Translocator/Blink moduleI hope you like big posts...
Can I get a picture? It sounds interesting although I can basically already tell you it is gonna be very very costly.
Eh, token cost doesn't matter, I'm just doing this fore fun. Although there are some serious modifications I want to consider... And this does mean I'm wasting my time...
hmmm...
Oh well, fun comes first! Plus, if this works, it could get used in a covert op or maybe in a spaceship.
So, the simple part first:The system comes with a suit, either a modified exoskeleton/MK3 or a custom built suit if necessary. It probably won't be necessary.
It will be good if the suit has flight capabilities since the when activated the system might damage the user's surroundings if automanipulators can't be set to only affect the user.
Let's assume this is the suit:
I know, I know, I draw terribly.
Then the system would be attached much like an armoured backpack (the green thing in the back, yes I said know I draw terribly). All the automanipulators along with their energy source and electronics will be in it, preferably close to the center of a sphere surrounding the user.
It should have a small port so that its insides can be checked, repaired and replaced as necessary without the entire system having to be disassembled.
The system can be manually programmed with the relative coordinates. It can also be controlled via a HUD, using a rangefinder to compute the distance. Finally, it can use a combination of the two systems (for example, looking where you want to move towards, setting the distance and engaging the system). It can also be allowed to be controlled remotely, but that function should be very well protected, perhaps with a physical switch on top of normal computer security, so that it cannot be easily used by the enemy or accidentally activated by AUX overshoots of teammates.
It doesn't need much armour, just enough to slow any debris down enough so that if an automanipulator is hit, the automanipulator's sensors can detect the breach and it can self destruct before it can overload, so that dying with the thing on does not mean everyone around you has to run. It would be good if the self destruct feature can be disabled in covert ops if possible, so that if the operative dies, the system can be overloaded, ensuring that the operative is not captured.
The position of the electromagnetic manipulator should be somewhere in the backpack. The where is not really important since it should remain immobile.
The vector automanipulators will be positioned like this:A sphere within which the automanipulators can freely move.
The automanipulators each point in opposite directions.
One manipulator accelerates, the other decelerates in the other direction. The electromagnetic manipulator protects the user during the transfer. Simple as that.
The delay between activation of the first automanipulator and the activation of the second controls how far the user jumps.
They can also be used to accelerate the user by being positioned at an angle and firing simultaneously, like this:
The orange arrow is the vector of the acceleration. The smaller the angle between the two automanipulators the greater the acceleration.
The primary use for this would be the ability for the user to gain a quick burst of speed if he needs more speed than a MK3 can provide. It would also be useful if the suit is used in space, since it will allow the user to do things such as match their velocity with that of a spaceship while remaining undetected and then infiltrate it by jumping through its hull.
The two modes (acceleration and teleportation) could be combined by inducing a tiny delay between the activation of the first and second automanipulators.
That way, you could do things like teleport in front of the enemy with enough speed to deliver a fatal kinetic-amp powered punch before he has a chance to react.
Of course, this requires the system to be precise enough to correctly position the automanipulators and keep them there, since if it is not, then the user might find himself veering off course and/or getting slammed into a wall at a significant fraction of c. Which is cool if you're trying to kamikaze, but not so cool for normal operation.
If there is no system stable enough to do that, then we can scrap the above for a rigid and precisely calibrated beam where the automanipulators are mounted on.
This means that the system can no longer be used to accelerate the user (except if you activate only one automanipulator, but that would probably cause you to go insanely fast) but is much safer to use.
The system also runs various self diagnostics between jumps to ensure that the user can be warned if wear caused by jumping is starting to make the system unsafe to operate (see overload and/or slamming into a wall) or possibly damaging to the user (most probable is loss of many atoms due to going through dense materials and radiation damage due to the energy released by the few atoms that are lost during normal operation).
It should be easy to do, just a few sensors on important equipment.
If that is expensive, then cheapest we can get is a cube of densely packed conductive almost-monoatomic wires. As conductivity in each wire drops, the on board electronics can measure how many atoms have been lost and from which position and run a simulation or use statistics gathered by VR-run simulations to estimate the damage caused to the suit and user and give the user an estimate of how safe it is to continue using the suit.
