Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

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discord
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by discord »

cacambo: google maps earth mode might be a tad bit better then 30cm/pixel, just saying.

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icekatze
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

Google maps earth mode does not have better resolution than 30cm/pixel, at least not from satellite imagery. Most of the world's imagery is 1 meter per pixel or higher. The most common high resolution satellite imagery comes from DigitalGlobe (65 centimeters), and Worldview-2 (50 centimeters).

If you are seeing imagery on google maps that is in the 15 centimeters range, that imagery was taken by airplane, not by satellite. (Most major cities are mapped by airplane.)

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by cacambo43 »

Yes, what icekatze says is true. The really high-resolution imagery you see in Google Maps and Bing Maps (and similar) is from aerial photography. Some of those rigs can get 4-inch resolution, but coverage is sparse. I suppose the government could be flying low altitude aerial missions to map your neighborhood at better than 4-inch resolution, but it'd be nearly impossible to do stealthily, and I can't think of a reason they'd want to.

Earlier in the thread someone was mentioning Mantis Shrimp and asked about element diameter vs. element depth. I am not sure what that refers to - did you (person asking) mean spectral width? We have operational hyperspectral imagers. They tend to be of lower spatial resolution, if space-borne, but there are some aerial systems that can image sub-meter with hundreds of spectral bands (or "colors"). In the visual range, having more bands doesn't necessarily mean you are detecting colors humans can't perceive, it just means that particular band is integrated into what a particular set of cones can detect and send to our brains.

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Absalom »

cacambo43 wrote:Earlier in the thread someone was mentioning Mantis Shrimp and asked about element diameter vs. element depth. I am not sure what that refers to - did you (person asking) mean spectral width? We have operational hyperspectral imagers. They tend to be of lower spatial resolution, if space-borne, but there are some aerial systems that can image sub-meter with hundreds of spectral bands (or "colors"). In the visual range, having more bands doesn't necessarily mean you are detecting colors humans can't perceive, it just means that particular band is integrated into what a particular set of cones can detect and send to our brains.

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No, I was referring to using distance along the axis of sight as a replacement for distance at right-angles to the axis of sight. Trading lens width for lens thickness in essence, though I don't believe that conventional lenses (or conventional reflectors) could possibly do it: I'm curious if someone has found a plausible method to do it (you won't get a stronger signal, no, but that wouldn't be the point, more compact optics would be).

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by SVlad »

The angular resolution of optical system is limited by a simple function of wavelength of light and the diameter of the lens' aperture. It's law of nature. And the angle itself is a function of an object's size an a distance.
For example, for 3 mm resolution you will need a 20 meters diameter lens even from extremely low 100 km orbit. And 100 meters lens for more reasonable 400 km orbit. 30 cm resolution needs only a 1 meter lens from the same 400 km orbit.
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by cacambo43 »

SVlad wrote:The angular resolution of optical system is limited by a simple function of wavelength of light and the diameter of the lens' aperture. It's law of nature. And the angle itself is a function of an object's size an a distance.
For example, for 3 mm resolution you will need a 20 meters diameter lens even from extremely low 100 km orbit. And 100 meters lens for more reasonable 400 km orbit. 30 cm resolution needs only a 1 meter lens from the same 400 km orbit.
Yep!

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by discord »

well, the astro people get a hell of a lot better imagery through math magic and using timelapse to get more data to correlate from.

since adding time into the equation you can extrapolate more data and get 'half pixel' data due to angles changing and movement, not really very functional for geostationary unless the object is moving relative to the planet, but still.

just saying you can get a effectively better resolution as compared to the simple analog optics and rules they follow.
and not entirely reliable such due to guesses involved.

however, to once again touch upon the subject of the thread, some kind of cryo stasis and combined with a possible 'shielding' effect from the naam system would be my guess.

