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ashpanash posted:When you arrive at point B, an FTL missile is instantly launched from point B to point A, blowing your ship up. I'm trying to follow you because I find this subject fascinating. Did you make a mistake here or did I just lose you? If you're arrived at B you can't be blown up at A even if your photons haven't arrived yet
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Jun 22, 2019 17:14
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Big Mean Jerk posted:IIRC there’s a book where Scotty decides to rescue Kirk from the Nexus accident via time travel but when he brings him back to the 24th century he accidentally creates an alternate timeline where the Borg have taken over everything. There's another novel where McCoy and Scotty steal an old museum ship (a non-refit Constitution-class ship, which convienetly has the TOS bridge module of the pre-refit Enterprise attached) on a rescue mission to get a kidnapped/captured Spock.
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Jun 22, 2019 17:21
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The Bloop posted:I'm trying to follow you because I find this subject fascinating. Did you make a mistake here or did I just lose you? From the frame of reference of someone at B, you're still at A. Remember there's no objective frame of reference. For an alien on a planet 70 million light years away, the Earth that exists in its frame of reference has t-rexes running around on it. Humans don't exist. spincube posted:There should be a race of little green men in flying saucers, with fishbowl space helmets and silver pyjamas, who communicate exclusively through the Close Encounters 'boop beep beep boop boooop' tones. B5 did that gag. https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Vree Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jun 22, 2019 |
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Jun 22, 2019 18:34
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ashpanash posted:Consider that, if you have a FTL ship, and you leave from point A to point B, you're outpacing the photons that go from point A to point B. So any point at which you arrive at point B, you'll see the past of point A, from before you left.
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Jun 22, 2019 19:25
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Cingulate posted:Ok, stupid question - why doesn't all of this go for e.g. sound too? Couldn't you do the same story with "hears" instead of "sees"? Basically it's because there's nothing particularly special about the speed of sound, but the speed of light (c) is fundamentally a part of how space and time transform.
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Jun 22, 2019 20:03
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ashpanash posted:Basically it's because there's nothing particularly special about the speed of sound®, but the speed of light© is fundamentally a part of how space™ and time™ transform.
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Jun 22, 2019 20:10
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Sash! posted:The energy costs could be so staggering and relying on a sequence of events so difficult to execute that it may be possible, but so difficult, that only highly trained specialists are the only people that it is available to. Yeah but if you don't have to care about causality you can just create unlimited amounts of energy by sending charged up batteries back in time
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Jun 22, 2019 21:04
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Grand Fromage posted:From the frame of reference of someone at B, you're still at A. I would say that given the assumption of FTL travel in this scenario, I only appear to still be at A to someone standing next to me at B. I'm not literally in two places at once, the information about my location is simply propigating more slowly than I'm moving. Analogous to a bat echolocating something that isn't there anymore because it moved away at Mach 2 or whatever
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Jun 22, 2019 21:24
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The Bloop posted:I would say that given the assumption of FTL travel in this scenario, I only appear to still be at A to someone standing next to me at B. I'm not literally in two places at once, the information about my location is simply propigating more slowly than I'm moving. But the speed of sound isn't a property of the universe. You're still privileging your own frame of reference as special. In the B frame of reference, you are still at A while also being at B in what B will perceive as the same time. So yes, you are in two places at once. One of the reasons FTL travel is a fundamental reality-breaking problem for our understanding of physics.
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Jun 22, 2019 21:28
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ashpanash posted:Consider that, if you have a FTL ship, and you leave from point A to point B, you're outpacing the photons that go from point A to point B. So any point at which you arrive at point B, you'll see the past of point A, from before you left. The second point makes no sense. I left point A to point B. At point B the missile was launched back at point A. Even if FTL is teleportation instead of the usual portrayal of "you're still 'moving' you're just moving many times faster than the speed of light - you actually have to traverse distance in some sense" then the missile that went to point A is wasted, or has to turn around and come to point B, at which point there aren't any problems. Well, other than the missile. Like this seems to have a bunch of additional assumptions which are causing the head-hurting. I don't know if these are somehow logically necessary, but if I am at point B, and the missile is at point B, why would you shoot at point A (unless you're doing the Picard Maneuver, in which case the point is that I'm not actually at A any more)?
