Sci-fi universe ideas

By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics and access other forums reserved for members. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today by clicking here.

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 May 2007 Posts: 428

I'm pondering the idea of creating a sci-fi universe to keep myself occupied during boring lectures. Basically, this is what I have so far:

It's based in the 24th century. Sometime in the early 22nd century, MIT partnered with Mensa and got together the most brilliant minds of the time to create the "Think Tank". It was responsible for many important discoveries, including faster than light travel, EPR(expanding predictive-random) generators, and much of the technology used in the Wormhole Network. The Wormhole Network is a network of "nodes" which have permanent wormholes connecting them to form a grid through which travelers can jump from place to place across the galaxy. The first intergalactic node is en route and expected to arrive in Andromeda in about five years. The nodes are usually large space stations but there are a couple planetary-based nodes. The planetary models usually rely on geothermal and solar energy instead of the usual EPR generators. Small ships called "jumpcraft" or jumpers for short are used for wormhole travel, as they are designed specifically to withstand the stress of wormhole travel. There are also interplanetary and interstellar craft which use either warp or hyperspace technology; usually larger craft will use hyperspace and smaller craft use warp drive, though there have been some small craft designed especially for hyperspace travel. Warp drive is as a rule slower, only going up to 10,000,000x the speed of light. Hyperdrive is much faster but requires a nearby star or other massive object to make the jump into hyperspace.

So, I'd like to get some feedback and/or suggestions. I'm going to try to make this mostly true-to-life as far as science goes, but there will be some conflicting areas and plenty of technobabble.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:20 pm

Nothing can travel faster than light. Wormholes are just shortcuts between different points in space-time, so it may seem that you have moved faster than light, but you have not.
If you'd move faster than light, then some physics would say that you'd have to move back in time... in your frame of course.

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 May 2007 Posts: 428

Same way with warp travel. It's getting you from Point A to Point B before the light you emit does, so I call it "faster than light" travel.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:33 pm

Any sci-fi universe worth it's salt has to have Tribbles.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:33 pm

That's physically incorrect, but I guess it will have to do Smile

BTW: As a object approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity. It would require an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it TO the speed of light. E=mc^2

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:35 pm

Rent "K-Pax", you'll learn all you need to know about space/time travel! Very Happy

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 May 2007 Posts: 428

@kurat: Yes, I'm aware of the restrictions of general relativity. Hyperspace travel involves creating a tear in space to enlarge the Calabi shape enough for the ship to slip into a different dimension. Theoretically, hyperspace could be practically instantaneous, but it takes a lot of time to negotiate an exit hole, so it's mostly limited by available technology. Also, it is highly recommended to have charts of the area you're jumping to to avoid jumping into a star, planet, or other some such massive object which is almost certain to destroy the ship.

Warp travel involves "popping" out of ordinary space-time and traveling directly to the destination, similar to a wormhole but without a connection at both ends. Therefore they both manage to avoid general relativity altogether.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:51 pm

Warp travel doesn't really base on physical possibilities.
-------
Let's say you're in point A, you need to get to point B.
You have a wormhole near point A(let's call it A') and near point B(let's call this B').

Let's assume the wormhole is created to be shorter than the ordinary(longer) route.
You mentioned that if I fire a beam of light from A to B, and then jump through the wormhole, I am travelling faster than light. But you are not looking at it correctly, since the universe is not single plane.
If I shot a beam of light from A to B and a beam of light from A' to B', and then jump into the wormhole myself, then the light going through the wormhole will reach the destination faster than me. The ray from A to B has got nothing to do with this since it's just taking the longer route in the space-time.
So, it ISN'T "faster than light".
Smile

EDIT: I am self taught on this subject, so If you find any flaws, please let me know, so I could fix my misunderstadnings Smile

ONE VERY INTERESTING THING:
The photon(light particle) has a lifespan of 0, but since it's moving at the speed of light, time has no effect on the particle; so it can move infinitely if not blocked.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

I've got to ask about this sci fi universe.
Its really, really important.

Will it still have chocolate?

I always fancied Anne McCaffreys description of singularity drives as transport

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 May 2007 Posts: 428

Yes, it will have chocolate, and a singularity is part of the idea behind the EPR generators.

@kurat: I am self-taught on the subject too. I realize it's not "technically" faster than light, but it is getting from point A to point B faster than light would "ordinarily" travel through regular spacetime. It's a convention.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:01 pm

Why not just take a fucking bus?

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

Oh come on SO.
We're talking of of things that are LIKELY to happen some time in the future.

