Faster then Light methods.

Thu, 2012-07-12 10:24

#2

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

From what I've gathered in other threads, it seems space fold is more theoretically accurate either that or something like wormholes and the Woodward effect/Mach Effect. I'm not sure though, I'm sure Arena can point this out much better than most of us could.

—

"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Thu, 2012-07-12 11:02

#3

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

I think the question is, how much do you want a ship to feature in your stories? If you want to be flying around Buck Rogers style, warp drives (or just super engine efficiency so you can approach even .5c) probably works best. Otherwise, use Pandora gates, as they're already described. Ultimately, no form of FTL travel is hard science-fiction, so picking one isn't much better than picking the other. If you DO want to stick to hard sci-fi though, one concession you can make is do away with causality. Travelling (or communicating) FTL permits effects before causes. It results in some major brain-bending, a few paradoxes, but can be a CRAZY awesome role-playing experience. (In an unrelated campaign, I have a character who is travelling backwards through time, and another character who pops to random times within the story-arc, Doctor Who style.)

Thu, 2012-07-12 12:33

#4

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
If you DO want to stick to hard sci-fi though, one concession you can make is do away with causality. Travelling (or communicating) FTL permits effects before causes. It results in some major brain-bending, a few paradoxes, but can be a CRAZY awesome role-playing experience. (In an unrelated campaign, I have a character who is travelling backwards through time, and another character who pops to random times within the story-arc, Doctor Who style.)

Temporal relativity is still an up-in-the-air concept from special relativity, and many people (including me) have yet to see any evidence that time as a whole is relative… only that the perception of time from any given perspective is relative. Should information be transmittable via FTL methods like quantum teleportation, this would almost completely prove this to be the case (or prove time travel feasible… but I consider this an Occam's razor-able dilemma).

—

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]

Thu, 2012-07-12 13:29

#5

The Enemy

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Probably the best thing to do, is to think about what sort of plot you want to do with FTL. What sort of action, the limitations, that sort of thing, then try and figure out a method to fit, rather than the other way around. Then try to be self-consistent with it. Having more than one method of FTL is not out of the question, however, if you want more than one set of limitations.

—

Insanity is the Spice of Life. Gun-totin Texan.

Thu, 2012-07-12 13:37

#6

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

You could have a certain Gatecrashing team find an alien/TITAN/who the hell knows what kind of vessel that can use the Pandora gates within a relative distance of said gate. Or even open up "rifts" using Gate-like technology and ethic.

—

"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Fri, 2012-07-13 09:22

#7

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Decivre, I'm not sure what the other solution would be. Assuming FTL is possible, if I send informatin outside of my light cone, then back in again, such that it enters an earlier point, how would you explain that? Or is your point that, from my perspective it is time travel, but from some other objective perspective, it isn't? (And if so, what's the functional difference between the theory you're proposing and temporal relativity?)

Fri, 2012-07-13 13:02

#8

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Decivre, I'm not sure what the other solution would be. Assuming FTL is possible, if I send informatin outside of my light cone, then back in again, such that it enters an earlier point, how would you explain that? Or is your point that, from my perspective it is time travel, but from some other objective perspective, it isn't? (And if so, what's the functional difference between the theory you're proposing and temporal relativity?)

Alright, so it works like this. Imagine that you are currently on an object traveling at half the speed of light, while I am stationary. For the sake of simplifying this exercise, let's say we are both under zero-gravity conditions (which takes out the gravitic effects on relativity from the equation, which can muddle things). For all intents and purposes, in order for you to still be able to perceive light with the same frame of reference, you will be perceiving reality at 2 times the pace that I do. This means that all the processes of your body are slowed by half; even the decay rate of the matter within your body will be cut in half. This means that if we both stay in this state for a year, you will have aged half the time I actually did. Now let's bring quantum teleportation into the mix. You and I both have a QT communication device. They have the same exact clockspeed and design. Since they are traveling with us at our speeds (mine stationary, yours at half the speed of light), they will also share our frames of reference. Now, let's say that we program them to communicate with each other with a ping loop, where one machine pings the other, and that machine responds with a ping, which makes the other machine respond with a ping, and so on. We set the delay at 1 second, making it so that my machine will not respond to a ping until its internal clock registers a second passing… yours is set to do the same. We then both switch them on, and they begin to communicate with each other. Now in most people's interpretation of special relativity, we would supposedly get those messages before we actually sent them, so long as we are more than 1 light second apart in distance (the distance where our pings would supposedly match the pace of the light cone, should they have a delay of 1 second). An interpretation based on the assumption that time is static and only its local effects on matter are relative means that you and I will each perceive those pings as coming after the previous ping, but at different rates; your response pings would come in a full 2 seconds after my machine sends a ping (because you are passing through time at half the rate), whereas you will see my response pings come in only a half-second after you send a transmission (because from your perspective, everything else is moving twice as fast). Even if we cut the time down dramatically, it won't change this. If we only transmitted pings a millisecond after receiving one, you would simply observe my responses as coming half a millisecond after yours, while I would observe your responses as coming two milliseconds after mine. No temporal backtracking is possible in this interpretation. Time goes at a constant pace which we only [i]perceive[/i] relatively, and is not limited by the speed of light. Time does not need to travel from place to place, it is simply present everywhere.

—

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]

Sat, 2012-07-14 16:51

#9

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Seekerofshadowlight wrote:
So what I am asking is, how would you make a FTL method that fits with a harder setting?

