?

More contemplation ...


Does anyone else realize what has happened in the HV?

It is obvious to me that mankind has achieved what Einstein could not. Someone has succeeded in producing a Grand Unified Theory of equations.

Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is any model in particle physics that merges the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces (the three gauge interactions of the Standard Model) into a single force at high energies.
–wiki

Some of David's technology also seems to suggest that gravity has been added to the mix and a Theory of Everything has been solved. That is the direction I was headed in the SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority thread, where a very ambitious post is lurking. It is why I state unequivocally that the alpha wall is a construct of very concentrated energy, whereby the weak gravitational force is no longer weak and it interacts with all of the other forces at very high energies.

Unifying gravity with the electronuclear interaction would provide a more comprehensive theory of everything (TOE) rather than a Grand Unified Theory. Thus, GUTs are often seen as an intermediate step towards a TOE.

Someone suggested that a new force has been created in the HV, or is present in hyperspace. I, OTOH, rather believe it isn't so much a new force, but a recombining* of all forces creating an entirely new 'effect.'

* Recombining, because it is believed that at the moment of the Big Bang the forces were as one. And if a Theory of Everything is a reality, then all versions of the phrase 'If you can conceive of it, then you can do it' really rings true.

The Mesan Alignment as a species of Alphas playing with a Theory of Everything frightens me.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I would point that that countergrav has only been seen used to let things float against a planetary gravity field. And nearly the strongest of those where we can be reasonably confident of countergrav use would be on San Martin, a 2.7g heavy grav planet.
Dunno if they'd be able to counter even a 10g gravity field.

And in some ways countergrav isn't.
Belying its name it doesn't actually seem to counter the effects of gravity -- not in any general sense.

Aircars and shuttles use it to help them fly, but if it actually countered the gravity on them then people inside them (or above them) would be weightless -- and they don't seem to be. Similarly countergrav cargo pallets don't seem to prevent the items stacked atop the pallet from being pulled onto it by gravity; nor does the pallet seem to be able to easily float into the sky -- instead the countergrav somehow lets it float solidly a short height above the ground or surface. Not exactly the effect you'd get if countergrav actually prevented gravity from affecting it. Nor would it float at all if countergrav simply prevented some large % of gravity from affecting it.

And remember when Alfred would have liked to have reduced the Sphinx gravity experienced by Honor's mom? That would have been achieved not by countergrav - but by outfitting the Harrington home with grav plates which could reduce the gravity experienced by those inside it.


So I think countergrav is somewhat misnamed; and misdoubt that it could be used to protect a ship inside a massive gravity field.

One aside, we already know there were several countergrav technologies - the grav plates seen in Havenite vessels in the Manticore Ascendant novels was a dead end technology, which was later thrown aside for the current grav plate technology. Missiles make their drive fields in a different manner (hardware with an integrated Compensator) than Warships do. Grayson comps work in a different manner than traditional comps.

Who is to say how many different ways of manipulating gravity there are.

I certainly agree. There has to be countless ways. With the main theories obviously solved, I think it would be child's play to utilize the Grand Unified Field Theory+ to manipulate gravity in a grand fashion. Plus, we know the MAlign likes to turn a problem on its ear.

How many things have they already developed that confounds us? Even text says that nobody imagined using the tractor beams in that fashion. Wait, I will repost part of that text from Mission of Honor that cautions us against complacency and warns us that the MAlign represent a totally different set of eyes and ways of looking at problems ...

Mission of Honor - Ch. 28 wrote:The ships which had mounted Oyster Bay, however, represented a radical departure from anything the galaxy had previously seen [...]
the spider used literally dozens of nodes to project spurs or spikes of intensely focused gravity. For all intents and purposes, each of those spurs was almost like generating a tractor or a presser beam, except that no one in his right mind had ever imagined tractors or pressers that powerful.*

Substitute counter-grav for tractor beams in the gist of that thought. Or in addition to that thought.

And we know the LDs will have surprises in store. Tum Te Tums? This will prevent them from having to make transitions way out on the other side of hell and beyond.

Plus it utilizes current physics and theories. Therefore, logically sound. Well, it sure is a much smaller pill than some of the behemoths text have prescribed.

*I don't think anyone in the Mesan Alignment can ever be accused of being in his right mind.

.

