masternerdguy
Inner Shadow Test Alliance Please Ignore
1804
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Posted - 2016.08.07 12:27:51 -
[1] - Quote
elitatwo wrote: Not my fault you didn't understand most of it, it is fine.
EVE physics is totally different than real world physics. Drag in vacuum, warp fields based on friction, and violation of the quantum no-communication theorem. Not to mention the inconsistent and bizarre ages and masses when you show info on celestials. And there's a lot more wrong than that. But it's just a game.
However, you made some comments about the real world.
Lets look at these one by one.
First, in an earlier post you're incorrect about the time warp effect. Warp field equations in general relativity allow backwards time travel, so they may not even be physically meaningful once quantum mechanics (which implies backwards time travel is impossible) is combined with general relativity.
Secondly, assuming you could create such a warp field it would be trivial to make the locally flat internal region large enough to avoid any harm to the ship. The space inside the field follows a free fall geodesic, so you wouldn't experience any g forces from the acceleration of the warp bubble itself. The edges of the field are obviously extremely dangerous due to tidal forces but I've already addressed that.
Finally, under realistic initial conditions you wouldn't be able to just turn on your warp drive and go anywhere. You'd have to send someone ahead of you the slow way (sub-light speeds) to prepare the space the warp field will pass through in advance. Once this is done, you can initiate your warp drive and travel arbitrarily fast towards your destination. This preserves causality since someone had to get there the hard way and set things up for you, so your warp field never gets out of their light cone.
Actually, EVE was brilliant here. There is a chronicle about how the Old Man's Star gate was built that involves someone getting there the slow, hard way to build the stargate at that end. That's probably very realistic. So think of a warp field more as a train track than a Star Trek warp drive. Once the track is made any ship that has a warp drive can ride the track to the destination.
And that brings us to your point about how a bubble couldn't "catch" a warping vessel. This is incorrect, under realistic conditions a warping vessel probably needs an external influence to disengage the warp field when it reaches the end of the "track".
Although there are solutions that don't require a track they have other problems such as requiring tachyonic negative mass (wow!) or permitting backwards time travel.
So if anything, under realistic conditions you'd probably have a bubble at the start and end of every warp corridor to mark the end points of the FTL train track
elitatwo wrote: You asked for mental gymnastics and I gave it.
Yep.
elitatwo wrote: I try to explain to my buddies how very exciting subatomic particles are or how to make quantum entanglement work for "long distance calls".
This won't work. Although quantum mechanics is non-local, no information can be transmitted this way. It's called the no-communication theorem. Essentially, it's impossible to know whether the state you're reading is the result of the other party influencing the entangled system, or just an artifact of the uncertainty of the measurement. Causality (information carrying events) propagates at the speed of light, and it isn't possible for 2 space-like separated events to influence each other.
EVE avoids the no-communication theorem via technobabble
The reality is that space-like separated events can't transmit information between them. Remember space-like means there is no future directed curve that joins the events in 4-space. For all practical purposes they are in separate universes until enough time passes that they become light-like and eventually time-like separated (assuming space isn't expanding fast enough between them that they are always space-like separated - there are events in our universe we will never receive due to this).
The only way to do FTL communication is to make a shortcut in 4-space between the events. That's how the "track" style warp drive explained earlier works. You're taking two points and creating a shorter path between them, but this requires preparing the length of that path at less than the speed of light the first time you use it. Once you've gotten there the hard way and laid the warp field train track you can send future information along this conduit.
That way you aren't violating causality; you've just spent the proper time (and energy) to change the shape of the universe. It isn't really FTL
elitatwo wrote: I bet the JPL would be very interested but since I don't have a physics degree, they wouldn't even listen in the first place..
This stuff has been thought of. It won't work for reasons. The future of Star Trek-esque FTL looks bleak.
Besides, why not focus on what we know we can do? For example, getting a probe to 5-10% the speed of light is within our technology, although currently prohibitively expensive as a mission. And assuming you can get 1G of constant acceleration (which would be no small feat, such a thing is well beyond our technology!) you could reach practically anywhere in the universe within your lifespan thanks to a combination of length contraction and time dilation. The downside is everyone you know will be long, long, dead by the time you get there making it the ultimate one way ticket.
Things are only impossible until they are not.
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masternerdguy
Inner Shadow Test Alliance Please Ignore
1804
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Posted - 2016.08.07 12:32:01 -
[2] - Quote
And as for the topic at hand, I believe that this change will hurt the sandbox. Anything that makes the game easier for people who won't take reasonable precautions (such as scouts, specialized ships, or pre-existing ping spots) is a bad idea.
If you want to travel through or PVP in someone else's space, you should do your due diligence and take reasonable precautions.
If you really want to operate freely in someone's space, join their alliance. It's much easier in the long run
Things are only impossible until they are not.
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