My standard hobby-horse is that one has to choose between 2 of FTL, special relativity or causality - one cannot all three at the same time. Now, relativity is very well tested, so I would not drop it (especially in a hard sf setting). And by assumption we are going to have FTL, so this means that causality needs to be changed. Basically, how do you prevent time-travel from messing up the setting? Then there is the controllability of the setting itself: can people go anywhere, or is there some structure - a gate network, fixed jump destinations etc - that determines where they can go? This affects the shape of space empires and has huge effects on military issues (consider FTL antimatter warheads that can show up anywhere without warning or traceability...) Here are two possible answers I like: Wormhole networks You can make wormholes using some special technology, pumping up their mouths to the size needed to allow through egocasts, swarmbots or spacecraft. However, when making them the mouths are at first next to each other. You have to send one end to the destination using a normal relativistic rocket: once it arrives in the destination system you can walk through with no problems. However, this trip also produces a relativistic effect: in a sense one end is in the future relative to the other. This is not a problem as long as the wormhole network is tree-like, since you cannot use it to go to the past. But loops do introduce this risk. However, there is a theory that this would produce flows of virtual particles that would blow up the offending wormholes before they can make a time machine! So a space empire will be temporally consistent, but needs to be cautious when expanding into space that has already been colonized. See http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Tech/Space-Time/wormholes.html for more details. I personally think this is very playable, and introduces a nice "geography". One take on this which I think could be great fun is to assume that there is one big wormhole network already, set up by Bracewell probes at some point in the past. Each connected system has a wormhole to a "parent" system, and a number of wormholes to "daughter" systems. By going through parents you will eventually, after a few hops, find yourself at the doorstep of whatever built the system... Quantum teleportation hyperdrives A bit like the QE comms in EP, but doing quantum teleportation with entire spacecraft. You entangle qubits, separate them, and then ships "burn" them in their hyperdrive to jump to the corresponding pair. This means that 1) you have to send qubits to possible destinations using slow and expensive probes or spacecrafts, 2) they can at least jump back home if things look bad, 3) at their destination they have a finite resource of jumps home/resupply missions, but it might be possible to deliver extra qubits to keep things going. This makes use of quantum teleportation travel relatively rare over interstellar distances, but might be more popular within solar systems. Just like QE comms breach causality this drive does it too. Perhaps the simplest solution is to say that the Novikov self-consistency principle holds: sure you can send signals and spacecraft back in time with some effort, but their changes have already happened. Paradoxes automatically have zero probability. So time travel is possible, it is just that it rarely has any useful applications. Some issues here with using it for computation - this might be one way of making beyond-quantum computing. Another approach is to assume the interference effect like in the wormhole empire case: if you bring a loop of qubits together they interfere and decohere. This might cut off entire solar systems if you are not careful. This again has the neat property that you can in principle go anywhere you have a qubit "ticket" within the empire (and distance doesn't matter), but to go beyond the frontier you need to send a relativistic starship to deliver new qubits. Different empires might have interface worlds where you shift from one network to another. Note that smuggling qubits into an empire might allow invaders to jump into it (or disrupt links): border controls are going to be tight.

—

Sun, 2012-07-15 06:27

#10

Anarhista

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Arenamontanus wrote:
Wormhole networks You can make wormholes using some special technology, pumping up their mouths to the size needed to allow through egocasts, swarmbots or spacecraft. However, when making them the mouths are at first next to each other. You have to send one end to the destination using a normal relativistic rocket: once it arrives in the destination system you can walk through with no problems. However, this trip also produces a relativistic effect: in a sense one end is in the future relative to the other...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we don't know how time dilatation works in accelerated systems, only in linear movement (const. speed), so acceleration and deceleration of normal relativistic rocket could even time difference. (this was always my favorite topic in physics class so I'll gladly expand/correct that knowledge)

—

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

Sun, 2012-07-15 07:02

#11

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Anarhista wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we don't know how time dilatation works in accelerated systems, only in linear movement (const. speed), so acceleration and deceleration of normal relativistic rocket could even time difference. (this was always my favorite topic in physics class so I'll gladly expand/correct that knowledge)

We know how it works, it is just a tad messy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_acceleration Basically you just integrate time dilations.

—

Sun, 2012-07-15 08:22

#12

Extrasolar Angel Extrasolar Angel's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Crazy idea(and remember I am just a amateur in physics and not a scientist). Light speed is constant in vacuum right? Is it possible to create a state of exotic matter that would allow to pass information faster than in vacuum?

—

[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]

Sun, 2012-07-15 10:36

#13

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Decivre: So what happens if your one ship isn't going at .5c, but at c? Instead of time multiplying by 2, does it multiply by infinity? Arenamenterous: AWESOME ideas. I love them both. So with your network, you're going into their future. And when you go back through, you're going back into the past?

Sun, 2012-07-15 10:49

#14

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Arenamenterous: AWESOME ideas. I love them both. So with your network, you're going into their future. And when you go back through, you're going back into the past?

Thanks! Yep, in the network, the further out the gates are, the further into the future they are. This might not be visible when you use the gates (people may commute out to the Frontier and back every day), but *really* remote gates may be so far into the future that they might see a slightly changed galaxy. And if there has been a non-gate using civilisation spending their time evolving, the frontier might meet them.

—

Sun, 2012-07-15 19:39

#15

Anarhista

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Let say that even after meticulous reading I'm... tad fuzzy on the subject of proper acceleration: when you say you just integrate time dilation (TD) can you 'dumb-down' it and explain how does TD compare from circumstances where relative velocity is unchanging to case of a spaceship whose acceleration, relative to some referent object with constant velocity, equals (e.g.) 1g? I don't expect you to do this but I would like to understand.

Arenamontanus wrote:
You can make wormholes using some special technology, pumping up their mouths to the size needed to allow through egocasts, swarmbots or spacecraft. However, when making them the mouths are at first next to each other. You have to send one end to the destination using a normal relativistic rocket: once it arrives in the destination system you can walk through with no problems. However, this trip also produces a relativistic effect: in a sense one end is in the future relative to the other. This is not a problem as long as the wormhole network is tree-like, since you cannot use it to go to the past. But loops do introduce this risk. However, there is a theory that this would produce flows of virtual particles that would blow up the offending wormholes before they can make a time machine! So a space empire will be temporally consistent, but needs to be cautious when expanding into space that has already been colonized. One take on this which I think could be great fun is to assume that there is one big wormhole network already, set up by Bracewell probes at some point in the past. Each connected system has a wormhole to a "parent" system, and a number of wormholes to "daughter" systems. By going through parents you will eventually, after a few hops, find yourself at the doorstep of whatever built the system...

This is great! Finally I got the reason why ETI is spreading exsurgent virus over so many worlds: If culture/entity is able to build wormhole networks its territory would spread over many, many light years of space AND time. So if this civilization encounters another culture and welcomes it by allowing to use its wormhole networks they might find out on farther systems (forward in time) that they all died out and reconstructing signals figure out exactly how this happened. Guess what would they do after that?!?

—

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

Sun, 2012-07-15 23:48

#16

Seekerofshadowlight Seekerofshadowlight's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

The Enemy wrote:
Probably the best thing to do, is to think about what sort of plot you want to do with FTL. What sort of action, the limitations, that sort of thing, then try and figure out a method to fit, rather than the other way around. Then try to be self-consistent with it. Having more than one method of FTL is not out of the question, however, if you want more than one set of limitations.

I keep bouncing around idea's, I want to nail items down as I want to be very consistent with its limits.

