07-03-2004, 12:55
FTL Travel
Extracts from the scientific databases of the Daiamid Council library
On Jump Gates
Jump gates are built around artificial wormholes, created by exploiting gravitational resonances found in binary systems. This resonance is as a friction between gravitational waves of stellar objects, the more massive the objects, the stronger the resonance between them. Positions of planets in a solar system, as well as the complex structure of dust rings around heavy planets illustrate this resonance. In binary systems there exists strong resonance phenomenons, where the gravitational field of two stars in a stable binary formation would interfere with each other, like ripples from two wave sources.
These stable wave patterns come in a succession of standing wave patterns, similar to those created on a guitar string. The strongest resonance is the 1:1 resonance (the first harmonic, so to speak), with two stationary node points situated in the center of each of the two stars. The second strongest resonance is the 1:2 resonance (the second harmonic), where an additional stationary node point appears in the field exactly mid-way between the stars (if of equal mass), and so on for successive resonances.
At the node points, the rapid oscillation of the gravitational field in opposite directions creates strong shear in the contravariant energy-momentum tensor. Under normal circumstances this stress is dissipated by high-frequency graviton radiation, and does thus not create any noticeable macroscopic phenomenons.
But if this stress is confined and forced to build-up in a limited region of space, then the tensor-field will eventually develop a steadily growing high-curvature tentacle like structure in the space-time continuum. More specifically, the tentacle constitutes a self-avoiding 4-manifold that attempts to grow farther and farther from itself. The tip of the tentacle, where the curvature is highest, effectively acts like a magnet on space-time, and for high enough curvature it can eventually induce the creation of a small tentacle in remote high-density regions, that can reach to the tip and spontaneously combine. An analogy of this phenomenon is when lightning strikes ground, where the tip of the downward lightning actually creates a small upward lightning emanating from the ground and the two combine somewhere above the ground, thus closing the electrical circuit.
The main device of jump gates is a so-called mass boson sphere, based on one of the fundamental physic fields that mediates mass, and thus interacts strongly with gravitational waves. The sphere is filled with mass boson plasma, which reflects gravitational waves, pretty much in the same way as a mirror reflects light. By adjusting the plasma density so that it reflects the high-frequency gravitational waves involved in the dissipation of tensor shear, this radiation is trapped within the sphere, thus leading to a steady net increase of the gravitational stress within the resonance node, which eventually leads to the creation of the high-curvature tentacle. An analogy of this is the laser, which builds up a highly coherent and intense beam of electromagnetic energy by enclosing oscillators within a reflecting cavity.
The distance between the two ends of the wormhole depends on the mass of the suns in the binary system and on what resonance node the jump gate is located. In order to connect two jump gates a trial-and-error method is needed, often lasting many years. This is because the tentacle created by the tensor-field cannot be controlled or directed in where to open. But by having another jump gate in a nearby system build up gravitational-stress in it its own, without reaching critical point, at the same time that the tentacle is growing, then the likelihood of a connection being made increases statistically, although many attempts are still often needed. This is similar to raising a metal rod in a thunder storm.
The first jump gate versions built by the Corporation limited in the way that once a wormhole had been created and a ship slipped through a new wormhole had to be made before another ships could pass. As it could take several days or even months to re-connect the two jump gates, passing was slow. Later versions of jump gates allowed the jump gates to hold the wormhole open for a longer time and modern day jump gates can keep a wormhole connection open for several dozen years before it has to be reset. Also, the first jump gates were only able to connect and hold a single wormhole at a time but today they can hold several wormholes open at the same time, allowing jump gates to be connected to several other jump gates at once. A spaceship entering the wormhole is subject to a strong metric gradient that would put its structural integrity in jeopardy. This can be prevented by locally countering the stretching around the immediate vicinity of the ship. Here the mass boson sphere plays its second role in the gate mechanism. When the ship goes through the mass boson sphere, a mono-atomic layer of mass boson gets deposited on the ships surface. This layer counters the stretching of the ship against the metric gradient, enough to keep the structural integrity of the ship for the duration of the trip through the hole. This doesn't mean that the gradient is completely wiped out, and even seasoned space veterans still know the feeling known as 'going down the drain' when entering a wormhole.
In past years, jump technology has advanced even further. Modern Corporate ships sized frigate class or larger are able to open their own jump gates using advanced technology on board of their vessels. This takes away the need to construct actual permanent jumpgates, causing those that the Corporation has erected in earlier years to have slipped into malfunction, simply because maintaining them was no longer needed. The exact technology needed to open these temporary jump gates is still partially classified. One thing about them though, is that only one ship can go through these temporary gates, after which they collaps. Fighters and corvettes should therefore always be docked on board of their mother vessels before making a jump.
On FTL Travel
The elusive answer to FTL travel was found through advanced research in the field of quantum electrodynamics. By creating depleted vacuum, that is, vacuum as found in space but completely stripped of all energy, and then expanding this depleted vacuum to envelop a ship, the ship is capable of moving faster than light through this bubble of depleted vacuum. A depleted vacuum bubble is more than frictionless – it is so anti-friction that things (including light) actually move faster in it than they would in complete vacuum.
