's picture

Plot Thickens

DataPacRat wrote:
Possible story idea...

I like it.