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Relativity

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Re: Relativity
Post by cthia   » Wed Sep 30, 2020 11:59 pm

cthia
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tlb wrote:
cthia wrote:I don't think the crew will see any change in the universe. Their brain - thus ability to process information - slows to the point that it is useless to them.

From the point of view of the crew in the ship, nothing has happened to them; it is the outside universe that changed: the stars in front have blue-shifted and the stars behind have red-shifted. Their brain speed has not changed by any measurement that they can make. You are considering them from the outside frame of reference, not from their local frame of reference.

None of these speeds can be attained in the Honorverse because of particle shielding failure.

No.

An outside observer will see what is happening, true. But the fact that it IS happening will also affect the crew. They will simply be oblivious to it.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Relativity
Post by tlb   » Thu Oct 01, 2020 9:13 am

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cthia wrote:I don't think the crew will see any change in the universe. Their brain - thus ability to process information - slows to the point that it is useless to them.

tlb wrote:From the point of view of the crew in the ship, nothing has happened to them; it is the outside universe that changed: the stars in front have blue-shifted and the stars behind have red-shifted. Their brain speed has not changed by any measurement that they can make. You are considering them from the outside frame of reference, not from their local frame of reference.

None of these speeds can be attained in the Honorverse because of particle shielding failure.

cthia wrote:No.

An outside observer will see what is happening, true. But the fact that it IS happening will also affect the crew. They will simply be oblivious to it.

That is not the way to think about Special Relativity; in their local frame of reference the laws of physics and chemistry will not have changed, so their neurons will be firing at the same measured rate that was observed before their voyage began.

What you are writing about is the time dilation effect that an outside observer would notice: not that their brains are running slower, but that time is flowing slower in a moving frame of reference. Fundamental to the Special Theory of Relativity is that this is dependent on the frame of reference, so the crew on the ship would say that the outside observer is the one observing time dilation.

Note that you said that they would not see any change in the universe outside. That is obviously false because they will observe the frequency shift difference between what is ahead and what is behind.
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Re: Relativity
Post by Theemile   » Thu Oct 01, 2020 9:14 am

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Loren Pechtel wrote:
Theemile wrote:As long as sidewalls are up, the missiles will just vaporize when they hit the sidewalls - it's what sidewalls were created for in the beginning. It doesn't change when you give them more KE - it's just Honorverse physics.


Even vaporized a hit would be deadly.


In our universe.. yes. but not in the Honorverse according to everything Webber has set up.

Matter hitting sidewalls equals "fzzt"....
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RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Relativity
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Thu Oct 01, 2020 9:50 pm

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Theemile wrote:
Loren Pechtel wrote:Even vaporized a hit would be deadly.


In our universe.. yes. but not in the Honorverse according to everything Webber has set up.

Matter hitting sidewalls equals "fzzt"....


Up until the MDM I would agree. With an MDM, however, even a perfectly spherical release of the energy produced vaporizes nearly a meter of tungsten armor (everything else fares far worse) on the ship--and the destruction is supersonic so you have a brutal shockwave heading into the ship.

I think he just didn't realize the physics had changed.
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Re: Relativity
Post by tlb   » Thu Oct 01, 2020 11:16 pm

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Loren Pechtel wrote:Even vaporized a hit would be deadly.

Theemile wrote:In our universe.. yes. but not in the Honorverse according to everything Webber has set up.

Matter hitting sidewalls equals "fzzt"....

Loren Pechtel wrote:Up until the MDM I would agree. With an MDM, however, even a perfectly spherical release of the energy produced vaporizes nearly a meter of tungsten armor (everything else fares far worse) on the ship--and the destruction is supersonic so you have a brutal shockwave heading into the ship.

I think he just didn't realize the physics had changed.

But does an explosion at the sidewall result in a shock wave in the hull? It depends how much of the energy release is transmitted through the sidewall. If the sidewall holds, then perhaps much of that energy is reflected or otherwise dispersed? Certainly any energy passed would be attenuated.
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Re: Relativity
Post by cthia   » Fri Oct 02, 2020 4:55 am

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tlb wrote:
Loren Pechtel wrote:Even vaporized a hit would be deadly.

Theemile wrote:In our universe.. yes. but not in the Honorverse according to everything Webber has set up.

Matter hitting sidewalls equals "fzzt"....

Loren Pechtel wrote:Up until the MDM I would agree. With an MDM, however, even a perfectly spherical release of the energy produced vaporizes nearly a meter of tungsten armor (everything else fares far worse) on the ship--and the destruction is supersonic so you have a brutal shockwave heading into the ship.

