?

cthia wrote:You misunderstood me. It isn't the failure of the sidewalls that would totally consume the ship. It is the instantaneous transfer of the exponential kinetic energy of the infinitesimals that would utterly consume the vacuum of the area contained within the wedge and sidewalls.

To re-iterate what I said above, a sidewall or a wedge is still not a physical object, there will be no explosion or instantaneous transfer of energy. If it where otherwise, relativistic objects would "explode" when passing through gravitational fields.

Joat42 wrote:

cthia wrote:You misunderstood me. It isn't the failure of the sidewalls that would totally consume the ship. It is the instantaneous transfer of the exponential kinetic energy of the infinitesimals that would utterly consume the vacuum of the area contained within the wedge and sidewalls.

To re-iterate what I said above, a sidewall or a wedge is still not a physical object, there will be no explosion or instantaneous transfer of energy. If it where otherwise, relativistic objects would "explode" when passing through gravitational fields.

???

For all practical purposes it behaves like a physical object. That which we call a rose by any other name would still act the same.

cthia wrote:You misunderstood me. It isn't the failure of the sidewalls that would totally consume the ship. It is the instantaneous transfer of the exponential kinetic energy of the infinitesimals that would utterly consume the vacuum of the area contained within the wedge and sidewalls.

Joat42 wrote:To re-iterate what I said above, a sidewall or a wedge is still not a physical object, there will be no explosion or instantaneous transfer of energy. If it where otherwise, relativistic objects would "explode" when passing through gravitational fields.

cthia wrote:For all practical purposes it behaves like a physical object. That which we call a rose by any other name would still act the same.

I agree and said as much in an upstream post in answer to the proposition that a created black hole was not a "real" thing (despite causing all the effects of a real black hole): "A field is a thing and it contains energy that has to be put in when the field is created and will be released somehow when the field collapses".

In the Honorverse, early hyperspace ships were destroyed by gravity waves. However I am agnostic about the effects you claim, before we see what what the author might decide (if he were ever to explore this); as you said elsewhere the author is a "god".

Joat42 wrote:

cthia wrote:You misunderstood me. It isn't the failure of the sidewalls that would totally consume the ship. It is the instantaneous transfer of the exponential kinetic energy of the infinitesimals that would utterly consume the vacuum of the area contained within the wedge and sidewalls.

To re-iterate what I said above, a sidewall or a wedge is still not a physical object, there will be no explosion or instantaneous transfer of energy. If it where otherwise, relativistic objects would "explode" when passing through gravitational fields.

cthia wrote:???

For all practical purposes it behaves like a physical object. That which we call a rose by any other name would still act the same.

But it doesn't behave like a physical object at all, remember all those descriptions what it does to beam-weapons, how they are bent and twisted or how CM's shred missiles with their wedge? That's the gravitic sheer-force acting upon the particles in the beam or physical objects. An object or particle intersecting the field is accelerated along the axis of the force, it doesn't in any way physically impact something because there is nothing there to impact since it is just a focused gravity field.

That the books talk about hits or impacts on sidewalls or wedges is just a way to describe events in a mundane way without going into what is really happening.

Joat42 wrote:But it doesn't behave like a physical object at all, remember all those descriptions what it does to beam-weapons, how they are bent and twisted or how CM's shred missiles with their wedge? That's the gravitic sheer-force acting upon the particles in the beam or physical objects. An object or particle intersecting the field is accelerated along the axis of the force, it doesn't in any way physically impact something because there is nothing there to impact since it is just a focused gravity field.

That the books talk about hits or impacts on sidewalls or wedges is just a way to describe events in a mundane way without going into what is really happening.

It does not behave like a NORMAL physical object, but it is an object with a physical presence; otherwise there is no explanation for the way wedge fratricide has feedback effects on the field generators. You are certainly correct that an author is describing "events in a mundane way without going into what is really happening".

