Technology in the 'verse

POSTED BY: zeke023
UPDATED: Friday, October 31, 2003 03:24
VIEWED: 21912
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SUCCATASH

Saturday, May 31, 2003 4:43 AM

ZEKE023 wrote:
geography: Has anyone come up with an actual citation from the show for this taking place in one solar system or many?

This sort of topic is certainly not my area of expertise, kind of like Maniac's Blue Print thread. My brain doesn't jump for joy when I think of this kind of thing. So if I come across as stupid, that's why.

But here's what I think. "Earth was used up." 100's of new worlds. It seems clear that Firefly involves multiple solar systems.

I'm kind of wondering why the question even needs to be asked. Am I just dumb and don't get all you people's space talk?

KENWOOD

Sunday, June 1, 2003 6:34 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Thegn:

Current science suggests a future that is somewhat less enthusiastic, however. Current theories of physics suggest that the speed of light is a boundary condition to the universe and that it cannot be broken. Contrary to science fiction pseudo science there is no realistically sound theories of physics that suggest that we will ever move across the universe at faster then light speeds. Any suggestion that it will happen is simply wishful thinking at best.

Given this, we can begin to construct what a 'Firefly-like' space-fairing society might look like. With stars averaging 5-20 light years apart, and mankind limited to a maximum speed of 0.999c, there are two interesting points that come to mind.

First is that man WILL be limited to a small number of solar systems and in fact, the vast majority of all mankind will be isolated to only one solar system, which will invariably lead to a distant future of very differently evolving human societies and possibly different species of man.

Second, any travel between solar systems will require huge vessels and colossally powerful propulsion system, and a crew that is capable and willing to endure the affects of time dilation, which at speeds of 0.999c and distances of 50 light years or more will be very extreme.

Although typically science fiction has avoided certain concepts. In general, you can almost always rely on two axioms of pseudo-science, non-centripetal artificial gravity and faster-then-light travel. So it just amounts to which assumptions you want to make in defining the theme of a show. In the end, we really don't know what the future holds.

Wrong. If our current understanding of the laws of the universe are correct ( any at least some of it is almost certainly wrong ) "FTL" travel
must be possible. The only problem is the energy required and there are theoretical ways around that. Additionaly if we assume that the Ghost of Jupiter nebula is the setting of Firefly some FLT travel is also required. Although this could be a one shot useing the power of the sun.

The artifical gravity is the real problem. There are some possibilities but nothing set in physics right now that would allow for it very well. The best answer for both of these ( excluding just saying it's FM ) would be exotic matter. Solves the energy problems for both ( assuming that gravity is a function of a single closed loop dimension which has it's own problems ).

Later,

ME.

Don't look back, som'thin' might be gainin' on ya.
Who let the pigs play poker?
Evo Shander was right!

CHRISTHECYNIC

Sunday, June 1, 2003 10:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by KenWood:
Wrong. If our current understanding of the laws of the universe are correct ( any at least some of it is almost certainly wrong ) "FTL" travel
must be possible. The only problem is the energy required and there are theoretical ways around that. Additionaly if we assume that the Ghost of Jupiter nebula is the setting of Firefly some FLT travel is also required. Although this could be a one shot useing the power of the sun.

The artifical gravity is the real problem. There are some possibilities but nothing set in physics right now that would allow for it very well. The best answer for both of these ( excluding just saying it's FM ) would be exotic matter. Solves the energy problems for both ( assuming that gravity is a function of a single closed loop dimension which has it's own problems ).

Later,

ME.

Don't look back, som'thin' might be gainin' on ya.
Who let the pigs play poker?
Evo Shander was right!

We have seen anything in Firefly to suggest FTL, if River could be frozen, so could everyone who got off earth, it could well be 500 years in the conscious future, and the time in transit wasn’t counted because everyone was asleep. Would be interesting when people woke up and found that their loved ones had died hundreds of years ago because the next ship over hit a meteor.

KAYTHRYN

Sunday, June 1, 2003 10:14 PM

Quote:
Posted by Christhecynic:
Would be interesting when people woke up and found that their loved ones had died hundreds of years ago because the next ship over hit a meteor.

I'm thinking you and I differ in our interpretations of the word "interesting"

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

THEGN

Sunday, June 1, 2003 11:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by KenWood:
Wrong. If our current understanding of the laws of the universe are correct ( any at least some of it is almost certainly wrong ) "FTL" travel must be possible. The only problem is the energy required and there are theoretical ways around that.

Oh yeah? Well I'd like you to show me the equations that defined the particular law of physics which you claim indicates that faster-then-light travel "must be possible." I don't remember any mention of these laws when I was taking Relativistic Mechanics or Quantum Field Theory in Grad school.