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Jun 22, 2019 21:50
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Grand Fromage posted:But the speed of sound isn't a property of the universe. You're still privileging your own frame of reference as special. In the B frame of reference, you are still at A while also being at B in what B will perceive as the same time. So yes, you are in two places at once. One of the reasons FTL travel is a fundamental reality-breaking problem for our understanding of physics. We are both making assumptions by necessity in this thought experiment. We started with the conceit that FTL is possible and doesn't bluescreen the universe. It seems more likely in that case that it somehow connects frames of reference in a way that we don't understand rather than duplicating matter. I realize this is outside the realm of the provable or even theoretical, but you can't fall back on that when discussing a fictional universe where FTL is accepted to be possible
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Jun 22, 2019 21:54
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We're talking about different things then. I was not assuming FTL is possible or talking about a fictional universe.
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Jun 22, 2019 21:57
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If you’re struggling to understand this, let me make this clear: that’s a perfectly normal and expected reaction. This stuff takes some getting used to in order to wrap your mind around. Even then, it can be difficult to think in terms of SO(1,3) all the time. But also, if you’re really fascinated by it, I’d recommend at least watching a series of lectures about special relativity. Not a pop sci treatment, but a teacher who will take you through the implications along with several examples. It may seem overwhelming at first but it doesn’t take any particular genius to understand it. Ultimately, it’s like an instrument: it just takes practice.
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Jun 22, 2019 22:06
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Grand Fromage posted:We're talking about different things then. I was not assuming FTL is possible or talking about a fictional universe. It was in the post you quoted but fair enough of we were just talking past each other. I get special relativity about as well as anyone without the math can, I think. I'm just interested in the what if scenario in the sense that if FTL is possible, something we think is wrong and what are the options for what that could be
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Jun 22, 2019 22:49
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ashpanash posted:If you’re struggling to understand this, let me make this clear: that’s a perfectly normal and expected reaction. This stuff takes some getting used to in order to wrap your mind around. Even then, it can be difficult to think in terms of SO(1,3) all the time.
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Jun 23, 2019 00:20
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Nessus posted:Like this seems to have a bunch of additional assumptions which are causing the head-hurting. I don't know if these are somehow logically necessary, but if I am at point B, and the missile is at point B, why would you shoot at point A (unless you're doing the Picard Maneuver, in which case the point is that I'm not actually at A any more)? The Bloop posted:It was in the post you quoted but fair enough of we were just talking past each other. So at some point all of this English gets in the way and it becomes best to draw a bunch of diagrams or just solve some equations, point to a result, and say, "that's why." I know that's not particularly helpful, but my example from above was a truncated (and probably subtly wrong) version of this classic problem: The Tachyonic Anti-Telephone. Ultimately, if you want to really understand this, you're going to have to learn the math. That's ok, though. If you're anything like me, you were afraid of the math well past school age. But you were interested in learning this stuff. And at a certain point, the descriptions in languages fail to give you a full idea of the situation. An English sentence can mean 100 things to 100 people; A mathematical equation means the same thing to everyone who understands it. And if, like me, you hated math when you were in school, but you're really interested in learning about how this stuff works, then you'll be able to push past that part of you that hated the math. It'll become a lot easier to deal with, mostly because this time, you'll care about what you're learning - not because you feel forced to learn it, but because you want to learn it. And anyway, SR is just trigonometry and linear algebra. It's not like you're going to be delving deep into Riemannian geometry or groups and representations. That is, unless, you find you want to! (I did.) ashpanash fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Jun 23, 2019 |
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Jun 23, 2019 00:26
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For "why does FTL equal time travel", it helps a lot to keep in mind that with relativity and all that crap you can have two different people see the same set of events happen two entirely different ways, where both of them are simultaneously correct. Here's a simple example:quote:Einstein later illustrated this point with another thought experiment. Imagine that you once again have an observer standing on a railway embankment as a train goes roaring by. But this time, each end of the train is struck by a bolt of lightning just as the train’s midpoint is passing. Because the lightning strikes are the same distance from the observer, their light reaches his eye at the same instant. So he correctly says that they happened simultaneously. Under relativity, this isn't a measurement problem or anything: two people literally see things happen in a different order/simultaneity, and both are correct when it comes to the interactions of physics and stuff. Now add in FTL, and you can break how events can appear different from different viewpoints but still add up the same way overall, such that they no longer fit together as alternate interpretations in the same universe and instead start causing time travel bullshit or alternate timelines or whatever. There's a lot of math as to the 'how', but "it makes the different arrangements of the puzzle pieces no longer fit together and that makes weird stuff happen" is the key thing.
