SciFi Q's & A's Thread

[kid908]

Seeing how alot of people here are interested in Scifi shows, I thought it would be nice to have a thread to ask about plot of shows you may not get (please use spoilers if you are, with the show's name and, if possible, episode #): Ex. What happened to all the sailors bring the T-Rex to civilization in Jurassic Park 2? - and/or scifi tech you don't get: Ex. What is the difference between Hyperspace, Slipspace, and Warp?.

I'll Start off with the last example. What is the difference between Hyperspace, Slipspace, and Warp? Which is faster?

[Cojafoji]

well allow me to jump right in here with some answers.

warp: warp speeds are multiplied factors of the speed of light. so what happens, is that using the combined power output of the antimatter/deuterium mixture in the engine, the ship can create a bubble in space. this bubble is pure energy, so it can travel faster than the speed of light, and also prevent the slowing of time as would occur outside the bubble as you reach infinitely towards 299,792,458 m/s.

a fucking awesome example of the multiplied factor of warp drive is the mother fucking picard maneuver, where picard leaps out of the screen on your tele and fucks your mother.


During the engagement which came to be known as the Battle of Maxia (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Battle_of_Maxia), the Stargazer, which was holding station several million kilometers away from its adversary, suddenly accelerated to warp 9 (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Warp_factor) directly towards the Ferengi ship. Because the enemy was only equipped with light speed (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Light_speed) sensors (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Sensor), they had no way of knowing that the Stargazer had moved until it was too late. When the light from the newly-moved ship reached the Ferengi ship's sensors, the light from its previous position was still arriving, so the Ferengi saw two Stargazers. Even if they had figured out that the new image was the genuine one in time, it would have been too late, as the Stargazer opened fire as soon as it dropped out of warp, and the Ferengi ship had no time to maneuver out of the way before the phasers and photon torpedoes hit. The Ferengi ship was destroyed. This technique was so successful that it was named after Picard, and there was no known defense against it until 2364 (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/2364).

HOLY SHIT THAT'S AWESOME.

no fucking clue how the others work, but from what i can see they're pretty much the same. the ship enters another parallel plain that coexists with our own, and then bridges the gap from that plain, back into our own. this utilizes m-theory which is just fuck off crazy.

[TeeKup]

Slipstream travel explained. I like the concept of Slipstream Space travel, it's just cool.


Slipspace is a tangle of intertwined dimensions, comparably similar to a wadded up piece of paper, which lie underneath the three conventional spatial dimensions of the universe. Because of this tangle of intertwined dimensions, objects in slipspace often group together in mass transit.

The Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine allowed human ships to tunnel into the Slipstream, Slipspace, technically called "Shaw-Fujikawa Space," after the scientists who proved its existence. Slipspace is a domain with alternate physical laws, allowing faster-than-light travel without relativistic side-effects i.e., the occupants do not "warp" time, despite their super-luminal speed. But however fast it may appear, faster-than-light travel is by no means instantaneous; "short" jumps routinely take up to two months, and "long" jumps can last six months or more; despite going faster than light, there is still a slight degree of Time Dilation, while a jump may last only a day or two, several weeks may have passed in real time, which is why most UNSC ships have cryo chambers, allowing their occupants to forestall the effects of aging, and minimize the need for crew supplies and quarters.

Slipspace can be thought of as our detectable universe (which, technically, it is) but with a greater number of dimensions. Our plane of existence is thought to have four dimensions (up-down, front-back, side-to-side and time), but Slipspace is an eleven-dimensional spacetime. Slipspace is currently theorized (in 2552) as a "tangle" of our plane's dimensions, rather like taking the classic "flat sheet" used to represent gravity and crumpling it up into a ball, thereby creating extra dimensions and shorter spaces between points. The slipstream also possesses different laws of physics than our "normal" universe, although some basic ones, such as energy transfer and momentum, remain the same.

The SFTE (Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine) generates a resonance field, which when coupled with the unusual physics of the Slipstream, allows for dramatically shorter transit times between stars; however, scientists note an odd "flexibility" to temporal flow while inside the Slipstream. Though no Human scientist is sure why travel time between stars is not constant, many theorize that there are "eddies" or "currents" within the Slipstream — there is generally a five to ten percent variance in travel times between stars. This temporal inconsistency has given military tacticians and strategists fits, hampering an uncounted number of coordinated attacks. Shaw-Fujikawa engines allow ships to leave normal space and plow through Slipspace. Slipspace drives use particle accelerators to rip apart normal space-time by generating micro black holes. These holes are evaporated via Hawking radiation in a nanosecond. The real quantum mechanical "magic" of the drive lies in how it manipulates these holes in space-time, squeezing vessels weighing thousands of tons into Slipspace.

The Covenant have a very finely tuned version of this technology, far superior to the UNSC Shaw-Fujikawa Slipspace Drive. Instead of simply tearing a hole into Slipspace, Covenant Slipspace drives cut a very fine hole in the fabric of space-time and slips into Slipspace with precision (much like a scalpel compared to a butcher knife). It exits with the same pinpoint accuracy, takes less time during travel, and is able to plot a course with error not exceeding an atom. This is why in battle Covenant ships are able to slip by human defenses by using slipspace.

Gravitational fields of significant size, such as those generated by a planet, affect the superfine quantum filaments that the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine must use to calculate an entry point to the slipstream, and UNSC calculations are unable to offset this effect. Covenant drives, in turn derived from Forerunner technology, have a much higher resolution of the filaments, and use more accurate calculations, and though the Covenant do not use this ability, are capable of making slipstream transition in and out of a planet's gravity well. Indeed, while using the captured Ascendant Justice to make a Slipspace jump within Threshold's atmosphere, Cortana remarked that "It was as if she was blind before." After observing this innovation, a Covenant AI managed to leak the data out to the rest of the Covenant in a transmission. During the first days of the Battle of Earth, the Prophet of Regret uses this newfound knowledge to transition into Slipspace while directly over New Mombasa in Earth's gravity well, damaging the city and causing the weakening and eventual collapse of the Orbital Elevator there. These events are further proof that the Covenant are imitative rather than innovative.

Slipspace travel is dangerous due to the high level of radiation encountered during the trip, which can be extremely hazardous to the crew. This is negated by the use of Lead Foil in UNSC ships, which absorbs the radiation. Fissile materials also emit radiation (specifically Cherenkov radiation, emitted when particles travel through a medium at a faster rate than light travels in that same medium. Named after the Russian physicist Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov) upon exiting Slipspace; this is not harmful to Humans, however it does make emerging from Slipspace very noticeable. It is not known how the Covenant deal with radiation, but it is presumed that either they also utilize lead, or with their improved Slipspace technology and Energy shields, it does not affect them at all.

The concept of using an alternate dimension with different laws to travel faster than general relativity allows was first posited as the Minkowski Space Theory.

[paladin]

Orson Scott Card's explanation of super-speedy space travel makes sense to me... Sorry, can't write a whole book into one post. Go read Ender's Game.