Quote

Originally posted by Githon:
**
Generally, the popular way in science fiction to build a hypergate link is to build a gate on one side, send people through it, and then have them build one on the other side, leaving them unable to return until they finish.

**

Ah. Interesting. So you interpret the hypergates as being one-way conduits. I assumed you needed both ends in place and operating in order to travel anywhere at all--just like you couldn't go across a bridge until it was completed.

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Quote

Originally posted by toadspittle:
**Ah. Interesting. So you interpret the hypergates as being one-way conduits. I assumed you needed both ends in place and operating in order to travel anywhere at all--just like you couldn't go across a bridge until it was completed.

**

The other stock SF approach was to send a "slow ship", usually automated, to set up the far end. If you are using modern-theory stabilized wormholes you pretty much have to use this method; the wormhole exists between the "generators" and all you can do is drag one end around. Interestingly enough, if you take the end you are dragging around and accelerate it to relativistic velocities you can get some veeery interesting causality violations.

Well, it beats jumping into a Heechee shuttle and seeing where it takes you.

Okay; can't leave it here. There are really two options to fictional FTL. One is to stay within known physics, or at least use only that which hasn't yet been convincingly disproven. The results are often intriguing and even baroque but the story begins to be about the drive, not about the action. Physics has a nasty tendency to point out just how much fuel you need to lift from a gravity well, for instance. Ships look a lot less like x-wings and a lot more like Saturn V's when you do the math.

If you want your people to be able to jump into a ship and zip over to another star as easily as taking I-50 up to Tahoe, all you can do is give them a black box that "makes the ship go fast." The creative part is making an interesting special effect to go with it. I have a certain fondness for the hand-wound coils of Williamson's "Geodesics" but cracked dilithium crystals have a charm as well. Not to mention, say, the glowing pile of sticks that is the Sheewash drive, or the creeping Blind Spot, or the morning-after suffered by the Pride of Chanur with every jump, or even the relativistic nighmares of the Forever War (a facinating concept for a plug, by the way). Or the mad simplicity of the Bergenholm, where the ship without inertia simply goes whatever speed the thrusters will take it, and C is no more remarkable then any other number.

Or the bloater drive. The ship gets very, very, very large; large until planets are tiny specks next to it and the stars a few miles apart. Then it trundles up to the proper star on maneuvering thrusters, turns off the bloater drive and comes back to normal size and space-time. Harry Harrison, by the way; "Bill, the Galactic Hero."

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Butterfly
My husband gave his promise
He would return in the joyous season,
When robin red-breasts rebuild their nests.

Quote

Originally posted by Commander Arashi:
**If you want your people to be able to jump into a ship and zip over to another star as easily as taking I-50 up to Tahoe, all you can do is give them a black box that "makes the ship go fast." The creative part is making an interesting special effect to go with it. I have a certain fondness for the hand-wound coils of Williamson's "Geodesics" but cracked dilithium crystals have a charm as well. Not to mention, say, the glowing pile of sticks that is the Sheewash drive, or the creeping Blind Spot, or the morning-after suffered by the Pride of Chanur with every jump, or even the relativistic nighmares of the Forever War (a facinating concept for a plug, by the way). Or the mad simplicity of the Bergenholm, where the ship without inertia simply goes whatever speed the thrusters will take it, and C is no more remarkable then any other number.

Or the bloater drive. The ship gets very, very, very large; large until planets are tiny specks next to it and the stars a few miles apart. Then it trundles up to the proper star on maneuvering thrusters, turns off the bloater drive and comes back to normal size and space-time. Harry Harrison, by the way; "Bill, the Galactic Hero."

**

Kull wahad! I am profoundly stirred! You are obviously well-read in SF, and an amateur theoretical physicist at that! From E.E. Smith's Lensman series to Larry Niven's Ringworld , you truly know your stuff. And you mentioned the Heechee, to boot. Wow.

Okay, rant over. Sorry, folks, it's just that I recognized and remembered 90% of the stuff that he mentioned, and I didn't even know I remembered it.

One of my personal favorites is the spacefolding drive, as it has been previously explained. However, Hyperspace has its merits -- and some serious limitations. I recommend Asimov's I, Robot , for a decent description of that, and his Foundation and Earth for gravitic and inertialless ships.