I think he just didn't realize the physics had changed.

But does an explosion at the sidewall result in a shock wave in the hull? It depends how much of the energy release is transmitted through the sidewall. If the sidewall holds, then perhaps much of that energy is reflected or otherwise dispersed? Certainly any energy passed would be attenuated.

That's brilliant tlb. I always thought the energy had to be reflected somehow. I recall another sci-fi piece which featured a weapon that reflected any energies directed at it proportional to the attack. It gives as good as it got.

At any rate, Every time I hear my bug zapper outside I think of sidewalls. Every time an enormous bug or moth gets caught in it, the thing sputters as if spikes of energy surges are going to shut it down.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Relativity
Post by cthia   » Fri Oct 02, 2020 6:39 am

cthia
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Treecat Experiment

If the maximum distance that a treecat can communicate is greater than the distance of the shortest line connecting two points on either side of a wormhole—which is simply folded space—can they communicate?

They are relatively the same distance apart.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Relativity
Post by George J. Smith   » Fri Oct 02, 2020 8:42 am

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cthia wrote:snip...
That's brilliant tlb. I always thought the energy had to be reflected somehow. I recall another sci-fi piece which featured a weapon that reflected any energies directed at it proportional to the attack. It gives as good as it got.
...snip


ST:TNG had an episode where the Enterprise went to the rescue of a stranded ship that suffered from a similar fate, continually increasing the power of the shields against the ever increasing energy pulse was what caused the damage.
.
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GJS

A man should live forever, or die in the attempt
Spider Robinson Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) A voice is heard in Ramah
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Re: Relativity
Post by Theemile   » Fri Oct 02, 2020 9:03 am

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tlb wrote:
Loren Pechtel wrote:Even vaporized a hit would be deadly.

Theemile wrote:In our universe.. yes. but not in the Honorverse according to everything Webber has set up.

Matter hitting sidewalls equals "fzzt"....

Loren Pechtel wrote:Up until the MDM I would agree. With an MDM, however, even a perfectly spherical release of the energy produced vaporizes nearly a meter of tungsten armor (everything else fares far worse) on the ship--and the destruction is supersonic so you have a brutal shockwave heading into the ship.

I think he just didn't realize the physics had changed.

But does an explosion at the sidewall result in a shock wave in the hull? It depends how much of the energy release is transmitted through the sidewall. If the sidewall holds, then perhaps much of that energy is reflected or otherwise dispersed? Certainly any energy passed would be attenuated.


And the sidewalls are "stitched to the wedge" - I've always assumed that this means any force and energy is transferred to the wedge from the sidewalls.

Other than lasers and grasers passing through the sidewall (and being "bent" "diffused" and "attenuated" in the process, all other energy (physical and energetic) is spent in the sidewall.

Contact nukes had the burn and boom modes. Burn would initiate a plasma bloom in an attempt to overwhelm the sidewall and burn the generator out - Boom would attempt to sneak it's way through the sidewall using special penetrators to sync with the sidewall, and explode next to the skin. Burn was never intended to harm the ship - only weaken or remove the sidewalls. We've never seen a battle where "some" of the energy gets though a sidewall from an impact or explosion. It's all or...nothing.

Once again, Loren, I'm not saying that I don't agree with you - in the real world. And you are correct, David set up everything for single drive missiles, and MDM changed the ballgame making Einsteinian overtake Newtonian physics. I'm just saying, in Universe, this has been the answer, and I have yet to see it contravened.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Relativity
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri Oct 02, 2020 9:29 am

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cthia wrote:Treecat Experiment

If the maximum distance that a treecat can communicate is greater than the distance of the shortest line connecting two points on either side of a wormhole—which is simply folded space—can they communicate?

They are relatively the same distance apart.

My guess is that wouldn't work - Honorverse wormholes don't seem to pass anything except ships under sail & hypergenerator. But it'd be worth a quick experiment.

Mind you, a treecat's mindvoice range appears to be only a few KM which means even if mindvoice passes through a wormhole like it was zero distance the 'cats would need to be deeply inside the departure and arrival lanes; well inside the grav eddy. So they'd pretty much have to stand in the middle of the road and block traffic to talk. :D

Still it seems simple enough to send a pair of ships, each carrying a treecat, towards a wormhole in close formation and see if the 'cats can still talk after the first ship jumps. In the unlikely event that it work you've learned something interesting and can start exploring if there's any way to make practical use of this scientific curiosity.
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