Enigma32 wrote:

neutrinos alone, are capable of [b]going plaid[/b]

:D NICE ONE! :D Now I'm going to be quoting spaceballs for the next three days, again. May the Schwartz be with you. Also:

Arenamontanus wrote:

Ok, I'm doomed to try :) Here is the non-FTL situation:

Mad Propz, Dude! Not only a clear and concise explanation of light cones for luddites but fairly compelling writing too. (Step aside Brian Green :) ) Are you sure you wouldn't rather be a physics teacher instead of fooling around with that brain stuff? ;) I give this post a 98/100 for utility to the average joe. You'd have gotten 100 but there was no mention of trilithium crystals and the assignment specifically requested startrek analogies. I think I can handle this one;

bRA1N bOX wrote:

Why does time factor at all?

the issue is that time does not factor in the 'traverse' of EP's quantum entangled communications. They are "instantaneous" they don't travel through time only distance. So you only deal with the time, distance and speed, (distance/time), in the frame of reference of the sender/reciever not the signal. If Fred and Bob are sitting in adjacent cubicles texting each other with q-bits they can bounce the same message back and forth instantaneously Bob gets the text the [i]Instant[/i] Fred sends it. If Bob is on a space ship traveling at something close to the speed of light then Bob is "moving [u]slower[/u] through time" than Fred. When Fred texts bob " Haha! LolCatz" at [b]12:00:00[/b] Bob recieves it at the EXACT time that Fred sends because the "Haha LolCatz" doesn't travel through time. However since bob is "moving slower through time" than Fred he actually receives " Haha! LolCatz" at [b]11:59:59[/b] according to the same clock. When Bob replies to Fred "Bwaaahaha Lawlcaaatz" Fred receives it the Instant Bob sends it but according to the clock Bob sent it at [b]11:59:59[/b] and Fred received "Bwaaahaha Lawlcaaatz" at [b]11:59:59[/b], one second before he he actually sent the stupid lolcats text. (or something like that.)

Decivre wrote:

No, I just think it creates a new wave of FTL detection systems. We would likely find some way to create sensors that utilize neutrinos to detect objects in space at speeds slightly faster than light. The question becomes how to make these neutrinos bounce and receive them afterwards, considering that they fly through almost all matter with relative ease. It's like trying to shoot something with rubber ghost bullets, then trying to catch said ghost bullets when they rebound. It will be interesting, to say the least.

Huh? I'd like to know more about this. Because the 8 cubic meter neutrino reciever in the main book led me to assume that that, in EP, they're still using a mass of heavy water to catch neutrinos. Is there some other way to catch neutrinos FTL or not? If I'm wrong and they're not using a large mass detector, wouldn't that indicate that they have already solved the problem of catching neutrinos, FTL or not?

I have no idea. Apparently the sudbury detector requires about 150m^3 meters and 2000 meters of intervening earth. I was just speculating cause, until right now, I didn't know there were other schemes for catching neutrinos. My assumption was that they'd figured out how to do it with a Cherenkov style detector that was smaller and didn't need a mountain of mass above it. I'm beginning to think that neutrino comms is pretty optimistic SF. [edit] I'm also wondering what gave whomever the idea to use this tech and what the logical spinoffs of this technology would be. What else could you do with a 2 meter cube capable of detecting neutrinos at a level that could deduce a signal? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_detector

