Scientific Questions

[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

[Krakenup]

Originally posted by Batman:
If we take the output of photons to be constant, then the same amount of photons is spread over a spherical shell at a distance R from the sun. The area of this shell is A=4/3*Pi*R^3. A sail of area B captures B/A of the total photons emitted by the star. At double that distance from the star, the area of the shell is A2 = 4/3 * Pi * (2R)^3 = 8*4/3*Pi*R^3 = 8*A. So the same sized sail now captures only B/(8*A) of the total photons (because they are less dense). At double the distance, the sail is 1/8 as effective, and so on. So it should be big if it is to maintain effectiveness for the whole voyage.

That's the volume of a sphere. The surface area is A=4*Pi*R^2. At double the distance, the sail is 1/4 as effective. (Yeah, I know, but I'm a member of the pick-a-nit-a-day club).

[Batman]

You're absolutely right.

I can't believe I screwed that up. That'll teach me to try and show off on the Boards. I'm surprised is wasn't caught sooner

[Taera]

hey thanks, all the stuff makes a lot of sense.
Meson BLasters shoot... balls of sub-atomic particles right?

As for phased stuff, i recall my older theory - it was that the phased weapons shoot multiple shots at once with different phasing, polar and so on stuff so finaly they simply pass the shields that cannot stand the multiple different attacks. Is that any right?

Will: thanks for explaining the NullSpace to me. Had a similar idea but you shaped it out realy nice.
So practically its a generator of nothingness just anywhere i wish (say - the command center of the ship) right?

[capnq]

However, it would be very hard to navigate with such a sail as you can only sail with the photons (i.e. away from the nearby sun)

It doesn't work the same way as sailboat tacking against the wind, but a solar sail can change your distance from the sun in either direction.

It works because of orbital mechanics. You're orbiting the sun at a certain speed, and can angle the solar sail such that it either increases or decreases your orbital speed; the change in speed then changes the radius of your orbit.

Magnetic sails (indirect link) and related tech are even more promising.