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Jun 23, 2019 01:56
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Roadie posted:Einstein later illustrated this point with another thought experiment. Imagine that you once again have an observer standing on a railway embankment as a train goes roaring by. But this time, each end of the train is struck by a bolt of lightning just as the train’s midpoint is passing. Because the lightning strikes are the same distance from the observer, their light reaches his eye at the same instant. So he correctly says that they happened simultaneously. I've always liked how most of the explanations of why there's no such thing as a privileged frame of reference implicitly HAVE a privileged frame of reference -- in this case the "each end of the train is struck by a bolt of lightning just as the train’s midpoint is passing".
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Jun 23, 2019 03:05
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Powered Descent posted:I've always liked how most of the explanations of why there's no such thing as a privileged frame of reference implicitly HAVE a privileged frame of reference -- in this case the "each end of the train is struck by a bolt of lightning just as the train’s midpoint is passing". Not really, no. The explanations refer to one or several different frames of reference, yes, but not any privileged frames of reference. Any frame of reference is valid in relativity. The first postulate of relativity is that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference. A privileged inertial frame would be one in which the laws of physics are different than in every other inertial frame.
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Jun 23, 2019 03:18
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So I’m guessing this isn’t the thread to talk about what ST novels are worth reading.
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Jun 23, 2019 08:54
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Nodosaur posted:So I’m guessing this isn’t the thread to talk about what ST novels are worth reading. A Stitch in Time is a novel about Garak by Andrew J. Robinson (the guy who played Garak) and is somehow one of the best Trek tie-in novels published so far.
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Jun 23, 2019 09:02
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Yeah, I already have that on my list
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Jun 23, 2019 09:19
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You'll never guess what I'm going to recommend. Prime Directive The New Earth series is also pretty nice and I might tentatively recommend the Gateway series book (#2?) featuring the New Earth Challenger crew that takes over after the TOS people bow out and has some pretty prime actual Star Trek-y exploration. I wouldn't particularly recommend the rest of Gateways and beyond those books I haven't really read much else.
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Jun 23, 2019 09:32
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I'm planning to read the "Novelverse" that's been running since, like, 2001. But that's gonna be a serious investment, money wise.
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Jun 23, 2019 09:37
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I really enjoyed the original run of the Vanguard series. Seven books, but it goes by super-quick, and I really dig its take on TOS and sorta DS9-ifying it.
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Jun 23, 2019 10:05
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Nodosaur posted:I'm planning to read the "Novelverse" that's been running since, like, 2001. But that's gonna be a serious investment, money wise. This is the way to go. Unlike the first 20 years, the past two decades or so have seen actual editorial control and an enforcement of canon and consistency across all lines. Before that, it was thinly disguised fan fiction of the worst tropes, fan induglences, wierd major backstories that went nowhere, etc. All under the rubric of "well, Roddenberry said we're not canon, go hog wild!"  Now they still know they can be contradicted by the screen, but they try to make that less likely. Obviously a lot of the post Voyager/Nemesis stuff will be blown out by STP. There were a few gems in the old run, but much if it is reduced to alt history "what if" by now.
