Team BlueFlint Westwood - Blue Squad - Sector 3
We're gonna have to find a way to handle this since colors are limited. I'm thinking using a rather messy but effective system of labeling subhexes with numbers and then having a key on the bottom of the map. Since there isn't room on the map to add text to each little hex.
((Fine by me.))
@Simus:"Uhh, Canary Nest this is Blue Peafowl. Are you seeing this? Any idea how this could be happening? I'm no scientist, but I thought gravity and time were connected. Any suggestions for experimentation? The Wastes of Time is sounding like a perfect name for this place right now..." ((And, light changing speed should at least get refracted a bit, shouldn't it?))
@Bishop:"So, what do you say blue leader? Send in a drone?"
Unless Bishop protests, send a mapping drone to map the sector. Then continue marking the time distortion (with a different color depending on the effect if possible) and scraping ground samples (not too many, don't want to be carrying lots of useless dirt containers). If Bishop orders me something else, do that instead.
EDIT: Idea! Try to find the border between the fast and slow zones. Is it something gradual or a straight line? If it's gradual, could someone pass through that area? If I find the border, mark that area differently.
((Also, this zone would be incredibly useful for computers. I'll crunch the numbers tomorrow and see just how much faster/slower time passes in those zones. You think I could build a supercomputer like that by using a gravity auto manipulator?))
Which side did you want to send the drone into? Fast or slow?
As per the boundary between the two zones, it doesn't look like like it's a "soft" or gradient boundary, rather that it's just a hard change from one area to another. Unfortunate.
((Any reason you quoted only one of my posts? Can't say it had anything important, but still. And Piecewise, another question. When I post an action and you don't process it, as with the tablet*, should I assume it done or what?
* - I posted an action two turns ago to link the suit feeds of everyone on my team to my tablet.))
Vich: Team Blue
"Poles showed into the ground? That is exactly what I meant by saying caution tape with sticks. So... I'm still totally taking credit for this.(lighthearted tone) Command, I'm sorry, I didn't hear your answer."
"Yup, marking differently sounds good. And not only for the border. A different can, and with a symbol before the paint, perhaps? And you know what would really piss me off? If tomorrow this anomaly occupied some entirely different place after all the work we've done."
Still figure out the amount by which the objects are slowed in the slow zone. I can even do it by looking at which rocks that we have walked past have fallen. Mark the area around the fast zone differently then around the slow zone, by Flint (hopefully) giving me a can of different color, and by drawing non-phallic symbols before the line at moderate intervals. (Standing orders as we continue exploring the anomaly.)
If nothing happens with the drone, volunteer to be the one to enter the fast zone first. Don't actually enter it if Bishop does not approve it.
(Will update this to be more specific if it's approved.)[/s]
(try to consolidate your actions into one post by editing the first one, if you could. Not only does it limit the posts I need to comb though, but it also makes sure I don't accidentally skip over an action. As per your video feeds to the datapad, I didn't mention that explicitly because it didn't need a roll and really could be done by anyone at any time. So yeah, you can access them through the datapad now. Sorry I didn't make that clear.)
It's hard to say exactly how fast or slow the things are going, but the more you look at it the more things don't make sense. A laser shot takes a little less then a second to cover about 5 feet in that zone. Considering speed of light, that is a massive reduction in speed. Something like 980,000,000 feet per second to 5 feet per second. If that reduction were universal, a stone that would normally take something like, say, .3 seconds to hit the ground when dropped would take something like....carry the three...112 years to hit the ground.
But the first one that went in has already traveled half the distance to the ground in roughly a half hour. This shit is bananas, yo.
"So time is acting up without gravity giving a shit, whats new? I had to fight against a sentient and highly infectious SOUNDWAVE, so you have to kinda expect weird stuff, especially in places like this."
Bishop shrugs and looks and the way they came.
