Hyperspace

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fredgiblet
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by fredgiblet »


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Re: Hyperspace

Post by discord »

well, i'll just post http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier:_Elite_II which has a insanely detailed starmap, given that it has oribital data and all such stuff, including history and political data on every system, and it fits on a single dd disk(660kb) the compression is very impressive...

so lets sum it up, 3d engine, lots of 3d objects, huge and detailed starmap(that is actually pretty accurate with the real world), sandbox type game.
actually came up with math for it WAY back and i think it was more stars than bytes on the disk....as mentioned, insane compression.

and as a side note, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/146 ... -dangerous david braben is going at it for a third time....could get awesome.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

Karst45 wrote:So why did they come with the oort cloud theory?

It started as an attempt to answer the question of where the long-period comets come from... if you plot the orbits of the long-period comets, you notice they come from WAY outside the solar system. If you multiply the number of observed long-period comets by the number that must be out there, especially considering that comets have limited lifespans once they enter the inner solar system, the number gets big fast. In the 50's Jan Oort presented a theory of how these comets got there (gravitational ejection from the early solar proplyd), and as I understand it that theory still fits the observed facts today.

We've never directly observed an Oort object outside the inner solar system because they're tiny, cold, dimly-lit, distant, and in unpredictable orbits. Folks who talk about objects being easy to detect in space need to remember that such objects need to be discerned against the background of the universe, and that's not always so easy unless you know exactly where to look.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Suederwind »

We've never directly observed an Oort object outside the inner solar system because they're tiny, cold, dimly-lit, distant, and in unpredictable orbits.
Well, as far as I remember there is this "dwarf planet" called Sedna which could belong to some kind of "inner Oort Cloud". But that theory sounded highly speculative to me at that time and I don´t know what changed in the last ~4 years or so.
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

I guess that depends on how you choose to define where the Kuiper belt ends and the Oort cloud begins, but even with an aphelion of 937 AU, Sedna is only a tiny fraction of the distance of most of the objects in the Oort cloud.

We've got some wacky stuff out there, and the scales of the outer solar system boggle the imagination.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Mikk »

Perhaps not as spectacular as Nemesis speculation, Big Ben in Peter Watts' Blindsight was a pretty nice barely visible small brow dwarf serving as a stage for some neat alien first contact adventuring. I haven't been able to read a distance for the object out of the book yet tho (PS: you can read PW's works on his website). The distance was expressed through a neicely technobabbly fashion referring to quantum waveform collapse and related magic.
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Trantor »

Necroposting FTW!
Arioch wrote:
Trantor wrote:
Arioch wrote:Given that the frequency of stars seems to go up as the size comes down, it's logical to expect that there are a significant number of brown dwarfs. Unfortunately I haven't seen much current evidence (or even much theory) that soldily predicts how many there are.
Me neither, but related to that link i found an article in a german newspaper where they state that they found 100 new "suns"/brown dwarfs in a radius less than 40 ly around earth.
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/welt ... 08,00.html

And they say there´s the possibility of even more brown dwarfs, maybe even nearer than proxima centauri.
That would be surprising, if there was one that close and we hadn't detected it. But you never know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISE_1049-5319

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

The line you quoted was referring to the possibility of a brown dwarf closer than Proxima Centauri, which the example you linked is not.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Trantor »

Arioch wrote:The line you quoted was referring to the possibility of a brown dwarf closer than Proxima Centauri, which the example you linked is not.
Neither link says that.
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by GeoModder »

Trantor wrote:Huzzah.
More Busstations. ;)
Works for the Outsiderverse.
Maybe the mass difference between a G -and L class star is too steep for a safe hyper-jump? :P
But if not, it looks like a good inbetween jump from Alpha Centauri to Sirius. 8-)
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Tamri »

Small necropost. Just had some questions on this subject, the answers to which I like as not found. Maybe just missed, but in general, here:

