Oolite Bulletins

jacksy wrote:

It's the same with the galactic jump, no feeling of moving a great distance.

Indeed... in fact a gal-jump is truly instantaneous, in that no time passes on the ship's clock either. An old chestnut, is that one.

All I am asking for is the time to learn to use the light sabre, get up to speed about the Emperor, Vader and the Rebellion. Not to mention breaking up a riotous robotic game of space chess.

Wolfwood wrote:

Smivs wrote:

It only seems instantaneous to you. In 'reality' time passes - watch your ship's clock as you emerge and it adjusts to allow for the time you were in hyperspace.

I'm never been sure of that. It could be that you travel instantaneously from your perspective while time passes outside of your ship. If that were to happen, space travellers would practically jump in time and see decades if not centuries pass and become more and more distanced from the everyday lives of people who never travel and live their lives on planets and stations...

I'm with you on this one Wolfwood - I think it should be moments to the traveler, just like relativity dictates . Between the spacelanes, docking, and planetary landing, one can squeeze in downtime - and those aren't the only options: travel to different planets within the system, for example, can take a long time in realtime. I once spent a half hour traveling to a distant planet within a system .

CommRLock78 wrote:

I think it should be moments to the traveler, just like relativity dictates

Heh... I'm not sure how/if relativity applies to speeds that are massively in excess of light-speed.

El Viejo wrote:

CommRLock78 wrote:

I think it should be moments to the traveler, just like relativity dictates

Heh... I'm not sure how/if relativity applies to speeds that are massively in excess of light-speed.

I wasn't aware there were any speeds faster than speed of light - the Tiger Mark I has a top speed of 0.5 c, with a coefficient less than unity. Also, the idea of wormholes are a way of avoiding faster than light travel. But you're right, there are some consequences if one considers relativity. For fun I was playing around with relativity today thinking about this. So starting from dt = gamma*dt', I came up with the speed based on time intervals, v = c*(1 - (dt'/dt)^2)^0.5. Since I was at Esbiza en-route to Soinuste, I chose that as an example. The distance between the two is 1.6 LY, at 2.6 hours travel time (9360 seconds). Assuming that in the ship frame, the time interval passed was say 5.2 minutes (twice the travel time in units of minutes instead of hours), then v ~= 0.9994 c, meaning that those time differences would imply that the ship travels at very nearly the speed of light while hyperspace.

Edit: dt' (prime) here is proper time (the time interval in the ship).

Edit: A graph of gamma(v), the Lorentz factor:

CommRLock78 wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

CommRLock78 wrote:

I think it should be moments to the traveler, just like relativity dictates

Heh... I'm not sure how/if relativity applies to speeds that are massively in excess of light-speed.

I wasn't aware there were any speeds faster than speed of light - the Tiger Mark I has a top speed of 0.5 c, with a coefficient less than unity. Also, the idea of wormholes are a way of avoiding faster than light travel.

What? Actually the opposite. Wormholes are a convenient way to do faster than light travel.

Do the math: when do you emerge in your new system? Jump duration is the square of distance: a 1LY jump takes 1 hour, a 2LY jump takes 4 hours, …, a 7LY jump takes 49 hours. What would you call that if not faster than the speed of light, if you routinely traverse the distance that would take a beam of light a full year in just one hour?

Commander McLane wrote:

What? Actually the opposite. Wormholes are a convenient way to do faster than light travel.

Umm, no, you're wrong, the idea is that the fabric of space time is bent so that two places in space time are "closer" to each other. I'm a physics major, I don't think you're going to win this one dude. Nothing can beat the speed of light, period, it's mathematically impossible, if you knew what gamma (gamma = 1/(1-(v/c)^2)^.5) was above, you'd know that if v is greater than c, you go into the world of imaginary numbers (edit: of course, v=c is undefined ).

Commander McLane wrote:

Do the math: when do you emerge in your new system? Jump duration is the square of distance: a 1LY jump takes 1 hour, a 2LY jump takes 4 hours, …, a 7LY jump takes 49 hours. What would you call that if not faster than the speed of light, if you routinely traverse the distance that would take a beam of light a full year in just one hour?

I did the math, see the post above . Edit: Wolfwood had suggested that the time had passed in the ship was just minutes in hyperspace, so I just quickly came up with a formula for the ship time just to yield some actual numbers to work with; as far as I know, we don't know the time interval (proper time) on the ship while it is in hyperspace.

CommRLock78 wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

What? Actually the opposite. Wormholes are a convenient way to do faster than light travel.

Umm, no, you're wrong, the idea is that the fabric of space time is bent so that two places in space time are "closer" to each other.

It doesn't matter what the handwavium behind it is. The result matters: you have jumped a distance of two light years, and emerge from witchspace exactly four hours after you entered a wormhole. Ergo: you have moved (inside the wormhole through witchspace) exactly 4380 (= 365 * 24 / 2) times faster than light has to move through normal space from your system of origin to your destination system. The amount of time that you have subjectively spent in witchspace is completely irrelevant to that equation, because time in the Ooniverse is "ooniversal", so to speak.

CommRLock78 wrote:

I'm a physics major, I don't think you're going to win this one dude.

