Detecting wormholes by resonance zone?

In War of Honor, the crew of Harvest Joy are somewhat disappointed that their new terminus isn't in an inhabited system.
In ART, the Zunker Terminus was discovered '17 T-years earlier', from the Idaho end, despite being in a previously-inhabited system.

But since the resonance zone of a terminus is fairly large and very lethal, how could the mysterious ka-splatting of any ship trying to leave on a certain bearing not be noticed? Even very poor systems tend to get quite a few ships a year.

[pre-posting edit thing]: I just realised that if termini aren't usually on the system ecliptic, there's very little chance of people running into them and the area to look in is much bigger. That said, the Manticoran one seems to be and I can't remember any that explicitly weren't.

In fact, given the ridiculous value of a hyper bridge - let alone a junction - and the relatively trivial cost of hyper travel (shipping vast quantities of basic foodstuffs is economically viable), why aren't there companies on the Axelrod line that go out looking for the things? Just have your dispatch boat make a few jumps around the hyper limit, and see if it explodes. If it doesn't, send it to the next system and repeat. Any system rich enough to stand up to a few BCs will (should?) have enough interstellar traffic to have run across its terminus already, so anything you discover is easily grabbed.

Even smaller systems could pay to hunt down termini - hyper travel is cheap, so the added cost for leaving on a non-least-time bearing can't be very great. So you can pay merchants who were coming anyway to go a few degrees off their normal path, and have the entire circumference* covered fairly quickly.

*See italicised bit, this is where I realised I was assuming they were typically on the ecliptic.

FLHerne wrote:In War of Honor, the crew of Harvest Joy are somewhat disappointed that their new terminus isn't in an inhabited system.
In ART, the Zunker Terminus was discovered '17 T-years earlier', from the Idaho end, despite being in a previously-inhabited system.

But since the resonance zone of a terminus is fairly large and very lethal, how could the mysterious ka-splatting of any ship trying to leave on a certain bearing not be noticed? Even very poor systems tend to get quite a few ships a year.

[pre-posting edit thing]: I just realised that if termini aren't usually on the system ecliptic, there's very little chance of people running into them and the area to look in is much bigger. That said, the Manticoran one seems to be and I can't remember any that explicitly weren't.

In fact, given the ridiculous value of a hyper bridge - let alone a junction - and the relatively trivial cost of hyper travel (shipping vast quantities of basic foodstuffs is economically viable), why aren't there companies on the Axelrod line that go out looking for the things? Just have your dispatch boat make a few jumps around the hyper limit, and see if it explodes. If it doesn't, send it to the next system and repeat. Any system rich enough to stand up to a few BCs will (should?) have enough interstellar traffic to have run across its terminus already, so anything you discover is easily grabbed.

Even smaller systems could pay to hunt down termini - hyper travel is cheap, so the added cost for leaving on a non-least-time bearing can't be very great. So you can pay merchants who were coming anyway to go a few degrees off their normal path, and have the entire circumference* covered fairly quickly.

*See italicised bit, this is where I realised I was assuming they were typically on the ecliptic.

IIRC, the resonance zone was a result of the interactions of a multiple star system (which Manticore is), and would therefore not be present in a typical single start system, but I'm not sure where I read that, so any textev on the subject would be appreciated.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

FLHerne wrote:In War of Honor, the crew of Harvest Joy are somewhat disappointed that their new terminus isn't in an inhabited system.
In ART, the Zunker Terminus was discovered '17 T-years earlier', from the Idaho end, despite being in a previously-inhabited system.

But since the resonance zone of a terminus is fairly large and very lethal, how could the mysterious ka-splatting of any ship trying to leave on a certain bearing not be noticed? Even very poor systems tend to get quite a few ships a year.

[pre-posting edit thing]: I just realised that if termini aren't usually on the system ecliptic, there's very little chance of people running into them and the area to look in is much bigger. That said, the Manticoran one seems to be and I can't remember any that explicitly weren't.

In fact, given the ridiculous value of a hyper bridge - let alone a junction - and the relatively trivial cost of hyper travel (shipping vast quantities of basic foodstuffs is economically viable), why aren't there companies on the Axelrod line that go out looking for the things? Just have your dispatch boat make a few jumps around the hyper limit, and see if it explodes. If it doesn't, send it to the next system and repeat. Any system rich enough to stand up to a few BCs will (should?) have enough interstellar traffic to have run across its terminus already, so anything you discover is easily grabbed.

Even smaller systems could pay to hunt down termini - hyper travel is cheap, so the added cost for leaving on a non-least-time bearing can't be very great. So you can pay merchants who were coming anyway to go a few degrees off their normal path, and have the entire circumference* covered fairly quickly.

*See italicised bit, this is where I realised I was assuming they were typically on the ecliptic.

IIRC, the resonance zone was a result of the interactions of a multiple star system (which Manticore is), and would therefore not be present in a typical single start system, but I'm not sure where I read that, so any textev on the subject would be appreciated.

Incorrect--resonance zones exist in single-star systems as well.

FLHerne wrote:In War of Honor, the crew of Harvest Joy are somewhat disappointed that their new terminus isn't in an inhabited system.
In ART, the Zunker Terminus was discovered '17 T-years earlier', from the Idaho end, despite being in a previously-inhabited system.

But since the resonance zone of a terminus is fairly large and very lethal, how could the mysterious ka-splatting of any ship trying to leave on a certain bearing not be noticed? Even very poor systems tend to get quite a few ships a year.

[pre-posting edit thing]: I just realised that if termini aren't usually on the system ecliptic, there's very little chance of people running into them and the area to look in is much bigger. That said, the Manticoran one seems to be and I can't remember any that explicitly weren't.