1) Whether such maneuvers are possible? If "yes", then will they hyperjump, or it will be just a "long" jump in ordinary space?
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Is it feasible feint ears? And what happens to the vessel / crew at the points of the trajectory, marked in blue?
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

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Tamri wrote:1) Whether such maneuvers are possible? If "yes", then will they hyperjump, or it will be just a "long" jump in ordinary space?
In Fig.I, jumps (A) and (B) are not possible; activating the jump drive will detach you from spacetime, but you must have a velocity vector that pulls you away from spacetime to escape into hyperspace. The energy of the jump itself gives you a little bit of +hyperspace momentum, but that's not enough (at least with the tech of the major combatants) to escape; the rest must come from your real-space velocity. Real-space velocity can only be built up tangent to the white line that is spacetime, and so in order to successfully enter hyperspace you need to jump from a point in realspace that is curved. That's why gravity wells are necessary for jumps: you can't just leap into hyperspace from a flat stretch of space (with the tech of the major combatants) .

Jump (C) might be theoretically possible, if the planets were of exactly the right masses, but it would only work for the brief time that the planets were properly aligned in their orbits.

Jumping towards a nearby mass usually results in a collision with that mass, as the gravity of the mass pulls you in, and since you're starting with a negative hyperspace momentum, in general only bad things can happen. The arc of jump (E) might be possible if a very high velocity was used, but such a small arrival target is hard to hit (as hyperspace is unpredictable), and even if you hit it it's unlikely that you'd successfully re-enter at such a small target destination; you'd more likely bounce off or punch through (G). More on that below. Arc (D) is also possible with a high enough jump velocity, but it will result in entry to negative hyperspace.
Tamri wrote:Is it feasible feint ears? And what happens to the vessel / crew at the points of the trajectory, marked in blue?
The trajectory shown in Fig.III is theoretically possible, but it would take an incredible stroke of luck to be able to hit your target at point (H), and at the correct angle; it's more likely that you'd bounce again and fall into the star. When the object in hyperspace reconnects with real spacetime, there are three possible outcomes depending on the angle of entry and local curvature of spacetime: if it is very close to a tangent at a curved point in spacetime, the object will re-enter real space. If the entry angle is too far off the tangent but still shallow, the object will bounce off of the "surface tension" of spacetime back into hyperspace. If the entry angle is too steep, the object may punch through spacetime and be liberated into negative hyperspace.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by sunphoenix »

Don't play around with the Jump drive... the answers you seek.. MAY FIND YOU!

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by novius »

I might not like reviving old posts, but I think it's still better than having several similar named threads scattered around the forum - this way you have all the answers in one place. But since I (hope to) add something meaningful, I think it's justified.

First: Fig. III in http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 667#p23667 shows that 'bouncing' off the spacetime curvature results in a series of ever smaller 'hops', and together with the premise that a re-entry can be successful when then spacetime closely matches the 'hyperspace depth change', I could see that an unlucky ship which overshot the destination would surely come to a rest, much like a rock skipping the surface of a lake, but after a number of skips sinking in.

Of course, said ship would be stranded in deep space, and in absence of a gravity well pretty much doomed, too.

Second: I had about the idea on reading the fanfic "What to do with Jardin", as in, making gracious assumptions about hyperspace physics and trying a really desperate boneheaded move to have at least a slight chance of survival.

Of course, 'official textbooks' would never discuss it, or even mention it, but when in positive hyperspace, there is a 'drag down' towards normal spacetime, and textbooks would not discuss about negative hyperspace. For them, if you end up there, you're lost, end of story. As in, the 'drag down' would put you deeper and deeper into the negative, with no chance of return.

So, one of the gracious assumptions would be that the 'drag' could be reversed as well, that when someone is in negative hyperspace, it would be a 'drag up' towards normal spacetime, making this a mirror to the positive one.

Now, here comes the Hail Mary move that would allow the "double jump" out of a certain trap, the truly miraculous move that would leave everyone guessing...