Not some mythical form of transport .

Given human nature it's likely that 419 fraud will still be going strong
Will computers be saying in Majel Barretts voice " Cavalry greetings from Aldeberan refugee camp. I have a trunk box full of Altairian dollars located ......"
Given human nature some baits may still be running

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:31 pm

[HAL9000] I'm afraid there is no money at the Western Union for you Dave... [/HAL9000]

Since they have made it possible to slow down light in the lab, than theoretically it is possible to go faster than light. So if you can travel faster than 38 MPH you have traveled faster than light*.

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/02.18/light.html

*Yes I do know this is a special circumstance, I am just being a hard ass for the sake of the discussion.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:42 pm

It's not even a special circumstance.
"c" is a mathematical/physical constant: speed of light in vacuum

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 May 2007 Posts: 428

And besides, the speed of light is with reference to the observer. If you were to shoot a laser beam from a spacecraft, and then somehow accelerate to 160,000 meters per second, the light would still be travelling away from you at 300,000 meters per second. [The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene]

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:49 pm

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:54 am

Do you know what company manufactured the "HAL 9000" computer?

Look up "HAL" on the New York Stock Exchange.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:07 am

WhiteKing419 wrote:

Do you know what company manufactured the "HAL 9000" computer? ...

The H.A.L. lab in Urbana, Illinois

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:21 am

Type "HAL" into:

http://www.nyse.com/interface/html/SymbolLookup.html

Select "Ticker Symbol"

1 company found
Name Symbol
Halliburton Company HAL

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:28 am

HAL (from the Discovery) tells you himself (WAV-file) Wink

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:54 am

I heard that HAL was the IBM-1. If you move one letter up the alphabet from IBM you get HAL.

Prisms and lenses work by slowing down light.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:55 am

@hacker9 and kurat, I can't understand anything you said. Confused

But when you build a time machine (capable of moving backwards) please send me a PM. Very Happy

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:57 am

Technically, it may be possible to move faster than the speed of light. I only believe so because it was once thought it was not possible to travel faster than sound, but that was proved wrong. The energy that is released when a single particle of anti-matter touches a single particle of regular matter is equivalent to (not sure about this number)~1000 megatons, so if the energy could be harnessed, it would be possible to travel at an extremely fast speed, what I believe to be fast enough to break the light barrier.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:59 am

I also have no clue ... but isnt all this based solely on theory???

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

Ummm light isnt a physical speed barrier.

E=mc2 does not mean if you send a 100 ton spacecraft upto light speed it cant go faster lol, it just needs to be a lot bigger

299,800 kilometers per second, thats the speed of light, Which is just over the speed of a blazar - now thats the engine you will need for your space ship its around 99.9% the speed of light. Blazars expend a fantastic amount of energy.

Speed does not = time travel. The faster you go the quicker you get there but, time still goes forward not backwards at any stage.

Space can bend and compress light, it can be slowed down, or damn made to go faster - yup light can go faster than light and so can a blazar - but that would upset einstein, and we wouldnt want to undo such an eminent persons work in your 24th century galaxy lol leave that till the 25th when they realise you can launch at the speed of light use twice the energy and go twice as quick only you would arrive thousands of years later - the physical atoms would travel at different speeds - scary stuff.

Oh and blazars are quite big, not neptune - jupiter i think but dont quote jupiter i forget i think it is tho, anyhow you would need a ship twice the size of 5 of them just to hold enough fuel to come back, you would need to understand inertia and some astrophysics to actually have working breaks - see why you need 5 now Razz

1 to go, 1 to stop, 1 to maneuver and 1 to come back and 1 to stop - not a very effient engine but it sure beats unleaded petrol or solid fuel for the digital-one space corp lol.

The instruments are not very effective, well because there molecules cant keep up by the time they make a calculation your already in another part of space, so theres no fly by wire systems - too slow its all fibre optic light computers - your only 0.01% behind them so they too will appear slow, but much better than any computer you can imagine today - pure light in a quantum shell.

You need to be able to re-generate matter, now there is a law saying energy/matter can neither be created nor destroyed, yet they can make anti-matter in a lab, you already have the energy - your engines, the reason you need this is in space every time you hit a pocket of short life antimatter bits vanish - your computers will replace it, its not infinate but it sure is required.

Worm holes - well there down to general relativity, at the speed your now genuinely capable of you shouldnt need them.

EDIT: The space travel is safe for humans - just like in a car all the parts travel at the same speed, but at such high speeds you need some seriously fast computers because just like a car - the turns really kick out there lol.