Is this dead horse been beaten enough yet? :) I think the original intent of this thread has had its trajectory curved slightly by the pull of logic and evil, evil math. The damned if you do, damned if you don't, scenario? On the one hand, EP has the honorable goal of trying to remain true to physics as we know, while, on the other hand, presenting believable possibilities given our knowledge today and maybe what it could be tomorrow. I respect the intent here in trying to avoid the "handwave physics" because it's part of EP's charm and integrity, only sacrificing some of these principles in the interest of fun and Mental Stress damage protection. Anyway, just a couple things, and then I'll probably shut up again. The issue, if you want to call it that, is in using light speed as the invariable reference point between all objects in a given situation, right? Since space could be infinite, or even just finite and unbounded, speed and direction and absolutes lose meaning without the means to consistently relate them to one-another. Thus "relativity," no doubt. As with what I mentioned about sound, it is the creation of waves/transfer of kinetic energy (?) through air, of which the density and composition affect the speed and energy at which the sound can travel. Of course, sound is a local phenomena, and each planet and atmosphere is going to require it's on set of local measurements to say "sound travels this fast here." Now, as far as I know light is a universal phenomena. It is the "sound of space." It transmits information, specifically electromagnetic force, right? However, it SEEMS to travel without a medium. Is this the whole wave-particle duality of photons/light? Is light its own medium that it travels through? I am sure we could degenerate into whatever talk there has been of old about the "ether" that space was thought to be made of, but nowadays I wonder if they just decided to rename it "dark matter" and "dark energy." Some sort of quantum foam? Or is that the shore, while light travels the ocean of electromagnetic/quantum current and waves? I don't want to get too allegorical or metaphorical, but relativity will only ever be solved once we can point to something and say "that never moves and everything moves relative to that, so that's how we'll judge speed, direction, and time with absolutes." Of course, unless light is everywhere and we're all moving in IT or something. I don't know. Perhaps I sound more incoherent than last time. Anyway, is there any form of quantum teleportation method available as a FTL engine? I'm thinking of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy's "Improbability Drive" or something. John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" series deals with a variation that tinkers with uncertainty to make it very certain to be some place other than where they are, sort of like the spacefolding of Dune ships, but explaining that they are actually traveling into a parallel universe where they would be in the new location rather than where they were, and it was just as likely a parallel ship was arriving where they were leaving in whatever universe they had "left." Of course, there might be a means to tweak that into a time-travel device, but might "merely" be dealing with parallel realities, and arriving in another universe that has "moved at a different temporal rate" or somesuch thing, so it's just a parallel universe that is at that historical point, not yet "caught up" to the original universe they had come from. Perhaps there is some sort of causality protection I do not have the cognitive capacity to calculate or even consider, but I'm just wondering. All in all, FTL can probably be effectively introduced into EP in a conservative manner, if one were so inclined. It could make for a whole campaign arc, much like the Pandora Gates. It might be just as likely some reverse-engineering fluke that transhumanity stumbles upon while messing around with the Gates, which means we'd be like apes discovering fire and trying to figure out how to make it, then burning down the forest around ourselves, maybe. Maybe we'd get lucky like we originally were with fire, but is it really luck, probability, or some sort of divine/exohuman intervention? Perhaps there is ETI or TITAN or Promethean nudging involved? Many angles to explore. I don't think that even in the timeframe FTL will grow to enormous use, like nanotech and other technology. Just because one technological breakthrough ignites throughout transhuman culture and enters everyday use, doesn't mean another technology, that apparently the EP universe hasn't cracked yet, would meet the same reception. Look how the Pandora Gates are treated. The hypercorps are probably the only KNOWN, almost-a-given factor that would certainly dig its claws into the use and control of that kind of tech. The reason some of the EP technology got into wide use, if I understand properly, is because first, it took time and became relatively economically viable, and the break down of conventional economy pushed it through because mankind was facing extinction, and still is. There were a number of factors that I totally generalized and glossed over, but basing anything off of our own real-world history and then trying to aim this projection through the scope of EP's current sights seems that we may see the same old conventions, no matter what stage humanity may be in, FTL will be the new fossil fuel and it would take another sort of shake-up to loosen the grip of the greedy, or until it just becomes impossibly cheap and easy to do that they would lose no money (or whatever passes for substantial economic value by then) in making it public domain. Perhaps I am being jaded. ...Oh, and not to mention the conservative side of the time and the outcry against "temporal interference" and fear of ruining reality. Not saying FTL will either be able to jive with causality and other problems, but just the ignorant masses might be in an uproar. There are still factions in EP that find ego transfer abhorrent and all AI as an abomination. Not only do physics have to be bested, then comes the much harder task of not destroying ourselves with it and destroying ourselves OVER it.