I could try myself on a crude sketch (that's about the most I could achieve...), but what I'm thinking about is to aim a jump to the FAR side of the gravity well of a targeted star, so that the ship would intentionally punch through the spacetime barrier into negative Hyperspace. (like 'G' in Fig. II). Now, with the gratious assumption that the 'drag' would be reversed, the ship would appear normal spacetime from BELOW and, given my first assumption it would be able to re-enter normal spacetime... though from below, rather than above, and end up on the far side of the gravity well of the second star, too, not on the near side like with conventional jumps.

The 'green' jump curve would look much like a sine curve in this case, crossing the spacetime barrier once or twice rather than the usual arc between starting and destination system.

Might be it would never appear in the comic. But this is at least the sort of "do or die" move I would opt for when I see myself boxed in from all sides.

Food for thought, don't you say?

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

If the effect of gravity in negative hyperspace mirrored that of hyperspace, then as with hyperspace, all objects would eventually return to normal space, and negative hyperspace would be just another section of hyperspace. However, negative hyperspace is the inverse of hyperspace, and the curvature created by mass in realspace propels objects away from realspace, not towards, and so a ballistic object will "fall" deeper into negative hyperspace.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by ShadowDragon8685 »

Arioch wrote:If the effect of gravity in negative hyperspace mirrored that of hyperspace, then as with hyperspace, all objects would eventually return to normal space, and negative hyperspace would be just another section of hyperspace. However, negative hyperspace is the inverse of hyperspace, and the curvature created by mass in realspace propels objects away from realspace, not towards, and so a ballistic object will "fall" deeper into negative hyperspace.
I'm assuming a no, but...

Has anyone ever intentionally launched anything into negative hyperspace and gotten any useful data out of it somehow? Like, from the entry, or if they aimed it to blast through the realspace curve into negative hyperspace in the vicinity of sensors, or something?

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by novius »

Huh, interesting question. Let's broaden it a bit...

Objects in Hyperspace do have little to no interaction with objects in realspace - aside from gravity wells of masses having an influence on hyperspace travel. But what happens with objects that cross (as ShadowDragon8685 implied) or even just bounced off the spacetime curvature?

I mentioned that an overshooting ship would bounce off the 'flat' spacetime curvature in ever smaller skips, as seen in one of the graphs. That may be
  • Due to some sort of 'friction' while being in hyperspace having a dampening effect
  • Every bounce (or punching through) would 'bleed' off some energy, maybe into realspace.
Note that these two possibilities need not to exclude each other, but the first one has an insidious side effect. I'll get to this.

Re-entry into realspace is accompanied by a visible flash of light, so there's definitely energy to be dissipated. A rather good assumption would be that whenever a ship would touch - or cross - realspace, some 'hyperspace momentum' would be shed into realspace... Punching through into negative would definitely be noticeable, but skipping on the top of curvature might be too, with a series of flashes in realspace along the travel route.


For something completely different, introducing 'hyperspace friction' would make things even more hairy. Whoever played around with dampening in oscillators (mechanical, electronics, whatever you come up with) might have noticed that with high enough dampening an object might not come to rest at 'zero position' because the dampening effect would cancel out the force that would push the object towards zero.

Translate that to our hyperspace physics it would mean that too short jumps (thus building up too little momentum) or a ship bleeding out momentum with a series of skips would risk to never return to realspace because the 'pull' spacetime exerts on the ship would be canceled out by the 'friction', thus keeping the skip being stuck in low positive hyperspace for all eternity.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:Has anyone ever intentionally launched anything into negative hyperspace and gotten any useful data out of it somehow? Like, from the entry, or if they aimed it to blast through the real space-time curve into negative hyperspace in the vicinity of sensors, or something?
Hyperspace is a realm in which objects travel faster than the speed of light, so by definition, it should be impossible to track such objects from real spacetime. The only way you can get information about an object traveling through hyperspace is to wait until it returns to real spacetime, and then query the object's systems about what it experienced. If the object never returns to real space-time, or returns in a location you don't expect and can't find, then you may never know what happened to it.

