Hyperspace

[Karst45]

Heh.

But notice how the Human thinks. "Interesting... how can I use this as a weapon?"

true but it inherent to the situation. We think of that because were trying to find some usefulness to the human in this story. And because the setting is in an all out war were no party seem willing to make peace. the only other option is to fight (running when you are a planet is kind of hard )

And since weapon wise we are of no match because of the range, we try to think of alternative to ether gain range advantage (close jump) or turn our current technology into powerful weapon.

I say we are just adapting to the situation.

It wouldn't be the first time we turn out a normal thing into a weapon because of a war. the other way around is also true. Maybe we will find a creative way to use our current weapon to let say "harvest" asteroid. After all railgun are big magnet

[LegioCI]

Well, to quote the good Sir Lawrence of Arabia...

Mankind has had ten-thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.

Humanity's history of technological development has always either been driven by the need for better weapons or driving the need for better weapons. Hell, the greatest technological advance of the twentieth century, splitting the atom, could've been developed as a fairly clean, peaceful way to make energy. What did we do? We turned it into a bomb, and then used it as a fairly clean, safe, peaceful way to make energy. When you step back and think about it, collectively we're psychopaths.

It's actually kind of scary, but the good sort of scary, the sort of scary that you're glad you're apart of and not having to fight against.

[Arioch]

The thing I find interesting is that Arioch has sort of just said that hyperspace has like a 1 way parallel vector field "gravity" effect. That is to say gravity is (constant?) and always points down, so that you need to attain positive hyperspace velocity, not just open a portal into hyperspace.

Since all the nearby mass is in realspace, and apparently none of it (except the crazy people in their starships) in hyperspace, there is always going to be net gravitational pull in the direction of -hyperspace toward realspace. But gravity will still pull the ship in realspace directions, too. The departure and destination masses will tug at the ship in the forward and rearward directions along the linear realspace jump vector, and other nearby masses may also perturb the ship's trajectory.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I suppose you could use "probe golf" to try to attack someone through FTL, if you knew they were about to jump into your system, you could launch a ton of unmanned kamikaze probes into the jump corridor. Though that would probably require a level of precision that nobody has at the moment.

Hold on a second... If someone took a star into hyperspace, it could pull objects in realspace into hyperspace with it? (theoretical energy requirements aside)

[osmium]

Since all the nearby mass is in realspace, and apparently none of it (except the crazy people in their starships) in hyperspace, there is always going to be net gravitational pull in the direction of -hyperspace toward realspace.

So what if you're in -hyperspace does gravity pull you back to realspace in that direction too?
(this to me seems to be the more "logical" setup, but it doesn't lead to the more interesting you miss the jump and you're stuck in hyperspace effect; this (gravity pulling back to realspace) means that eventually all ships in hyperspace will eventually come back in, except in the case that they somehow pass the edge of the universe before passing be enough mass to be pulled back into realspace or somehow falling into a stable oscillating equilibrium whereby they simply increase amplitude...).

-O

[TrashMan]

Well, to quote the good Sir Lawrence of Arabia...

Mankind has had ten-thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.

Humanity's history of technological development has always either been driven by the need for better weapons or driving the need for better weapons. Hell, the greatest technological advance of the twentieth century, splitting the atom, could've been developed as a fairly clean, peaceful way to make energy. What did we do? We turned it into a bomb, and then used it as a fairly clean, safe, peaceful way to make energy. When you step back and think about it, collectively we're psychopaths.

It's actually kind of scary, but the good sort of scary, the sort of scary that you're glad you're apart of and not having to fight against.

[Majincarne]

hi hi

I suppose you could use "probe golf" to try to attack someone through FTL, if you knew they were about to jump into your system, you could launch a ton of unmanned kamikaze probes into the jump corridor. Though that would probably require a level of precision that nobody has at the moment.

Hold on a second... If someone took a star into hyperspace, it could pull objects in realspace into hyperspace with it? (theoretical energy requirements aside)

It would probably make some spherical area into a void that leads to hyperspace.

Also its experiments like that that lead to in 4 or so billion years some mew alien race coming along and looking at the neat "SPATIAL ANOMALY!" add one hundred more years and your system is the new Bermuda Triangle of that species. That or "Dragons be here listed on their star charts"

And as far as the human manner of thought, anyone know how much energy is required to detonate C4 and if its less than that of a 12 gauge at firring. I was wondering if you could replace the lead part of a shotgun slug with a plastic case housing C4. Considering the military hasn't done it yet the likely answer is cloud of red mist.