"I have to agree with not walking in this thing. It might be safer than the slow zone, but you could basically age years in seconds for all we know. Send a drone in if you can think of a way to have it avoid the slow zone, but otherwise, mark the boundry of the change and keep mapping the edge. If we find a way around on this end, we'll head back this way and map out the other side too if we have time."
Mark down the change and position of the boundry on my map and keep mapping and marking the edge with the others. Take a guess on how far and long we've been out here.
You mark down the two zones on the map and send the data back to the Nest. You'd guess you've been out for maybe two hours or so, walked 5 or 6 miles or so. Food and water supplies are holding up fine but a bit of a rest wouldn't go amiss.
((I'd also like to note that the brain doesn't react well to being "a little oxygen deprived"))
Help out with marking the anomalies and such
You keep wandering the edge of the zone, throwing rocks to see the effects. Eventually, you find one area where the rocks seem to drop to the ground as usual. Huh.
Team Greenfollow lars.
"If it is ionization, that could be the source of the interference. Might also explain the radiation, but I am not an expert on that. Anyway, any theories on the planetoid? Where it can from exetera."
Mark zone with spraypaint, follow Lars, watch for other anomalies with weirdvision.
((The human body is quite fragile. Any extreme difference, be it temperature, pressure, atmosphere, is dangerous. Why shouldn't it be the same for temporal?))
Lars nodded as he heard the reply. "Brothers, we have been given orders to route around this hazard. We will explore it more fully at a later date. Let us walk around it to determine its boundaries. Mark it any way you can."
Start walking counterclockwise around the area, keeping to the border where radiation is just starting to get through the suits. Mark the ground in any way possible- line in the sand, rearranged rocks, marking them, whatever possible.
head counter-clockwise around the edge of the radioactive anomaly dragging my pole along the ground to mark the boundary.
Keep the top end raised in front of me just incase there are any gravimetric anomalies in my path.
Lars and Co. Begin a counter Clockwise march around the zone, marking it's edge as best they can with stones, scratches in the stone and, probably more helpfully, on the map. It's a bit silly, really, since the bright blue glow is a pretty damn good indicator of "bad shit ahead" but whatever. As they march, it becomes clear that the effected zone may take up a large area of Zone 6, with greater distortion and radiation lying near the center and radiating outward.
Team Red:Lukas gazes at the smooth floor and then at the distant lights. "Should we proceed, boss? I have a bad feeling about this, but I am really curious about those lights."
"This is only a reconnaissance mission, so we'll just mark everything on the map and keep going. We will send another team to investigate it in detail."
Mark everything on the map, send data to Simus and keep going along the smooth path (not actually on said path/ground).
Miyamoto here. We've found a strange change in the terrain, this surface looks like it isn't something natural, it's much colder than the surrounding ground.. We're also seeing structures in the distance that appear crystalline in nature, and some sort of light. We'll mark it on the map and keep going, we'll be sending a follow-up team to get to the bottom of things later.
((Well then))
"might as well go see that thing on the horizon"
Go to thing on the horizon and investigate (bring the rest of the team though)
Miyamoto sends back the mapping data he's accrued so far, stops Corsair from walking into the effected area, and proceeds to travel along the edge of the flat zone, looking for anything new. It appears that the flat zone may take up most of zone 2, if not all of it. The team maps several miles worth of area but finds nothing significantly new.
Team Base:
((Some thoughts about the sector 3 anomaly:
I was thinking about that so-called temporal anomaly and after reading your thoughts and making some thought experiments of my own, I have come to a conclusion: These are not temporal anomalies. (Right now I'm wishing I had given Flint some intelligence so that he could say those things IC preferably in an auditorium with people going *gasp* at the announcement.)
First, let's look at the slow-mo zone. It took a light beam about a second to travel the distance from Flint's laser to the ground and back (let's name that distance 2x). That would mean that the speed of light in the slow-mo zone was c/(2*x) times slower then outside the slow-mo zone. However, current physics say that the speed of light is constant. So, we come to the conclusion that IF this is a temporal anomaly then time passes c/(2*x) times slower. And for x=5 meters, that means that a second inside that region would pass in about 347 days. For the more likely x=15 meters it is 1 normal second = 115 slow-mo days.
