Scientific Questions

[Batman]

[quote]Originally posted by AeoN2:

Originally posted by Batman:
I seem to remember a theory that may make it possible for information (not matter) to travel faster than light.

You're talking about the EPR paradox (stands for Einstein-Podolsky(sp?)-Rosen).

Sometimes when a pair of particles are created, they have properties that depend upon one another. For example, spin is conserved, so if a particle with zero spin decomposes and sends two smaller particles off in opposite directions, the total spin of the situation still has to be zero. Therefore, one particle has spin "up" and the other has spin "down". From a quantum mechanical perspective, each of the two particles (let's call them left and right) has an equal chance of being the up particle. Now if I know a particle decomposed in this manner say, a light year away, and the left particle comes towards me and the right particle moves away, then they are both in a 'superposition' of the spin up and spin down states. It isn't until I measure or observe 'left' that it collapses into one of the two states (up or down).

Now, the paradox comes from the fact that the instant I observe left, right must also become fixed into the opposite state that I observe. So, supposedly, it must have "heard" what state left was in. Since this happens instantaenously, the information is transmitted from one particle to the other an infinite velocity.

Its worth noting that this scenario was put forward by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen as a reason that quantum mechanics is nonsense.

This might not be 100% accurate, I'd have to get home and check some of my textbooks. Even if it is accurate, it probably isn't very well explained. Go to google +epr +paradox -"Star Trek Voyager"

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Batman:
Its worth noting that this scenario was put forward by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen as a reason that quantum mechanics is nonsense.

[Mephisto]

I stand corrected.

[Taz-in-Space]

Taz tiptoes in...
Listens to these concepts - and head starts to hurt!
Taz barely manages to stagger out, holding hands to ears...

[Will]

For those talking about the mass of a photon: photons have properties of having mass, but only due to the fact that it is energy. If you look up the mass of other particles, such as an electron, it will give you a rest mass, meaning the particle's mass when it isn't moving anywhere. A photon's rest mass doesn't exist because it is just energy. The properties of having mass, such as momentum, come from the relationship between mass and energy.

Mesons, I know they're a class of subatomic particles, and that's about it. I think there are three types they've identified, but I only went over that stuff briefly. I'd just say a Meson BLaster would be kinda like a laser, and kinda like a lightning bolt, but not really like either of them :Þ

Phased stuff, that's dealing with waves traveling in a certain way, but the rest of it smells Trekkie.

Null-Space would skip anything because of it's nature. If you have vacuum, it is 'nothing' to us because of the lack of matter. But there is still space there, volume, energy, "the fabric of space-time" and all that good stuff. Null-Space would be absolute nothingness. No energy, no volume, nothing can exist there. So, the basic effect is there is a big battering ram of nothingness, and even a mass as dense as a black hole can't stop it. To make the Null-Space damage more "realistic", it would take a percentage damage off everything. eg. A ship has a damage resistance of 1500kT, plus 200kT armour, and 1000 shields; a Null-Space rated at 5% would take off 50 shields, 10kT armour, 75kT damage resistance. All the energy and mass are just pushed away, because nothing can go in Null-Space. That was probably confusing, but oh well.

[AeoN2]

Originally posted by Will:
Null-Space would skip anything because of it's nature. If you have vacuum, it is 'nothing' to us because of the lack of matter. But there is still space there, volume, energy, "the fabric of space-time" and all that good stuff. Null-Space would be absolute nothingness. No energy, no volume, nothing can exist there. So, the basic effect is there is a big battering ram of nothingness, and even a mass as dense as a black hole can't stop it. To make the Null-Space damage more "realistic", it would take a percentage damage off everything. eg. A ship has a damage resistance of 1500kT, plus 200kT armour, and 1000 shields; a Null-Space rated at 5% would take off 50 shields, 10kT armour, 75kT damage resistance. All the energy and mass are just pushed away, because nothing can go in Null-Space. That was probably confusing, but oh well.

Actually it made a lot of sense to me, and I finally understood what the null-space weapons were (not that I had given it that much thought before) ... Actually in the anime "Lost Universe" there is a weapon which reminds me of this effect (other that instead of nothingness, it kind of leads to a dimension of nothingness. It was called a D-brave gun if I remember correctly (not that it matters), and it looked real cool shooting small spheres that hit the ship and grew to large spheres of nothingness, then dissapearing, the part of the ship where they were, also gone.

I thought null-space weapons were cool in SE4 from before, no I think they are even cooler

--
AeoN2
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Cannot find reality.sys, Universe halted.

[Suicide Junkie]

To make the Null-Space damage more "realistic", it would take a percentage damage off everything.

If your null-space "projectile" has a very small radius in normal space, it could poke a very small hole in your shield/armor, and then destroy a small number of internal components completely.

The outer hull should be able to take quite a few holes before you get a serious unpatchable atmosphere leak, but people, electronics and precision machinery all have very low tolerances for having holes punched through them