Arenamontanus wrote:
My standard hobby-horse is that one has to choose between 2 of FTL, special relativity or causality - one cannot all three at the same time. Now, relativity is very well tested, so I would not drop it (especially in a hard sf setting). And by assumption we are going to have FTL, so this means that causality needs to be changed. Basically, how do you prevent time-travel from messing up the setting? Then there is the controllability of the setting itself: can people go anywhere, or is there some structure - a gate network, fixed jump destinations etc - that determines where they can go? This affects the shape of space empires and has huge effects on military issues (consider FTL antimatter warheads that can show up anywhere without warning or traceability...)

I was leaning toward something more like jump points/gates just for the limits. I like the idea that a system could be controlled by a spaceborn force and blockaded. It also covers and effects things as economics.

Arenamontanus wrote:
Here are two possible answers I like: Wormhole networks You can make wormholes using some special technology, pumping up their mouths to the size needed to allow through egocasts, swarmbots or spacecraft. However, when making them the mouths are at first next to each other. You have to send one end to the destination using a normal relativistic rocket: once it arrives in the destination system you can walk through with no problems. However, this trip also produces a relativistic effect: in a sense one end is in the future relative to the other. This is not a problem as long as the wormhole network is tree-like, since you cannot use it to go to the past. But loops do introduce this risk. However, there is a theory that this would produce flows of virtual particles that would blow up the offending wormholes before they can make a time machine! So a space empire will be temporally consistent, but needs to be cautious when expanding into space that has already been colonized. See http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Tech/Space-Time/wormholes.html for more details. I personally think this is very playable, and introduces a nice "geography". One take on this which I think could be great fun is to assume that there is one big wormhole network already, set up by Bracewell probes at some point in the past. Each connected system has a wormhole to a "parent" system, and a number of wormholes to "daughter" systems. By going through parents you will eventually, after a few hops, find yourself at the doorstep of whatever built the system...

I like this and has many possibilities from size/ power needed for the wormhole to placement of such a thing. I do plan to place some xeno-lifeforms, but it is unlikely they will be anything a player could play as I am not a massive fan of "Humans with a funny forehead". I am still in the steps of defining ETI's and how they will effect the setting as a whole. The idea of bracewell style seeded wormhole's is a neat one as well.

Arenamontanus wrote:
Quantum teleportation hyperdrives A bit like the QE comms in EP, but doing quantum teleportation with entire spacecraft. You entangle qubits, separate them, and then ships "burn" them in their hyperdrive to jump to the corresponding pair. This means that 1) you have to send qubits to possible destinations using slow and expensive probes or spacecrafts, 2) they can at least jump back home if things look bad, 3) at their destination they have a finite resource of jumps home/resupply missions, but it might be possible to deliver extra qubits to keep things going. This makes use of quantum teleportation travel relatively rare over interstellar distances, but might be more popular within solar systems. Just like QE comms breach causality this drive does it too. Perhaps the simplest solution is to say that the Novikov self-consistency principle holds: sure you can send signals and spacecraft back in time with some effort, but their changes have already happened. Paradoxes automatically have zero probability. So time travel is possible, it is just that it rarely has any useful applications. Some issues here with using it for computation - this might be one way of making beyond-quantum computing. Another approach is to assume the interference effect like in the wormhole empire case: if you bring a loop of qubits together they interfere and decohere. This might cut off entire solar systems if you are not careful. This again has the neat property that you can in principle go anywhere you have a qubit "ticket" within the empire (and distance doesn't matter), but to go beyond the frontier you need to send a relativistic starship to deliver new qubits. Different empires might have interface worlds where you shift from one network to another. Note that smuggling qubits into an empire might allow invaders to jump into it (or disrupt links): border controls are going to be tight.

Also an interesting Idea, not sure if I would go with that approach as it allows a bit more open endedness toward spacetravel then I am thinking of at this point.

Mon, 2012-07-16 00:22

#17

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Decivre: So what happens if your one ship isn't going at .5c, but at c? Instead of time multiplying by 2, does it multiply by infinity?

According to special relativity, this is impossible. You can never even equal the speed of light, let alone surpass it. All you can do is get crazy close; and the closer you get, the more insane time dilation gets.

—

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]

Mon, 2012-07-16 00:29

#18

Seekerofshadowlight Seekerofshadowlight's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Decivre wrote:
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Decivre: So what happens if your one ship isn't going at .5c, but at c? Instead of time multiplying by 2, does it multiply by infinity?
According to special relativity, this is impossible. You can never even equal the speed of light, let alone surpass it. All you can do is get crazy close; and the closer you get, the more insane time dilation gets.

The light huggers from Revelation Space cover that nicely.It never stats ( In the books I read anyhow) just how close to light it gets, but it does cover the difference in time perspective of those on the ship to those upon worlds.

Mon, 2012-07-16 07:54

#19

ZeroSum

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Here's a question: if the time dilation effects are caused by transporting one of the two linked wormholes at some fraction of c, would it be possible to avoid them by instead creating the second wormhole at the destination and hook it up to the network from there? How wrong am I about this?

—

"I figure that the more of you there are around me, the more chance there is of the inevitable hail of bullets hitting you instead of me.'" - Warren Ellis

Mon, 2012-07-16 09:29

#20

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Decivre wrote:
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Decivre: So what happens if your one ship isn't going at .5c, but at c? Instead of time multiplying by 2, does it multiply by infinity?
According to special relativity, this is impossible. You can never even equal the speed of light, let alone surpass it. All you can do is get crazy close; and the closer you get, the more insane time dilation gets.

Which I can agree with, in principle, but the topic of the thread is FTL, my point was that FTL creates time travel, and you argued that wasn't necessarily so.

Mon, 2012-07-16 09:53

#21

Seekerofshadowlight Seekerofshadowlight's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

I am not sure sure myself. Someways would in fact make time travel, but only if it is going Faster then light. Some methods to me do not in fact go faster then light, they skip around the topic. Now as we have very little way to test them, it all really rests in speculation and theory. I mean we might end up being totally wrong or at lest a bit wrong on things like wormholes. I myself am not to clear on time dilation effect of using a worm hole. I do not feel it would be all that notable, but that really depends upon just how a wormhole works. The link above, and a few others that one lead me to, seems to think something like wormhole gates prevent backward time travel.In any event if a wormhole did connect to the future, how far would it be into the future? If you can not travel back in time and interstellar space takes generations to travel. Then mostly it is a non issue. Really every time you go from Gate A to Gate B the difference is the same number of days. The best you can do is send a ship from Point A to B and it arrives a few hundred years from when you sent it.However if you did have something like Light huggers, that traveled at near light speed, you might have a bigger issue.