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by cacambo43 »

discord wrote:well, the astro people get a hell of a lot better imagery through math magic and using timelapse to get more data to correlate from.

since adding time into the equation you can extrapolate more data and get 'half pixel' data due to angles changing and movement, not really very functional for geostationary unless the object is moving relative to the planet, but still.

just saying you can get a effectively better resolution as compared to the simple analog optics and rules they follow.
and not entirely reliable such due to guesses involved.

however, to once again touch upon the subject of the thread, some kind of cryo stasis and combined with a possible 'shielding' effect from the naam system would be my guess.
The "astro people" are also working with objects with much larger angular diameters than newspapers or coins near the ground, from Earth orbit. The super-resolution images from some of the Mars landers and rovers is impressive, and I'm sure certain "operators" have been using similar tricks to tease out more information from Earth orbit for decades. But once you enter a temporal element to the process, you introduce another set of problems and limitations to your data.

I'm waiting with bated breath for how Arioch is going to reveal both the Umiak's evasion of the farseers and what Kikitik-27 meant in panel 88.

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Absalom »

SVlad wrote:The angular resolution of optical system is limited by a simple function of wavelength of light and the diameter of the lens' aperture. It's law of nature. And the angle itself is a function of an object's size an a distance.
For example, for 3 mm resolution you will need a 20 meters diameter lens even from extremely low 100 km orbit. And 100 meters lens for more reasonable 400 km orbit. 30 cm resolution needs only a 1 meter lens from the same 400 km orbit.
I'm aware of how it works, but as a comparison of reflector and Beverage antennas shows, that doesn't necessarily mean that the aperture size is required to be measured at right angles to the direction of the photons (though who knows, perhaps I just haven't grokked Beverage antennas yet). At any rate, it sounds like no possibilities have popped up.
discord wrote:well, the astro people get a hell of a lot better imagery through math magic and using timelapse to get more data to correlate from.
This isn't image-related, but the "time-lapse" that I'm aware of is mostly useful for increasing bit-depth, rather than pixel-count (double the measurements of a single value, double the accuracy of the combined measurement of that value). You might be able to fine-tune your estimate of the location of something that contributes to multiple pixels, but you won't really be increasing the resolution: the resolution stays the same (well, actually I think the resolution would fall), you just get to calculate the "real position" of the pixels instead of assuming that they fall perfectly on the grid.

Sure, it's slightly different if the object is moving, but not necessarily by much.
discord wrote:however, to once again touch upon the subject of the thread, some kind of cryo stasis and combined with a possible 'shielding' effect from the naam system would be my guess.
I'm leaning toward increased cybernetics + improved automation, particularly since mostly older ships get used on raids: if higher-automation ships seem to work well, they'd probably have been mostly kept inside Umiak space... except for a handful scattered among the fleets, with unnecessarily large crews to hide the special traits of the ships.

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saint of m
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by saint of m »

Another thing came to mind with stealth bombers coming to mind.

The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber (the usual go to image of a stealth bomber) was designed to be ignored by radar. Its angles, the way the cockpit is (as even the piolet moving their head could be picked up), color, and even the type of paint which obsorbs radar waves were all carefully tested for it.

Could the Shells have done something similar?

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dragoongfa
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by dragoongfa »

That would require in depth working of the working of Telepathy. Not just being able to use telepathy but to scientifically detect it and measure it.

The Loroi aren't able to do this so the comparable Umiak shouldn't be able as well.

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Krulle »

Buut then the Umiak never had psychological burdens when experimenting with Telepathy, whereas the Loroi always have to experiment on one of their own.
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

I'm not sure if the Loroi are above conducting cold and clinical studies on their own species. There certainly haven been times in history when humans weren't, anyways. Not saying they do or do not necessarily, but when matters of survival of the species are concerned I get the impression that if they felt it was needed, they could find a way to make it happen, either discreetly, or with some cooked up justification.

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Absalom »

saint of m wrote:Another thing came to mind with stealth bombers coming to mind.

The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber (the usual go to image of a stealth bomber) was designed to be ignored by radar. Its angles, the way the cockpit is (as even the piolet moving their head could be picked up), color, and even the type of paint which obsorbs radar waves were all carefully tested for it.

Could the Shells have done something similar?
If I recall, the Mannadi have some sort of resistance to telepathy. If the Umiak found a way to make them "look" like Umiak then I suppose that it might work, but that would require some assumptions.

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by saint of m »

@ icekatze

True enough.

The Tuskegee Siphlies Experiment; Edison electicuting things to death to disprove Tesla; how we have our understanding of the effects of hypothermia.

