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Yej (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
#101: Mar 30th 2011 at 10:16:13 AM

100,000 years. Possibly more, because you can use the time travel to continually bootstrap yourself back in time. grin

edited 30th Mar '11 10:16:48 AM by Yej

RTaco Since: Jul, 2009
#102: Mar 30th 2011 at 12:16:46 PM

Poop.

How could a galaxy-wide Portal Network be done with internal consistency? Can it be done at all (not in reality, but in any kind of logical setting)?

Yej (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
#103: Mar 30th 2011 at 12:18:44 PM

Ignore Relativity, and all fans who complain about it. That's worked for pretty much every Space Opera-style show in existence, up to and including Star Trek.

storyyeller More like giant cherries from Appleloosa Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
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#104: Mar 30th 2011 at 12:29:44 PM

^^ It can't be done consistently without rewriting all physics discovered in the last 200 years.

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RTaco Since: Jul, 2009
#105: Mar 30th 2011 at 2:55:10 PM

I don't suppose there's a way I could drop relativity while still conforming to the evidence that it exists for it? Like going, "Oh, that whole relativity thing is bull, but I can see why you thought it was the case".

Maybe I should just have the holes connect to other universes, not other points in ours. The plot would still work in that case, unless there's some huge consequences I'm not seeing.

nrjxll Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Not war
#106: Mar 30th 2011 at 3:52:06 PM

[up][up]The folks at Orion's Arm have argued that it could be possible to create traversable wormholes without violating causality. You may want to give their site a look. Of course, I haven't bothered to try and figure out if their math really holds up or not, but they do reference some usual papers on the topic.

If they're right, it'd be the closest thing you could get.

Edit: That should be "useful papers", not "usual papers".

edited 30th Mar '11 7:42:40 PM by nrjxll

Archereon Ave Imperator from Everywhere. Since: Oct, 2010
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#107: Mar 30th 2011 at 7:08:34 PM

Theoretically, if you had particles or mediums of communications that were exceptions to special relativity, then you could conceivably avoid causality issues and minimize the damage done to special relativity. Having "special" reference frames (which Special relativity forbids in its first postulate) causally isolated from the rest of space time except when the two time frames you're communicating between are, for lack of a better word "synched", keeps causality intact while enabling FTL communication. I believe that's because the two special frames act as a middle-man and cause the FTL communication to occur as if the two communicating reference frames had the same world-line.

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NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
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#108: Mar 31st 2011 at 7:30:02 AM

Yeah, the easiest way to do away with FTL = time travel is to have a special reference frame. Basically, the laws of physics work differently in hyperspace, which short-circuits all the usual causality madness.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Archereon Ave Imperator from Everywhere. Since: Oct, 2010
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#109: Mar 31st 2011 at 8:59:21 AM

Native Jovian: It's not necessarily hyperspace, it's just an area of space where special relativity's first postulate no longer applies. When the speed of light is no longer the same for all observers, time dilation doesn't occur, and you can go faster than light.

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NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
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#110: Mar 31st 2011 at 10:17:58 AM

I'm defining hyperspace as an area of space where special relativity's first postulate no longer applies.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
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#111: Mar 31st 2011 at 12:49:48 PM

The problem is that special relativity follows from Maxwell's Laws of electromagnetism. So you're going to have some issues trying to work out the physics of hyperspace.

^^^^^^ That's the kind of thing that professional theoretical physicists spend their time doing, mostly unsuccessfully. It's not easy.

edited 31st Mar '11 12:56:28 PM by storyyeller

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Yej (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
#112: Mar 31st 2011 at 1:04:55 PM

So... to have a working FTL drive, you have to re-define light itself? grin

storyyeller More like giant cherries from Appleloosa Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
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#113: Mar 31st 2011 at 1:06:17 PM

Either that or have everything disintegrate when it goes too fast.

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Yej (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
RTaco Since: Jul, 2009
#115: Apr 4th 2011 at 12:07:10 PM

@ Archeron: Could you explain that to me in a little more detail?

And something else: What could cause our sun to start dying prematurely? I'm looking for any way to render our solar system uninhabitable while still giving humanity some time to prepare.

Also, how long would it take for selective breeding to significantly alter the behavior of humans?

edited 4th Apr '11 12:08:32 PM by RTaco

Yej (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
#116: Apr 4th 2011 at 12:29:10 PM

1) One of the fundamental assumptions that underpins Relativity is that the laws of physics do not change based on how fast you are moving. Obviously, if that's not true, the rest of it, including No FTL, isn't necessarily true. And once you've said the accepted laws of physics "aren't necessarily true" that gives you license to make stuff up. grin

2) If this is modern humans, there aren't any RL ways of doing that. We don't have the tech to get anyone out of the solar system with a reasonable chance of surviving, and probably won't for the next 50 years or so.