In fact, given the ridiculous value of a hyper bridge - let alone a junction - and the relatively trivial cost of hyper travel (shipping vast quantities of basic foodstuffs is economically viable), why aren't there companies on the Axelrod line that go out looking for the things? Just have your dispatch boat make a few jumps around the hyper limit, and see if it explodes. If it doesn't, send it to the next system and repeat. Any system rich enough to stand up to a few BCs will (should?) have enough interstellar traffic to have run across its terminus already, so anything you discover is easily grabbed.

Even smaller systems could pay to hunt down termini - hyper travel is cheap, so the added cost for leaving on a non-least-time bearing can't be very great. So you can pay merchants who were coming anyway to go a few degrees off their normal path, and have the entire circumference* covered fairly quickly.

*See italicised bit, this is where I realised I was assuming they were typically on the ecliptic.

Most resonance zones are not as dangerous and as obvious as Manticore's. The Manticore Junction is massive, with at least 7 termini, and produces far more resonance effect than any other wormhole. So detecting wormholes by resonance is usually not as easy as you think. Also, David has said that there are a number of other phenomena which produce dangerous effects similar to resonance, so just poking around waiting for your ship to explode is more likely to find something other than a wormhole.

As for searching for wormholes, there are indeed people who go out searching for wormholes. The problem is that there aren't enough experts available to do that searching, and they are expensive. It usually takes years of highly paid work with expensive sensitive equipment. But there are people who do it. The Zunker wormhole was discovered just 10 years ago. And Jessyk discovered the Felix wormhole during its survey.

The Harvest Joy represented a very specific repurpose and modification of an existing ship, possibly an older CL. I have not gone back to try and look that up.
It was a RMN ship now operated by the RM Astrophysics agency.
Essentialy a partial conversion of an older warship as a science vessel specificaly set up to search and investigate for wormholes. Lots of specialized sensors and electronics, scientific crew compliment to do the searching and analysis. MILITARY grade compensators, sensors, weapons defense, hyperspace nodes, it's W-sail and armor- at least for a ship of it's original class plus general and then for the searching.
This kind of conversion makes a lot of sense for the quality and strenth/power of the basic ship, the kind of tools needed and research platform's capability. As shown in the discussion after the ship goes missing, it had a long endurance if it needed to attempt to return home through hyper-space (once it figured out where it had gotten to through the new terminus) and certainly for visiting any close star systems to wherever it had appeared. That was part of the planning. It was certainly possible that they could go through the wormhole and not be able to reverse transit for all sorts of reasons including damaged W-sail or just not be able to nail down the readings to be confident. So they were stocked up to support the crew for something like at least a year.
Don't think they were going through the wormhole with weapons live but they certainly would have been (had they not been destroyed immediatly in the ambush) able to have a conversation with anybody in an inhabited starsystem near the exit point or on the hyper-space trip home from a reasonable position of confidence and strength by virtue of the regular weapons systems on board.

Not clear if this was a normal configuration for a wormhole survey ship but I suspect that most civilian/corporate survey ships would not be on military hulls. You might custom build a civilian ship for survey work but not want to arm it.

FLHerne wrote:

Just have your dispatch boat make a few jumps around the hyper limit, and see if it explodes. If it doesn't, send it to the next system and repeat.

My response:

And if they survive three tries, they are pardoned, right?

Don

Wouldn't it be interesting if -- in the processing of investigating a sensor ghost (worrying about another Oyster Bay attack) one of the GA's fighting ships got a few twitchy gravitational readings in an unexpected and previously "not real interesting corner" of one of the main star systems?

AKA a Lynxian or Torchese (hard to detect) wormhole terminus to parts unknown... Boy, that could hoist a few folks on their own petard...

A while ago I was saying, after the RMAIA finished mapping the seventh terminus, that they should go and investigate the unclaimed, uninhabited systems near Manticore. Given the number of termini we have seen end in uninhabited systems, there must be some linking two uninhabited systems. Heck, the Felix Darius bridge is proof of that. Go to a star, see if it has something like an RZ, if not go on to the next, if so, mark it down for further investigation. They will probably find twenty or more not hyper bridges for every one they do find, but even finding one would be worth the investment.

crewdude48 wrote:A while ago I was saying, after the RMAIA finished mapping the seventh terminus, that they should go and investigate the unclaimed, uninhabited systems near Manticore. Given the number of termini we have seen end in uninhabited systems, there must be some linking two uninhabited systems. Heck, the Felix Darius bridge is proof of that. Go to a star, see if it has something like an RZ, if not go on to the next, if so, mark it down for further investigation. They will probably find twenty or more not hyper bridges for every one they do find, but even finding one would be worth the investment.

Hmmm....just how many stars are there in the approzimatley 1,000,000,000 cubic light years in known space (imagining a cube with sides of 1000 ly and 1,000 ly from the central point (Sol))?

A lot, I expect. Enough to keep explorers busy for quite some time.

Plus I think the average of twenty 'dry holes" to one wormhole is way too generous...I think two thousand to one is a better percentage.

So only governments will probably want to do this (a risky investment for all but the most gambling of venture capitalists), and I expect they've checked out most of the systems within 5-10 LY of their planet.

So the Core is probably been well-covered, the Shell/Protecotrates/Verge, probably a lot less.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

SharkHunter wrote:Wouldn't it be interesting if -- in the processing of investigating a sensor ghost (worrying about another Oyster Bay attack) one of the GA's fighting ships got a few twitchy gravitational readings in an unexpected and previously "not real interesting corner" of one of the main star systems?

AKA a Lynxian or Torchese (hard to detect) wormhole terminus to parts unknown... Boy, that could hoist a few folks on their own petard...

It would certainly be interesting, but highly unlikely, since they are extremely hard to detect.