SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

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.

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.

Certainly the wedge should be seen, or evidence of a wedge because of the highly concentrated gravity affecting photons locally. But I would expect a gravity-based propulsion system deployed by the spider-drive tractors to also be of such a high concentration that there should be a noticeable effect created around local space-time. A concentrated gravitic phenomena is responsible for propelling a massive object like the LD. If the gravitic tractors are akin to steel chains for sake of conversation, they'd have to be very "powerful" chains lest they break. I'd expect there to be some sort of localized distortion. As areas of highly concentrated gravity create a phenomena called frame-dragging in local space-time, which is a very visible effect, as I mentioned in the Attacking Darius thread when discussing infinite mass projectiles. And I think that should be detectable without a complex spider drive detector.

I don't suppose we know the range of the LD's tractors?

penny wrote:Certainly the wedge should be seen, or evidence of a wedge because of the highly concentrated gravity affecting photons locally. But I would expect a gravity-based propulsion system deployed by the spider drive tractors to also be of such high concentration that there should be a noticeable effect created around local space-time. A concentrated gravitic phenomena is responsible for propelling a massive object like the LD. If the gravitic tractors are akin to steel chains for sake of conversation, they'd have to be very strong (powerful) chains lest they break. I'd expect there to be some sort of localized distortion. As areas of highly concentrated gravity create a phenomena called frame-dragging in local space-time, which is a very visible effect. As I mentioned much further upstream when discussing infinite mass projectiles. And I think that should be detectable without a complex spider drive detector.

I don't suppose we know the range of the LD's tractors?

Possibly - yet somehow the tractors do that without creating the ripples along the Alpha wall that allow other space-time affective grav wedges (and sidewalls) to be detected FTL using Warshaski detectors. Because RFC has said explicitly that detecting a spider drive "will be a --- ahem --- non-trivial challenge" and if they were generating ripples even as strong as a sidewall, that wouldn't be very hard to detect (even if the pattern of those ripples looks weird).

But given the unknowns around them they might well accelerate/deflect photons while somehow not producing FTL ripples. (Or they may not. Massive unknowns)

As for the spider tractors' range. I also don't think we really know that.
There's some text that leads me to think they're pretty short ranged compared to weapons -- but even assuming that's true that still leave least a lot of possibility space. FWIW said I'd be surprised if their range was less than several km; but also surprised if it exceeded, say, 50,000 km. (But that's an uncertainly of four orders of magnitude - so again; massive unknowns).

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Certainly the wedge should be seen, or evidence of a wedge because of the highly concentrated gravity affecting photons locally. But I would expect a gravity-based propulsion system deployed by the spider drive tractors to also be of such high concentration that there should be a noticeable effect created around local space-time. A concentrated gravitic phenomena is responsible for propelling a massive object like the LD. If the gravitic tractors are akin to steel chains for sake of conversation, they'd have to be very strong (powerful) chains lest they break. I'd expect there to be some sort of localized distortion. As areas of highly concentrated gravity create a phenomena called frame-dragging in local space-time, which is a very visible effect. As I mentioned much further upstream when discussing infinite mass projectiles. And I think that should be detectable without a complex spider drive detector.

I don't suppose we know the range of the LD's tractors?

Possibly - yet somehow the tractors do that without creating the ripples along the Alpha wall that allow other space-time affective grav wedges (and sidewalls) to be detected FTL using Warshaski detectors. Because RFC has said explicitly that detecting a spider drive "will be a --- ahem --- non-trivial challenge" and if they were generating ripples even as strong as a sidewall, that wouldn't be very hard to detect (even if the pattern of those ripples looks weird).

But given the unknowns around them they might well accelerate/deflect photons while somehow not producing FTL ripples. (Or they may not. Massive unknowns)

As for the spider tractors' range. I also don't think we really know that.
There's some text that leads me to think they're pretty short ranged compared to weapons -- but even assuming that's true that still leave least a lot of possibility space. FWIW said I'd be surprised if their range was less than several km; but also surprised if it exceeded, say, 50,000 km. (But that's an uncertainly of four orders of magnitude - so again; massive unknowns).

