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Topic: black spathi? (Read 13644 times)
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ChainiaC
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Cybernetic Experiment
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Thats true, but is the degree of bending that tends to differ. Gnerally speaking, the least bent the rules are, the better the sci-fi. There are ofcourse exceptions to that rule 
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0xDEC0DE
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Gnerally speaking, the least bent the rules are, the better the sci-fi. There are ofcourse exceptions to that rule
The most topic-appropriate exception being the Star Control series of games. For example:
- How do the HyperSpace "pushers" work? Why do you have to be so far away from stars to use them, rather than just switching them on from anywhere?
- How does one obtain a "class-IV pan-species psychological profile"? What "domains" exist other than "Furtive-Hateful"?
- How do they measure "esper potential" in human beings? When did humans start showing signs of "esper potential" (Miss Cleo notwithstanding)
- Why does it only take a day to reach Earth from the edge of the solar system when you have a full complement of engines, even though your ships are not supposed to be FTL-capable without pushing into HyperSpace?
The "Star Control Universe" is chock full of examples like this; whatever "magi-tech" they happen to need at the time to service the story, they have. Whenever breaking the laws of nature makes gameplay more fun, they break them with glee. I think the reason it works so well is that it's all done with a knowing wink and a smile, and more often than not, it's done as a sly reference to other sci-fi works, e.g., I'd swear that the Ur-Quan's main weapon is the sound effect from the 1960's War of the Worlds movies.
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"I’m not a robot like you. I don’t like having disks crammed into me… unless they’re Oreos, and then only in the mouth." --Fry
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Well, Pluto is only 5 and a quarter light-hours out from the sun, so it looks like the ship is only pushing about 0.25 C. Which is pretty freaking fast, I'll grant.
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Censored
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Actually 0.25c isn't *that* fast, well, not for an elementary particle  I'm sure they managed something in the year 21xx
Anyways, I'm studying physics/elec.engin. in the University, well, first year, but still! they gave us a few pointers about Quantum mechanics, and how any particle beam, from a certain frequency, can move through gas as if it wasn't even there! yes, it's real!
think about it - you spray a bunch of particles through a thick cloud of gas - you can't see through it but on the other side all of the particles you shoot come out - unharmed, unslowed, as if the gas wasn't even there!
so I had a thought - if I could change the vibration frequency of my molecules, then from a certain minimum frequency value, I could just walk through walls!
now, theoretically or should I say mathematically that might be possible, but in real life I would disintegreate.
so, physics-ly speaking, if one could come up with such a technique to accelerate the frequency of one's molecules, and still live, he could actually do that.
in TNG they didn't say anything about the cloaking shield or how it works, and I didn't really ask my professor what would happen if the particle beam changed frequency in the middle of the gas, but I'm guessing the molecules might push each other and you'd be "rematerialized" in the right form. or, we could always come up with some creative solution to that 
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"You boldly enter our space! Approach this Dreadnought as though it were a recreation base and then play the dumb hominid?
Who do you take us for, Captain... Spathi!?"
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Michael Martin
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To answer the actual implied question in the first post on this thread:
The Starbase Commander told you about them. He didn't believe the rumor, but was just passing it on.
And they aren't in the game.
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ChainiaC
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To get back to particle quantum physics... what I'm curious about now is if said particle beam would shoot through solid matter as well?
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Censored
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well, the course I had ("had" is too good a word, still need to see how I do in the test  ) is just preliminary (classical physics - electromagnetism) and so nothing about quantum mechanics; and come to think of it I think he did say it works with gas only and not solids.. but I guess I'll be able to answer that more fully next year, or at worst the one after that.. stay tuned
at any rate, Quantum mechanics is a lot about chances, and there is a function of particle dynamics called "tunneling", where a particle can just fly through anything per given chance.. though I don't know too much about it, just yet.
which reminds me of the barometer jokes (or: how to measure the height of a building) -- here is the relevant one  :
Go to the basement. Find a part of the basement such that directly above you is solid brick until you reach the roof. Throw the barometer at the ceiling of the basement, which is the floor of the building. The barometer will most likely bounce off the floor. Repeat n times, where n is a very large number. In a few trials, the barometer will tunnel through the potential field of the bricks, and appear on the top of the building. Calculate the percentage of trials for which the barometer tunnels. Use the quantum tunneling equation to calculate the length of the barrier, and thus the height of the building. Note: this effect can be calibrated properly by finding the likelyhood of the barometer tunneling through one brick.