It's certainly possible that folks in the Honorverse have worked out a Grand Unified Field Theory. But the fact they clearly have a theory (or theories) that allow them to make practical use of various artificial gravity mechanisms doesn't guarantee that.

After all, we have quantum mechanics theories which allow us to make various practical use of it -- despite famously being un-unified with our theory of relativity.



But I'd point out that whatever theories and research the MAlign have access to, to date they've only been able to improve grav plates by a factor of 5. (Which is hobbling the acceleration and maneuverability of their warships)

Apparently it wasn't child's play to affect gravity that way

Jonathan_S wrote:It's certainly possible that folks in the Honorverse have worked out a Grand Unified Field Theory. But the fact they clearly have a theory (or theories) that allow them to make practical use of various artificial gravity mechanisms doesn't guarantee that.

After all, we have quantum mechanics theories which allow us to make various practical use of it -- despite famously being un-unified with our theory of relativity.



But I'd point out that whatever theories and research the MAlign have access to, to date they've only been able to improve grav plates by a factor of 5. (Which is hobbling the acceleration and maneuverability of their warships)

Apparently it wasn't child's play to affect gravity that way

I totally agree. I did not mean that literally.

Are you? Nah! You couldn't be my professor from physics. He said, even though you have all of the answers (TOE) doesn't mean you have all of the questions.

I was going to opine that Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker have always had access to those exact same equations. And look how long it takes them to get ideas off the assembly lines.

Restated. If one can conceive of A then getting to B, comparatively, is a cinch. Compared to what is in-between A and B. There will be many experiments conducted. Many tests run. Many people replaced. Much alcohol consumed. And many things thrown against the wall out of anger.

Besides, oftentimes the limitation will be a lack of the proper materials and methods to support the project, or supporting technology. Case in point; the MAlign needs a breakthrough in reactor technology. Even though they already know by example what is possible even without the equations.

As a matter of fact, the current equations that are available to us told us that black holes must exist. Look how long before we had the expertise and technology to discover them. Einstein's equations also tell us there must be a particle that is faster than light. We don't have the technology available to realize it.

The latest technology in photography is a good example. There is a new camera that can snap 10 trillion frames per second. That is faster than light. Technology that wasn't present yesterday but is available today may allow us to realize things we technically know is possible.

https://youtu.be/7Ys_yKGNFRQ?feature=shared



I am also glad you brought up grav plates. There is a post coming!

penny wrote:As a matter of fact, the current equations that are available to us told us that black holes must exist. Look how long before we had the expertise and technology to discover them. Einstein's equations also tell us there must be a particle that is faster than light. We don't have the technology available to realize it.

That's a mis-representation.

The equations do not say black holes must exist and that a tachyon must exist.

Neither Einstein nor Karl Schwarzschild, who first solved Einstein's equations, thought a Black Hole would exist. The Schwarzschild solution has two singularities and physicists always think "there's something wrong with the formula here" instead of "there's a point of infinity here". Einstein believed we would find that Physics would have other laws in the way that would make a black hole impossible.

He was nearly right: we know that electron degeneracy pressure keeps white dwarfs from collapsing, but if you add enough mass they do collapse into a neutron star. The same thing happens again with the Pauli Exclusion principle keeping the neutron star from collapsing completely (a paper written by a certain Oppenheimer you may have seen movies about). Even today, though we know Black Holes exist and they do have event horizons, we don't think that there's a point of infinite density at the centre; we need Quantum Gravity to tell us what that actually is.

Ditto for tachyons: the equations say that no particle with mass could achieve the speed of light, but don't ban particles that started travelling above it from staying above it. But there is nothing that says how we could create such a thing. It doesn't say it must exist; it only gives the rules of what it needs to obey if it does exist. Likewise, the Alcubierre solution for his equations say you could move space faster than light... all you need is a bit of negative mass and energy.

The latest technology in photography is a good example. There is a new camera that can snap a trillion frames per second. That is faster than light.

No, it isn't. There's nothing in that statement that implies movement, only time. And something can happen trillions of times per second.

The question is what is this thing happening and whether it's going far. 1 light-picosecond is 300 µm, which is 6 orders of magnitude larger than the radius of a Caesium atom (267 pm). That means electrons can jump up and down in the energy bands inside that atom 500,000 times per picosecond without needing to go faster than light.

Technology that wasn't present yesterday but is available today may allow us to realize things we technically know is possible.