A Warshawski detector shouldn't be needed to detect a high concentration of gravity. Black holes, our own Sun. And if a warship is reasonably close to a Spider drive, the localized distortion caused by its highly concentrated tractors should be visible if the spider drive is in use. Telescopes, naked eye. Drones. Separate from the waste heat issue. (Can't believe I am saying that.)

penny wrote:Right. Good example. Security systems that feature lasers are a good example as well. Smoke or some sort of gas makes them visible.

Actually, no, because security systems don't use visible light in the first place, except in movies. They use infrared, so even if there's smoke, your eyeballs won't see them. Most cameras (including phone cameras) will pick up some near-infrared, but not anything in the mid- or far-infrared range. For those, you'd need specialised equipment to realise there's a security system in place -- if it wasn't detectable by other means.

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.

Good point, once the beam hits the object, it might scatter because the object isn't a perfect mirror. But in that case, you illuminate the object (or your neighbour's house or the classroom board or your palm) and still can't see the beam. You can infer it's there, though, so this is a rather distinction without a difference.

It would make a difference if you had to prove where it had come from. That might have been the case in New Tuscany if they had detected a graser hit and had to prove it had come from the RMN ships. But that was not the case.

The graser mount may shine bright even if beam itself may not be detectable (though it might). The mount will emit in a lot more frequencies than the beam itself and will probably heat up, due to the enormous amount of energy that is coursing through it. So I don't think anyone would miss a graser firing if you're within a million km of the emitter. Unless you're Byng, of course.

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.

I went by the process of exclusion: there's no other technology we're aware of that could produce a tractor or pusher. Electromagnetism can do attraction and repulsion, but it requires that the target be magnetic itself. Not to mention we also don't know of a way to do directed attraction (the best we have is pushing through photon momentum).

Besides, the spider is described as a tractor interacting with the alpha wall, which is a gravitic phenomenon.

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.

Right, but that requires you've already sent recon drones past the formation, which is very advisable anyway. You may discover other things lying doggo behind all those wedges, like another formation of ships.

Theemile 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.

X-Rays and gamma rays may not be visible themselves, not even through scattering, but their interaction with matter in its path might. The photons would deliver a lot of energy to the atoms they collided with and, as Planck and Einstein tell us, the energy is released back in discrete packets of energy called quanta (they made a whole science out of this). So those atoms would re-emit in energy bands that may include visible light.

This can't happen to infra-red though, because no infrared photon would have the energy necessary to be re-emitted in visible light (an atom would need to absorb two or more photons before relaxing back). That's a good reason to use infra-red for security systems. It would also make masers undetectable too, unless the energy flux is just so much that those multiple-absorptions are very likely.

penny wrote:Certainly the wedge should be seen, or evidence of a wedge because of the highly concentrated gravity affecting photons locally.

Seen, but not with the eyes. Wedges are a gravitic phenomenon and are detectable by gravitic sensors. In the EM spectrum, especially in visible light, they are dark. The concentrated gravity and chaotic bands distort light to the point that you can't see what's behind it, so the paltry light you'd be getting from stars would be distorted so much that it would be a very, very dark smudge.

We know this from A Call to Duty, when Travis is standing on the hull of HMS Guardian in the Secour system when the wedge is brought up. He doesn't see it; he can tell the wedge is up because he can't see the stars.

It would be interesting to know what shows through when you have a very large, very bright light source on the other side of the wedge, like the planet you're orbiting, in daylight. You'd still see a smudge, but how bright?

penny wrote:A Warshawski detector shouldn't be needed to detect a high concentration of gravity. Black holes, our own Sun. And if a warship is reasonably close to a Spider drive, the localized distortion caused by its highly concentrated tractors should be visible if the spider drive is in use. Telescopes, naked eye. Drones. Separate from the waste heat issue. (Can't believe I am saying that.)

That might very well be why the spider ship is detectable at extremely close range. It might be for other reasons, but given that the MAlign was working on a spider detector and the spider activation can be detected, it's probably the right reason.

As for black holes... certainly if they are stellar mass and you can detect stars. I mean, we can detect them now from their gravity and we don't have gravitic sensors! But what if they are sub-stellar mass? We've never seen one and have little idea how one could form, but Einstein tells us they could exist.