And there is the fact we still look for someone to look down upon. While using race, religion, and ethnicity (3 go to things to pick on) we still look at class (upper or lower), or someother quicky group or subcuture to say: Thank heaven I am not them."

Considering how the blue space babes treat their allies and enemies, I doubt they have grown out of it.

@Absalom: Could they rig something that would broarden their signiture, say add more telepathic white noise?

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Krulle »

Well, blocking out physical screams is one thing, but blocking out mental anguish telepathically transmitted may touch the experimenters on a far more direct level....
Especially if telepathy is considered as transmitting truth...
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Absalom »

saint of m wrote:@ icekatze

True enough.

The Tuskegee Siphlies Experiment; Edison electicuting things to death to disprove Tesla; how we have our understanding of the effects of hypothermia.

And there is the fact we still look for someone to look down upon. While using race, religion, and ethnicity (3 go to things to pick on) we still look at class (upper or lower), or someother quicky group or subcuture to say: Thank heaven I am not them."

Considering how the blue space babes treat their allies and enemies, I doubt they have grown out of it.
While not entirely unjustified (both are part of the primate/mammilian/vertebrate/whatever socialization toolkit), I do feel the need to point out that you're conflating "tribe" and "rank" as if they're the same thing.
saint of m wrote:@Absalom: Could they rig something that would broarden their signiture, say add more telepathic white noise?
That's a question for Arioch to answer, though I suspect the answer will come in the form of "The Loroi don't understand the mechanisms of telepathy, and the Umiak understand even less", or something of the sort.

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by ShadowDragon8685 »

I hate to say it, but this seems pretty simple to me, for a value of simple that by no means equates to "easy."

The Umiak probably have keyed in that the Loroi are telepathic, what with invading Loroi worlds and dealing with stiff resistance thereon.

Aaaand they probably figured out that telepathy requires living minds, so...

Well, the Historians have personality constructs, so we know that thinking AI isn't out of the question, or automatically-supermurderously cold turn-on-its-creators stuff.

Aaand the only shell we've actually seen was Kikitik-27, and, well... Frankly, synthesizing a false background and equipment environment would be child's play...

So, possibly, there's no real Umiak there. Or if they are, they've all uploaded their memories and personalities into robotic drone-bodies and/or their ships themselves - having "Sleeved," in Eclipse Phase terms, into synthetic bodies and their ships, not only would they be far more resistant to G-forces, but they'd be invisible to the Loroi's major advantage.

I mean, why choose between the AI War and the Bug War when you can both simultaneously, am I right?

That's maybe - in fact, probably - not the case. It could be that they've invented some kind of psi-dampener/suppressor/shield/whatever that screws with psionics. But the shells are already very transhumanist - well, transoriginist - to the point where they don't even use their reproductive organs, so sleeving wholesale into robotic bodies/into their ships themselves would really seem... Logical to them.

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Cardshark »

Between the ponderous style of the Umiak and my debatable written english I hope it is not too much of a chore to read. Biopunk, industrial and carelessly clinical. That's the way I see the Shells. Maybe a tad bit too dark?
TOP-SECRET – COMPOUND EYES ONLY
REPORT #437-567-053
AUTHOR: KIKTALIK-28-KILLIT-TIKKUTIT / [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] 7th STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUP
SUBJECT: AD-HOC ORGANIC-MACHINE INTERFACE SOLUTION FOR ACTIVE NOISE-CANCELATION OF [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] PSYCHOSENSING UNEXPLAINED ABILITIES. AN OVERVIEW FOR FIELD COMMANDERS BEFORE LARGE-SCALE DEPLOYMENT.

To all field commanders.

Due to the repeated failure by all [[THE MURDERING RAIDERS] STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUPS] so far to measure any physical manifestation of [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] psychosensing and/or psychoactive abilities save the apparently ex-nihilo influence over matter in the case of psychoactivity, or direct stimulation of the brain of the receiving subject in the case of psychosensing, as well as related energy consumption by the emitting subject, [[THE MURDERING RAIDERS] 7th STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUP] suggested a novel approach to the problem that could circumvent the physical impossibility we faced. We attempted to integrate the functioning organic devices readily available into our technology and consider the actual inner functioning of the system as a black box that could be practically ignored as long as the entry measurable brain activity and output measurable brain activity were consistent and within margin error.