[discord]

majincarne: assuming a casing for the C4 to shield it from the explosion, should work just fine, add a detonator and you have a small explosive round....but why not do it properly and use a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M32_MGL

a curious thought though... could you make a hyper jump that WILL drop out inside the target sun? not just that it can, but WILL, since that could create a rather nasty weapon of stellar destruction.

[Mjolnir]

a curious thought though... could you make a hyper jump that WILL drop out inside the target sun? not just that it can, but WILL, since that could create a rather nasty weapon of stellar destruction.

If you could, it'd only solve the problem of delivery...you've still got to make a weapon that can destroy a star. And do so after popping out inside one. There's been nothing so far that suggests anyone has star-destroying capabilities. Except maybe the Soia (that whole Well of Souls mess).

[Riess]

So, sorry if I missed that but does the area below the realspace 'plane' have a name? Besides "unending terror", that is?
Subspace?

[discord]

mjolnir: we already have the technology for it, since we know how a star works, different elements and the chains....don't remember what it was that you would use as accelerator in the process, but i think it was simple iron, so dump a few million tons of iron into a star and you have nova in process, that will happen in a few years or so....or maybe a few thousand years....hmm, or was it dumping a few million tons of nuclear reactor waste....whatever, something like that anyway...

and the star would become unstable and go 'boom' in rather short order, making it not viable as system to jump to.

[Ktrain]

That would a) require an already unstable star and b) a neutron star (which is not a star) c) a star fusing Oxygen (I think the Sun might stop at carbon but don't quote me on this) and a BUNCH OF MASS. Maybe a planetload, which Arioch state was beyond the logistical capacities of the current war participants (though it would be cool to see one of them go BOOYA and if Earth could do it, that might be a double BOOYA).

Element and Burn duration in years.
H- 8.1 million
He- 1.2 million
C -976
Ne -0.6
O -1.25
S/Si-0.0315[146]
From das Wikipedia

[Mjolnir]

mjolnir: we already have the technology for it, since we know how a star works, different elements and the chains....don't remember what it was that you would use as accelerator in the process, but i think it was simple iron, so dump a few million tons of iron into a star and you have nova in process, that will happen in a few years or so....or maybe a few thousand years....hmm, or was it dumping a few million tons of nuclear reactor waste....whatever, something like that anyway...

and the star would become unstable and go 'boom' in rather short order, making it not viable as system to jump to.

A star's just not going to notice a few million tons of anything. Adding a million tons of iron, carbon, or anything else would add 0.5 parts per 10e21 to the sun...0.5 parts per sextillion. And given that large stars accumulate cores composed largely of iron, it's clearly not something that's going to make a star explode.

Stars a bit larger than the sun already use a catalytic reaction to convert hydrogen to helium (the CNO cycle), those less than ~1.3 solar masses are too small for anything but proton-proton fusion. Deterium would be quickly burned up, briefly increasing the local rate of fusion in a tiny part of the star, but no practical amount would have any effect on the star as a whole...our own sun is already converting 4.26 million tonnes of mass to energy per second, and has plenty more mass to absorb a brief increase. Even a few million tonnes of antimatter are unlikely to really destabilize a star. Stars are big.

[Razor One]

The only way you're going to truly destabilise a star in any significant fashion would be to throw the following at them:

A: A stellar black hole.

No, not the tiny one's that you could artificially produce. A black hole. A fully fledged black hole. One that has significant mass, say roughly 3 - 4 times the mass of the sun.

That is not an insignificant figure.

B: Another star.

And no guarantee that it'll make the star go boom either. They'll likely just merge, pump out more energy and destabilise the planetary system.

The only way you can do this is if you can find a way to fling black holes and stars through hyperspace. That alone would be a technological and logistical wonder of godlike proportions.

What we have now and presumably in the Outsider 'verse is the knowledge of how stars work. Knowing how something works and having the capability of breaking it in any significant fashion are two vastly different things. It's like trying to break an aircraft carrier with a brick and a brick alone.

The only workable way I can imagine that would be easier, in comparison, would be to upscale a gravity generator to stellar-mass proportions, reverse the field, then fling it into the heart of the star. The few seconds before it melts and explodes from the temperature and pressure should be all it needs to negate the gravitational binding energy of the star and cause its own internal pressure to blow it apart.