(Actually, Einstein thought black holes couldn't exist, despite his equations showing so. He thought some other physics would prevent them from occurring. We didn't detect black holes until after his death, and strictly speaking we didn't have direct, observational evidence of them until a few years ago. That's when the Event Horizon & Roger Penrose team won a Nobel)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:<snip>

We know this from A Call to Duty, when Travis is standing on the hull of HMS Guardian in the Secour system when the wedge is brought up. He doesn't see it; he can tell the wedge is up because he can't see the stars.

It would be interesting to know what shows through when you have a very large, very bright light source on the other side of the wedge, like the planet you're orbiting, in daylight. You'd still see a smudge, but how bright?

We'd probably also see a frequency shift in addition to the bending - . So a bright blue planet will probably be seen as a dim infrared smudge.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Possibly - yet somehow the tractors do that without creating the ripples along the Alpha wall that allow other space-time affective grav wedges (and sidewalls) to be detected FTL using Warshaski detectors. Because RFC has said explicitly that detecting a spider drive "will be a --- ahem --- non-trivial challenge" and if they were generating ripples even as strong as a sidewall, that wouldn't be very hard to detect (even if the pattern of those ripples looks weird).

But given the unknowns around them they might well accelerate/deflect photons while somehow not producing FTL ripples. (Or they may not. Massive unknowns)

As for the spider tractors' range. I also don't think we really know that.
There's some text that leads me to think they're pretty short ranged compared to weapons -- but even assuming that's true that still leave least a lot of possibility space. FWIW said I'd be surprised if their range was less than several km; but also surprised if it exceeded, say, 50,000 km. (But that's an uncertainly of four orders of magnitude - so again; massive unknowns).

A Warshawski detector shouldn't be needed to detect a high concentration of gravity. Black holes, our own Sun. And if a warship is reasonably close to a Spider drive, the localized distortion caused by its highly concentrated tractors should be visible if the spider drive is in use. Telescopes, naked eye. Drones. Separate from the waste heat issue. (Can't believe I am saying that.)

It's true that you don't need Warshaski detectors to detect high concentrations of gravity. For that matter, we don't know whether Warshaski detectors can even see the space time distortion caused by concentrations of mass.[1] It might only be artificial sources like wedges and sidewalls that produce the FTL ripples they look for.

Of course, for the things they can see, the advantage of a Warshaski detector is it sees the signal 62 times faster than light (while in normal space). That's what give you the near-realtime tracking of maneuvering enemy ships.

Still, for tracking down something as relatively slow as a Spider sneaking in, lightspeed detection of it's drive would be plenty quick. But, again, since RFC said detecting the drive would be quite non-trivial I think we have to rule out it making obvious distortions to passive photons - as that would greatly simplify its detection.

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[1] Certainly a Warshaski can't see the distortions caused by something with a relativistic mass around 500,000 kg -- because we know from Honor's planning right before 4th Yeltsin [FiE] that if "if the Peeps launched at .8 c, their birds' drives would boost them to .99 c before burnout" the defending ships would have to rely on radar to spot those ballistic missiles; indicating their relativistic mass's distortion of space time couldn't be detected FTL. (Or if it could then at such short range that slow light-speed radar was still the more useful sensor -- and it couldn't localize them until the missiles were within a million km!)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We know this from A Call to Duty, when Travis is standing on the hull of HMS Guardian in the Secour system when the wedge is brought up. He doesn't see it; he can tell the wedge is up because he can't see the stars.

Corrections. There's almost no fact in the previous paragraph that is correct... except for the book name and the conclusion.

It wasn't Travis standing on the hull, it was Jean Massingill. She wasn't on HMS Guardian, she was standing on RHNS Saintonge. And she could tell that the wedge was down because she could see stars.

A Call to Duty, ch. 30 wrote:She watched the cloud for another few seconds, just to make sure it was safely behind her, then turned her eyes to the vastness of space above.

The vastness of space... and the whole of the incredibly starry host stretched out across the sky. A view she could see with perfect clarity, unimpeded by anything.

The gamble had worked. Saintonge's reactor had scrammed, and taken her wedge with it.