Semi-OT: A General Tech Question Thread for me :)

[El_Phil]

Starhawk said:
Or it would not have any time dialation effects at all and you would just happen to get someplace else at the same time you left which is an interesting theory

Imagine that "Ladies and gentlemen we are leaving at 12:01pm September 24 and proceeding 50 light years the trip will take x amount of time)

Say a week later "Ladies and gentlemen welcome to destination B 50 light years away, the time is 12:01 september 24th thank you for flying paradox air."

Possible

My official position: Temporal Mechanics is very very bad for the health and should never be dabbled in more than necessary.

However time does slow down as you go faster in exact accordance with relativity. Hell, even at Mach 2 the effect is mesaurable. Take two atomic clocks, synchronsie them and stick one on a concorde. Compare the two when they land and you will find that the land based one is ahead.

As for FTL, you have asked for explanations, so here they are (but simplified, of course ). You cannot go FTL in a universe that has causality and relativity. Causality is simply cause and effect, something has to make something happen. Relativity is time slowing down, and eventually reversing, as you approach then pass light speed. If you can go faster than light, you can go back in time. If you've traveled in time you muck up causality hugely in a variety of, hopefully, obvious ways.

[Starhawk]

Well there is one flaw in your theory and that is that The Concorde fleet is grounded bwahahahaha I just defied physics . lol j/k

Seriously though I definately understand the whole atomic clock deal I'm just sayin' lord knows what else might effect this thing other then "time dialation" yah know? At least as we think of it. Not saying your wrong obviously but that whole "time and space" area of science is as you said best avoided for the sake of human sanity and health lol

Well good thing about the "FTL" in my story (even when and if I can get good enough to write a book, all I'd need is an editor like most authors ) is that it's "warp points" (name to change trust me) which are actual "folds" in space which don't actually make you go FTL so much as temporarily exist in two places at once and then fully "materialize" in the new place. Unfortunately this has rather bad effects on human orientation leaving earlier generations with "jump shock". Though as stated with my newer chapters the newer generations of GFGs are better able to compensate for this and thus little to no jump shock.

[El_Phil]

In comparison to breaking cause and effect I think we can safely say every other possible problem is minor.

[Starhawk]

Really I've heard that fold space is actually a simpler proposition compared to "warp" and "FTL" speeds, for that matter the Bab 5 and HH "Hyperspace" might be an even more accurate form of what FTL may look like in the future if we ever get it.

Oh and El_Phil as far as internal gravity goes I've read up on some stuff and other folks think that all it would take to get internal gravity is to have a "hyper dense" alloy or material located at the bottom of the ship to create a "pull". What is your opinion on this please

[El_Phil]

Hyperspace is shaky, partly the theoretical existence is very much conjecture. More seriously getting into a 'higher level' dimension whatever you call it would be tricky. More tricky would be getting back to the one you came from.

Wormholes could, maybe be used for backwards time travel depending on layout and a variety of other things. This is a bad thing and so travel through them would be impossible, ie they'd collapse as soon as you try and use them. If your wormhole is so arranged that you don't time travel it has more chance of working.

On the grav plating, the density gets ridiculous. As in 1.5E9 kg of mass beneath 100mm beneath your feet will give you ~1g. In real numbers thats 1.5 million tons of material compressed so much the centre of this mass is 0.1m under your shoes. I think you'd agree the density starts getting ridiculous. There's also the point that is unidirectional and falls off with distance. So if it's just at the bottom then your upper decks have much lower gravity (it's a squared law so double the distance and the force drops by 4.). If you have plating per deck then the crew will be attracted to the ceilings, not as strongly as too the floors, but enough to be very disoreintating and bad for the body. Imagine being weakly torn apart all the time.

Gravitons... It's a logical extension of quantum mechanics so they probably do exist. Probably. But they're only 'messenger' particles, you need the source of the gravity for them to be created, so they don't really solve the problem.

[AgentZero]

For 'anti-gravity', correct me if I'm wrong, but does an object's gravitational pull also depend on it the speed of it's rotation? ie: If the Earth had the same mass but spun faster, we'd have higher gravity?
Unless I'm totally wrong about that, then gravity could be created on a ship by placing sphere's of same undetermined high-density material underneath the floorplates and spinning it really fast. Of course that would really only work for the top deck of the ship, since the deck under it would have 1g pulling up and 1g pulling down, ergo zero G. This could be countered by having the spheres on Deck 2 spinning fast enough to create 2g and thus 1g pulling up and 2g pulling down works out at 1g downwards. Not sure whether that would be noticable to people or not, but either way it'd get really tricky the more decks you had since you'd have to account for the gravitational pull of more and more decks above you, and also said pull would be a bit variable since as you got further away from a given deck it's pull would begin wane, and lets not even talk about the decks below you pulling down.