Sure. There's nothing stopping a gamma-ray laser from existing... we just don't know how to make one.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Sure. There's nothing stopping a gamma-ray laser from existing... we just don't know how to make one.

Not sure if we've built any quite up into the gamma ray range, but free electron lasers (FEL) can produce at least into x-ray frequencies. (Whether one can make gamma rays lase might depend on which definition of gamma ray you were using - as under some definitions there's some overlap of frequencies and power levels between x-rays and gamma ray)

Though for even the existing X-ray FEL you hopefully don't mind a laser mechanism that's several km long. And the more power and higher frequency you need the longer its going to be (baring some utterly revolutionary breakthrough in the FEL tech).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:As a matter of fact, the current equations that are available to us told us that black holes must exist. Look how long before we had the expertise and technology to discover them. Einstein's equations also tell us there must be a particle that is faster than light. We don't have the technology available to realize it.

That's a mis-representation.

The equations do not say black holes must exist and that a tachyon must exist.

Neither Einstein nor Karl Schwarzschild, who first solved Einstein's equations, thought a Black Hole would exist. The Schwarzschild solution has two singularities and physicists always think "there's something wrong with the formula here" instead of "there's a point of infinity here". Einstein believed we would find that Physics would have other laws in the way that would make a black hole impossible.

He was nearly right: we know that electron degeneracy pressure keeps white dwarfs from collapsing, but if you add enough mass they do collapse into a neutron star. The same thing happens again with the Pauli Exclusion principle keeping the neutron star from collapsing completely (a paper written by a certain Oppenheimer you may have seen movies about). Even today, though we know Black Holes exist and they do have event horizons, we don't think that there's a point of infinite density at the centre; we need Quantum Gravity to tell us what that actually is.

Ditto for tachyons: the equations say that no particle with mass could achieve the speed of light, but don't ban particles that started travelling above it from staying above it. But there is nothing that says how we could create such a thing. It doesn't say it must exist; it only gives the rules of what it needs to obey if it does exist. Likewise, the Alcubierre solution for his equations say you could move space faster than light... all you need is a bit of negative mass and energy.

The latest technology in photography is a good example. There is a new camera that can snap a trillion frames per second. That is faster than light.

No, it isn't. There's nothing in that statement that implies movement, only time. And something can happen trillions of times per second.

The question is what is this thing happening and whether it's going far. 1 light-picosecond is 300 µm, which is 6 orders of magnitude larger than the radius of a Caesium atom (267 pm). That means electrons can jump up and down in the energy bands inside that atom 500,000 times per picosecond without needing to go faster than light.

Technology that wasn't present yesterday but is available today may allow us to realize things we technically know is possible.

Sure. There's nothing stopping a gamma-ray laser from existing... we just don't know how to make one.

It is a misrepresentation ...


Actually it was the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar who, despite ridicule, stuck to his math.

The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/t ... -possible/


https://news.uchicago.edu/legendary-dis ... rrow-began


But no one wants to give credit to the real father of black holes, John Mitchell. He did the math first.

https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curric ... lack-holes


There is a mistake in the frame rate in the camera as well. Which is 10 trillion fps.

penny wrote:]The latest technology in photography is a good example. There is a new camera that can snap 10 trillion frames per second. That is faster than light.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:No, it isn't. There's nothing in that statement that implies movement, only time. And something can happen trillions of times per second.

Huh? The shutter!

.

penny wrote:There is a mistake in the frame rate in the camera as well. Which is 10 trillion fps.

An article I just looked at said the 10 trillion fps figure was from 2018 and the new figure is 7 times that:
World's fastest camera

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:There is a mistake in the frame rate in the camera as well. Which is 10 trillion fps.

An article I just looked at said the 10 trillion fps figure was from 2018 and the new figure is 7 times that:
World's fastest camera

Thanks. That is incredible! Watch the link I included to the Caltech video and what they are aiming for! 1 quadrillion fps!

penny wrote:The latest technology in photography is a good example. There is a new camera that can snap 10 trillion frames per second. That is faster than light.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:No, it isn't. There's nothing in that statement that implies movement, only time. And something can happen trillions of times per second.

penny wrote:Huh? The shutter!

.

I'd bet a years supply of Pizza that they don't have a traditional mechanical shutter physically opening and closing trillions of times per second.