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« Last Edit: June 22, 2004, 03:01:27 am by Censored »
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"You boldly enter our space! Approach this Dreadnought as though it were a recreation base and then play the dumb hominid?
Who do you take us for, Captain... Spathi!?"
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freddine
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I'd like to point out that how is that important to enjoying the game? 
The ships engines move its entire mass at the same time. No one feels a thing. The same prinicple is used to move through hyperspace, so the ship doesn't get torn apart. After all, there's a mysterious friction that affects everything in hyperspace, and you don't want your crew or ship to get flattened, do you?
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meep-eep
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well, 0.25c is 74,948 kilometers per SECOND, I don't know if it's possible today to get to that speed. If I'm not mistaken standard satellites move at an average of 8 kmps. Albeit about the acceleration you're correct - that's the actual problem, technologically speaking.
Well, it may have been a bit of an understatement when I said "It just takes a while". The thing is, if you keep applying force, you keep going faster; there's nothing to slow you down. It just gets increasingly "harder" to go faster because of relativity.
With the rocket propellents that are currently in use you can't increase speed for very long. But if you use solar sails (which may not be in actual operation, but they are within todays technological capabilities) you will be able to accelerate slowly, but continuously.
I just underestimated the "slowly". I just read that it takes approximately 1000 years in continuous sunlight to go to one tenth the speed of light.
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“When Juffo-Wup is complete
when at last there is no Void, no Non
when the Creators return
then we can finally rest.”
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freddine
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That's what the idea is of inertial dampers.
Well, from what I've seen on TV and all, there are three major and accepted ways to do that:
1. Get rid of inertia- Basically, you can move the same mass at a much higher speed, using the same force. In math terms, you'd be warping the E=MC^2 equation to do what you want; to move more easily. I think many shows refer to this, but they'd rather not go into detail.
You can run into a few problems, litteraly. You'd find yourself with the strength of an ant, because one pound of force can do so much more than before. Instead of taking one step, you could launch yourself into the ceiling. Ouch. Also, human biology may simply not work right under those conditions.
2. Somehow move everything at once- so no one feels a thing. If the ship is accelerating at 100M/S, and you're just standing still., you'll quickly find yourself a pancake on the back of the ship. But if everything was pulled in exactly the same way, you'd never know it.
2a. Gravity is something that can pull everything at once. Everything accelerates at the same speed, and nothing moves out of place. So you won't feel a thing, because you don't feel anything move. But the ship sensors will tell you that you're going at an insane speed. Once you turn off the gravity, you'll continue to move, because of your inertia.
2b. Warping space is another way to move everything on a ship at once. You don't actually move the ship, instead you shovel large amounts of space from in front of you, and drop it behind you. All of a sudden, you've moved a considerable distance.
Because you aren't moving the ship, once you turn off the warp, you'll lose all the speed that the warp gave you. If you happen to be stuck in the dead of space, you'll have to travel with normal thrust. That means it could take years to get somewhere, even travelling near the speed of light.
It's almost like gravity, except you're actually bending space, and it won't like to be bent. Anything stuck in the warp could be torn into a million pieces, or just look really stretched out. It doesn't really matter, you can make up anything you like here.
Perhaps, hyperspace could be explained as a place where it's really easy to warp space? Inside a solar system, real space is pretty tough, and you'll need alot of fuel and special equipment to warp out of the solar system. Outside of the solar system, normal space weakens, and it becomes a piece of cake to warp through hyperspace.
Even though it'd easy to warp hyperspace, it may not like being warped so much. It could explain the hyperspace fatigue that I've heard mentioned in a few places.
4. Hyperspace may simply "be there", just by getting away from the solar system. As you move away from a solar system, space condenses and becomes thick, and it becomes hard to move. But, for every inch of this thick space that your ship goes through, it's the same as going through a hundred miles of a solar system. Light travels at the normal rate, going just as fast through hyperspace, as it would through an equal amount of normal space.
A bonus of this, is that if one inch of movement is a hundred miles, one inch of your ship would be just as large. You'd look like a giant travelling through space, and solar systems would appear to practically fit inside your ship. But as you enter a solar system, and its normal, vacuum space, everything would quickly return to normal. It'd basically be an illusion, after all.
Of course this is all Sci-Fi conjecture, so please pick and scratch at it. It's not like we've gone past the oort cloud and really seen what is there, anyways. We can make up anything, as long as its believable. There are plenty of ways to say it can be done, that's for sure.
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