When dealing with Hyperspace as it is understood now, you have to remember that we exist in a 4-dimensional continuum. That is, 3 spatial dimensions and 1 temporal dimension. Hyperspace assumes that there is at least one more spatial dimension. Most theories include five to seven extra spatial dimensions, and some call for eleven or more. These extra dimensions are supposed to be wrapped up into a ball with a diameter of the Planck Length, which, if I remember correctly, is 10^-32 cm: really really really really really really REALLY REALLY small. This ball is in physical contact with EVERY POINT on the conventional 4D spacetime continuum. Kinda weird, huh? Now, a Hyperspatial Drive would cause the ship to travel through these extra dimensions, and pop out whereever it was told to.

Of course, one begins to wonder what would happen if it was not space that possessed the extra dimensions, but time... What a difference two more could make...

Good luck, and God bless,
-- spacecowboy

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Suddenly, the little scoutship disappeared and then reappeared right behind the alien warfleet. The gravitic ship's captain hailed the armada. "You are going to be destroyed, but I will give you a choice as to how you want to spend eternity: big pieces, little pieces, or quarks?"
Dead silence.
"Quarks it is, then."

Quote

Originally posted by spacecowboy:
** <snip>
**

You forget M theory wrt Hyperspace. What if our universe is merely the intersection point of two 5-branes? The intersection of two 1-branes, or "strings" in superstring theory, results in a point. The intersection of two 2-branes results in a line. The intersection of two 3-branes, a plane. Two 4-branes, a volume. Two 5-branes, then would be a 4-dimensional time-space volume. This provides additional possibilities. Our universe is no longer a distinct entity, but rather an artificial construction. What happens if you change how the 5-branes intersect?

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Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
-Steve Jobs

Quote

Originally posted by Quantum Transcendence:
What happens if you change how the 5-branes intersect?

You disappear

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass :

Quote

He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: and what do you think
he's dreaming about?'

Alice said `Nobody can guess that.'

Why, about YOU!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. And if he left off dreaming about you, where do
you suppose you'd be?'

`Where I am now, of course,' said Alice.

Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. You'd be
nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!'

If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, you'd go
out--bang!--just like a candle!'

-Vaumnou

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Did you know that 63.8% of quoted statistics are made up on the spot?
"He's too late. SEE?!? THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!!! Hurry up!"

Quote

Originally posted by Vaumnou:
** <snip>
-Vaumnou

**

A far easier explanation is just this:

Take the equation E=mc^2. Because it is an equation, both sides are equivalent. In other words, anything with mass contains a rest energy equal to the mass mulitplied by the speed of light squared. So if you increase one side of the equation, what do you have to do to the other side? Increase it. So as something goes faster, it gets morenergy, and therefore it must become more massive. To prove this point, which would you rather get hit in the head with, a ball going 5mph, or one going 75mph? The slower one because it has less energy, and will therefore hurt less when it imparts that energy into your face.

Now, technically, the equation is E=(gamma)mc^2, where (gamma)=1/sqrt(1-v^2/C^2), which is what takes into account your speed, and is also why increases in mass aren't noticable until you approach the speed of light, because V^2/C^2 is so very near 0 at the speeds we are used to dealing with.

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"Damn, everybody wants something up their ass today! Yeah, I'm cool like that." - forge

Quote

Originally posted by toadspittle:
**Ah. Interesting. So you interpret the hypergates as being one-way conduits. I assumed you needed both ends in place and operating in order to travel anywhere at all--just like you couldn't go across a bridge until it was completed.

**

Sort of like firing a man out of a cannon - you can aim him wherever you like, but he can't fire himself back until he builds a second cannon.

CHeers,
Guapo

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"Quote it, paraphrase it, soak it in peanut oil and set it on fire. I don't mind in the least." - forge
Founding Member of WORRPBOITAMPSH
(url="http://"http://guapohq.jonpearse.net")GuapoHQ - for all your Guapo needs(/url)
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Quote

Originally posted by Russell Quintero:
**A far easier explanation is just this:

Take the equation E=mc^2. Because it is an equation, both sides are equivalent. In other words, anything with mass contains a rest energy equal to the mass mulitplied by the speed of light squared. So if you increase one side of the equation, what do you have to do to the other side? Increase it. So as something goes faster, it gets morenergy, and therefore it must become more massive. To prove this point, which would you rather get hit in the head with, a ball going 5mph, or one going 75mph? The slower one because it has less energy, and will therefore hurt less when it imparts that energy into your face.