Now, on to the more physics oriented stuff:My knowledge of physics is amateur at best, just what I learned by reading and in university, so I'm not 100% certain about those stuff, so I'll keep it simple.
Also, I have no idea of how quantum physics work (then again, who does?) so I'm not certain about how electrons would behave in that situation. I'm just guessing by using Newtonian physics.
First of all the problem of the air at the arriving location: In the best case scenario, the automanipulators would simply move the body of the user. However, if that is not possible, then they will affect an area around the user, like this:
Now, when you begin the transportation, you begin moving at a certain speed. Let's call that speed V.
So when you reach your destination, you're going to be moving at that speed V, while the air will be motionless (relative to the speed you're moving with).
Let's call the air's speed Δ, where Δ=0. So at the moment you arrive to your destination, you have something like this:
Where the blue thing is you and the purple the air.
And then the second automanipulator activates to slow you down. But since it affects everything in the surrounding area, then the air will be accelerated in the opposite direction.
So you end up with Δ'=-V and V'=0.
That will make the air leave the location you're standing in, ensuring no nasty air bubbles in the brain will kill you.
Obviously this won't save you if you end up inside a wall, since the material that is accelerated still has to go somewhere. It would end up impacting the rest of the wall, overheating it and probably killing you in the process.
Then we have the impact problem:So, your main problem when moving at high speeds is impacts, be they with the atoms in the air (friction, drag) or with the atoms in a wall (collision). Interactions between atoms happen almost exclusively via electromagnetism, since gravity and the weak and strong atomic forces are not strong enough to be of any influence at the scale we're working with.
So in the best case scenario, you would find a way to disable all outside electromagnetic forces to your body for the split second the transfer takes to happen. I know this is probably very expensive, but that should be offset by the fact that they only have to be disabled for a very short time, just enough for the transportation to happen. The electromagnetic forces between the atoms in the user's body continue happening normally, keeping the body of the user together.
If that can't be done then there's a slight problem, since you'd also have to disable electromagnetism in the user's body. And with Newtonain physics, that means that the electrons orbiting the protons in the atoms of your body will become free within moments of electromagnetism being disabled, turning your body into a cloud of cold plasma. That means that you can't travel any great distances without risking your body falling apart. Even if you survive the transfer without becoming plasma, bonds between atoms can still break and many electrons will radiate photons as their orbits decay to their ground states.
I'm unsure about how time dialation would work in that scenario. My instinct tells me it would help since things will appear to be happening slower for the user, so that means that the electrons would move slower, giving the user greater range. But I'm too sleepy to think clearly right now and I need to wrap this up.
The below are Newtonian. They do not take relativity or quantum mechanics into account.
If my calculations are correct an electron goes about 2km/s when orbiting a proton.
Going with the speed of light, you can travel one meter in about 3.3 nanoseconds.
In 3.3 nanoseconds, an electron going 2km/s can travel 7.22 micrometers.
The Bohr radious (distance of electron from proton in hydrogen atom in ground state) is about 5*10^-5 micrometers.
Misc:Obviously with the same resources you could get a very powerful weapon that could probably destroy walls, but that is not the purpose of the blink module. Its purpose is to provide a mobility advantage that will probably surprise your enemies, a way to bypass obstacles and allow the infiltration of otherwise inaccessible or hard to reach areas.
Note that this can probably still be affected by other people's amps and manipulators if their effect is strong enough.
I got inspiration by Simus' phase suit. I was trying to think how it would work with real physics and this was one of the ways I came up with: selectively disable the influence of outside electromagnetic forces on the user's body.
One of the other ways is to move Simus above the 3d world, into an area where she could bypass obstacles simply because they aren't there, although that gets a bit more complicated to think about, since I'm not that good with physics, so I can't tell what exactly that would entail. Although it would probably be easier to implement, you'd probably use a gravity manipulator to manipulate the properties of spacetime around your body.