Arenamontanus wrote:

You could include it in your setting, but it would really change things. Four words: undetectable unstoppable antimatter bombs. That can travel in time. OK, you might want to explain that away. If you and your players do not care for quantum mechanics and relativity, no problem - but be prepared for some surprises. With FTL the outer system is just as close to the planetary consortium as the jovian junta, isolation becomes all about not being known or not being accessible due to quirks in your hyperdrive physics. Here is a quantum jump FTL idea that might actually be fun to play with: you need a qubit link to do the jump. The ship basically takes one end of a qubit pair, does something handwavy, and arrives at the other end (burning the qubits). So to go to Moravec you first need a gatecrasher team to get there with a few qubits, then you can send your armada. Which presumably brings a load of qubits linked with qubits back at HQ, allowing them to go home and supplies to be sent over. If somebody breaks their reservoir the ships are isolated. The same is true in the solar system: to go quickly to point B, you need to send qubits there classically. Brinkers might hence scan you for smuggling in dangerous qubits and want to stay out of the emerging quantum network... and nasty entities might want to get access to send their invasion swarms everywhere.

Quantum teleportation would be a lovely "doomsday machine" plot that perhaps intel discovers what the TITANs or some other faction, etc., are up to. The question might be "why haven't they done it yet" and it gets quirky indeed, considering one could hardly say "because it hasn't been invented by them yet," subsequently all brain cells I would have left would be swirling down the drain of sanity. I don't know. One could maybe explain that away again with some dimensional "repositioning." Even if it's technically time travel, all that's really happened is, I guess, doing some sort of U-turn in spacetime back to whatever event, then taking a new exit which is a different universe than the point of origin from the "native" one. I guess it's some Butterfly Effect engine. A temporal and/or dimensional lane change, sort of. I have been reading and following along to Rob Bryanton's vlog and videos about his "Imagining the 10th Dimension" project. (Check out the YouTube videos or vlog. An easy search, of course.) The 4th dimension would need a 5th dimension in which to "move places" in within that 4th dimensional horizon. You can't move along different points if you ARE one of those points. To a 2-dimensional observer a 3-dimensional being or object could seemingly move instantly or without regard to needing to traverse any intervening space between points in the 3rd dimension. A 5th dimension would not be beholden to 4th dimensional criteria, necessarily, right? Call it hyperspace, probability decoherence-recoherence, or whatever. I have no idea how it could ever be done. How do we move 3-dimensional constructs through a 5th dimension? Can a higher dimensional influence "tell a lower dimensional object what to do?" I couldn't say. Smarter minds may make sense of that, I hope. Oh yeah, and I like your "qubits" fuel idea. I think that would be a wild and wonderfully divergent alternative to a LOT of ideas already out there about FTL and such. I did wonder at one point, just contemplating a sci-fi setting, how the many "gate" scenarios would be able to work. How does one "point" where you want a wormhole to bridge spatial distances? If it requires a gate on the other side, what did they do before there was a gate? One thought was that they had to send high velocity, subluminal automated gatebuilders, perhaps. But then, that still takes a long, long time. How about gating another gate through? Getting those wormhole portals would likely be a tedious development that only AGI's might have patience for. There could be highly unstable, short-lived means an automated gatebuilder could first make a blind jump and maybe not worry about FTL concerns or causality or whatever, and soon as it arrives, the linked gates are then tandem and the bridge can remain intact in a more consistent manner. If what you are saying about qubits is what I remember, it wouldn't be far from a similar concept, only potential destinations would need to have had a "qubit-seeder" start up the process of travel points. I guess one could, if manufacture of that particle ever become prominent and cheaper, just send those seeders en masse and every which way, waiting for the links to establish at their destinations whenever. Or can it be used even while the seeder is on its way? Providing some sort of cross-space tether that just is being stretched like a string or FTL zip line?