Now, technically, the equation is E=(gamma)mc^2, where (gamma)=1/sqrt(1-v^2/C^2), which is what takes into account your speed, and is also why increases in mass aren't noticable until you approach the speed of light, because V^2/C^2 is so very near 0 at the speeds we are used to dealing with.

**

You consider ^THAT^ EASIER??? Whew. Glad I follow basic theoretical physics.

And Vaumnou, we'd actually only disappear if the two 5-branes (or whatever they are -- the name for a brane which you don't know the dimension for is p-brane. Who says physicists don't have a sense of humor?) were to disconnect entirely. Changing the angle of the intersection, as QT suggests, is an entirely different matter.

Still, no one has answered my prompt as to multidimensional time...

------------------
Suddenly, the little scoutship disappeared and then reappeared right behind the alien warfleet. The gravitic ship's captain hailed the armada. "You are going to be destroyed, but I will give you a choice as to how you want to spend eternity: big pieces, little pieces, or quarks?"
Dead silence.
"Quarks it is, then."

It'd make meetings damned inconvenient. "Meet me at 12:00PM". "Which one?".

------------------
Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
-Steve Jobs

Quote

Originally posted by Commander Arashi:
...or even the relativistic nighmares of the Forever War (a facinating concept for a plug, by the way).

If you think that's confusing, try (url="http://"http://www.ateliervirtuel.com/uw1/")Universal War One(/url) (I'm not sure if there's an English translation already).

Anti-grav engines, artificial wormholes, time-travel... brain hurts.

Right now I don't feel up to tackling elaborate theories, but for the sake of fueling the fire some more: how about the ideas in Dan Simmons' Hyperion books (Planck space / The Void Which Binds - I admit it's pretty esoterical...) and Card's Xenocide?

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Do not adjust your mind - there is a fault in reality.

Quote

Originally posted by spacecowboy:
And Vaumnou, we'd actually only disappear if the two 5-branes (or whatever they are -- the name for a brane which you don't know the dimension for is p-brane. Who says physicists don't have a sense of humor?) were to disconnect entirely. Changing the angle of the intersection, as QT suggests, is an entirely different matter.
Still, no one has answered my prompt as to multidimensional time...

Very clever about the p-branes. Puns++
Imagine you live on Flatworld (an imaginary 2d world where individuals are 2d geometric figures). If someone outside (a 3d individual) were to lift you out of the 2d world, you would disappear to the others in that world ("go out like a candle"). You would see them disappear too.
Multidimensional time is very strange. Still, it has its theoretical benefits. (wild unsupported speculation) Einstein proved that as your velocity through space increases, your velocity through time decreases. Maybe this means that your velocity through time is being transferred into "progression" through "time" on an alternate temporal dimension (conservation of momentum). If so, then what if you can cause yourself to go backwards through that dimension? (answer: you turn into a black hole, so you don't live to tell the tale ;))
Stephen Hawking believes that a second temporal dimension proves his version of the Big Bang theory.

-Vaumnou

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Did you know that 63.8% of quoted statistics are made up on the spot?
"He's too late. SEE?!? THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!!! Hurry up!"

(This message has been edited by Vaumnou (edited 05-10-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by spacecowboy:
**You consider ^THAT^ EASIER??? Whew. Glad I follow basic theoretical physics.

And Vaumnou, we'd actually only disappear if the two 5-branes (or whatever they are -- the name for a brane which you don't know the dimension for is p-brane. Who says physicists don't have a sense of humor?) were to disconnect entirely. Changing the angle of the intersection, as QT suggests, is an entirely different matter.

Still, no one has answered my prompt as to multidimensional time...

**

My answer seemed much more straightforward to me. But then again, I am a physics major and lean towards the experimental side more than the theoretical. I find many of the theories interesting, but I don't really have time to follow them and most of them are ridiculous anyway. If it doesn't seem to correlate with the real world, I don't understand the point. Of course, I certainly won't judge the validity of any of these theories based on what is said here...

Quote

Originally posted by Vaumnou:
Maybe this means that your velocity through time is being transferred into "progression" through "time" on an alternate temporal dimension (conservation of momentum).