Of course, take a tip from a fellow writer and don't bother explaining anything at all. Think about all the things that would have been considered science fiction 2000 years ago (assuming they had scifi, that is): Cars, Planes, Guns, Computers, Phones, Movies, CDs, DVDs, etc. Now, pretend you have a basic understanding of English but have never heard of any of the above. Is there anything about them that suggests what they are? Exactly my point. You tell your readers that your SD is armed with X number of Grasers, and they won't know what you're on about until someone says 'Fire Graser battery one!' Then they know it's a weapon and that's about all they need to know. Plus if you're not getting all scientifc, it lends you far greater poetic license.
Example: Compare & Contrast
"Fire!" Ordered the admiral.
The TWS Daedalus shuddered as she fired a full broadside of micro-fusion anti-proton beams into the enemy vessel, causing the atoms of it's hull to be instantly repelled from each other, and the whole ship was blown apart.

OR

"Fire!" Ordered the admiral.
The TWS Daedalus shuddered as she unleashed energies that rivaled the wrath of gods and the full might of her broadside sliced through the enemy ship's shields, ripped through it's armor and devastated the interior. Within seconds the enemy vessel was overwhelmed and exploded in a brilliant flash of light.

Now, example 1 might be 'scientifically' (I know it's a load of bollox, but bear with me) but example 2 sure sounds a lot better, doesn't it? And it doesn't reveal a single thing about how any of the technology actually works.

Cool, huh?

[El_Phil]

AgentZero said:
For 'anti-gravity', correct me if I'm wrong, but does an object's gravitational pull also depend on it the speed of it's rotation? ie: If the Earth had the same mass but spun faster, we'd have higher gravity?

Sorry but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Gravity is just mass and distance, Newton theory anyway. I'll admit to being shakier on Einstinean theory, but I think it's the same there. In fact if the earth spun faster you'd feel less gravity as there'd be a higher centrifugal reaction force offsetting the gravitational pull, so effective gravity would be lower.

But I completely agree with your other point, #2 did sound so much better.

[Suicide Junkie]

Of course, take a tip from a fellow writer and don't bother explaining anything at all. Think about all the things that would have been considered science fiction 2000 years ago (assuming they had scifi, that is): Cars, Planes, Guns, Computers, Phones, Movies, CDs, DVDs, etc. Now, pretend you have a basic understanding of English but have never heard of any of the above. Is there anything about them that suggests what they are?

Car = Auto-mobile = "Thing that moves itself"
Comput-er = "Thing which does math"
DVD = Digital Video Disk = "technobabbled, (moving pictures/technobabble) on round, flat thing"
Tele-phone = "over-a-distance, and phon, meaning Sound; voice; speech."

Hrm... the "understandability" of the names might just be more closely related to the age of the technology relative to the plot's "now", rather than the age of the reader relative to the plot's "now".
At least in english.

When something new comes out, it gets a name that explains its purpose. After a couple years, long names like to collapse into acronyms. And after more years, the names get slanged-down into a syllable or two with no explanatory effect at all.

[Starhawk]

Agent zero GREAT advice you too El Phil (and El sorry about my earlier pigheadedness I am just trying to get a harder sci-fi then say star trek but softer then this one series where it takes decades to get anywhere and where energy weapons and all the like are heat based like Lasers. (I know lasers are technically not "heat" but they do tend to melt and burn rather then tear and explode whatever they hit).

And I thought gravitons were another Star Trek technogidgit like their "Tachyon scanner" and "Phase Cloak" stuff, I guess I learn something new every day

Well SJ the thing is I suppose after a while I-laser would just get shortened further to IL or I-Las (that has a nice ring to it, say it with me Eye-Laz lol) so I guess you have a point to that terminology is subjective to who's using it and when.

BTW anyone ever heard of Induction weaponry? I tried a google search and got jackloads of porn (I dont know how Induction + Weaponry= Teen nudist camp but hey) so anyone got any idea of what exactly an "Induction Weapon" is and how it works?

I can't remember what sci-fi I heard/saw/read it from but it sounded strange as when I hear "Induction" I think "being brought in on" or "being initiated".

[kerensky]

Here's a link on industion beam thingies (i think)

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...g/roberds.html

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/...DARHT-one.html