SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

penny wrote:As I understand it, waste heat is radiated away from the LD in a straight line. If that capability is true (though it challenges the laws of thermodynamics, I can swallow that issue because in some form or fashion it might be managing to "side-step" that problem) then is it possible that the LD can radiate waste heat into the alpha wall as it grabs it?

A photon travels in a straight line, unless bent by gravity. But heat photons don't all leave in the same direction from a hot surface, so they spread out as they travel away. I am not sure why thermodynamics is mentioned. Photons travel within the space delimited by the walls (for example, just within normal space), so they should not collide with walls and should not be able to put heat into them.

PS: thinking of heat as a electro-magnetic wave, instead of a group of photons, also makes the spread clear. Even the wave output from a laser spreads after its characteristic distance.

Theemile wrote:

penny wrote:Why are an LDs tractors not visible? Shouldn't tractors normally be visible? IINM, an LDs tractors grab at the Alpha wall, but why wouldn't they be visible?

And, is it possible that waste heat is expelled into the alpha wall, via some function of the tractors as they are grabbing at the alpha wall? As I understand it, waste heat is radiated away from the LD in a straight line. If that capability is true (though it challenges the laws of thermodynamics, I can swallow that issue because in some form or fashion it might be managing to "side-step" that problem) then is it possible that the LD can radiate waste heat into the alpha wall as it grabs it? IINM that an LDs tractors actually grab into the alpha wall.

Where was it stated that any tractors were visible?

To the best of my knowledge, that has never been stated.

I have never seen it stated anywhere. I just assumed they are visible. Star Trek baggage I suppose. But if it is a beam, why wouldn't it be visible? I did not think it mattered ordinarily. A warship isn't tractoring anything in the middle of a battle. Except when the RMN tractored so many pods. But they were inside the wedge, which I also assumed that being inside the wedge would hide the fact that pods are being towed. But IINM, there were times pods were tractored outside the wedge, but still were not visible. As the only way the enemy could tell you were probably towing pods was by the low acceleration. But in my head there has always been the question about the tractors.

penny wrote:I have never seen it stated anywhere. I just assumed they are visible. Star Trek baggage I suppose. But if it is a beam, why wouldn't it be visible?

Because beams aren't visible in the first place, unless you're in its path or they collide with something along said path and disperses some of you to your sensors/eyes. It was a major disappointment when I first used a laser pen and it did not shine like a phaser or a light sabre!

And in this case, they are a gravitic phenomenon. We don't know how the gravitic sensors work to say if scattering can happen.

A warship isn't tractoring anything in the middle of a battle. Except when the RMN tractored so many pods. But they were inside the wedge, which I also assumed that being inside the wedge would hide the fact that pods are being towed. But IINM, there were times pods were tractored outside the wedge, but still were not visible. As the only way the enemy could tell you were probably towing pods was by the low acceleration. But in my head there has always been the question about the tractors.

Right. Early in the first war with Haven, the pods were tractored outside of the wedge (and thus the compensator field), which reduced the acceleration of the towing ship. So no one was trying to detect the pods, because everyone would know. Oh, this might be usable as a bluff, but even if you can't see the tractors, you may be able to see the pods themselves.

In any case, maybe the tractors couldn't be seen from the distance... especially not against the bright wedges of the ships that were doing the towing. It might be like trying to see the candle or torchlight being held in front of the million candlepower spotlight.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:I have never seen it stated anywhere. I just assumed they are visible. Star Trek baggage I suppose. But if it is a beam, why wouldn't it be visible?

Because beams aren't visible in the first place, unless you're in its path or they collide with something along said path and disperses some of you to your sensors/eyes. It was a major disappointment when I first used a laser pen and it did not shine like a phaser or a light sabre!

Right. Good example. Security systems that feature lasers are a good example as well. Smoke or some sort of gas makes them visible. But then tractors are interacting with the towed object, and at that point they should be seen. If you aim a laser pointer at the neighbor's house, you can see the beam on it. Or in a classroom, you can see it on the board. Anyway, when Byng fired on the destroyers because the space station, Giselle, had mysteriously blown up, IINM there was talk about "not seeing" an energy weapon, and they knew there had been no missiles fired. I suppose an energy weapon is different, in that respect, it certainly isn't gravitic.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:And in this case, they are a gravitic phenomenon. We don't know how the gravitic sensors work to say if scattering can happen.