Mon, 2012-07-16 12:45

#22

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

ZeroSum wrote:
Here's a question: if the time dilation effects are caused by transporting one of the two linked wormholes at some fraction of c, would it be possible to avoid them by instead creating the second wormhole at the destination and hook it up to the network from there? How wrong am I about this?

Well, how do you hook up a wormhole? This is actually a quite deep problem: general relativity has no problems with spacetimes that are twisted and curved in all sorts of ways, including changing over time. But it doesn't tell you *anything* about how the topology - what is connected to what - can change. The theory just assumes it doesn't happen. This is where quantum gravity necessarily will play a role. When you make a wormhole pair you start with the slightly (?) plausible assumption that you can either make a zero-size pair or pick a naturally occuring quantum pair and expand it to macroscopic size. That is handwavey. Somehow getting a wormhole from *here* to *there* is handwavey squared. Perhaps (I used this in an old game setting) there are quantum wormholes to anywhere at any location, and the right tool can find one that leads close to the destination and expand it. If you could do it, I don't see why it would even have to link to some existing wormhole. It might actually show up anywhere, essentially acting as a jump drive.

—

Mon, 2012-07-16 16:26

#23

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Seekerofshadowlight wrote:
I am not sure sure myself. Someways would in fact make time travel, but only if it is going Faster then light. Some methods to me do not in fact go faster then light, they skip around the topic.

In this case, we're now talking about moving outside of light cones, so the actual acceleration is irrelevant. If you go from A to B using a route faster than light will make that same journey using the conventional route, you run into time problems, regardless as to your acceleration.

Mon, 2012-07-16 18:35

#24

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Which I can agree with, in principle, but the topic of the thread is FTL, my point was that FTL creates time travel, and you argued that wasn't necessarily so.

It depends on your form of FTL. Quantum teleportation, while theoretically sending something faster than light in a sense, does not actually travel through space, so it does not actually travel faster than light. In that same vein, someone going through a wormhole, despite potentially going farther than light possibly could in a similar timeframe, is not actually breaking the speed of light. So not all FTL is necessarily equal. And if exceeding the speed of light while travelling through spacetime is impossible, then time travel likely is as well. And there is no evidence yet that quantum teleportation has the ability to travel through time. If anything, quantum teleportation potentially proves that absolute simultaneity exists, which might disprove some elements of special relativity (specifically the relativity of simultaneity; the idea that things can only be simultaneous from certain frames of reference). Then again, there are arguments that there might be means of bending spacetime to alter the speed of light locally, such that one can travel faster than the [i]usual[/i] speed of light, but not faster than the local speed of light. In which case this would likely also distort dilation, and therefore still render time travel impossible.

—

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]

Mon, 2012-07-16 19:02

#25

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
In this case, we're now talking about moving outside of light cones, so the actual acceleration is irrelevant. If you go from A to B using a route faster than light will make that same journey using the conventional route, you run into time problems, regardless as to your acceleration.

Not true. Einstein himself stated that travel via wormhole can never violate causality through means of granting time travel, no matter how far that wormhole might take you in an extremely short time. Because any light traveling through that wormhole will still go faster than you. The wormhole effectively distorts your light cone. For this reason, the Pandora gates might not violate causality at all… well, if it weren't for the fact that light doesn't seem to travel through them. But even discounting that, the answer is still "Maybe, maybe not." It's one of the hardest-to-prove elements of special relativity. Quantum teleportation certainly befuddles the issue, since we've yet to observe entangled motions from the future.

—

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]

Mon, 2012-07-16 19:02

#26

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Deleted.

—

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]

Tue, 2012-07-17 08:01

#27

Seekerofshadowlight Seekerofshadowlight's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

I am leaning toward the idea that stars are "Linked" maybe at a quantum level that we at this time simply do not have the means to detect. Working off this idea , I am thinking each star might be linked to those closest, say within 10 LY. I am not sure if I want to go with the idea of being able to trigger those connections with a simple drive or if those connections need a gate of station of some type. I am thinking if stars are connected in such a way, you will still need to travel to a point, be it at the systems star itself of at a range above or below the star. You could limit it to a point at the systems edge above or below the star, which would make travel time to about any point within the system roughly close in travel time. This would still mean travel to the system gate/jump point would take weeks, months or sometimes years depending upon the location, travel velocity and propulsion type/burn time.This would also mean you would have to jump more then one if your target happened to be a few stars away. Now if I go with still requiring a gate, we would still need to send something to the other end normally to construct such a gate. However, another idea is that you could jump with a gate only at one end, however as most stars have six or more stars within 10ly, without the gate to stabilize the other end of the wormhole, you could end up with ship destruction, a random destination or other unforeseen events such as a burned out drive or being dropped out in interstellar space between stars. Thoughts?

Tue, 2012-07-17 08:21

#28

ZeroSum

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Decivre wrote:
Not true. Einstein himself stated that travel via wormhole can never violate causality through means of granting time travel, no matter how far that wormhole might take you in an extremely short time. Because any light traveling through that wormhole will still go faster than you. The wormhole effectively distorts your light cone.

This. Technically you aren't actually going at FTL speeds, you're just bending spacetime so far out of shape that it becomes moot. One of the more plausible methods for getting from here to way, WAY over there (which still doesn't mean it's anything other than astronomically unlikely, but at least it doesn't violate relativity/causality too much compared to the other methods).

Quote:
For this reason, the Pandora gates might not violate causality at all… well, if it weren't for the fact that light doesn't seem to travel through them.

I always thought the whole "light not passing through the Gates" was just a safety feature intended to keep both sides of the wormhole seperate so that conditions on one end didn't bleed over onto the other. If the "shield" was down I imagine you'd be able to see just fine (more or less) through the aperture. And all your air would get sucked into a vacuum when you dialed in the coordinates for a gate stuck on some barren rock with no atmosphere.

—

"I figure that the more of you there are around me, the more chance there is of the inevitable hail of bullets hitting you instead of me.'" - Warren Ellis

Tue, 2012-07-17 08:36

#29

Seekerofshadowlight Seekerofshadowlight's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

ZeroSum wrote:
I always thought the whole "light not passing through the Gates" was just a safety feature intended to keep both sides of the wormhole seperate so that conditions on one end didn't bleed over onto the other. If the "shield" was down I imagine you'd be able to see just fine (more or less) through the aperture. And all your air would get sucked into a vacuum when you dialed in the coordinates for a gate stuck on some barren rock with no atmosphere.