And again, this requires a technological and logistical capability that would be beyond godlike.

Stars are tough stuff. They tend to last for billions of years on average depending on the type of star. The only thing blowing them up is themselves once they run out of fuel. They're their own best friend and their own mortal enemy at the same time. Planets are significant only to the tiny infinitesimal life forms that dwell on them.

[Aygar]

Since all the nearby mass is in realspace, and apparently none of it (except the crazy people in their starships) in hyperspace, there is always going to be net gravitational pull in the direction of -hyperspace toward realspace.

So what if you're in -hyperspace does gravity pull you back to realspace in that direction too?

IMO, yes

(this to me seems to be the more "logical" setup, but it doesn't lead to the more interesting you miss the jump and you're stuck in hyperspace effect; this (gravity pulling back to realspace) means that eventually all ships in hyperspace will eventually come back in, except in the case that they somehow pass the edge of the universe before passing be enough mass to be pulled back into realspace or somehow falling into a stable oscillating equilibrium whereby they simply increase amplitude...).

In my theory the strength of the gravitational field is attenuated with hyperspace distance. So if you are in hyperspace over a realspace location with 0 strength gravity field there will be no net force attempting to pull you towards the ground brane. So it is possible to achieve a hyperspace velocity vector component that is greater then the hyperspace escape velocity of the ships forward hyperspace path. In which case (if the universe is topologically flat) the transiting mass will never return to realspace. Through extraordinary bad luck you could put your self in an orbit around a gravity well with a stably oscillating hyperspace velocity component, or you could perform a gravitational slingshot.

For clarification, In my mind the 'real space time' does not pass for the transiting mass. Some other time does pass but all realspace events are constrained by 'realspace time'. So to the crew of a ship, you jump and then immediately emerge, if the transiting mass never returns to realspace then the crew experiences no additional time. (Basically, if you are stuck in hyperspace you will never know it.) My guess is that most bad jumps end up in one of the super-massive black holes at the center of most galaxies. Either way none of the possibilities are interesting to a plot.

--Aygar

[dex drako]

And given that large stars accumulate cores composed largely of iron, it's clearly not something that's going to make a star explode.

where did you get this fact?

as I understand it no sun has a core composed of iron at least for more then short period before it goes super nova (reads hours to days). iron is the last element made in a star (all other heavier element are formed in the resulting nova) because iron absorbs energy when fused stopping the suns fusion and alowing gravity to crush the star in on itself.

I agree no reasonable amount iron thrown into a sun would do much, a star is 99% of all matter in a solar system after all. you would have to rip about countless systems just to take out one sun. but I never read or seen anything that says a stars core is made of iron.

[Mjolnir]

as I understand it no sun has a core composed of iron at least for more then short period before it goes super nova (reads hours to days). iron is the last element made in a star (all other heavier element are formed in the resulting nova) because iron absorbs energy when fused stopping the suns fusion and alowing gravity to crush the star in on itself.

Alright, they don't accumulate actual cores of iron until they start burning silicon, and it's only a matter of days until the end at that point...due to exhaustion of fuels that produce net energy when fused, though, not the presence of iron. I don't think iron-producing processes are absent before that point, and the amounts of iron produced would almost certainly be greater than anything you could import...but even if I'm wrong about that, any star with planets around it would almost certainly have accreted many times the amount of iron that formed into solid objects outside the star. Same goes for everything else you could throw at it. (with the technical exception of antimatter, but the quantities required to make a star take notice are still ridiculous).

[Arioch]

I suppose you could use "probe golf" to try to attack someone through FTL, if you knew they were about to jump into your system, you could launch a ton of unmanned kamikaze probes into the jump corridor. Though that would probably require a level of precision that nobody has at the moment.

I don't see how this would be any more effective than flooding an inbound jump zone with debris. The odds of collisions are very low even in realspace, and in hyperspace the transiting ship is only there for a fraction of a second.