Faster then light travel is only possible if your mass is effectively zero. Otherwise you are bound by Relativity, which clearly states that you cannot travel faster then light, or even at the speed of light. As a massive object travels faster, its mass actually increases. For relatively slow speeds, like those we encounter in our lives, the increase in mass is negligible, but at speeds close to the speed of light, mass begins to increase very quickly with an increase in velocity. With the increase in mass comes an increase in the amount of energy to further accelerate an object. At the speed of light, your mass is essentially infinite, according to Relativity, and you would need an infinite amount of energy to accelerate to the speed of light.

And THAT is what the current laws of physic state.

-----------
In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Sunday, June 1, 2003 11:13 PM

Subspace, or hyperspace, depending on which sci fi show you watch, has been created. As I said before the power needed to transport anything big enough to see makes the creation useless. However the whole reason for making it is to make a region of space with laws of physics in which non-energy particles can be accelerated to, or passed the speed of light.

Further the ability to send information faster then light has been shown, and verified, though not accepted by the community at large. (The information sent was Mozart, though I have forgotten which bit of music.) Because the conversion of mass to energy, and energy to mass is accepted as possible (energy to mass is to my knowledge not verified) it would in theory be possible to convert something to energy, send it faster than the speed of light, and convert it back. I would not use this technology (were it to be created), because if whatever was used to convert back didn’t work I’d have died.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Sunday, June 1, 2003 11:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kaythryn:

I'm thinking you and I differ in our interpretations of the word "interesting"

-------------------------------------
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

Sorry, didn't see you responded. Interesting has no negative or positive connotations that I know of, so a horrible thing can be interesting just like a good thing or an indifferent one.

THEGN

Monday, June 2, 2003 12:23 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Further the ability to send information faster then light has been shown, and verified, though not accepted by the community at large.

Actually, nothing of the like has ever been verified. There have been some interesting experiments done and some interesting papers have been written on this topic, but nothing as of yet, as far as I know, has ever been verified.

I believe you are making reference to the Enders/Nimtz papers. But the newest of these papers that I know about, are almost 10 years old. And as far as I know there has been no further study done on this. If any of these papers actually verified the non-local transfer of information would you not think that someone would have done something with this knowledge by now? One of the single most groundbreaking laws of physics is just sitting on a shelf somewhere? Where are the major Universities clamoring to repeat the experiment, where's the news frenzy, where's the Nobel Prize? Something like this just doesn't get forgotten. This leads me to believe that the papers themselves probably don't say what you think they say, and I'm pretty certain they don't verify anything, interesting as they may be. Although admittedly, I haven't read them.

People are just a little too quick to jump on the faster then light bandwagon and claim "proof" of faster then light travel. The truth is that there is a lot that has to be bone before anything can be proven. Recently, an astronomer claimed to have found proof of faster then light travel in supernova eject, but that turned out to be basically an illusion of relativity, known as superluminal motion. It wasn't real. There is likely something similar at work in the Enders/Nimtz papers, and that has to be determined.

And what if it is possible to transfer information faster then light? There's no reason to believe that, if such a thing were possible, that it would also mean that faster then light travel of a massive body would also be possible. That is a fallacy of logic. Information and mass are not necessarily the same thing. I know that many scifi people don't like to hear this, but current laws of physics really do seem to be pretty sternly set on Relativity. You can't go throwing it out, every time some paper gets written that seems to oppose it.

-----------
In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, June 2, 2003 12:41 AM

Verified does not mean accepted, it merely means that it has been repeated. This was fairly recent, within the past two years. The scientific community doesn’t dispute that light (what the information had been encoded in) can be sent faster than c (the speed of normal light through a vacuum.) What is disputed is the fact that information encoded in said light will remain.

How does this effect objects with mass? Well it doesn’t. What it does effect is our understanding of acceleration of things at the speed of light. Why that matters is a little more odd. It is possible to change energy into matter, and we have been able to turn matter into energy. If it we could find a way to turn something into energy and then have it decay back into matter then it could be accelerated beyond the speed of light and turned back into matter after, thus creating FTL travel. The big if is whether energy can be converted back to matter, and if it can if it could be done without any technology on the other side.

THEGN

Monday, June 2, 2003 2:34 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Verified does not mean accepted, it merely means that it has been repeated. This was fairly recent, within the past two years. The scientific community doesn’t dispute that light (what the information had been encoded in) can be sent faster than c (the speed of normal light through a vacuum.) What is disputed is the fact that information encoded in said light will remain.

Verified does not mean repeated. Verified means that it has been shown to be true. As far as I know, there is no proof that information can move faster then light. There are a lot of interesting experiments, but nothing of what you are suggesting has been verified. If I am mistaken, then I want to see references to recent papers.

The problem I'm having with what you are saying is that you are essentially wrong according to Quantum theory, if I'm reading you correctly. I think you are jumping to conclusion without understanding the Physics. You seem to be suggesting that you can use quantum teleportation to move faster then the speed of light and quantum theory says you can not. Observable effects cannot propagate faster then light, therefore no information can be sent faster then light. I think you're making your mistake by assuming that Quantum entanglement means faster then light speed. It does not.

-----------
In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.

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