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Jun 23, 2019 11:43
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Of the old runs I've read, "Strangers from the Sky" and "Prime Directive" were the two highlights. I've just dove into the Rihannsu trilogy and they're good (but indulgent as gently caress).
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Jun 23, 2019 11:50
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I'm on a big Voyager kick right now so I'm starting with the String Theory trilogy, because I hear it becomes important to the Voyager relaunch storyline. After that I'm gonna try to see if I can find a chronological reading guide.
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Jun 23, 2019 11:55
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Best Trek books are New Frontier, where the Mary Sue of all Mary Sues is Captain M'k'n'zy of Calhoun, the best swordfighter who ever was, who liberated his entire planet at like age 18, is a devastating handsome and angsty man with purple eyes and a badass facial scar, becomes besties with Picard, enrolls in Starfleet, beats the Kobayashi Maru, marries Commander Shelby, punches out Jellico numerous times with no consequences, is the personal secret undercover operative for Nechayev, sleeps with a lot of sexy ladies, and I think adopts baby Thor at one point. Also the only non-screen Star Trek character to get his own action figure!
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Jun 23, 2019 12:26
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does that have anything to do with the Novelverse
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Jun 23, 2019 12:40
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Nodosaur posted:does that have anything to do with the Novelverse I don't think New Frontier is a part of the verse.
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Jun 23, 2019 12:55
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TVTropes says it's part of it through "broad strokes", but it's TVTropes, so I'm not sure how seriously I should take it.
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Jun 23, 2019 12:59
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I wanna say Calhoun and the overall idea that he commanded a ship called Excalibur remained in the Novelverse, but I think the actual happenings in the New Frontier setting got chucked out the window. Meantime I'm still stuck in the late seventies on my readthrough of the old lovely TOS novels. Lost a bit of motivation after I powered through like three of them in a week, but I'm in a mood to get back round to it again.
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Jun 23, 2019 13:19
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They’re not Novelverse but I enjoyed some of the Captain’s Table books and most of the Stargazer line. It’s been 10+ years since I read them though so YMMV.
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Jun 23, 2019 14:16
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MorgaineDax posted:Best Trek books are New Frontier, where the Mary Sue of all Mary Sues is Captain M'k'n'zy of Calhoun, the best swordfighter who ever was, who liberated his entire planet at like age 18, is a devastating handsome and angsty man with purple eyes and a badass facial scar, becomes besties with Picard, enrolls in Starfleet, beats the Kobayashi Maru, marries Commander Shelby, punches out Jellico numerous times with no consequences, is the personal secret undercover operative for Nechayev, sleeps with a lot of sexy ladies, and I think adopts baby Thor at one point. There's a comic of him going back in time via sun slingshoting too. Might as well call him Kirk
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Jun 23, 2019 16:29
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K'r'k.
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Jun 23, 2019 16:41
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I've only really read A Stitch in Time and The Never-Ending Sacrifice which was pretty good - about the Cardy kid from early DS9 who had Bajoran parents and what happens to him over the time period of the series.
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Jun 23, 2019 17:55
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8one6 posted:A Stitch in Time is a novel about Garak by Andrew J. Robinson (the guy who played Garak) and is somehow one of the best Trek tie-in novels published so far. what's best about it is that they actually did something smart and had it be formatted as a letter so you can take or leave which part of it you think he's just straight-up lying about*. this sets it in a space that is ideal for beta canon--"take it or leave it according to your preferences" *probably like 85%+
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Jun 23, 2019 18:29
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Orv posted:You'll never guess what I'm going to recommend. Prime Directive The New Earth series is justified alone by how much the first book rags on the TMP uniforms: quote:Kirk glanced at McCoy, wearing his washed-out medical suit, and at his own clothing, a cloud-blue flight suit with sewn-on slippers instead of boots.
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Jun 23, 2019 18:50
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I would love to read a Stitch in Time. Wish I could find a reasonably priced paperback, I don't really want to buy an e-reader for it.
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Jun 23, 2019 18:59
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