Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Gigaz]

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.

[RedKing]

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>

[forsaken1111]

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

[forsaken1111]

Reality 1.2.1

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

[Starver]

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.)

[Descan]

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.

[Zrk2]

[/notaphysicist]

/thread

[Starver]

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.

[DreamCarver]

All this potential destruction of reality really makes me think we should invest in a spacelab somewhere around L3. Just to be safe.

[Sergarr]

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.

[BFEL]

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.

[Bohandas]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)