As far as anyone knows, no object that has entered negative hyperspace has ever returned to real spacetime. According to Outsider-era contemporary theory, the boundary between real spacetime and negative hyperspace is analogous to the event horizon of a black hole; any crossing object is accelerated away from the boundary at greater than the speed of light, and so no information about it can ever return to real spacetime. Some theories suggest that the singularities of black holes must themselves have left the real universe and exist in negative hyperspace (or in a layer between spacetime and negative hyperspace), and that the surface tension of spacetime may be the mechanism that provides the negative pressure that accelerates the expansion of the universe.

If space-time has a positive curvature, then it's possible that hyperspace is infinite and negative hyperspace is a finite spherical volume, perhaps with some kind of unimaginable singularity at the center.
novius wrote:I mentioned that an overshooting ship would bounce off the 'flat' spacetime curvature in ever smaller skips, as seen in one of the graphs. That may be
  • Due to some sort of 'friction' while being in hyperspace having a dampening effect
  • Every bounce (or punching through) would 'bleed' off some energy, maybe into realspace.
Note that these two possibilities need not to exclude each other, but the first one has an insidious side effect. I'll get to this.

Re-entry into realspace is accompanied by a visible flash of light, so there's definitely energy to be dissipated. A rather good assumption would be that whenever a ship would touch - or cross - realspace, some 'hyperspace momentum' would be shed into realspace... Punching through into negative would definitely be noticeable, but skipping on the top of curvature might be too, with a series of flashes in realspace along the travel route.
Spacetime must have a "surface tension", so to speak, that provides resistance that deters objects from moving in extra-dimensional directions, and prevents objects from simply "slipping" into hyperspace by accident. Overcoming this surface tension to escape into hyperspace requires a certain amount of energy (generated by the jump field), which is returned either in the case of a direct re-entry (partially in the flash of light) or in a loss of +hyperspace momentum in the case of a bounce back into hyperspace. There is no "friction" in hyperspace that affects real space-time momentum; interacting with the spacetime/hyperspace interface affects only +hyperspace energy/momentum.

Since an object in hyperspace loses +hyperspace momentum with each bounce, an object that bounced enough times would enter a dribbling path in which the +hyperspace momentum would eventually bleed to zero, in which case the trajectory would become flat and the object could re-enter spacetime in flat (empty) interstellar space. However, I think it's exceedingly unlikely that this would happen before the object was drawn towards and collided with a mass in real spacetime... and even if it did reappear deep in empty interstellar space, it's even more unlikely that it would ever be able to make contact with its own civilization again, since it would have to crawl to a nearby star at a slower-than-light speed, and then have to content with the potentially incomprehensible distance it must have traveled while dribbling through hyperspace.

An object falling from hyperspace that punched through real spacetime into negative hyperspace would never actually enter real spacetime, and so there would be no sign to observers within spacetime near that location that anything untoward had happened. There would be no disturbance or flash of light.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Mjolnir »

Likely not story-relevant at all, but: is there any serious in-universe speculation about stable "layers" or "bands" in hyperspace, with the jumps used by ships being only a shallow entry into a transitional area, or is that as much the realm of crankery and fiction in the Outsider universe as hyperspace is in ours?

It does seem odd for what we consider to be "normal space" to be the only speedbump on the way from the most distant positive hyperspace to the most distant negative hyperspace.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by ShadowDragon8685 »

Hrm... IF Negative Hyperspace is in fact a finite curvature with a mnogo singularity at the core, that would mean that, in theory, you could take a dive through the realspace plane from hyperspace into Negative Hyperspace, at such an angle that your trajectory is a parabola around the mnogo singularity instead of directly into it, and potentially reach escape velocity again, resurfacing through realspace. Possibly on the underside of realspace.

I mean, that's all waaay out there cuckoo speculation, but...

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