I see your major, and raise you my wife's PhD in Theoretical Physics. Dude.

And now I'm gonna call your bluff:

CommRLock78 wrote:

Nothing can beat the speed of light, period, it's mathematically impossible, if you knew what gamma (gamma = 1/(1-(v/c)^2)^.5) was above, you'd know that if v is greater than c, you go into the world of imaginary numbers (edit: of course, v=c is undefined ).

Nice equation, but completely irrelevant to the matter, because we're dealing with the physics in the Ooniverse, not with RealLife™ physics. There are vast differences between those two.

For instance there is no clearly defined 'c' in the Ooniverse, because of the well-known irreconcilable inconsistencies regarding sizes, distances, and speeds.

If you want an example: in your same post above you speculated about a Tiger Mark I's top speed of 0.5LM, calling it incorrectly 0.5 c. It's not 'c', there is no 'c' in the Ooniverse. Ship speeds are given in LM (= Light Mach), and it's anyone's guess in which relation one LM stands to the speed of light in the Ooniverse. Thus, your speculations suffer from a big problem: they have no foundation.

Again, I invite you to do the math, but before that, make some actual observations. All science begins with observation. If it's all based on speculation alone, it should be called metaphysics.

So, fire up your Tiger Mark I, turn on the coordinate display (SHIFT-F), target a fixed object (like a station), and fly towards it at top speed while having an eye on the clock and the remaining distance, which is given in meters. How fast are you flying? 0.5LM = how many m/s? Personally, I've done that years ago, and can therefore tell you that 0.5LM = 500 m/s. A simple arithmetic operation therefore tells us that 1LM = 1,000 m/s. Now, is that the speed of light in the Ooniverse? As you equal LM and c, I guess you would say so. And there you are already: obviously, physics in the Ooniverse are very different from physics in our universe, where in a vacuum c ≈ 300,000,000 m/s.

But that's not all. We know that fuel injectors give you exactly three times your top speed. Thus, with a simple press of the 'I' button, your Tiger Mark I boosts to 0.5LM * 3 = 1.5LM = 1,500 m/s. Taking your assumption that LM = c, this means that a Tiger (and a Cobra III, and many more ships) are flying faster than light effortlessly in normal space, without any fancy space bending at all.

But wait, there's more. Because we have also torus speed, which is precisely 32 times the top speed of a ship. So, with a simple press of the 'J' button, your Tiger Mark I accelerates to 0.5LM * 32 = 16LM = 16,000 m/s.

So, if your assumption that LM = c is correct, your assertion that "nothing can beat the speed of light, period, it's mathematically impossible" goes out the window instantaneously. On the contrary, for any ship with a top speed of more than 0.03125LM (= 1/32) beating the speed of light is mathematically necessary, as soon as the torus drive is involved.

At the end of the day all of this only proves that physics in the Ooniverse are vastly different from physics in RealLife™, and can therefore not be tackled with RealLife™ wisdom and formulas.

To summarise:-
Hyperspace jumps allow you to travel faster than light, but not by exceeding the speed of light.

Can anyone raise the stakes to a professor?

Obligatory Star Trek reference: http://www.physicsguy.com/ftl/

Commander McLane wrote:

CommRLock78 wrote:

Umm, no, you're wrong, the idea is that the fabric of space time is bent so that two places in space time are "closer" to each other.

It doesn't matter what the handwavium behind it is. The result matters: you have jumped a distance of two light years, and emerge from witchspace exactly four hours after you entered a wormhole. Ergo: you have moved (inside the wormhole through witchspace) exactly 4380 (= 365 * 24 / 2) times faster than light has to move through normal space from your system of origin to your destination system. The amount of time that you have subjectively spent in witchspace is completely irrelevant to that equation, because time in the Ooniverse is "ooniversal", so to speak.

No handwavium here, just basic special relativity (i.e. actual science). I invite you to read the entire thread: the amount of time passed on the ship in witchspace was the crux of the matter, and therefore, completey relevant.

Commander McLane wrote:

CommRLock78 wrote:

I'm a physics major, I don't think you're going to win this one dude.

I see your major, and raise you my wife's PhD in Theoretical Physics. Dude.

Well now, if you were a Ph.D., that would be calling and raising . Feel free to show her my physics if you don't believe me.

Commander McLane wrote:

And now I'm gonna call your bluff:

CommRLock78 wrote:

Nothing can beat the speed of light, period, it's mathematically impossible, if you knew what gamma (gamma = 1/(1-(v/c)^2)^.5) was above, you'd know that if v is greater than c, you go into the world of imaginary numbers (edit: of course, v=c is undefined ).

Nice equation, but completely irrelevant to the matter, because we're dealing with the physics in the Ooniverse, not with RealLife™ physics. There are vast differences between those two.

The whole idea of doing the calculation was to try and introduce some real physics to the game. I thought people would appreciate some real science behind the game....

Commander McLane wrote:

For instance there is no clearly defined 'c' in the Ooniverse, because of the well-known irreconcilable inconsistencies regarding sizes, distances, and speeds.

