3 Body Problem
- Thread starter Xexx
- Start date
Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
- 16,451
- 12,098
More or less under relativity. Using Einstein, it basically calculates that any mass accelerated to light speed would obtain infinite mass and require infinity energy, functionally making it impossible to achieve. In theory you would only be able to achieve close to light speed, so like 99.9% or whatever, without using some type of travel method that could fold space and effectively allow you to bypass the cosmic speed limit
- 1
- 5,970
- 30,702
The books are poorly written, basically only the basic plot and some of the ideas are good. Yeah, there's a good character or two in there. I haven't watched the show. Ifi were you I'd either just watch someone's YouTube summary or get the 1st book on tape and listen to see if you want to read the rest.
Foggy
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 6,236
- 4,809
Show is interesting enough, about halfway through. The dialogue and most of the characters are complete shit. Hot scientist is so disturbed that her wire was used to kill 1,000 people. Bitch, you invented an invisible wire that can cut through anything, the first thing anybody would do with that is turn it into a weapon.
LiquidDeath
Magnus Deadlift the Fucktiger
- 4,892
- 11,298
It is just so laughable how many women are present in a group that is purported to be a collection of the greatest minds on the planet, especially when they focus on two of them girl-bossing their way across the globe.
As if Auggie would be able to waltz into the slums of Central America, apparently alone, and not be literally raped to death within days. It is all just so fucking stupid it takes away from an otherwise solid series.
As if Auggie would be able to waltz into the slums of Central America, apparently alone, and not be literally raped to death within days. It is all just so fucking stupid it takes away from an otherwise solid series.
- 2
Attog
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 2,344
- 1,770
First thing I thought when I saw that scene is how many seconds until she is gang raped. Actually surprised it didn't go there since men are bad.
Kiroy
Marine Biologist
- 34,620
- 99,921
Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
- 16,451
- 12,098
you're thinking about FTL communication - basically the idea that if you were able to quantum entangled particles. The show uses this concept for the aliens and how they can communicate/observe Earth. However, I've seen it questioned whether or not that is actually possible (FTL communication between particles).
- 3,107
- 2,712
quantum entanglement is the other mcguffin along with warp drives for scifi to work.
If one particle is spinning left in an quantum entangled pair, then you instantly know that the other particle is spinning right, no matter the distance between the particles, which I suppose allows for some form of communication to occur instantly across the void.
Now I'll grant you building a device that can read the spin of the particles at either end of this communication is possible, then figure out how to flip the spin of the particle on your end (to thus flip the spin on the particle at the other end) but then you have to a: send this device to the other end of space where you are trying to communicate b: be able to quantum entangle particles across the void somehow or c: send one part of the pair across the void to the place you are trying to communicate.
all of that shipping is being done with a rocketship moving at 0.00000001% the speed of light so yeah.
its all space magic. Like Jedi.
FTL is impossible in the real world.
The problem with the "Dark Forest" model is our understanding of this "forest" ie space.
It's the same as Asteroid belts in movies. We imagine rocks floating in space bumping into one another, epic chases and crashes, x-wings and tie fighters bobbing and weaving through the belts.
In the real world the average distance between asteroids in "belts" like the Kuiper belt is 600k miles. you literally can pass right through the motherfucker and never, ever, ever come within 500k miles to even seeing a single fucking asteroid.
In the real world stars capable of having planets capable of having life are really really fucking far apart. I don't know exactly how far radio waves can propagate through the near (but not total) vacuum of space before attenuation makes them impossible to differentiate from the background cosmic radiation. Someone said it was something like only 2 light years which is scary since if that is the case there are 0 fucking stars within range of us (closest is 4.5ly away) but again even if its 15ly (30 years of us intentionally sending powerful radio waves into space searching for life) there's only like 19 stars in range of us and its like 99.9999999% that there isn't any life in those 19 systems.
So even if we somehow had magical jedi FTL travel we would never know which direction to even go because we could not ever communicate or "find" life ever. We would just be rolling the dice every time trillion to one odds that we warp drive to a random system and hope and pray there was shit there to see.
so yeah "dark forest" can be a thing, but the distance between each tree is the size of Texas so it doesn't really matter how loud you are or how much attention you draw to yourself no other hunter is ever going to see you.
If one particle is spinning left in an quantum entangled pair, then you instantly know that the other particle is spinning right, no matter the distance between the particles, which I suppose allows for some form of communication to occur instantly across the void.
Now I'll grant you building a device that can read the spin of the particles at either end of this communication is possible, then figure out how to flip the spin of the particle on your end (to thus flip the spin on the particle at the other end) but then you have to a: send this device to the other end of space where you are trying to communicate b: be able to quantum entangle particles across the void somehow or c: send one part of the pair across the void to the place you are trying to communicate.
all of that shipping is being done with a rocketship moving at 0.00000001% the speed of light so yeah.
its all space magic. Like Jedi.
FTL is impossible in the real world.
The problem with the "Dark Forest" model is our understanding of this "forest" ie space.
It's the same as Asteroid belts in movies. We imagine rocks floating in space bumping into one another, epic chases and crashes, x-wings and tie fighters bobbing and weaving through the belts.
In the real world the average distance between asteroids in "belts" like the Kuiper belt is 600k miles. you literally can pass right through the motherfucker and never, ever, ever come within 500k miles to even seeing a single fucking asteroid.
In the real world stars capable of having planets capable of having life are really really fucking far apart. I don't know exactly how far radio waves can propagate through the near (but not total) vacuum of space before attenuation makes them impossible to differentiate from the background cosmic radiation. Someone said it was something like only 2 light years which is scary since if that is the case there are 0 fucking stars within range of us (closest is 4.5ly away) but again even if its 15ly (30 years of us intentionally sending powerful radio waves into space searching for life) there's only like 19 stars in range of us and its like 99.9999999% that there isn't any life in those 19 systems.