I considered that they could be a gravitic phenomena, but dismissed it because I didn't think gravity would be directional as such. I know the LDs have a special relationship with gravity, but... gravitic tractors? If gravity can be coaxed so effortlessly, there should not be any openings in the wedge. But then there are portholes created on a whim (in the sidewalls?) for firing weapons, etc., golly gee.

penny wrote:A warship isn't tractoring anything in the middle of a battle. Except when the RMN tractored so many pods. But they were inside the wedge, which I also assumed that being inside the wedge would hide the fact that pods are being towed. But IINM, there were times pods were tractored outside the wedge, but still were not visible. As the only way the enemy could tell you were probably towing pods was by the low acceleration. But in my head there has always been the question about the tractors.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Right. Early in the first war with Haven, the pods were tractored outside of the wedge (and thus the compensator field), which reduced the acceleration of the towing ship. So no one was trying to detect the pods, because everyone would know. Oh, this might be usable as a bluff, but even if you can't see the tractors, you may be able to see the pods themselves.

Later in the series, GR drones did exactly that, IINM. They spotted pods???

Thinksmarkedly wrote:In any case, maybe the tractors couldn't be seen from the distance... especially not against the bright wedges of the ships that were doing the towing. It might be like trying to see the candle or torchlight being held in front of the million candlepower spotlight.

That's the only thing I could come up with as well. They get lost in the brighter glare of wedges. But a long gangly line of them I'd think could be seen from certain angles. And then there is Foraker's Donkey which operated some distance away from the ship and it also featured towed pods with power "beamed" from the ship.

At any rate, the way laser pointers work is the best explanation I suppose.

penny wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Because beams aren't visible in the first place, unless you're in its path or they collide with something along said path and disperses some of you to your sensors/eyes. It was a major disappointment when I first used a laser pen and it did not shine like a phaser or a light sabre!

Right. Good example. Security systems that feature lasers are a good example as well. Smoke or some sort of gas makes them visible. But then tractors are interacting with the towed object, and at that point they should be seen. If you aim a laser pointer at the neighbor's house, you can see the beam on it. Or in a classroom, you can see it on the board. Anyway, when Byng fired on the destroyers because the space station, Giselle, had mysteriously blown up, IINM there was talk about "not seeing" an energy weapon, and they knew there had been no missiles fired. I suppose an energy weapon is different, in that respect, it certainly isn't gravitic.

Your eyes are sensitive enough to green light that the path of most green laser pointers can be seen in normal indoor lighting - just from the stray dust particles they hit in the air. (They're still limited to the same <= 5 mW as any other laser pointer - but your eyes can detect fewer photons in the green spectrum so it's easier to pick out their beams against the brightness of indoor lighting)

Interplanetary space has a lot less dust than the average building's air; but the energy mounts are unfathomably more powerful and range from about 1/3rd of a meter up to around 3 meters in diameter -- so fire them over hundreds of thousands of km and they're going to hit enough particles for sensors to pick up the 'flashes' of that. (Plus as you turn the target's hull into plasma the energy beams will show up clearly through that expanding plasma)

So I'm not surprised that the nearby SLN ships could actually tell that no energy beam had been fired at the station (not that Bing waited for that information before stupidly starting a war)

Jonathan_S wrote:Your eyes are sensitive enough to green light that the path of most green laser pointers can be seen in normal indoor lighting - just from the stray dust particles they hit in the air. (They're still limited to the same <= 5 mW as any other laser pointer - but your eyes can detect fewer photons in the green spectrum so it's easier to pick out their beams against the brightness of indoor lighting)

Interplanetary space has a lot less dust than the average building's air; but the energy mounts are unfathomably more powerful and range from about 1/3rd of a meter up to around 3 meters in diameter -- so fire them over hundreds of thousands of km and they're going to hit enough particles for sensors to pick up the 'flashes' of that. (Plus as you turn the target's hull into plasma the energy beams will show up clearly through that expanding plasma)

So I'm not surprised that the nearby SLN ships could actually tell that no energy beam had been fired at the station (not that Bing waited for that information before stupidly starting a war)

But those examples all contain photons moving at the visible frequencies - any beam of photons moving at frequencies above or below is not visible (say infrared, radio, or x-rays), and any technology not using photons would not be visible (say Gravity based technologies), unless caused by a secondary effect. While a big part of how we interact with the universe, the visible frequencies are a very small portion of the full EM spectrum.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Your eyes are sensitive enough to green light that the path of most green laser pointers can be seen in normal indoor lighting - just from the stray dust particles they hit in the air. (They're still limited to the same <= 5 mW as any other laser pointer - but your eyes can detect fewer photons in the green spectrum so it's easier to pick out their beams against the brightness of indoor lighting)

Interplanetary space has a lot less dust than the average building's air; but the energy mounts are unfathomably more powerful and range from about 1/3rd of a meter up to around 3 meters in diameter -- so fire them over hundreds of thousands of km and they're going to hit enough particles for sensors to pick up the 'flashes' of that. (Plus as you turn the target's hull into plasma the energy beams will show up clearly through that expanding plasma)

So I'm not surprised that the nearby SLN ships could actually tell that no energy beam had been fired at the station (not that Bing waited for that information before stupidly starting a war)

But those examples all contain photons moving at the visible frequencies - any beam of photons moving at frequencies above or below is not visible (say infrared, radio, or x-rays), and any technology not using photons would not be visible (say Gravity based technologies), unless caused by a secondary effect. While a big part of how we interact with the universe, the visible frequencies are a very small portion of the full EM spectrum.