All space ships are equipped with a jump drive device. The jump drive creates depleted vacuum by repeatedly ‘compressing’ vacuum between two polar discs, draining all energy neutrons and quarks out of it. A laser-locked field is then created to hold the ever-increasing depleted vacuum bubble until it has enveloped the whole ship. When that happens the ship is able to enter FTL speed. Although initial experiments with the jump drive were very encouraging technology wise, problems arose in regard to navigation. Once the ship has attained FTL speed, it is very difficult for it to act or react to the world, such as for communication or scanning purposes. Numerous experiments were made, for example with compactified dimensions radio, but without success. The unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics made it very difficult to create a stable enough vacuum bubbles to allow for precise time measurements due to fluctuating speeds. Finally, a solution was found. It was discovered that gravity capacitors similar to the control system used in jump gates were able to pick up gravity signals from ‘normal’ space while the ship was on FTL speed. By locking the capacitor onto one of these signals, the ship travels to it. The bubble is then automatically dispersed once certain distance from the gravity well is acquired. The only problem is that these capacitors can only efficiently pick up signals from gravity wells of certain size or above, with the minimum being a small moon or a cluster of asteroids. Also, in order for the gravity capacitor to align correctly on the destination object in relevance to the position of the sun, it must follow a relatively narrow route towards it, resulting in a fairly restricted emerge area for the ship. This puts some limits on the jump drive’s usage, but as all major objects in a system can be detected, this is not such a great problem.
Further research into jump drives, especially those aimed at amalgamating the technology used for jump drives, has led to more and more advanced jump drives becoming available. It is now possible to fit a ship with a jump drive capable of inter-stellar travel. The first versions of these allowed the jump drive to connect to a jump gate in another solar system and jump to it just as if the ship had moved through a jump gate. The later versions allow ships to jump from a system with a jump gate to another system that has no jump gate, and the latest version, now used on almost every large corporate vessel, allows a ship to jump between systems even if no jump gate exists in either system. The first versions of these drives simply aligned the drive with the nearest resonance node in the system (often using nodes 1:4 or even 1:5), then created instant mini-wormholes through it for just enough time for the ship to slip through. More advanced versions, allowing jumps into systems with no jump gates, are a bit more complex. They send out a constant barrage of high frequency neutron rays, based on the flat-space principle of trans-relativistic physics, through infinitesimal cosmic strings to scout out the destination system. This survey can last for several days before enough data is gathered to allow the ship to create a wormhole (through a resonance node of course) to the destination system.
References: articles on FTL communication (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=105568&highlight=)
Extracts from the scientific databases of the Daiamid Council library
On Jump Gates
Jump gates are built around artificial wormholes, created by exploiting gravitational resonances found in binary systems. This resonance is as a friction between gravitational waves of stellar objects, the more massive the objects, the stronger the resonance between them. Positions of planets in a solar system, as well as the complex structure of dust rings around heavy planets illustrate this resonance. In binary systems there exists strong resonance phenomenons, where the gravitational field of two stars in a stable binary formation would interfere with each other, like ripples from two wave sources.
These stable wave patterns come in a succession of standing wave patterns, similar to those created on a guitar string. The strongest resonance is the 1:1 resonance (the first harmonic, so to speak), with two stationary node points situated in the center of each of the two stars. The second strongest resonance is the 1:2 resonance (the second harmonic), where an additional stationary node point appears in the field exactly mid-way between the stars (if of equal mass), and so on for successive resonances.
At the node points, the rapid oscillation of the gravitational field in opposite directions creates strong shear in the contravariant energy-momentum tensor. Under normal circumstances this stress is dissipated by high-frequency graviton radiation, and does thus not create any noticeable macroscopic phenomenons.
But if this stress is confined and forced to build-up in a limited region of space, then the tensor-field will eventually develop a steadily growing high-curvature tentacle like structure in the space-time continuum. More specifically, the tentacle constitutes a self-avoiding 4-manifold that attempts to grow farther and farther from itself. The tip of the tentacle, where the curvature is highest, effectively acts like a magnet on space-time, and for high enough curvature it can eventually induce the creation of a small tentacle in remote high-density regions, that can reach to the tip and spontaneously combine. An analogy of this phenomenon is when lightning strikes ground, where the tip of the downward lightning actually creates a small upward lightning emanating from the ground and the two combine somewhere above the ground, thus closing the electrical circuit.
The main device of jump gates is a so-called mass boson sphere, based on one of the fundamental physic fields that mediates mass, and thus interacts strongly with gravitational waves. The sphere is filled with mass boson plasma, which reflects gravitational waves, pretty much in the same way as a mirror reflects light. By adjusting the plasma density so that it reflects the high-frequency gravitational waves involved in the dissipation of tensor shear, this radiation is trapped within the sphere, thus leading to a steady net increase of the gravitational stress within the resonance node, which eventually leads to the creation of the high-curvature tentacle. An analogy of this is the laser, which builds up a highly coherent and intense beam of electromagnetic energy by enclosing oscillators within a reflecting cavity.