That is how I took it as well. I also thought they had a built in Buffer as to keep out nasty things like airborn contaminants and radiation.

Tue, 2012-07-17 09:34

#30

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Decivre wrote:
Not true. Einstein himself stated that travel via wormhole can never violate causality through means of granting time travel, no matter how far that wormhole might take you in an extremely short time.

I don't ever recall reading that. Not saying you're wrong, but it does seem odd. And regardless, Hawking, Thorne, and Novikov have all said that wormholes DO create the possibility for time travel (and they have the more current data). Part of the problem we run into is, how did the wormholes get here? If a wormhole between A and B already exists naturally, sure, both A and B are effectively neighbors already, the universe is just in a funny bundle, and the special time effects are minimized (except that from B I can see the CURRENT time in A via the wormhole, and the distant PAST in A via my telescope). However, if you are creating your own travel network and those wormholes don't currently exist, that means you have to create it. There are two ways you can do that. The first is you create both wormholes at A, and fly one end out to B (in which case you get the time effect due to time dilation anyway), or you magically create a wormhole at A and B simultaneously through sciencemagic and deal with the bleed-through. Before you don't enter my lightcone until t=10, now you enter at t=2. I'm effectively seeing the future.

Tue, 2012-07-17 09:47

#31

Seekerofshadowlight Seekerofshadowlight's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

I am not so sure myself. It would seem to me that the only way you could create time travel by wormhole is for you to open a portal to another time. You would have to link current time with a planet into the future,but if wormhole travel does not pass though the current time but around it, you never break speed of light. Also building a wormhole in another system would mean you would have to have gotten there the hard way, meaning one you link it with the parent system they would be in the same time frame. I am not sure how worm hole travel means time travel when you are not breaking the speed of light and are not linking to something out of your own time frame. Even linking with an alien gate system would still link you up to your time frame, as you entered at a set time and as all the gates are linked up, you exit at the same point in which you entered. From my limited reading it states wormholes could allow time travel under a set series of condensations, not that it will allows allow. It could easily be said you have no way of reaching those condescensions that allow the possibility. We do not really know how worm holes work, it might be that you can not accelerate one end without doing so to the other and if you can not do so, then you can not have it in two different time frames.

Tue, 2012-07-17 10:09

#32

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

OK So I might be sounding like a tool here, so pardon me for possibly throwing a wrench in the gears. Mathematically we seem to all assume that time is obviously relative from a point of reference, though it seems that this is something we have yet to truly observe simply because we don't have much in the way of throwing an object at near 'c' anyway. I have a question. What if, some time in the near future, we do have said capabilities (fusion rockets or gravity sling shots or whatever you want), and we observe that time is constant regardless of acceleration?

—

"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Tue, 2012-07-17 10:25

#33

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Prophet710 wrote:
So I might be sounding like a tool here, so pardon me for possibly throwing a wrench in the gears. Mathematically we seem to all assume that time is obviously relative from a point of reference, though it seems that this is something we have yet to truly observe simply because we don't have much in the way of throwing an object at near 'c' anyway.

We *are* regularly throwing objects around at relativistic speeds. Mainly in particle acclerators, but also in old CRT monitors. We have observed the relativistic effects not only on mass, but also on time dilation: fast-moving muons decay more slowly exactly as predicted. And of course, plenty of spacecraft have atomic clocks measuring their time dilation.

Quote:
I have a question. What if, some time in the near future, we do have said capabilities (fusion rockets or gravity sling shots or whatever you want), and we observe that time is constant regardless of acceleration?

The consequences would be about as bizarre as if we suddenly discovered that there was no law of gravity.

—

Tue, 2012-07-17 13:32

#34

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
I don't ever recall reading that. Not saying you're wrong, but it does seem odd. And regardless, Hawking, Thorne, and Novikov have all said that wormholes DO create the possibility for time travel (and they have the more current data).

Yes, but they are working on different interpretations of relativity. You have to remember that Einstein himself never actually believed that time travel was possible. When he spoke about exceeding the speed of light being a means of traveling backwards through time, he meant it in more of a thought experiment manner. In his opinion, even matching the speed of light was tantamount to dividing by zero, so it was something you simply could not do. In fact, he believed that if there were superluminal objects, not only were they already traveling backwards through time… they were incapable of slowing their speed to match light in the same manner that we can't speed up to it. In simplest terms, he believed that there either was nothing faster than the speed of light, or that the things faster than the speed of light were so un-interactive as to effectively not exist from our perspective. Hawking, Thorne, Novikov are all working under the presumption that Einstein is wrong about this. This aspect of Einsteins theories regarding special relativity, much like Shrödinger's cat, has lost its context.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Part of the problem we run into is, how did the wormholes get here? If a wormhole between A and B already exists naturally, sure, both A and B are effectively neighbors already, the universe is just in a funny bundle, and the special time effects are minimized (except that from B I can see the CURRENT time in A via the wormhole, and the distant PAST in A via my telescope). However, if you are creating your own travel network and those wormholes don't currently exist, that means you have to create it. There are two ways you can do that. The first is you create both wormholes at A, and fly one end out to B (in which case you get the time effect due to time dilation anyway), or you magically create a wormhole at A and B simultaneously through sciencemagic and deal with the bleed-through. Before you don't enter my lightcone until t=10, now you enter at t=2. I'm effectively seeing the future.

According to the original theories, the universe already is a funny bundle. It constantly gyrates and shifts, in ways that we simply cannot perceive. Natural wormholes (Einstein-Rosen Bridges) occur when those ungulations bring two points in space to contact with each other, allowing travel between them. The problem is that these connections don't last very long, so Einstein theorized that we might be able to find a way to stabilize local parts of spacetime, rendering a wormhole stable enough to use for travel. Creating wormholes is a skosh bit trickier, because it meant finding a way to control the ever-shifting universe enough to bring two specific points into contact with one another. I'm pretty sure that's gotta be a bit hard. That said, you have to remember that wormholes don't just distort space, they distort lightcones. Your lightcone now travels through the wormhole (as does yours) making its expanse an unusual pattern from the norm (or pretty usual, if Einstein is right and wormholes occur rather commonly). In other words, when a wormhole is in play, lightcones don't actually form "cones". They form all sorts of zany shapes.

