Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 11 12 [13]

Author Topic: Emdrive news: we might be about to become an interstellar civilization  (Read 31853 times)

Gigaz

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile

The whole vacuum instability thing depends very much on interpretations

What we can probably all agree on is that a decay from a high energy eigenstate to a lower energy eigenstate requires an energy measurement. Otherwise, energy eigenstates are always constant in time.
Now comes the tricky part. The first question is: "We suddenly all die. Does this constitute an energy measurement?" I'm inclined to say that it doesn't and thus, the vacuum energy eigenstate can not change.
If you however believe that it is an energy measurement, it also means that the excited state must have been created by some event in the first place, either from a decay of an even higher state or from an excitation of the ground state. Whatever it is, it is reasonable to assume that we might just pop back into existence at some point, completely oblivious of the whole quantum madness.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2015, 02:47:04 pm by Gigaz »
Logged

RedKing

  • Bay Watcher
  • hoo hoo motherfucker
    • View Profile

Whatever it is, it is reasonable to assume that we might just pop back into existence at some point, completely oblivious of the whole quantum madness.
And perhaps that happens millions of times per second. </notaphysicist></likewhoamaaaan>
Logged

Remember, knowledge is power. The power to make other people feel stupid.
Quote from: Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Science is like an inoculation against charlatans who would have you believe whatever it is they tell you.

forsaken1111

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
    • TTB Twitch

Well up until god gets tired of rebooting his computer to fix the quantum instability bug introduced in reality 1.2
Logged

forsaken1111

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
    • TTB Twitch

Reality 1.2.1

-EMdrive patched, no longer produces free thrust (this was a bug!)
Logged

Starver

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile

One idea I had, was that the energy imparted to them does not "Go away", but instead contributes to the probability that adjacent regions of spacetime will produce another fluctuation, thus increasing the fluctuation density of that area of space congruent with the added energy.

If so, that could have unfortunate implications if such a drive were to see regular use in the same region of space.

Though I find the possible need for a space zamboni amusing.
That's actually very similar to something in Star Trek canon.  I forget exactly when (sometime during TNG), but some alien species popped up and complained to Picard that all this warp drive travel was messing about with space and some damaging way.  (Perhaps just, or primarily, damaging to this particular alien species.)  From then on, except for emergencies, ships were encouraged to no longer travel at or near their maximum warp, like a speed limit on a waterway to protect the banks from the resulting wash and the bed from the turbulence.

(And, IIRC, this also prompted the design of Voyager's reconfiguring nacelle angles, although I don't remember enough about it to work out why... after all, it was pretty much every time they went to warp that they did this, so, why not be statically set in the 'cleaner' position?  I probably need to check some form of Trek wiki to refresh my braincells on this matter.)
Logged

Descan

  • Bay Watcher
  • [HEADING INTENSIFIES]
    • View Profile

The idea was that too much warp speed in an area eventually makes subspace go "what the fuck guiz" and stop being in a configuration suitable for warp travel. So if you use it too much in an area, eventually any ship going through that area is limited to sub-light speed.
Logged
Quote from: SalmonGod
Your innocent viking escapades for canadian social justice and immortality make my flagellum wiggle, too.
Quote from: Myroc
Descan confirmed for antichrist.
Quote from: LeoLeonardoIII
I wonder if any of us don't love Descan.

Zrk2

  • Bay Watcher
  • Emperor of the Damned
    • View Profile
Logged
He's just keeping up with the Cardassians.

Starver

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile

Basically, if a vacuum metastability event happens, we'll literally never see it coming.

The only time you really could would be if there was some quantum-entangled transmission that suddenly stopped because the other side was hit by the event.
More fiction (sorry), but there's a book I read1 which involved a galaxy full of humans (mostly trans-humans, in various ways) recovering from some kind of metapocalypse.  There were many different kinds of transhumanism, but many of these inhabitants were people who with multiple bodies spread across the galaxy but possessed a single (multiplexed) consciousness connected by speed-of-light mental communication.  Who somehow managed to deal with centuries or even millennia of 'lag' as one 'part' of their selves experiences and thinks thoughts that will not be known by another part of themselves until the transmission of this bridges the gap.

And then this "metapocalypse" happens happens.  Whatever it is.  I think spreading from the centre of the galaxy.  At the same universal speed-limit.  Whatever else it does, it certainly disrupts these individuals.  All of a sudden each instance of the individual are disconnected from (have received the last information from) their counterpart instances closer to the original problem.  But with no warning because the warning would have had to have come along following the disturbance, and thus cannot.  Because the prior-effected counterparts (like the current counterpart now is) are now isolated and likewise have no way of sending any warning onwards to the yet-to-be-affected entities in this individual, blissfully unaware of the disastrous wavefront of the whatever-it-is that is yet to get to them.

Cue a form of galactic anarchy.


1 Got it from a Remaindered book store, so while the book itself ends inconclusively with the promise of a sequel, I don't think one will exist.  I must dig it up and do a search, though, just to see.
Logged

DreamCarver

  • Bay Watcher
  • cancels breath: Seeking infant.
    • View Profile

All this potential destruction of reality really makes me think we should invest in a spacelab somewhere around L3. Just to be safe.
Logged
"Anything man can imagine is a possibility in reality."
Electrum, pedophilia, and necrophilia at the same time!?
I just found a barrel which contained a wheelbarrow. Inside the wheelbarrow was another barrel. I don't even understand how that is possible.

Sergarr

  • Bay Watcher
  • (9) airheaded baka (9)
    • View Profile

Besides, the probability of metastability events occuring due to human activity is lower than the probability that all the molecules in the room will spontaneously condence in the left half of it.
Logged
._.

BFEL

  • Bay Watcher
  • Tail of a stinging scorpion scourge
    • View Profile

I doubt we'd be able to refine this technology (assuming it works) to a state such that we could produce any real harm from this effect.

Never doubt what man is willing to do for the penis extension of destroying the universe.
Logged
7/10 Has much more memorable sigs but casts them to the realm of sigtexts.

Indeed, I do this.

Bohandas

  • Bay Watcher
  • Discordia Vobis Com Et Cum Spiritum
    • View Profile
Re: Emdrive news: we might be about to become an interstellar civilization
« Reply #191 on: June 07, 2015, 07:44:48 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Logged
NEW Petition to stop the anti-consumer, anti-worker, Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement
What is TPP
----------------------
Remember, no one can tell you who you are except an emotionally unattached outside observer making quantifiable measurements.
----------------------
Έπαινος Ερις
Pages: 1 ... 11 12 [13]