The distance between the two ends of the wormhole depends on the mass of the suns in the binary system and on what resonance node the jump gate is located. In order to connect two jump gates a trial-and-error method is needed, often lasting many years. This is because the tentacle created by the tensor-field cannot be controlled or directed in where to open. But by having another jump gate in a nearby system build up gravitational-stress in it its own, without reaching critical point, at the same time that the tentacle is growing, then the likelihood of a connection being made increases statistically, although many attempts are still often needed. This is similar to raising a metal rod in a thunder storm.
The first jump gate versions built by the Corporation limited in the way that once a wormhole had been created and a ship slipped through a new wormhole had to be made before another ships could pass. As it could take several days or even months to re-connect the two jump gates, passing was slow. Later versions of jump gates allowed the jump gates to hold the wormhole open for a longer time and modern day jump gates can keep a wormhole connection open for several dozen years before it has to be reset. Also, the first jump gates were only able to connect and hold a single wormhole at a time but today they can hold several wormholes open at the same time, allowing jump gates to be connected to several other jump gates at once. A spaceship entering the wormhole is subject to a strong metric gradient that would put its structural integrity in jeopardy. This can be prevented by locally countering the stretching around the immediate vicinity of the ship. Here the mass boson sphere plays its second role in the gate mechanism. When the ship goes through the mass boson sphere, a mono-atomic layer of mass boson gets deposited on the ships surface. This layer counters the stretching of the ship against the metric gradient, enough to keep the structural integrity of the ship for the duration of the trip through the hole. This doesn't mean that the gradient is completely wiped out, and even seasoned space veterans still know the feeling known as 'going down the drain' when entering a wormhole.
In past years, jump technology has advanced even further. Modern Corporate ships sized frigate class or larger are able to open their own jump gates using advanced technology on board of their vessels. This takes away the need to construct actual permanent jumpgates, causing those that the Corporation has erected in earlier years to have slipped into malfunction, simply because maintaining them was no longer needed. The exact technology needed to open these temporary jump gates is still partially classified. One thing about them though, is that only one ship can go through these temporary gates, after which they collaps. Fighters and corvettes should therefore always be docked on board of their mother vessels before making a jump.
On FTL Travel
The elusive answer to FTL travel was found through advanced research in the field of quantum electrodynamics. By creating depleted vacuum, that is, vacuum as found in space but completely stripped of all energy, and then expanding this depleted vacuum to envelop a ship, the ship is capable of moving faster than light through this bubble of depleted vacuum. A depleted vacuum bubble is more than frictionless – it is so anti-friction that things (including light) actually move faster in it than they would in complete vacuum.
All space ships are equipped with a jump drive device. The jump drive creates depleted vacuum by repeatedly ‘compressing’ vacuum between two polar discs, draining all energy neutrons and quarks out of it. A laser-locked field is then created to hold the ever-increasing depleted vacuum bubble until it has enveloped the whole ship. When that happens the ship is able to enter FTL speed. Although initial experiments with the jump drive were very encouraging technology wise, problems arose in regard to navigation. Once the ship has attained FTL speed, it is very difficult for it to act or react to the world, such as for communication or scanning purposes. Numerous experiments were made, for example with compactified dimensions radio, but without success. The unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics made it very difficult to create a stable enough vacuum bubbles to allow for precise time measurements due to fluctuating speeds. Finally, a solution was found. It was discovered that gravity capacitors similar to the control system used in jump gates were able to pick up gravity signals from ‘normal’ space while the ship was on FTL speed. By locking the capacitor onto one of these signals, the ship travels to it. The bubble is then automatically dispersed once certain distance from the gravity well is acquired. The only problem is that these capacitors can only efficiently pick up signals from gravity wells of certain size or above, with the minimum being a small moon or a cluster of asteroids. Also, in order for the gravity capacitor to align correctly on the destination object in relevance to the position of the sun, it must follow a relatively narrow route towards it, resulting in a fairly restricted emerge area for the ship. This puts some limits on the jump drive’s usage, but as all major objects in a system can be detected, this is not such a great problem.
Further research into jump drives, especially those aimed at amalgamating the technology used for jump drives, has led to more and more advanced jump drives becoming available. It is now possible to fit a ship with a jump drive capable of inter-stellar travel. The first versions of these allowed the jump drive to connect to a jump gate in another solar system and jump to it just as if the ship had moved through a jump gate. The later versions allow ships to jump from a system with a jump gate to another system that has no jump gate, and the latest version, now used on almost every large corporate vessel, allows a ship to jump between systems even if no jump gate exists in either system. The first versions of these drives simply aligned the drive with the nearest resonance node in the system (often using nodes 1:4 or even 1:5), then created instant mini-wormholes through it for just enough time for the ship to slip through. More advanced versions, allowing jumps into systems with no jump gates, are a bit more complex. They send out a constant barrage of high frequency neutron rays, based on the flat-space principle of trans-relativistic physics, through infinitesimal cosmic strings to scout out the destination system. This survey can last for several days before enough data is gathered to allow the ship to create a wormhole (through a resonance node of course) to the destination system.
References: articles on FTL communication (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=105568&highlight=)