I don't think this would conserve momentum at all. If you were transferring energy or momentum into a dimension we couldn't measure, it would work the same as if it was using an imaginary number (unmeasurable) and this would not conserve momentum. Unless of course you were to add in something along the lines of "potential momentum" in which case it could be represented much the same way as energy is conserved in a pendulum (who's motion is represented by a real and imaginary component). An interesting idea now that I think about it, although I'm not sure about the interpertation of Einstein. It may be an interesting way of conserving momentum and energy through FTL travel, and actually making hyperspacial travel possible.

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"Damn, everybody wants something up their ass today! Yeah, I'm cool like that." - forge

Quote

Originally posted by General Rak:
(B)From what I know, the only thing that bends space-time is matter

Everything bends space-time, and when I say 'everything' I mean matter and energy.

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"Mmmmm; doughnuts!" - Socrates

Quote

Originally posted by boot:
**If you think that's confusing, try Universal War One (I'm not sure if there's an English translation already).

Anti-grav engines, artificial wormholes, time-travel... brain hurts.

Right now I don't feel up to tackling elaborate theories, but for the sake of fueling the fire some more: how about the ideas in Dan Simmons' Hyperion books (Planck space / The Void Which Binds - I admit it's pretty esoterical...) and Card's Xenocide?

**

In a "practical" vein, still think Haldman's "The Forever War" would be interesting as a plug -- each time you jump, hundreds of years pass due to time dilation, and you have a 50/50 chance of running into hostile ships whose technology is hundreds of years in advance of your own.

Even more difficult to implement would be Vernor Vinge's "Zones of Thought" from "A Fire Upon the Deep." At 2 A.M. Pacific Time I'm not sure I can summarize THAT idea!

Or...take the existing mechanism of wormholes/hypergates and create alternate universes or some variety of time travel. The question for the latter being, are eras isolated in many-worlds fashion (you can travel to "A" past but not "your" past), or might your little ship make "A Sound of Thunder"; one tiny cargo run in 2017 propagates outward to end in the fall of the Auroran Empire in 2103? I'd hate to script that, even in Nova.

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Butterfly
My husband gave his promise
He would return in the joyous season,
When robin red-breasts rebuild their nests.

Quote

Originally posted by Hudson:
**Everything bends space-time, and when I say 'everything' I mean matter and energy.

**

I didn't realize that there was a difference.

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"Damn, everybody wants something up their ass today! Yeah, I'm cool like that." - forge

Quote

Originally posted by Hudson:
**Everything bends space-time, and when I say 'everything' I mean matter and energy.

**

May I remind you, my friend, of Einstein's notorious equation, E=mc^2. Translation: Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Energy and mass are the same thing.

------------------
Suddenly, the little scoutship disappeared and then reappeared right behind the alien warfleet. The gravitic ship's captain hailed the armada. "You are going to be destroyed, but I will give you a choice as to how you want to spend eternity: big pieces, little pieces, or quarks?"
Dead silence.
"Quarks it is, then."

Quote

Originally posted by spacecowboy:
Energy and mass are the same thing.

I would dispute that. I personally think that energy and mass are FORMS of the same thing, but not literally the same. There is a fundamental difference between the energy of a ball falling off a shelf and the mass of the ball itself. You can harness the energy of the fall and use it to do something useful, but you can't "harness" the mass of the ball itself.

You can measure the amount of mass that disappears in a nuclear reaction (in grams), and multiply that by the speed of light (in meters/second) squared, to get the energy released (in Joules). However, while some mass was converted into energy, nowhere near all of it was.

They say a glass of water represents enough energy to power the U.S.A. for several hours, but, while true, this isn't actually useful. If the entire mass of the glass of water was ADDITIONAL mass (i.e. added temporarily because the object is in a high-energy state, like moving at 0.99999c), then it could be released/captured and used to power the country. However, you can't just look at the glass of water and tell it to convert itself into useful energy. There IS a way to do it, but it involves small nearby black holes, which are excruciatingly difficult to handle and very unreliable.

-Vaumnou

------------------
Did you know that 63.8% of quoted statistics are made up on the spot?
"He's too late. SEE?!? THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!!! Hurry up!"

