austenandrews

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? That is an astoundingly interesting faq. Many thanks for the link.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Out of curiosity, does anyone here actually know the math? I'm curious about the degree to which these discussions are oversimplified to the point of being largely meaningless, a la the "instant creation" period of nanotech speculation. When we talk about actual wormholes, what does the math say about what a "traversible" one looks like?

Re: If you Had to Pick, ONE (already) Setting, to Run in, What is it?

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? As I understand it, the wormhole we're discussing isn't a tunnel from one point in spacetime to another point in spacetime. We're talking about a persistent wormhole, which means each end exists along a world-line through time (if I'm using that term correctly). So instead of a conduit from point A to point B, it's more like a ribbon cable connecting slot A and slot B (where the "slots" are the world-lines of each end). Any given point along slot A is connected to some point along slot B. The scenario is that, due to time dilation, there are fewer points along slot B. So if slot A and slot B converge (i.e., the ship returns to Earth) the futuremost point of slot B is not connected to the futuremost point of slot A, but to some point farther back along slot A. That point corresponds to Gate A in an earlier time.

Re: If you Had to Pick, ONE (already) Setting, to Run in, What is it? For a moment I read the thread title as "If you had to pick one setting to ruin..." Which could be fun in itself. I'd probably pick Star Wars, mainly because I always wanted to run a Star Wars game but never got around to it.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ???

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? I'm unclear what scenario you're describing. Gate B starts on Earth in 2100. It spends 1000 years of Earth time in space. It returns in 3100. It doesn't exist on Earth in the interim.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Sure, but I thought we were trying to reconcile things to be playable, thus without time machines.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Or, during transit, it's a wormhole where time runs twice as fast on one end as it does on the other. On the ship side it'd be brighter and hotter and you'd probably want to put it in an airlock, because I suspect the faster time flow will simulate higher air pressure and cause a strong wind to rush into the ship. It's ugly to contemplate what would happen to a human body that straddled the two ends, so you'd best have some length in the wormhole with a graduated time difference. Move the shipborne end fast enough and it's practically a stasis machine from the Earthly perspective. Bring it back to Earth and the time flows match again, with no time differential, so no time machine.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ???

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ???

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Say time runs half as fast for the STL ship than for the planet. When the ship receives signals from the planet, they're twice as fast as normal signals. The ship hears chipmunks. The ship's signals are half as fast to the planet - they hear a record player running slow. When the ship slows down at its destination, the signal frequencies normalize out. No time travel required.

Re: First Known Binary Star Is Discovered to Be a Triplet, Quadruplet, Quintuplet, Se Doesn't sound like a lot of hope for terrestrial planets.

Re: First Known Binary Star Is Discovered to Be a Triplet, Quadruplet, Quintuplet, Se Out of curiosity, how likely is it that gravitationally-bound stars could have planets? Is it equivalent to moons circling a planet circling the sun, or are the stellar forces much greater? I'd always heard binary stars had very little chance of developing stable planetary orbits.

Re: December 27, 2004: The Day Earth Survived the Greatest Stellar Attack -Ever Ah, my old enemy Magnetar is up to his tricks again!

Re: Quantum Propulsion Machine May Lead To Propulsion Without Change In Mass Evidently it isolates a magnetic field from the quantum vacuum, so it's got no reaction mass. It magnetizes space. No worries - by the time we figure out how to make a working Fiegel drive, Casimir negative-generators will be commonplace. Just because it's scary doesn't mean it's impossible.

Re: What are the chances of multiple sentient races to evolve/be created on one world It's a matter of resources. If there are enough to support multiple races, there's no reason to think they couldn't evolve side-by-side. Especially if they evolve in different environments - humans and mermen, for example, wouldn't necessarily be competing for the same resources, nor would forest elves and underground dwarves. Remember of course that territory is a resource; if populations get big enough to crowd into the domain of another race, that's an evolutionary pressure. The result could be cooperation/symbiosis, like herding species on the savanna (but note, though they share the same grassland, again there is plenty to go around). So I'd say the main variable is the abundance of resources, including land.

Re: Quantum Propulsion Machine May Lead To Propulsion Without Change In Mass Reactionless drive?

Re: Saturn’s Hexagon May Be Solar System’s Coolest Mystery Hexes are gone? I haven't followed the new edition of the rules.

Re: Saturn’s Hexagon May Be Solar System’s Coolest Mystery Pretty sure it's come up before. One word: Megascale.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Watched parts of Harry Potter movies on TV with the kids. It's strange to think how long they've been around and how many times I've seen various ones. I'm not even a big fan but they're solidly embedded in pop culture now. I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time. I'm up to the middle of season three.

Re: YACttTOR (Yet Another Challenge to the Theory of Relativity): Space-Time no More The article in the OP is talking about extremely high energies. As it says, the theory won't be accepted until/unless it matches current observed data, which includes time dilation.

Re: The myth of the starship I'm not sure using up the solar system's resources will ever be an issue, as such. Theoretically it's possible, but the level of technology required to do so puts us so far beyond our current world culture that I'm not at all sure you can predict our motivations. You can posit artificial limits like "pesky armed inhabitants" but really, at what point does "mining another star system" become easier than "making do with what we have" or "getting rid of the pesky armed inhabitants"?

Re: The myth of the starship I'm on the bubble about manned interstellar flight. Part of me believes we'll eventually launch terrariums to other stars. Part of me wonders whether interstellar travel will be relevant if and when we have the technology.

Re: The myth of the starship I wouldn't say he's splitting hairs so much as reframing the terminology. Which I think is a worthwhile exercise, as a way to look at an issue from a different perspective. If we call them "factories" or "progenifers" or "interstellar habitrails" instead of "ships" we conjure a different set of assumptions and connotations. He's simply doing the same thing in reverse - instead of evoking new associations, he's questioning the ones we already have.