To this end we were supplied with a significant number of [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] research subjects thanks to [THE HIERARCHY]’s incursions into their space. We surgically fitted each of our test subjects with an integrated brain activity 3D sensor attached to the back of their skull, then encouraged them to communicate via their unexplained abilities in a fashion that allowed us a good estimation of the data transferred: Pairs of isolated subjects were initially confronted to problems of which one had the solution readily available and the second the display to cease the common negative encouragement one of them was subjected to. This allowed us to measure accurately the subjects’ neural activity while narrowing the content of the data transferred to a very small, acceptably predictable content once filtered the noise induced by the negative encouragement upon the subjects’ nervous system. By repeatedly increasing the complexity of the problems the subjects had to solve and the target, intensity and duration of the negative encouragement we were able to develop an accurate lexicon of [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] psychosensing communication patterns. Further induced stimulation of the subjects’ brains demonstrated the accuracy of that lexicon and, after a few [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] deaths due to sudden neural collapse upon communication attempt initiation, then regular loss of sanity of the following subjects, we consistently managed to send intelligible message to subjects despite their unease over unmistakably feeling the emitter as “Ice-cold” or “brain-dead”.

[[THE MURDERING RAIDERS] 7th STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUP] is proud to announce that we merely spent 5762 subjects in this experiment, which leaves us with a comfortable reserve for further research and development or industrial use of the resource before need for replenishment.

Upon mastery of that lexicon and our electric/light synapse stimulation solutions refined to adequate precision upon [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] neural architecture, it was trivial to apply electronic warfare active noise cancelation solutions commonly used for RCS-reduction technologies to pairs of linked receivers/emitters brains. As the neural activity of a brain detecting the psychosensing presence of a [THE HIERARCHY] member is registered, it is processed by the system them reemited with the adequate spatial distortion by the second brain of the pair to cancel the emission. As all field commanders no doubt knows, we are at least sure despite our inadequate knowledge of the phenomenon, that the [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] psychosensing abilities are location-sensitive limited in range, bound to the inverse square law of distance which most certainly demonstrates it applies in the physical universe, despite its apparent instantaneous travel over arbitrary distance, and not through hyperspace, as defended by the incompetent members no smarter than day-hatched larvae of [[THE MURDERING RAIDERS] 13th STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUP] which are a waste of oxygen and resources and should be terminated and reprocessed with no further delay.

Further experiments demonstrated the efficiency of our prototype [PSW/ANC-1] (PsychoSensing Warfare/Active Noise Cancelation – Model 1) which uses at least four devices (Each composed of a pair of extricated receiver/emitter brains, life support equipment and associated electronic warfare calculator) in a pyramidal shape to delimit a limited volume of space within which we can efficiently cancel the psychoactive emissions of [THE HIERARCHY] members, up to a 45dB attenuation when within the psychoactive threshold of fourty [THE HIERARCHY] crewmembers for a each functional system of four [PSW/ANC-1] devices, efficiency decreasing exponentialy beyond that threshold. Test subjects were unable to sense the presence of [THE HIERARCHY] members or any other sentient being at all but the closest distance well below any remotely plausible space engagement range. Despite our lack of understanding of [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] psychosensing amplification technology this weakness is attenuated by the careful life support and single purpose of the brains, allowing each one to perform at peak efficiency. Thanks to its scalable nature to system can be adapted to any ship shape and crew size.

The [PSW/ANC-4] series version is slated to be installed to all frontline units upon your next visit to port by our personnel, with spare neural units. Please keep in mind the devices are fragile in nature and are to be carefully powered and fed in nutrient by your maintenance crew, and replaced at the first diagnostic predicting probable stress failure. The survival and success of your warship depends on it.

It will certainly occur to our readers that this application of the mastery over the psychoactive communication system of the [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] is only the first of many breakthroughs that will no doubt be deployed in the near future.
I fail to see how you could actually perform active noise cancelation over something that travels without time delay, but oh, well, i liked the idea too much to pass. Technobabble Umiak space-magic ftw. It also pushed me to finally register on this forum, so hello everybody! I hope you somewhat enjoyed my text. I'm not crazy i swear.

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Hālian »

Hi :D

“Compound eyes only” made me LOL.
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