penny wrote:Let's follow your thoughts to their conclusion. Let's assume that my notions of reflected energy weapons do not apply to ships that are simply sitting in the transit lane. Even though the transit lane is a powerful enough cone of gravity to destroy ships and anything else without Warshawski Sails.
And let's follow that notion all the way to its inference that reflected energy weapons only apply to the junction. Then that means that all of the energy weapons that miss their targets would be reflected when they continue on and hit the “door” of the WH. There would be reflected energy weapons everywhere. A veritable greenhouse effect inside the area encompassing the emergence lane. I think I recall from physics that reflected light loses none of its energy. What does that mean? Imagine a cop preparing to fire at a suspect through the bullet proof windows of a Tesla. What do you think will happen when he fires? Yes, that won't be a good idea for him or for anyone else who happens to be around the area. So when a fort fires energy weapons and they miss —or when laserheads fire energy weapons and they miss — they will be reflected when they hit the wall, destroying anything within standoff range. The standoff range of fort-fired energy weapons is 500,000 kilometers! That should eventually destroy Junction Control.
My notion that a much bigger cone of gravity is only triggered when ships are in the transit lane has merit. If it were not so, then anything that happened to hit the WH before it was discovered would have been destroyed. It would have been like an invisible wall in space. I know “The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy” gives humongous magnitudes for space, but sooner or later. BAM!!! Also, since Joat42 insisted that light has to pass through the WH, and I agree, or certain ships would be occluded, then that dense gravitic area of highly distorted space has to be initiated only when in the transit lanes. The area is always distorted and is always distorting light. But of course, that could be the case. The gravity is always there and ships are in danger of being destroyed by running into an invisible wall.
I was working on this post when I read Jonathan's rebuttle. And he thinks the cone of gravity is always there. In hindsight, I think I agree, or how could it ever be discovered?
But. I will reserve a place for some magnitude if gravity or energy being released from the WH when a transit takes place.
Anyway, are we certain those ships that were fired on emerging from the junction weren't fired on as they left the emergence lane? Two plus two in that case would come a lot closer to four.
Having read Jonathan's reply, he thinks the energy weapons would be absorbed when impacting the WH’s wall of gravity. Which might be true, except if the WH is absorbing energy weapons it would also absorb light, which would make it impossible to detect or read or even see any ships in the emergence lane, being so close to the wall of gravity… whilst sitting in the emergence lane’s cone of gravity. As I said upstream, we do know that nothing can enter the WH without sails. X-Rays do not have sails. So they cannot enter the WH. Missiles going off perpendicular to the junction have a standoff range of 50,000 kms. That should be enough to impact the wall of the WH. If they pass through, they might be able to impact ships on the other side. Same as the energy weapons of the forts.
Each thought leads to varying conclusions.
First and most minor - ships don't just sit in the transit lane and more than airlines just sit on the runway. On departure they queue up clear of the lane and await Astro Control giving them permission to proceed -- once they raise sail and enter it they continue moving down it until they get to the transit point and then transit and emerge in the emergence lane. And when they emerge, they continue moving down the lane until reaching its far end, transition to wedge, and move clear.
As to reflecting energy beams. First we have no statement that the wormhole does reflect them. And certainly wedges don't reflect beams; they scatter the photons wildly such that there isn't enough concentration anywhere to be dangerous anymore. (Almost like a lead bullet squarely hitting an armor place -- it doesn't fly back at the gun, it splatters and mostly into small enough pieces that they lack sufficient power to injure)
But even if the wormhole itself did reflect energy fire that hardly seems to matter because, from what we can tell, the weapons aren't positioned off the end of the transit lanes -- they're positioned
along it So they're firing into the sides of the lane at ships that would be passing them, rather than down its length. So they weren't aimed towards the wormhole in the first place; and if they missed they'd be headed across the lane and out the other side.
And no, weapons misses (or reflections if such a thing happens), wouldn't be destroying Astro Control because there's no reason for it to be within a million km of the wormhole; it'd be back near the staging area -- back closer to the airport analog of the terminal; not even the taxiway that leads to the runway/transit lane.
And yes from what the books say it seems anything that hit the wormhole before it was discovered would be destroyed. But wormholes (with the sole exception of the Twins) are [b]lighthours[/i] away from the system and way, way, way beyond the hyper limit. And compared to the volume of space out there they're
tiny. It's wildly unlikely for even a ship without grav sensors at all to wander into it. And with grav sensors they'd see the dangerous grav effects before running into it and so change course.
(Apparently there are other, non-wormhole, things causing similar it not quite so powerful grav effects which RFC has put forth as the reason that wormholes aren't instantly apparent upon entering a system -- even if you can see the dangerous area a wormhole is one needle hiding in a whole haystack of similar looking sensor readings)
