"Why are you still alive?"

Jonathan_S wrote:I agree that the terminus itself would be beyond the range of shipboard sensors.

However, the resonance zone from the terminus to the star would cover a significant fraction of the hyper limit's cicumphrence -- and that probably could be detectable by shipboard sensors.

Not really. We know from the Manticore Ascendant series that there are other gravitational effects that are similar to those of an RZ, so it can be mistaken. If it were that easily detectable, the junction would have been found by others much sooner, such as the survey ship that did get to Felix 200 years ago (or more) and whoever laid claim to it.

So, again, one would find the wormhole only if they already suspected it was there. It's possible the GA suspects the MAlign is hidden behind one because of the Congo one and because they do that with Bolthole too, but knowing where to search is not obvious. They do have those 3 freighters that did the Warner-Mannerheim transit and never came back from Galton, but because they never came back there's no hint of how far the wormhole would be.

Now even as a 3 terminus Junction it'd be a lot weaker RZ than Manticores -- and there are apparently other grav turbulence phenomena that often produce indistinguishable effects yet aren't associated with a wormhole.

It's 4 termini. Darius, Twins and two more.

But it's still possible that a GA (especially an RMN) ship that happened on the system might well notice where the RZ meets the hyper limit and follow it back to see if it was potentially related to an unknown wormhole. That could be the trail of clues that leads a ship the light hours out to where that little Junction is now within their sensor range.

Yes, it's possible. But again, it's usually dedicated ships and it's also usually if you already suspect it. Otherwise, tunnel vision applies and the scouting ships won't think to look for it.


BTW, just who surveyed the Felix system to find the wormhole there?

The books imply that the MAlign did. My guess that it really means Mannerheim did and the MAlign intercepted the data. When the MAlign decided to start colonising Galton, they would have infiltrated the Mannerheim Association to ensure they wouldn't interfere with and would help hide the transits. So when their incipient navy scouted nearby systems and did stumble upon the wormhole, the information never made it out of the navy.

jtg452 wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
That's a non-issue.

A GA task group drops in: "We have strong reason to believe this wormhole is being used by the MAlign and will be scouting it. We are making no claims on this system or the wormhole. Leave us alone and we will leave you alone." Mannerheim has nothing that can challenge such a force and whoever is in charge there will either not know (and thus be inclined to cooperate) or will know (and will want to hide that fact and thus cooperate.)

The real problem is the other end of the link is no doubt guarded.

I agree.

I don't see a Mannerheim senior officer arguing if a GA task force dropped into the system for a look around.

Then again, I don't think it's Mannerheim territory, so his arguments wouldn't hold water if the GA CO didn't want to be obliging.

He's not about to jump them unless he can wipe them out. Too big a break in character and you can't leave witnesses behind, so it's got to be a massacre or nothing. If one ship gets away, it means the RF is going to war with the GA or one of its members.

And we've already seen a 100% instant kill on a RMN force still get reported back. Mannerheim won't shoot even if they are confident of their ambush because they can't be sure there's no observer hanging back.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Or if there's a technology to pinpoint where a warp bridge leads to, without transiting, but again we'd have expected to see some research on that line or something even resembling that before now.

Such a discovery is probably two separate things:

Range and bearing. Maybe they'll figure out approximately what direction the wormhole goes--at that point you can send out survey ships to systems on that bearing.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Such a discovery is probably two separate things:

Range and bearing. Maybe they'll figure out approximately what direction the wormhole goes--at that point you can send out survey ships to systems on that bearing.

Reminds me of Asimov's The Currents of Space, where someone obtains the range to a secret location, but not the bearing, so the incipient Empire spends a lot of effort searching all systems on the surface of that sphere. Turns out that he had got that wrong too.