However, there are a number of problem in this hypothesis: Objects entering the field did not break apart or display other signs of damage (one explanation for this could be that the change in time-speed is gradual enough for this to not happen). The rocks could still be seen moving even though with the rate time passes they should have looked completely still (unless our suit cameras are really really good). There is no distortion of light passing through the barrier. There is no gravitational anomaly or spacetime distortion here (not that we can see anyway).
A way to prove that this isn't a temporal anomaly is by measuring the infrared emissions of an object before and after it enters the slow-mo zone. If this were a temporal anomaly then infrared light coming from the object while inside the slow-mo zone would be less intense and have a lower frequency then infrared light coming from the same object outside the zone.
So what do I believe this is? I believe this is some kind of testing area or playground or anything else an alien would use this for. It works like a vector manipulator, multiplying the vectors of all objects entering it by a constant and dividing the vectors of all objects exiting it by a constant. And not just the vectors of the objects themselves but the vectors of all the components of the objects (photons, quarks, etc). This constant could also be dependant on the object's condition (mass, speed, particle type, etc), so that we can notice rocks moving while light goes 5m/s. This also solves the break-apart problem, since it is possible for objects to not be affected by the manipulator unless they have entered the zone in its entirety. Thus, time-warp-like effects can be produced without the need for a temporal anomaly.
A way to learn more about the zone is by inserting something long halfway inside the zone and seeing how it responds. Morul's pirate eye would also be useful if he didn't go blind just by looking at it. (By the way, has Morul tried looking at the crater from afar?)
Of course, one can always throw physics out the window and say that this is an alien anomaly fueled by space magic.
Any peer reviews?))
((Lightspeed isn't guaranteed to be constant across an anomalous change in timerate. Just as normal physics are said not to work where relativity is concerned, so is relativity not guaranteed to work where pure changes in timerate - not those set about by relative speeds or gravity - are concerned. There is no scientific way to describe the behavior of light in these anomalies. If reflected light keeps its frequency on transition, but travels slower inside the anomaly, that would mean it becomes "compacted", losing speed but gaining frequency relative to the outside observer. If that is the case, anyone within the anomaly would only see light from any carried sources, because outside light would become "compressed" into ultraviolet and beyond spectrum, as time outside passes faster. To the inside observers, the "border" of the anomaly would be darkness, spotted with visible light converted from low-frequency radiation such as infrared. Only light from their own source would, to them, seem to reflect off objects - including objects beyond the border of the anomaly, because that light would exit as infrared radiation, bounce off something, then reenter as visible light.
It's quite confusing from any known conventional physics standpoint.
Also, I didn't seem to post an action.))
"Next time might not be survivable.. Hm, must be about that Zone Storm. Why do I have a sudden feeling that mapping this rock is going to be a much harder, and much less straightforward task that we anticipated?"
Go over to where the feeds from the current team are, hear their reports on the anomalies they encounter. Attempt to analyze and think of possible properties of the anomalies encountered based on the reports and results of the teams' experiments.
Red Team could be anything, not much to go on so far. Only real information is that the ground is extremely smooth and heat absorbent. Hard to say what that means. May mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Team Blue's anomalies are strange to say the least, and may be very dangerous. But perhaps, if they look around, they can find an area with a "normal speed" or at least someplace close enough to that so that it won't really matter.
Team Green is clearly someplace they really shouldn't be. If anything thats a place for a Full body robot, preferably Lukas since he's so much heavier and more armored and probably more radiation resistant.
Try to determine whether the previous team already explored any of the areas the current team is.
If they did, they did it without their helmet cams on. There is footage of them sort of wandering around the base and the immediate area but they never seem to go very far.