Also, isn't it possible to burn through a sidewall? There is also this in chapter 27 of OBS:

Breath hissed as her officers tensed for the inevitable, suicidal impact, but Honor's face was carved stone as the edge of Fearless's drive field slashed past the courier at less than two kilometers, far inside its drive safety perimeter. Vaporized alloy burst from the smaller vessel's stern as the cruiser's vastly more powerful impeller wedge blew her after nodes to incandescent gas

I take this as a wedge on partial wedge interaction, causing destructive feedback to the courier's nodes.

tlb wrote:

Joat42 wrote:But it doesn't behave like a physical object at all, remember all those descriptions what it does to beam-weapons, how they are bent and twisted or how CM's shred missiles with their wedge? That's the gravitic sheer-force acting upon the particles in the beam or physical objects. An object or particle intersecting the field is accelerated along the axis of the force, it doesn't in any way physically impact something because there is nothing there to impact since it is just a focused gravity field.

That the books talk about hits or impacts on sidewalls or wedges is just a way to describe events in a mundane way without going into what is really happening.

It does not behave like a NORMAL physical object, but it is an object with a physical presence; otherwise there is no explanation for the way wedge fratricide has feedback effects on the field generators. You are certainly correct that an author is describing "events in a mundane way without going into what is really happening".

It's very simple, when a physical object or particle interacts with a wedge/sidewall it's accelerated in the direction the wedge/sidewall points to, this takes energy which has to come from somewhere - hence an increased load on the nodes and generators and when the object/particles have been accelerated to a speed determined by the field strength the load stops and since there will always be a lag in adjusting the powerlevels you get feedback effects. For wedges it seems the load is negligible but there is little textev how wedges react.

tlb wrote:Also, isn't it possible to burn through a sidewall? There is also this in chapter 27 of OBS:

Breath hissed as her officers tensed for the inevitable, suicidal impact, but Honor's face was carved stone as the edge of Fearless's drive field slashed past the courier at less than two kilometers, far inside its drive safety perimeter. Vaporized alloy burst from the smaller vessel's stern as the cruiser's vastly more powerful impeller wedge blew her after nodes to incandescent gas

I take this as a wedge on partial wedge interaction, causing destructive feedback to the courier's nodes.

Of course it's possible to burn through in sidewalls since they don't have an infinite field strength, you can't burn through wedges though (ie "no known weapons could penetrate an impeller wedge in either direction" as mentioned in textev).

A wedge or sidewall is just a focused gravitic field that is tightly coupled to the equipment projecting and powering it. If such a field intersects with another field the more powerful one will induce a catastrophic load on the weaker field's equipment.

As I said above, there can be no impact because there is nothing to impact on. All you have is an interaction between a field and an object. Kinetic energy kind of matters but not in the way it does for a KEW, the amount of matter/particles you can push through the sidewall field for a given amount of time determines the energy needed to keep the field strength up, and if the generators can't deliver that energy you get burn-throughs - so an object traveling at relativistic speeds will push enough matter into the field to weaken it or blow out the generators but there won't be any direct conversion of kinetic energy as if it hit something solid.

You have to remember that an object moving into a wedge/sidewall doesn't stop moving, it's just that the object and it's constituent particles are accelerated sideways by the wedge as it passes into the field.

Joat42 wrote:As I said above, there can be no impact because there is nothing to impact on. All you have is an interaction between a field and an object. Kinetic energy kind of matters but not in the way it does for a KEW, the amount of matter/particles you can push through the sidewall field for a given amount of time determines the energy needed to keep the field strength up, and if the generators can't deliver that energy you get burn-throughs - so an object traveling at relativistic speeds will push enough matter into the field to weaken it or blow out the generators but there won't be any direct conversion of kinetic energy as if it hit something solid.

You have to remember that an object moving into a wedge/sidewall doesn't stop moving, it's just that the object and it's constituent particles are accelerated sideways by the wedge as it passes into the field.