Anyway, that would still be a herculean effort by the GA... and needed to be done three times. First from Congo to the Twins; thence back to Felix. At that point, maybe they get lucky and raid Mannerheim's and the RF's databases, but otherwise they'd still need to do it a third time from Felix to Darius.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Such a discovery is probably two separate things:

Range and bearing. Maybe they'll figure out approximately what direction the wormhole goes--at that point you can send out survey ships to systems on that bearing.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Reminds me of Asimov's The Currents of Space, where someone obtains the range to a secret location, but not the bearing, so the incipient Empire spends a lot of effort searching all systems on the surface of that sphere. Turns out that he had got that wrong too.

Anyway, that would still be a herculean effort by the GA... and needed to be done three times. First from Congo to the Twins; thence back to Felix. At that point, maybe they get lucky and raid Mannerheim's and the RF's databases, but otherwise they'd still need to do it a third time from Felix to Darius.

That truly would be Herculean. Consider that that you know the direction to within one kilometer for every hundred kilometers; as approximate bearings go, that is pretty good. But what is your detection range? Assume it is one light minute; then for the first 100 light minutes of travel you could detect the end of the wormhole without stopping to search. But after a 1000 light minutes the radius of uncertainty is 10 light minutes, so you have to spiral out from the path at least 5 times around to be sure of finding the end within the area of possibility. But it is much worse that that, because you do not know how long the wormhole is; so to make sure that you do not overshoot it, you need to stop after traveling at most twice the detection range after the first 100 light minutes and perform the search spiral again. This stopping and performing a search spiral continues until the end is found or you give up.

Does this have to be done in normal space, or could it in hyperspace? But does the detection range decrease in hyperspace? The only way to speed this up is to have a fleet of ships that gradually spread out to cover the expected area.

tlb wrote:That truly would be Herculean. Consider that that you know the direction to within one kilometer for every hundred kilometers; as approximate bearings go, that is pretty good. But what is your detection range? Assume it is one light minute; then for the first 100 light minutes of travel you could detect the end of the wormhole without stopping to search. But after a 1000 light minutes the radius of uncertainty is 10 light minutes, so you have to spiral out from the path at least 5 times around to be sure of finding the end within the area of possibility. But it is much worse that that, because you do not know how long the wormhole is; so to make sure that you do not overshoot it, you need to stop after traveling at most twice the detection range after the first 100 light minutes and perform the search spiral again. This stopping and performing a search spiral continues until the end is found or you give up.

It's not that bad. A one-degree uncertainty after 100 light-years means 1.79 light-years laterally. But you don't have to first find the wormhole terminus. You have to only find the host star, and given stellar density, there are likely going to be 1 or at most 2 systems in that range (if that were pointing at Sol and Sol were at the extreme range at 1.8 light-years, it would still be the only star in that radius). In fact, given that every direction in the night sky does not end at a star, it's actually quite likely that a 1 degree search zone will have a handful candidates star systems over the known range of wormholes, which is less than 1000 light-years.

Unless it intersects a star cluster (an actual cluster, not the term used by the SL).

It's similar when knowing range, if you can get a 1% or better accuracy. Like in The Currents of Space, there aren't many systems that can be found in that sphere's shell. It's more difficult in this case because there'll be a lot of inaccuracy in the position of the furthest stars that haven't been already visited and directly surveyed.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Or if there's a technology to pinpoint where a warp bridge leads to, without transiting, but again we'd have expected to see some research on that line or something even resembling that before now.

Such a discovery is probably two separate things:

Range and bearing. Maybe they'll figure out approximately what direction the wormhole goes--at that point you can send out survey ships to systems on that bearing.

Harvest Joy's exploration of the Lynx terminus in WoH explicitly says you can't know the distance of a wormhole until someone's traveled it -- but I seem to recall that there no way (or I guess at least no known way) to for sensors on one end to determine anything about what bearing it follows either.

So, IIRC, the very most you can determine from even the closest inspections of a wormhole terminus are (a) how many other termini it connects to (aka - is it a junction; and if so how large), and (b) the approach needed to initiate travel to its remote terminus (termini).


Though actually seizing the Felix junction, and thus forcing any ships from Darius to avoid it, might eventually get you a step closer to finding the place.
Right now the kind of ship travel analysis that let the GA to Galton could only point them towards Felix -- even if they were lucky enough to ID ships that were going to Darius and get enough traffic records to work out max travel spheres.