I agree the gravity based technologies wouldn't create that kind of visible scattering/excitation - but I was replying to the side-tangent on energy weapons; which are lasers are grasers. (Though at least once you get up to the power levels of a wedge you can see the grav effects affect ambient photons -- an active impeller wedge "twisted photons into pretzels" [HAE]; and even sidewalls distort and bend the path of photons, so I guess it's possible that at even lower power levels your sensors might be able to notice the acceleration/deflection of photons passing through the grav effect -- should there be any)

And while their x-rays wouldn't scatter like visible wavelengths of light from a laser pointer, as they annihilate space dust, micro-meteorites, and other particles those would emit photons of their own and that's what you'd be seeing.

Jonathan_S wrote:
But those examples all contain photons moving at the visible frequencies - any beam of photons moving at frequencies above or below is not visible (say infrared, radio, or x-rays), and any technology not using photons would not be visible (say Gravity based technologies), unless caused by a secondary effect. While a big part of how we interact with the universe, the visible frequencies are a very small portion of the full EM spectrum.

I agree the gravity based technologies wouldn't create that kind of visible scattering/excitation - but I was replying to the side-tangent on energy weapons; which are lasers are grasers. (Though at least once you get up to the power levels of a wedge you can see the grav effects affect ambient photons -- an active impeller wedge "twisted photons into pretzels" [HAE]; and even sidewalls distort and bend the path of photons, so I guess it's possible that at even lower power levels your sensors might be able to notice the acceleration/deflection of photons passing through the grav effect -- should there be any)

And while their x-rays wouldn't scatter like visible wavelengths of light from a laser pointer, as they annihilate space dust, micro-meteorites, and other particles those would emit photons of their own and that's what you'd be seeing.[/quote]

Sorry, I was trimming the longer discussion to post, and not directly responding to you -

As I said, secondary effects - but even the creation of a secondary photonic effect does not mean the photons created are in the visible spectrum - again, the visible spectrum is actually very small - though proportionally a low powered photon is more likely and the visible spectrum is on the lower powered side of the spectrum.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I agree the gravity based technologies wouldn't create that kind of visible scattering/excitation - but I was replying to the side-tangent on energy weapons; which are lasers are grasers. (Though at least once you get up to the power levels of a wedge you can see the grav effects affect ambient photons -- an active impeller wedge "twisted photons into pretzels" [HAE]; and even sidewalls distort and bend the path of photons, so I guess it's possible that at even lower power levels your sensors might be able to notice the acceleration/deflection of photons passing through the grav effect -- should there be any)

And while their x-rays wouldn't scatter like visible wavelengths of light from a laser pointer, as they annihilate space dust, micro-meteorites, and other particles those would emit photons of their own and that's what you'd be seeing.

Sorry, I was trimming the longer discussion to post, and not directly responding to you -

As I said, secondary effects - but even the creation of a secondary photonic effect does not mean the photons created are in the visible spectrum - again, the visible spectrum is actually very small - though proportionally a low powered photon is more likely and the visible spectrum is on the lower powered side of the spectrum.

Fair - the secondary photons aren't necessarily within the narrow visible light spectrum.

On the other hand, we're not looking for them with the Mark I eyeball. As long as sufficient photons reach the ship (or recon drone) their passive sensors should be wide-band enough to pick up photons whether in the x-ray, UV, IR, etc. bands. (Well, I doubt even the Honorverse has a single sensor that wide-band; but they'd have various sensors that collectively covered much of the EM spectrum)

Jonathan_S wrote:Fair - the secondary photons aren't necessarily within the narrow visible light spectrum.

On the other hand, we're not looking for them with the Mark I eyeball. As long as sufficient photons reach the ship (or recon drone) their passive sensors should be wide-band enough to pick up photons whether in the x-ray, UV, IR, etc. bands. (Well, I doubt even the Honorverse has a single sensor that wide-band; but they'd have various sensors that collectively covered much of the EM spectrum)

Sorry, I'd taken Penny's comment of "see the tractors" and "influenced by Star Trek" to indicate we were discussing actual visible wavelengths, like they always show on the TV shows.