—

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]

Tue, 2012-07-17 13:35

#35

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Prophet710 wrote:
OK So I might be sounding like a tool here, so pardon me for possibly throwing a wrench in the gears. Mathematically we seem to all assume that time is obviously relative from a point of reference, though it seems that this is something we have yet to truly observe simply because we don't have much in the way of throwing an object at near 'c' anyway. I have a question. What if, some time in the near future, we do have said capabilities (fusion rockets or gravity sling shots or whatever you want), and we observe that time is constant regardless of acceleration?

That would be somewhat impossible; we've already observed dilation in small quantities using atomic clocks. Now what [i]might[/i] be possible is if we found out that dilation isn't actually linked to light, but to something else entirely. That would make our conclusions based on our observations invalid, while still making dilation very real. Though no one is entertaining that because we haven't observed anything to make us believe this is true.

—

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]

Tue, 2012-07-17 13:51

#36

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Seekerofshadowlight wrote:
It would seem to me that the only way you could create time travel by wormhole is for you to open a portal to another time.

Kip Thorne actually illustrated this nicely (providing the same example Arenamonterous described previously). Create two ends of a womrhole at the same point. Fly one out to Pluto and back. The end of the wormhole that flew out, thanks to time dilation, will have 'aged' less than the one here. If the fixed end of the wormhole is anchored to 2pm, the travelling side now opens to 1pm.

Quote:
Also building a wormhole in another system would mean you would have to have gotten there the hard way,

Why is that?

Quote:
I am not sure how worm hole travel means time travel when you are not breaking the speed of light and are not linking to something out of your own time frame.

Are you familiar with the concept of the light cone? If not, the quick answer is that it is out of our time frame. For us, that distant star exists as I see it right now, and the events we see are simultaneous with the other events we see right now. For that star, the Earth exists as it did in 1860, and a totally different set of events are simultaneous (or not simultaneous). We do have different time frames, because of distance, location, gravity, and speed.

Quote:
Even linking with an alien gate system would still link you up to your time frame, as you entered at a set time and as all the gates are linked up, you exit at the same point in which you entered.

Yes? I'm not sure what you're saying exactly. But in the example above, if I enter A at 2pm, I leave through B at 1pm, travelling back 1 hour. If I enter back through B at 1:01pm, I'll exit A at 2:01pm.

Tue, 2012-07-17 13:57

#37

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Decivre wrote:
When he spoke about exceeding the speed of light being a means of traveling backwards through time, he meant it in more of a thought experiment manner. In his opinion, even matching the speed of light was tantamount to dividing by zero, so it was something you simply could not do.

Well yes, per Einstein, travelling faster than light is impossible (in part specifically because you would be travelling back in time, and because your mass would be greater than infinity, etc. etc.) And if that's your argument, I can't really say anything :) However, the jist of the thread is, "imagine FTL is possible ..." So if we're imagining that, we have to deal with the fact that all of this stuff that should make FTL impossible now have to be dealt with. There are ways to deal with the mass issue, because things like gates avoid actually accelerating anything. But time still remains a concern.

Quote:
According to the original theories, the universe already is a funny bundle.

Yes, this is true. If you want to say, as GM, points A and B are already "touching" and we can create a wormhole without time issues, I think that would be okay. The problem inevitably rises that GMs want to connect now to points C through Z, and assume that adding a fourth spatial dimension means EVERYTHING is linked, which isn't reasonable. So if you want to say that these particular two points are already proximal, you're right, and I agree. Otherwise, the issue still stands. (And I agree, intentionally shaping the universe to create that proximity would be 'a tad hard' :P)

Quote:
That said, you have to remember that wormholes don't just distort space, they distort lightcones. Your lightcone now travels through the wormhole (as does yours) making its expanse an unusual pattern from the norm (or pretty usual, if Einstein is right and wormholes occur rather commonly). In other words, when a wormhole is in play, lightcones don't actually form "cones". They form all sorts of zany shapes.

Absolutely. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what would happen that first moment you 'added a gate' to the network; that moment of light cones suddenly flooding into each other.

Tue, 2012-07-17 14:02

#38

Seekerofshadowlight Seekerofshadowlight's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Kip Thorne actually illustrated this nicely (providing the same example Arenamonterous described previously). Create two ends of a womrhole at the same point. Fly one out to Pluto and back. The end of the wormhole that flew out, thanks to time dilation, will have 'aged' less than the one here. If the fixed end of the wormhole is anchored to 2pm, the travelling side now opens to 1pm.

That is assuming that the wormhole end can move. If you can not move it after it is formed I really do not see how it can be a different time as it never goes though time dilation.

Quote:
Why is that?

How did it get there? If you have to construct it at the other end and can not use it to get there before it is created, then you must get there without any type of FTL.

Quote:
Are you familiar with the concept of the light cone? If not, the quick answer is that it is out of our time frame. For us, that distant star exists as I see it right now, and the events we see are simultaneous with the other events we see right now. For that star, the Earth exists as it did in 1860, and a totally different set of events are simultaneous (or not simultaneous). We do have different time frames, because of distance, location, gravity, and speed.

I am roughly familer yes. I am not sure I agree that it equals time travel however. If a wormhole is built in one star, then the end is built in another and they are connected then both are connected in the same year. It may still take 4 or 5 years for the lights to reach each other, but that has no effect on the wormhole.

Quote:
Yes? I'm not sure what you're saying exactly. But in the example above, if I enter A at 2pm, I leave through B at 1pm, travelling back 1 hour. If I enter back through B at 1:01pm, I'll exit A at 2:01pm.

Again you are assuming that a wormhole end can move. If it can not then it is not in a different time frame as the other end.

Tue, 2012-07-17 14:13

#39

King Shere King Shere's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Decivre wrote:
Now what [i]might[/i] be possible is if we found out that dilation isn't actually linked to light, but to something else entirely. That would make our conclusions based on our observations invalid, while still making dilation very real. Though no one is entertaining that because we haven't observed anything to make us believe this is true.

Im in favor of this. Maybe the conclusions that light causes time dilation is instead a "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/tc_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/exh_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [i]"To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult."[/i] Plutarch

Tue, 2012-07-17 15:39

#40

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Kip Thorne actually illustrated this nicely (providing the same example Arenamonterous described previously). Create two ends of a womrhole at the same point. Fly one out to Pluto and back. The end of the wormhole that flew out, thanks to time dilation, will have 'aged' less than the one here. If the fixed end of the wormhole is anchored to 2pm, the travelling side now opens to 1pm.