But prevent any traffic from using the Felix wormhole and then -- should you be lucky enough to ID more Darius traffic, and get sufficient traffic records of those ships appearance in known systems -- you could start narrowing down where they could have gone to (to someplace other than the wormhole they use to travel an unknown distance in an unknown direction)

But you still need insane amounts of luck to even have the data necessary to start that kind of analysis. And Darius has (a) very little traffic, and (b) seems likely that if forced to abandon the wormhole would add forced and carefully planned or randomized delays to most such traffic that did exist specifically to throw off such analysis attempts.

Jonathan_S wrote:Harvest Joy's exploration of the Lynx terminus in WoH explicitly says you can't know the distance of a wormhole until someone's traveled it -- but I seem to recall that there no way (or I guess at least no known way) to for sensors on one end to determine anything about what bearing it follows either.

So, IIRC, the very most you can determine from even the closest inspections of a wormhole terminus are (a) how many other termini it connects to (aka - is it a junction; and if so how large), and (b) the approach needed to initiate travel to its remote terminus (termini).

Understood. That was just speculation on what any purpose the Congo Wormhole could still have to the plot. Without any of this ability, it has no further value and may not get mentioned in the books any more.

tlb wrote:Anyway, that would still be a herculean effort by the GA... and needed to be done three times. First from Congo to the Twins; thence back to Felix. At that point, maybe they get lucky and raid Mannerheim's and the RF's databases, but otherwise they'd still need to do it a third time from Felix to Darius.

That truly would be Herculean. Consider that that you know the direction to within one kilometer for every hundred kilometers; as approximate bearings go, that is pretty good. But what is your detection range? Assume it is one light minute; then for the first 100 light minutes of travel you could detect the end of the wormhole without stopping to search. But after a 1000 light minutes the radius of uncertainty is 10 light minutes, so you have to spiral out from the path at least 5 times around to be sure of finding the end within the area of possibility. But it is much worse that that, because you do not know how long the wormhole is; so to make sure that you do not overshoot it, you need to stop after traveling at most twice the detection range after the first 100 light minutes and perform the search spiral again. This stopping and performing a search spiral continues until the end is found or you give up.

Does this have to be done in normal space, or could it in hyperspace? But does the detection range decrease in hyperspace? The only way to speed this up is to have a fleet of ships that gradually spread out to cover the expected area.[/quote]

Most wormholes are near stars. A bearing-only fix is going to be useless for finding a deep space wormhole, but if it's near a star you only need to have a scout camp on the star and look for traffic. You don't survey for the wormhole until you've found ships where there shouldn't be ships. There are going to be guards of some kind, hyper footprints of the changing of the guard will be detectable.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Or if there's a technology to pinpoint where a warp bridge leads to, without transiting, but again we'd have expected to see some research on that line or something even resembling that before now.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
Such a discovery is probably two separate things:

Range and bearing. Maybe they'll figure out approximately what direction the wormhole goes--at that point you can send out survey ships to systems on that bearing.

Harvest Joy's exploration of the Lynx terminus in WoH explicitly says you can't know the distance of a wormhole until someone's traveled it -- but I seem to recall that there no way (or I guess at least no known way) to for sensors on one end to determine anything about what bearing it follows either.

You can't determine range or bearing with current technology. That doesn't mean discoveries aren't possible!

Though actually seizing the Felix junction, and thus forcing any ships from Darius to avoid it, might eventually get you a step closer to finding the place.

Actually, if they find out about the Felix junction the best approach is to keep it under careful observation by recon drones, not seizing it. Probably build some extra long duration versions.

But you still need insane amounts of luck to even have the data necessary to start that kind of analysis. And Darius has (a) very little traffic, and (b) seems likely that if forced to abandon the wormhole would add forced and carefully planned or randomized delays to most such traffic that did exist specifically to throw off such analysis attempts.

If they lose the wormhole I think they would pull their heads in completely. That deprives them of the ability to control their agents, though.