A rapid acceleration change IS an impact; it can cause intense heating and structural failure, the same as if the object hit a brick wall moving at those speeds. Actually worse than a brick wall, because the wall will fail; but the wedge does not. From chapter 3, Honor Among Enemies:

but the massive fifteen-gram bullet still reached the end of its twenty-five-meter journey with formidable kinetic energy. The jacketed slug exploded through the equally anachronistic paper target's "X" ring in a shower of small, white fragments, then vanished in a fiery flash as it plowed into the focused grav wall "backstop" and vaporized.

tlb wrote:A rapid acceleration change IS an impact; it can cause intense heating and structural failure, the same as if the object hit a brick wall moving at those speeds. Actually worse than a brick wall, because the wall will fail; but the wedge does not. From chapter 3, Honor Among Enemies:

but the massive fifteen-gram bullet still reached the end of its twenty-five-meter journey with formidable kinetic energy. The jacketed slug exploded through the equally anachronistic paper target's "X" ring in a shower of small, white fragments, then vanished in a fiery flash as it plowed into the focused grav wall "backstop" and vaporized.

No, a rapid acceleration change isn't an impact. An impact is when a part of an object violently deaccelerates due to it not being able to move forward anymore for whatever the reason. An object intersecting a sidewall/wedge will have the part intersecting rapidly accelerate away along the wall - it doesn't actually slow down, its speed vector is just brutally changed and added to which produce secondary effects at the boundary layer.

And regarding the grav wall backstop, what do you think the effect is when parts of a bullet is accelerated away at several thousands of G's, atomic layer by atomic layer as it intersects the gravitic distortion? (I do hope they have good air-scrubbers, breathing in atomized metals can't be good for you health). Just think about the quote you gave, how fast must a 15gram bullet travel for it to produce a fiery flash when it hits something?

tlb wrote:A rapid acceleration change IS an impact; it can cause intense heating and structural failure, the same as if the object hit a brick wall moving at those speeds. Actually worse than a brick wall, because the wall will fail; but the wedge does not. From chapter 3, Honor Among Enemies:

but the massive fifteen-gram bullet still reached the end of its twenty-five-meter journey with formidable kinetic energy. The jacketed slug exploded through the equally anachronistic paper target's "X" ring in a shower of small, white fragments, then vanished in a fiery flash as it plowed into the focused grav wall "backstop" and vaporized.

Joat42 wrote:No, a rapid acceleration change isn't an impact. An impact is when a part of an object violently deaccelerates due to it not being able to move forward anymore for whatever the reason. An object intersecting a sidewall/wedge will have the part intersecting rapidly accelerate away along the wall - it doesn't actually slow down, its speed vector is just brutally changed and added to which produce secondary effects at the boundary layer.

And regarding the grav wall backstop, what do you think the effect is when parts of a bullet is accelerated away at several thousands of G's, atomic layer by atomic layer as it intersects the gravitic distortion? (I do hope they have good air-scrubbers, breathing in atomized metals can't be good for you health). Just think about the quote you gave, how fast must a 15gram bullet travel for it to produce a fiery flash when it hits something?

There is no scientific difference between a "rapid acceleration change" and a "violent deacceleration". In the same way having its speed vector "brutally changed" is another way of saying it's having a "rapid acceleration change". You are trying to get around that by saying the change is instantaneous, which just means the acceleration in that instant was infinite (that is most likely an exaggeration).

Given an "infinite" acceleration, it does not matter what speed the bullet was going; the violence of the focused gravity wall is what tore the bullet apart. Bouncing a marble into it would have had the same effect.

Between having better medicine and better air scrubbers, I think the people at the range are safe (as long as they do not walk into the gravity wall).

tlb wrote:This is from TV Tropes:

The novel uses Fasset Drives — that is, a ship generates an artificial black hole that draws the ship toward it. At the same time, the black hole moves away from the ship since the ship is generating the thing. This leads to unlimited acceleration. When the ship hits 1.0c, something technobabbly happens and the ship enters wormhole space, where it can go much faster than should be possible (to the tune of several thousand times the speed of light).

TV Tropes has a lot of errors.

I'm remembering the drone having to reach .9c to wormhole.