Assuming two things: that wormholes can be moved once open, and that spacetime itself is affected by dilation.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Well yes, per Einstein, travelling faster than light is impossible (in part specifically because you would be travelling back in time, and because your mass would be greater than infinity, etc. etc.) And if that's your argument, I can't really say anything :) However, the jist of the thread is, "imagine FTL is possible ..." So if we're imagining that, we have to deal with the fact that all of this stuff that should make FTL impossible now have to be dealt with. There are ways to deal with the mass issue, because things like gates avoid actually accelerating anything. But time still remains a concern.

But it was relevant because Einstein said that [i]traditional travel[/i] cannot exceed the speed of light. He acknowledged that there may very well be non-traditional means of superluminal speed, which bypass the problem. And many have come up with theories regarding that (Alcubierre drives and wormholes being the two I can think of, the latter being proposed by Einstein himself). So even in a world where the human race breaks the speed of light, that doesn't mean we have to prove Einstein wrong or violate causality to do it. Look at Battletech!

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Yes, this is true. If you want to say, as GM, points A and B are already "touching" and we can create a wormhole without time issues, I think that would be okay. The problem inevitably rises that GMs want to connect now to points C through Z, and assume that adding a fourth spatial dimension means EVERYTHING is linked, which isn't reasonable. So if you want to say that these particular two points are already proximal, you're right, and I agree. Otherwise, the issue still stands. (And I agree, intentionally shaping the universe to create that proximity would be 'a tad hard' :P)

Well, they don't necessarily have to be too close, just the distance through the wormhole has to be shorter than the traditional distance from one point to another. There could very well be distance within the wormhole that is significant. Imagine that a wormhole connected the Solar system with a system in a distant galaxy. The wormhole itself might be a few light years long (and take a damn long time to traverse), but still be [i]vastly[/i] shorter than the traditional distance between this galaxy and that one. "Close" is a relative concept (Ha! Pun!).

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Absolutely. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what would happen that first moment you 'added a gate' to the network; that moment of light cones suddenly flooding into each other.

Of course, this is one piece of special relativity where I've always wondered whether Einstein was wrong. I think he assumed too much importance out of the speed of light. I have no reason to doubt that dilation is correlative to the speed of light, but I've always thought it weird that he assumed that causality also has to be tied to it.

King Shere wrote:
Im in favor of this. Maybe the conclusions that light causes time dilation is instead a "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

Imagine how awesome it would be if we found out that the speed of dilation (what I shall now call the theoretical concept that dilation and light are not necessarily tied together) is variable and can be affected by various means. The possibilities suddenly become limitless. [list][*]Ships that can create high-dilation fields around themselves to render FTL possible. [*]Incubation tubes that can create low-dilation fields and allow you to retard the aging process. [*]Dilation weapons that can slow a target to such a point that they are effectively frozen in time.[/list] That would be pretty boss.

—

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]

Tue, 2012-07-17 15:40

#41

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

It's discussions like this that make me love being a geek.

—

"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Tue, 2012-07-17 20:20

#42

King Shere King Shere's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

I think that even when the theoretical concept that dilation and light are not necessarily tied together is proven true, empirical protocol/methods of the old theoretical concept would still be sufficiently accurate in most cases due to the observed correlation. Sort of like lightning actually striking from below is still described as lightning striking from above, and yet prevented. But it yes it would be awesome if it was possible to somehow modify the time dilation effect. -- Movable worm gates might be utilized as powerful propulsion methods. one gate is placed inside a gravity well with mass For example:gate A: on Earth & 50 meter underwater. Gate B is in space & attached to a spaceships "rear". When A opens the sheer force of gravity will push water/matter into it, causing a thrust like phenomena at gate B.

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/tc_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/exh_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [i]"To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult."[/i] Plutarch

Tue, 2012-07-17 20:56

#43

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Gates are mobile, or at least not fixed in space-time. Think about it.

—

As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Tue, 2012-07-17 21:02

#44

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

King Shere wrote:
I think that even when the theoretical concept that dilation and light are not necessarily tied together is proven true, empirical protocol/methods of the old theoretical concept would still be sufficiently accurate in most cases due to the observed correlation.

True. It may very well be that in standard experimental circumstances, the speed of dilation is damn near, or even exactly the same as, the speed of light. But if adjustable, could change the face of space physics as we know it. You know what else would be insane? You know how some scientists are claiming that the new boson that we just discovered might not actually be the Higgs, but an imposter? How crazy-awesome would it be if we accidentally discovered the "Dilaton", the particle responsible for time dilation?

King Shere wrote:
Movable worm gates might be utilized as powerful propulsion methods. one gate is placed inside a gravity well with mass For example:gate A: on Earth & 50 meter underwater. Gate B is in space & attached to a spaceships "rear". When A opens the sheer force of gravity will push water/matter into it, causing a thrust like phenomena at gate B.

What becomes more insane is that because a wormhole is just a bending of spacetime, all forces existent within spacetime flow through them as well. Which means that if you opened a wormhole underwater on Earth, then Earth's gravitic and magnetic fields would come spilling out behind that ship as well. Water pressure would likely be enough to push the water through, so your plan would still work, but that ship might have to make an effort to avoid being pulled partway into that wormhole, or to get away from the wormhole after the water extraction was finished. Plus damn, how disorienting would it be to suddenly have 1G of gravity suddenly appear behind your ship while you're sitting in micrograv or an artificial well?

—

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]

Tue, 2012-07-17 22:15

#45

Seekerofshadowlight Seekerofshadowlight's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Gates are mobile, or at least not fixed in space-time. Think about it.

I am not sure sure they are. Noe one has been able to move a gate, they barely understand the,m and I am more of the idea that you can not move a point once it is made.

Tue, 2012-07-17 22:22

#46

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Seekerofshadowlight wrote:
NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Gates are mobile, or at least not fixed in space-time. Think about it.
I am not sure sure they are. Noe one has been able to move a gate, they barely understand the,m and I am more of the idea that you can not move a point once it is made.

You didn't think about it. A TITAN warbot ate your stack and all backups. Is any point in space fixed? Is Mars not moving? What about Saturn? Where are the Gates? What about the ones on the 'other' side? Gates are destructible (even if temporarily)...