So even if we somehow had magical jedi FTL travel we would never know which direction to even go because we could not ever communicate or "find" life ever. We would just be rolling the dice every time trillion to one odds that we warp drive to a random system and hope and pray there was shit there to see.
so yeah "dark forest" can be a thing, but the distance between each tree is the size of Texas so it doesn't really matter how loud you are or how much attention you draw to yourself no other hunter is ever going to see you.
Last edited:
spronk
FPS noob
- 22,599
- 25,650
any sort of "its simply not possible" boils down to clarkes law: sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Thats one of the core ideas of the books besides the Dark Forest, any group that is far behind another in technology is simply incapable of really understanding what advanced technology can do, they lack the framework to truly understand the tech gap.
If you think "FTL is impossible, time travel is impossible, sophons are impossible, interstellar travel is impossible, physics proves blah blah" you have fallen into that trap. You simply cannot get into the frame of reference where the advanced technology completely obliterates your understanding of the universe.
I mean its silly to think humanity knows a goddamn thing about the way the universe works. 95% of the universe, we think, is what we call dark matter and dark energy. Its called dark because WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS. We can't see it, test it, interact with it, or figure it out in any way other than to see its effecting gravity and expansion. If you only understand 5% (way less even really) of something, you don't know shit. We literally are bugs.
If you think "FTL is impossible, time travel is impossible, sophons are impossible, interstellar travel is impossible, physics proves blah blah" you have fallen into that trap. You simply cannot get into the frame of reference where the advanced technology completely obliterates your understanding of the universe.
I mean its silly to think humanity knows a goddamn thing about the way the universe works. 95% of the universe, we think, is what we call dark matter and dark energy. Its called dark because WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS. We can't see it, test it, interact with it, or figure it out in any way other than to see its effecting gravity and expansion. If you only understand 5% (way less even really) of something, you don't know shit. We literally are bugs.
- 2
Phazael
Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
- 14,109
- 30,206
Relativistic speeds greater than c exist. It is why the sky is mostly black at night. In an infinite universe with infinite stars every single millimeter of the sky would be bright white. But because we are moving away from most of the observable universe at a combined value greater than C, we have a dark night sky and some stars. So relativistic speeds greater than C do exist, but the physics models are kind of iffy on how that works precisely. Having said all that, its not really of any practical use for developing FTL.
True FTL if it were ever possible is likely going to involve bending space (tesseract like effects or artificially created wormholes) or shifting objects into a higher dimension where relativity as we know it do not apply and C is not the fastest possible velocity (basically the hyperspace model from Star Wars and other shows). Unless there is some physics trick that suppresses relativity in our level of reality (which presently seems very unlikely), FTL ships that move through normal space by way of propulsion are not happening. As you said, the energy requirements become infinity and time dilation gets so crazy that navigation becomes practically impossible because the universe around you is changing so fast that you cannot account for hazards or even if your intended destination still exists.
Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 6,110
- 12,305
Infinite stars is not the prevailing theory that I have ever seen. An infinite universe is more in regards to what is possibly outside our bubble of spacetime.
Phazael
Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
- 14,109
- 30,206
I don't know if this is true. The effort to make another planet, even one with very close parameters to ours, remotely colonizable is very difficult. I mean our own species runs into fertility issues just by moving to higher altitudes on the surface. Slight variations in gravity, radiation, available nutrients, and a hundred other things make colonization basically impractical unless you have no other option. In this series, the aliens are up against certain death so they have nothing to lose by trying. But you would almost certainly have to engage in lengthy modifications to both your species and the intended colony to even have a chance of making a sustainable population. And if you are gonna modify your whole race into something else, you are not really preserving your race as it is. Even resource stripping is impractical, because most Ort clouds have so many comets that even something like water is much more readily available for harvest from your own solar system.
Basically Dark Forest is the more likely scenario. Unless your home world is doomed and you HAVE to try and migrate, the only rational response to discovering another intelligent species out there is to nuke them from afar so they never do it to you.
Phazael
Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
- 14,109
- 30,206
Think of it in these terms. We know we are moving away from the center of the universe and have been for a while. Whats more, there are galactic clusters moving from it in all vectors from the center and we are only able to observe the ones moving our general direction because of this. Here is the situation:
Galaxy on opposite side of center <===== moving 60% of C from center ====+ Center of Universe +============ moving 60% of c from center ====> Our galaxy
Combined relativistic velocity is greater than C so no light from either galaxy ever reaches the other. We know this occurs from observation (distant galaxies just on the cusp moving at enough of an angle that they essentially achieve this state have been documented), but we are not clear of all the implications aside from the fact that we are not getting burned alive by the collective light of every star in the known universe. Fun mental exercise, if the expansion of the universe were to slow down (its not for reasons unknown currently hand waved by "dark energy" theories) the night sky would become brighter and brighter until the ambient temperature of most of the know universe rose to the point where we all melted (over a cosmic scale of time mind you). Overall point is that velocity greater than C technically exists in relativity, we just don't know what the ramifications are fully.
Also keep in mind that any singularity (black hole) has an event horizon where the acceleration of gravity is the same value as C, which implies that the acceleration of gravity beyond that point would be greater than C. We mostly do not have a means to observe the particulars, but there are singularities out there that actually eject some forms of energy due to rapid rotation speeds. So while we cannot measure a velocity against a static point in the universe (Heisenberg and Schoedinger's Wave Theorem explain this at length) we have a decent approximation when it comes to singularities because their center is static in relation to the whole and there is clearly a force capable (at least theoretically) of FTL velocities beyond the event horizon.