3) 10+ generations? Sounds like something that works At The Speed Of Plot.

edited 4th Apr '11 12:37:12 PM by Yej

FrodoGoofballCoTV from Colorado, USA Since: Jan, 2001
#117: Apr 4th 2011 at 12:33:21 PM

And something else: What could cause our sun to start dying prematurely? I'm looking for any way to render our solar system uninhabitable while still giving humanity some time to prepare.
Well, a collision with a smaller star, but that might not give you much time at all. Maybe something happens to the sun chemically, some isotope that acts as a catalyst - maybe if you dumped enough plutonium in it. But you'd probably need a lot. Maybe a planet containing a lot of high - atomic mass isotopes collides with the sun?

Also, how long would it take for selective breeding to significantly alter the behavior of humans?
I heard somewhere that it's on the order of 100 generations, however this study suggests maybe much less, depending on what the change was and how the breeding was done.

Yej (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
#118: Apr 4th 2011 at 12:38:38 PM

Maybe a planet containing a lot of high - atomic mass isotopes collides with the sun?
Nope. You'd need 15 Jupiters to even get up to 1% of the mass of the Sun. And actually getting the 15 Jupiters there is going to play marbles with the orbits of all the other planets in the system.

edited 4th Apr '11 12:39:52 PM by Yej

FrodoGoofballCoTV from Colorado, USA Since: Jan, 2001
#119: Apr 4th 2011 at 12:58:56 PM

You'd need 15 Jupiters to even get up to 1% of the mass of the Sun.
Which would be more than the mass of the most massive extrasolar planet ever detected, but smaller than the smallest star.
  • Maybe a mini black hole fell into the sun which was too small to disrupt the orbits of the planets catastrophically, but from slight perterbations, the scientists have calculated its mass, calculated how long it would take to accrete enough material to cause a serious problem for the sun, etc. But it's also a long shot. The smallest black hole known is ~3 solar masses.
  • Maybe it's a subtle change. The sun is actually a variable star, but it is about the least variable variable star we know of. Maybe it starts varying more, or permanently gains or looses brightness. Not enough to destroy life, but enough that the Earth's climate will shift problematically over the next X years.

Archereon Ave Imperator from Everywhere. Since: Oct, 2010
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#120: Apr 4th 2011 at 2:34:04 PM

Giving up special relativity is really the hardest you can go with FTL of any sort. If you say that special relativity is, for all known practical purposes beyond Faster Than Light, an accurate model of the real world's functioning, than it doesn't do nearly as much damage to physics. (Though that would add a whole new level of complexity to phyiscs; something comparable to the jump between Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics)

R Taco: It would have to be a human caused/alien caused disaster for the solar system to become suddenly uninhabitable.

edited 4th Apr '11 2:36:18 PM by Archereon

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Yej (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
#121: Apr 4th 2011 at 3:04:37 PM

Yes it does. S/GR says that FTL travel involves timetravel. The only way around that is to abandon SR's premises, the easiest being that time and space are interchangable.

RTaco Since: Jul, 2009
#122: Apr 5th 2011 at 12:25:54 PM

I'm still a bit unsure on how special reference frames would work. Is there an analogy or something?

The solar system death wouldn't be with modern humans, but it wouldn't be too far in the future, either. Just advanced enough to get us out of here alive on some Generation Ships.

I was originally thinking of a man-made disaster, but now it seems too unlikely that we'd ever do anything where the risk of ruining the sun even exists. A collision sounds like it might work, but how far in advance would we be able to see it coming?

edited 5th Apr '11 12:29:59 PM by RTaco

Yej (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
#123: Apr 5th 2011 at 2:35:36 PM

A "special reference frame" basically means that some portion of physics changes depending on how fast you move. Maybe light's speed isn't absolute, and increases if the source moves. Or maybe the electric force gets weaker/stronger if you start moving. Something along those lines. A good one might be the idea that there actually is an Aether, and it causes Space Friction. (The experiments that produced Maxwell's equations and, later Relativity, basically busted that exact premise, so you stop the physicists/pedants assuming it's Like Reality, Unless Noted.)

About the collision; Well, who would be causing the collision? What would be colliding? Remember that the masses and distances are, literally, astronomical. (The speeds are also massive compared to human scales, but the distances are massive-er.) The bare minimum you'd need to disrupt the Sun's reactions is an object on the same order of size as the Sun itself. That's going to be very hard to hide.

edited 5th Apr '11 2:36:50 PM by Yej

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#124: Apr 6th 2011 at 6:30:00 AM

^ The main problem is that you'd also have to rewrite the laws of electromagnetism. Which of course affects everything from light and electricity all the way down to chemical bonds.

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Archereon Ave Imperator from Everywhere. Since: Oct, 2010
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#125: Apr 6th 2011 at 8:05:08 AM

Really, the best thing you can do is make a Hand Wave. Special Relativity has quite a bit of supporting evidence behind it. Most sci-fi readers will be satisfied with an acknowledgement of the FTL=time travel issue, and the one's that won't aren't interested in the type of story you're telling.

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