If you want an example: in your same post above you speculated about a Tiger Mark I's top speed of 0.5LM, calling it incorrectly 0.5 c. It's not 'c', there is no 'c' in the Ooniverse. Ship speeds are given in LM (= Light Mach), and it's anyone's guess in which relation one LM stands to the speed of light in the Ooniverse. Thus, your speculations suffer from a big problem: they have no foundation.

You admit yourself that it's anyone's guess what LM is, but turning back to reality (sorry, I just like to, fiction is fun, but I find the reference section much more enlightening), in air Mach = v/a where v is the relative speed to medium and a is the speed of sound in the medium. Extending this idea, a Light Mach would then be LM = v/c and 0.5 LM = 0.5 c (of course, this would seem to suggest faster than light travel is possible, much like faster than sound travel).

Commander McLane wrote:

Again, I invite you to do the math, but before that, make some actual observations. All science begins with observation. If it's all based on speculation alone, it should be called metaphysics.

Speculation? The only speculation I made was the time interval in the ship's frame. I used numbers which are all available on the wiki and forumlas that you yourself can verify with a simple web search.

Commander McLane wrote:

So, fire up your Tiger Mark I, turn on the coordinate display (SHIFT-F), target a fixed object (like a station), and fly towards it at top speed while having an eye on the clock and the remaining distance, which is given in meters. How fast are you flying? 0.5LM = how many m/s? Personally, I've done that years ago, and can therefore tell you that 0.5LM = 500 m/s. A simple arithmetic operation therefore tells us that 1LM = 1,000 m/s. Now, is that the speed of light in the Ooniverse? As you equal LM and c, I guess you would say so. And there you are already: obviously, physics in the Ooniverse are very different from physics in our universe, where in a vacuum c ≈ 300,000,000 m/s.

As you said there are "well-known irreconcilable inconsistencies regarding sizes, distances, and speeds", so doing what you're suggesting didn't come to mind, rather, I jumped straight to relativity, where one can find velocity by time intervals alone. Moreover, my calculation was geared toward the process of jumping, not so much travel within the system.

Commander McLane wrote:

But that's not all. We know that fuel injectors give you exactly three times your top speed. Thus, with a simple press of the 'I' button, your Tiger Mark I boosts to 0.5LM * 3 = 1.5LM = 1,500 m/s. Taking your assumption that LM = c, this means that a Tiger (and a Cobra III, and many more ships) are flying faster than light effortlessly in normal space, without any fancy space bending at all.

But wait, there's more. Because we have also torus speed, which is precisely 32 times the top speed of a ship. So, with a simple press of the 'J' button, your Tiger Mark I accelerates to 0.5LM * 32 = 16LM = 16,000 m/s.

So, if your assumption that LM = c is correct, your assertion that "nothing can beat the speed of light, period, it's mathematically impossible" goes out the window instantaneously. On the contrary, for any ship with a top speed of more than 0.03125LM (= 1/32) beating the speed of light is mathematically necessary, as soon as the torus drive is involved.

At the end of the day all of this only proves that physics in the Ooniverse are vastly different from physics in RealLife™, and can therefore not be tackled with RealLife™ wisdom and formulas.

Now here's where you're right; I was under the impression that a ship's top speed was when it was in "torus" speed.

The bottom line: as Smivs said, Witchspace Jumping allows us to travel great distances in relatively short periods of time, and and as you said trying to apply RealLife™ science to Oolite has major caveats .

CommRLock78 wrote:

The whole idea of doing the calculation was to try and introduce some real physics to the game. I thought people would appreciate some real science behind the game....

And here's the crux of the matter. No, they don't (well, at least I don't; or to be more precise: I don't care, at all). It's a pointless exercise.

Real physics does have a place when you are writing fiction. At least back when I was writing FFE fiction, I found it extremely important to try to figure out how the space travel was supposed to work etc. But, then again, the Frontier games were more science-oriented to begin with whereas Elite/Oolite take some freedoms in that regard.

Wolfwood wrote:

Real physics does have a place when you are writing fiction. At least back when I was writing FFE fiction, I found it extremely important to try to figure out how the space travel was supposed to work etc. But, then again, the Frontier games were more science-oriented to begin with whereas Elite/Oolite take some freedoms in that regard.

Agreed. Real physics always has a place in good science fiction, hence the name .

Commander McLane wrote:

CommRLock78 wrote:

The whole idea of doing the calculation was to try and introduce some real physics to the game. I thought people would appreciate some real science behind the game....

And here's the crux of the matter. No, they don't (well, at least I don't; or to be more precise: I don't care, at all). It's a pointless exercise.

I'm going out on a limb here, but it would probably be best to not speak for other people; it is discourteous.

Perhaps for the feeble-minded asking questions about how something works (or might work, as in the case of a space game) is a pointless endevour, but for me personally I like asking questions and knowing how things work (or might work); that's why I love science. I don't think it's too outrageous to for me to assume that a group of people playing a space game might also be interested in science and asking questions and knowing how things in their game could work based on scientific fact.

<shameless plug>[wiki]Stranglehold[/wiki] has some real science in it. And some pretty darn convincing cod science too, if I do say so myself!</shameless plug>