—

As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Tue, 2012-07-17 22:36

#47

Seekerofshadowlight Seekerofshadowlight's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Seekerofshadowlight wrote:
NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Gates are mobile, or at least not fixed in space-time. Think about it.
I am not sure sure they are. Noe one has been able to move a gate, they barely understand the,m and I am more of the idea that you can not move a point once it is made.
You didn't think about it. A TITAN warbot ate your stack and all backups. Is any point in space fixed? Is Mars not moving? What about Saturn? Where are the Gates? What about the ones on the 'other' side? Gates are destructible (even if temporarily)...

I indeed did think about it and I disagree. Yes the worlds move, but this has no impact upon the gate or the wormhole as they are already linked so its time frame is set. I do not think for instance you could uproot a gate and say move it from mars to the systems edge, doing so would disconnect it from the system I feel. Having a world moving does nothing to effect a time frame already established as the network is in sync.

Tue, 2012-07-17 22:57

#48

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Seekerofshadowlight wrote:
You didn't think about it. A TITAN warbot ate your stack and all backups. Is any point in space fixed? Is Mars not moving? What about Saturn? Where are the Gates? What about the ones on the 'other' side? Gates are destructible (even if temporarily)...

I indeed did think about it and I disagree. Yes the worlds move, but this has no impact upon the gate or the wormhole as they are already linked so its time frame is set. I do not think for instance you could uproot a gate and say move it from mars to the systems edge, doing so would disconnect it from the system I feel. Having a world moving does nothing to effect a time frame already established as the network is in sync.[/quote] Your imagination is sadly limited. What do you mean by time frame? Define Solar System Edge. Is it the orbit of Pluto? The edge of the Heliosphere? Oort Cloud? Where the Sun's gravity is overcome by other gravitational forces? Imagine a gate on a planet, say, Mars. If according to you, its not moving... Imagine that planet is ejected; becoming an rogue planet. Read this link: http://www.eclipsephase.com/runaway-exoplanets Is that gate magically disconnected? What is the clock speed on that planet? By Arenamontanus's (and most scientifically-savvy people I know), its going to be dramatically different when compared to the clock speed in Sol. Anyways, on page 38 of Gatecrashing, its is noted a Gate is operational on such a rogue planet. With that, I infer that gates are NOT disconnected when ejected from a solar system; you are incorrect.

—

As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Wed, 2012-07-18 00:48

#49

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
You didn't think about it. A TITAN warbot ate your stack and all backups. Is any point in space fixed? Is Mars not moving? What about Saturn? Where are the Gates? What about the ones on the 'other' side? Gates are destructible (even if temporarily)...

Actually, this is an age old science/philosophy question, dating back to forever. If something is fixed in reference to a moving object, is it moving or fixed? Because the pandora gates are fixed in reference to the planet they are on. That much is obvious. It's very possible that they have effectively been anchored to the orbiting structure, and are therefore effectively "immobile". Fixors work similarly. They anchor themselves in a fixed position relative to the gravity well acting strongest upon them. So are they fixed, or not?

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Your imagination is sadly limited. What do you mean by time frame? Define Solar System Edge. Is it the orbit of Pluto? The edge of the Heliosphere? Oort Cloud? Where the Sun's gravity is overcome by other gravitational forces? Imagine a gate on a planet, say, Mars. If according to you, its not moving... Imagine that planet is ejected; becoming an rogue planet. Read this link: http://www.eclipsephase.com/runaway-exoplanets Is that gate magically disconnected? What is the clock speed on that planet? By Arenamontanus's (and most scientifically-savvy people I know), its going to be dramatically different when compared to the clock speed in Sol. Anyways, on page 38 of Gatecrashing, its is noted a Gate is operational on such a rogue planet. With that, I infer that gates are NOT disconnected when ejected from a solar system; you are incorrect.

By the frame of reference for that gate, it is still fixed to the gravity well of the planet. About the only way I could see a gate being "moved" would be to destroy the gravity well it is anchored to (destroy the planet). At which point the question becomes whether it suddenly becomes mobile, or it simply auto-anchors itself to the next strongest gravity well in its vicinity (likely the star, or a neighboring body like a moon; or if it's already on a moon, the planet that moon was orbiting). One thing I think should be noted is that the books make reference to the fact that gate coordinates are extremely massive files… immense enough to be daunting for even modern storage space. My guess is that this is because the coordinates actually contain the exact means of calculating another gate's precise location, culminating in massive amounts of data about the anchoring body's orbit, the orbit of it's parent body, the orbit around the local star, that star's orbit through the galaxy, and the galaxy's drift through the greater cosmos. Such data likely takes so much precision, that it's very possible that if the anchoring body is thrown off its usual trajectory with enough force to completely render those coordinates inaccurate, it might be disconnected from the network. However, if it was naturally drifting into an orphan trajectory, then the gates likely have that data already stored, and have already compensated for the day that the planet/moon goes rogue.

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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, 2012-07-18 00:55

#50

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Faster then Light methods.

Seekerofshadowlight wrote:
NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Gates are mobile, or at least not fixed in space-time. Think about it.
I am not sure sure they are. Noe one has been able to move a gate, they barely understand the,m and I am more of the idea that you can not move a point once it is made.

They can move. Or at least they can be seen to be capable of moving. The Discord gate has been moved since its discovery. It was moved from its previous position on Eris' surface down to the bottom of the crater formed when they accidentally made it go boom. And there is the brief mention of a gate moving itselfs somewhere else in Gatecrashing. I cannot seem to find the reference though. It was something like 'we sent a probe through the find the missing crashers, we found their gate severed corpses where our reports said the gate was, but the gate was actually 15m down thataways (I am paraphrasing)".

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Wed, 2012-07-18 01:03

#51

Decivre

Re: Faster then Light methods.

CodeBreaker wrote:
They can move. Or at least they can be seen to be capable of moving. The Discord gate has been moved since its discovery. It was moved from its previous position on Eris' surface down to the bottom of the crater formed when they accidentally made it go boom. And there is the brief mention of a gate moving itselfs somewhere else in Gatecrashing. I cannot seem to find the reference though. It was something like 'we sent a probe through the find the missing crashers, we found their gate severed corpses where our reports said the gate was, but the gate was actually 15m down thataways (I am paraphrasing)".

That proves that they can move themselves. Or that the gate network is to some degree autonomous. It says nothing about whether the gates are actually mobile per se outside of the whims of the network, or whether people like us can affect the gate network's motions. But the Discord gate is a crazy interesting issue, because that gate was effectively annihilated. Apparently, once a gate has been established, it's there for good. That's kind of a scary thing, when you think about it.

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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]

Eclipse Phase

Faster then Light methods.

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