Hold on a second... If someone took a star into hyperspace, it could pull objects in realspace into hyperspace with it? (theoretical energy requirements aside)

A mass in hyperspace should gravitationally affect ojects in realspace, but only along the plane of real space-time; the mass would exert a +hyperspace pull on a realspace object, but it's not clear that this would immediately draw the object into hyperspace. I don't think objects pop out of realspace that easily (or it would probably happen more often). So there is probably some kind of inertia inherent in the boundary between realspace and hyperspace, which jibes with the mechanics of hyperspace jumps as we know it: the successful entry into hyperspace requires a lot of energy and imparts a significant initial +hyperspace momentum. If the hyperspace mass was large enough and close enough, it might exert a strong enough pull to break this inertia.

Even if you had enough energy to cover a star in a mass-appropriate jump field (and the instrumentality to generate it) I'm not sure how you'd arrange the proper spactime gravity gradient needed to ski-jump the star into hyperspace. It would probably have to be near an even larger star.

a curious thought though... could you make a hyper jump that WILL drop out inside the target sun? not just that it can, but WILL, since that could create a rather nasty weapon of stellar destruction.

It's not hard to fly something into a star, but I don't believe the major combatants possess anything to significantly affect a star (on any kind of meaningful time scale). It takes a LOT more than a few million tons of iron to shut down a star, and it wouldn't cause the star to explode (unless it was already supernova-sized). But even if you had some magic trigger to stop fusion in the core of a star, remember that it takes millions of years for the energy produced in the core of a star like our Sun to migrate to the surface; I'm not sure anyone on the outside would even notice something had been done for a very long time. And finally, again here we're talking about exotic ways to kill civilian populations in systems that your superweapons have no access to.

So, sorry if I missed that but does the area below the realspace 'plane' have a name? Besides "unending terror", that is?
Subspace?

I suppose it could be called "negative hyperspace" (or perhaps "antihyperspace"). "Subspace" might do, but it's more or less a synonym for hyperspace, and in SF literature is pretty firmly associated with FTL communications.

Although I must admit I do like "unending terror."

So what if you're in -hyperspace does gravity pull you back to realspace in that direction too?

It seems logical to infer that gravity still affects objects in negative hyperspace, but it's not clear that this effect would be the same as in positive hyperspace... there must be something different about the two, as breaking the boundaries of realspace always propels you into positive hyperspace, and never negative hyperspace. For all we know, gravity acts like "dark energy" in negative hyperspace, pushing you farther away from realspace (that's a "forinstance", not an actual theory).

I think it's true that most hyperspace misses will eventually lead to the transiting object eventually embedding itself back into realspace at the center of a star somewhere. But, for story purposes at least, it's like asking what happens to you inside a black hole's event horizon: it really doesn't matter, because no one in the rest of the universe will ever find out.

[Karst45]

majincarne: assuming a casing for the C4 to shield it from the explosion, should work just fine, add a detonator and you have a small explosive round....but why not do it properly and use a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M32_MGL

Frag-12a fin stabilized HE shotgun shell

a curious thought though... could you make a hyper jump that WILL drop out inside the target sun? not just that it can, but WILL, since that could create a rather nasty weapon of stellar destruction.

Well that what i implied with the "nova bomb"

The only way you can do this is if you can find a way to fling black holes and stars through hyperspace. That alone would be a technological and logistical wonder of godlike proportions.

but they did it in stargate!


all that conversation about black hole kind of triggered my curiosity. Could you send a mission with the component to create a strong enough Gravity field for a ship to make a short jump outside a system. Like beacon for an alternate path/secret sector?

You could use that to make a safe jump to a sector farther than 10LY by traveling with a ship in normal space until you reach a distance at which your artificial gravity field could still be useful then repeat until you have build your relay bridge.

[sun]---------------15LY---------------[Sun]
|------|------|------|------|------|
3ly 3ly 3ly 3ly 3ly

That could be used to have a secret path toward enemy line and/or an "safe zone" in case the enemy overwhelm you

[Trantor]

a curious thought though... could you make a hyper jump that WILL drop out inside the target sun? not just that it can, but WILL, since that could create a rather nasty weapon of stellar destruction.

It's not hard to fly something into a star, but I don't believe the major combatants possess anything to significantly affect a star (on any kind of meaningful time scale). It takes a LOT more than a few million tons of iron to shut down a star, and it wouldn't cause the star to explode (unless it was already supernova-sized).

And, as i understand it, you exit hyperspace with a remarkable amount of speed. Inside a star or a gas giant his would inflict the same damage like crashing into something on a realspace vector. I doubt you can make any doomsdaymachine that accident-proof.