Quote

Originally posted by Vaumnou:
**I would dispute that. I personally think that energy and mass are FORMS of the same thing, but not literally the same. There is a fundamental difference between the energy of a ball falling off a shelf and the mass of the ball itself. You can harness the energy of the fall and use it to do something useful, but you can't "harness" the mass of the ball itself.

You can measure the amount of mass that disappears in a nuclear reaction (in grams), and multiply that by the speed of light (in meters/second) squared, to get the energy released (in Joules). However, while some mass was converted into energy, nowhere near all of it was.

They say a glass of water represents enough energy to power the U.S.A. for several hours, but, while true, this isn't actually useful. If the entire mass of the glass of water was ADDITIONAL mass (i.e. added temporarily because the object is in a high-energy state, like moving at 0.99999c), then it could be released/captured and used to power the country. However, you can't just look at the glass of water and tell it to convert itself into useful energy. There IS a way to do it, but it involves small nearby black holes, which are excruciatingly difficult to handle and very unreliable.

-Vaumnou

**

Ah, but that is simply because only part of the mass was converted to energy, the rest of the energy is stored in the mass of the products. If you were to destroy all of the mass, as in an matter-antimatter reaction, all of the mass would be converted to energy, but again most of that energy would be used up to create new particles.

Regarding your ball example, the fact that all of the energy equations, such as the potential due to gravity and the kinetic energy are all reliant on the mass, it seems to imply that any work you would hope to accomplish by pushing it off of the shelf harness that same mass.

Would you care to elaborate on your reference to black holes, since I do not know of the theory of which you speak?

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"Damn, everybody wants something up their ass today! Yeah, I'm cool like that." - forge

Quote

Originally posted by Russell Quintero:
< snip>

Antimatter/matter reactions don't fit the bill because you need antimatter first! Antimatter is the #1 most expensive substance on the planet, at $62.5 trillion per gram. They think they might be able to get it down to $5 million per gram, but that hasn't happened yet. Besides that, it takes more energy to make the antimatter than you would get from the reaction, anyway (2nd law of thermodynamics).

The amount of energy that you can get by dropping the ball is limited. You probably can't get more than about 1000/c^2 grams (0.00000000000001g) of potential energy out of the ball, even though the ball has a mass of 100g.

And the black hole thing is based on Stephen Hawking's theory that any mass dropped into a black hole is eventually radiated as heat energy ('cause all objects, even black holes, have to radiate heat if they have a non-0K temperature). So if you drop a few rocks and some garbage into a (small) black hole, they will be radiated as energy. Mr. Fusion!

-Vaumnou

------------------
Did you know that 63.8% of quoted statistics are made up on the spot?
"He's too late. SEE?!? THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!!! Hurry up!"

(This message has been edited by Vaumnou (edited 05-11-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Vaumnou:
**Antimatter/matter reactions don't fit the bill because you need antimatter first! Antimatter is the #1 most expensive substance on the planet, at $62.5 trillion per gram. They think they might be able to get it down to $5 million per gram, but that hasn't happened yet. Besides that, it takes more energy to make the antimatter than you would get from the reaction, anyway (2nd law of thermodynamics).

The amount of energy that you can get by dropping the ball is limited. You probably can't get more than about 1000/c^2 grams (0.00000000000001g) of potential energy out of the ball, even though the ball has a mass of 100g.

And the black hole thing is based on Stephen Hawking's theory that any mass dropped into a black hole is eventually radiated as heat energy ('cause all objects, even black holes, have to radiate heat if they have a non-0K temperature). So if you drop a few rocks and some garbage into a (small) black hole, they will be radiated as energy. Mr. Fusion!

-Vaumnou

**

Nature does not care about the cost, nor do the laws of physics. The reason it takes more energy to create than you could get from the process of annihilation is that to create it you must convert energy into both a particle and an antiparticle to maintain certain quantum conservation laws. Of course, the particles don't do us much good, just the antiparticles.

As for the ball, it doesn't give off much energy because when it stops it still retains its rest mass.

From what I understand of blackholes, they convert a great deal of the matter falling into them into EM energy in their accretion disks, but much of it still falls within the event horizon, and then increases the mass of the blackhole, again not a perfect transformation.

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"Damn, everybody wants something up their ass today! Yeah, I'm cool like that." - forge