Concerning the Orbital Bombardment System, No Spoilers

AirTech wrote:(Tesla level fiddlings would be detectable a couple of light years away with the power transmission experiments and you would have to be blind and deaf to miss them).

Are you sure? I'd read that it was actually really hard to detect anything but an intentionally interstellar-beamed transmission at light-year distances because it gets lost in the noise, so aliens couldn't realistically, say, be looking at 50-year-old broadcast TV.

Would it really be possible to distinguish Tesla's experiments from, say, the sun's radio noise at the distance of Alpha Centauri?

Hello FTTB,

Welcome to the forums!

Enjoy your favorite simulated beverage on the forum.

Kudos for suggesting something the rest of us have overlooked.

One would hope Nahrmahn has indeed tasked OWL to look again at what he can do, now that he's far more aware of his capabilities, but its just like RFC not to mention it in LaMA, but we can dream there's additional data in HFQ.

7 days for the next snippet?

L

FTB wrote:Here's a suggestion.

Given that the textev appears to be all from the first book (OAR) when OWL wasn't the sharpest tack in the draw, etc., maybe it would be time for Merlin to suggest to the new and improved OWL and Nahrmahn that they investigate the question of neutralizing the OBS again, and possibly do some of that super-time compressed R&D like they did regarding PICA's. Who knows what answers might come from a couple of centuries of virtual R&D?

cralkhi wrote:

AirTech wrote:(Tesla level fiddlings would be detectable a couple of light years away with the power transmission experiments and you would have to be blind and deaf to miss them).

Are you sure? I'd read that it was actually really hard to detect anything but an intentionally interstellar-beamed transmission at light-year distances because it gets lost in the noise, so aliens couldn't realistically, say, be looking at 50-year-old broadcast TV.

Would it really be possible to distinguish Tesla's experiments from, say, the sun's radio noise at the distance of Alpha Centauri?

Tesla's power transmission technology involved megawatt class RF transmitters, the tight frequency control of these is wildly different from the broadband spectra of a natural event. That said, its transmissions would be unmistakable from an orbital platform and possibly detectable from interstellar range with the right equipment in the absence of other confusing transmissions.
The point being that defines the range of possible early technologies that may be detectable before the theory catches up with the practice enough to provide effective shielding.

If Merlin were to drop some hints to get people thinking along the lines of metamaterials, then effective stealth of virtually everything would be possible, with the exception of waste heat rejection and omnidirectional broadcasting.

I suspect that the bodies of the various satellites are covered n a metamaterial sheath for much the same reason, since a properly designed metamaterial sheath would "bend" light around the object you would not even be able to detect it through occultation of the stars or other planets and moons.

Thucydides wrote:If Merlin were to drop some hints to get people thinking along the lines of metamaterials, then effective stealth of virtually everything would be possible, with the exception of waste heat rejection and omnidirectional broadcasting.

I suspect that the bodies of the various satellites are covered n a metamaterial sheath for much the same reason, since a properly designed metamaterial sheath would "bend" light around the object you would not even be able to detect it through occultation of the stars or other planets and moons.

By the time such materials could be developed on Safehold, the Rakurai should already have been dealt with.

Maybe, or maybe not.

Research metamaterials on the NextBigFuture blog and you will see there are multiple approaches besides making photonic latticeworks. By the 25th century, the principles may have been refined to the point that some form of metamaterial could be made with relatively simple tools and materials.

The bonus is that the sorts of techniques used to make metamaterials probably have many other applications as well.

Thucydides wrote:Maybe, or maybe not.

Research metamaterials on the NextBigFuture blog and you will see there are multiple approaches besides making photonic latticeworks. By the 25th century, the principles may have been refined to the point that some form of metamaterial could be made with relatively simple tools and materials.

The bonus is that the sorts of techniques used to make metamaterials probably have many other applications as well.

Sure, I know that there are other methods of making metamaterials. But I don't see any way that such materials could possibly ever be made without advanced construction techniques. I'm not saying that they would absolutely require electricity or anything else which might be detected by the Rakurai. What I'm saying is it would take decades of development before any invisibility metamaterials could possibly be produced on Safehold. By that time, Merlin will have removed the danger of the Rakurai because it is interfering with so many other potential developments.