Darth Wong wrote:A lot of silly questions about sci-fi would never be asked if people applied more of what they knew about real-life. Real-life is chock full of inaccurate, imprecise, or misleading terminology. Hell, it's common to say that you're "nuking" something when you put it in the fucking microwave oven!
Agreed. I blame Star Trek, considering everything had to have a technobabble answer to how it worked in the dialouge some where. I prefer some jingo/slang once in a while to that.
No need to get technical over 'hopping thorugh the 'verse on my lightdrive on a wing and a lolipop.' No need for actual wings or lolipops.
Course the good old 'lasersword' and 'turbolaser' comes to mind too.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong
But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
Knife wrote:I prefer some jingo/slang once in a while to that.
Neverthemind that's what genuine technobabble is: simply a technical shorthand rather than a form of Mad Libs.
*shrug* Fine, I prefer some short slang once in a while rather than long winded techie slang.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong
But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
Knife wrote:I prefer some jingo/slang once in a while to that.
Neverthemind that's what genuine technobabble is: simply a technical shorthand rather than a form of Mad Libs.
No, in science and engineering there is a clear distinction between proper terminology and everyday shorthand usage or slang. The fact that engineers tend to heavily prefer the latter does not mean the latter is actually used as the former.
The problem with sci-fi fans who grew up on Star Trek is that they don't seem to recognize that this distinction will exist in the future. They think that everything characters say must be scientifically precise terminology.
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"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
Hold on, what I meant by real life technobabble being simply technical shorthand was like the kind of jargon you hear by NASA, between mission control and capsule crew in Apollo mission footage. I swear you said something like that yourself on your site somewhere.
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Perhaps by millisecond he means planck time, within which IIRC I thought you could get away with breaking certain laws of physics? No flaming please, I may not recall correctly.
Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Psst, Hyperspace isn't a separate dimension from Realspace: it's simply Realspace observed from a tachyonic (FTL) perspective.
Is that spelled out anywhere in canon? I thought it was just the leading theory about wht hyperspace is, rather being a fait acompli. Did I get the WEotS?
PayBack wrote:Yeah but (again IIRC) it does so by travelling at the speed of light for such a short time it doesn't have infinite mass.
Eh? It doesn't gain mass over time at c, it must already have infinite energy/mass. Hence the 'jump' idea.
Nope if you travel at c for a short enough period of time (within planck time) it's as if you never traveled at c at all. You didn't jump past it without ever having travelled at c, it's just you were at c for such as short period of time that as far as the universe is concerned it never happened. I may have worded it badly but that's how I believe it works.
Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Psst, Hyperspace isn't a separate dimension from Realspace: it's simply Realspace observed from a tachyonic (FTL) perspective.
Is that spelled out anywhere in canon? I thought it was just the leading theory about wht hyperspace is, rather being a fait acompli. Did I get the WEotS?
glass.
ICS describs it as traveling through real space, just from the perspective of tachyonic? point of view.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong
But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
PayBack wrote:Nope if you travel at c for a short enough period of time (within planck time) it's as if you never traveled at c at all. You didn't jump past it without ever having travelled at c, it's just you were at c for such as short period of time that as far as the universe is concerned it never happened. I may have worded it badly but that's how I believe it works.
Call me nuts, but if it's less than plank time it didn't happen, since it didn't affect anything.
You're nuts. The time was effectively zero but not actually zero. You're not really jumping past c without passing through it. Maybe it's just me but if something happened it happened regardless of it's effect.
Also I think events within Planck time happen in respect to quantum physics??By that I mean they have no effect on the macro universe but may do in quantum physics. And yes I'm stretching a bit here so could be FOS on that last bit.
PayBack wrote:You're nuts. The time was effectively zero but not actually zero. You're not really jumping past c without passing through it. Maybe it's just me but if something happened it happened regardless of it's effect.
Even if you're traveling at c for a short period of time, you'll still have to deal with the fact that you had to continuously ramp up to c. This implies that the amount of mass you'll accumulate is still infinite -- it blows up with respect to velocity as you approach c, so you'll never actually reach the speed of light in the first place, even if you're only intending to travel at that speed for a very, very short period of time.
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
PayBack wrote:You're nuts. The time was effectively zero but not actually zero. You're not really jumping past c without passing through it. Maybe it's just me but if something happened it happened regardless of it's effect.
Even if you're traveling at c for a short period of time, you'll still have to deal with the fact that you had to continuously ramp up to c. This implies that the amount of mass you'll accumulate is still infinite -- it blows up with respect to velocity as you approach c, so you'll never actually reach the speed of light in the first place, even if you're only intending to travel at that speed for a very, very short period of time.
Well that's how Saxton explains it anyway.. it took me a while to find this morning as he spells Planck wrong...
"A starship can exist comfortably above or below lightspeed but cannot pass through lightspeed via ordinary physical means. However all of ordinary physical existence becomes imprecisely defined below a certain subatomic scale, and we can speculate that this may have something to do with the super-technology that permits hyperdrive in STAR WARS. The leap beyond the lightspeed may be an event which exploits some kind of quantum-mechanical effect in order to slip from subluminal to superluminal speed without ever being at intermediate speeds. As seen by an external observer, the jump must be accomplished within Plank time, a tiny time unit below which time itself becomes meaningless."
It reads slightly differently to how I recalled it but I still take the same idea from it. That being that you do pass through light speed rather than skip it completely. Sure it's within Planck time and so that period of time is effectively meaningless, however it still happens. He does say "without ever being at intermediate speeds" but I take that as meaning without "effectively" ever being at intermediate speeds as you are there for too short a period for it to have any effect. Otherwise I wouldn't think he'd bother saying it can't be done "via ordinary physical means" Maybe I'm misinterpreting it but I wouldn't have thought he'd have mentioned Planck time if you were never at that speed? And yes Surlethe that would have to include the lead up to c as well.
The thing is though it's not just c but the lead up to it also. As Surlethe mentions, it's not only the time spent at c but also approaching c that has to take place within Planck time.
PayBack wrote:It reads slightly differently to how I recalled it but I still take the same idea from it. That being that you do pass through light speed rather than skip it completely. Sure it's within Planck time and so that period of time is effectively meaningless, however it still happens. He does say "without ever being at intermediate speeds" but I take that as meaning without "effectively" ever being at intermediate speeds as you are there for too short a period for it to have any effect.
That's a really neat definition of "without ever being at", that you can interpret it to mean "being at".
Otherwise I wouldn't think he'd bother saying it can't be done "via ordinary physical means" Maybe I'm misinterpreting it but I wouldn't have thought he'd have mentioned Planck time if you were never at that speed? And yes Surlethe that would have to include the lead up to c as well.
The planck time would have to include most of the ramp-up. The point is that you're saying they'll have to at accelerate to reach the speed of light, which is patently impossible because of the ramp-up, even if they're only at c for an infinitesimally short period of time.
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
