quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
How about a ship that travels inside a time bubble. Time passes much faster inside the bubble than outside. i.e. you have a ship that travels at .5 speed of light but time inside the bubble time is 100x faster than normal time, so over all the ship travels at 50x speed of light (when viewed from outside).

Not very useful for transporting people since inside the bubble a 100 light year trip will still take 200 years to complete but only 2 years to the outside world. Maybe good for transporting non-perishable goods between stars.

I dunno about that. Anybody who reads (or writes) SF would probably loathe this idea - perhaps not a major audience, but we''re vocal.

quote: Original post by Edward Ropple

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
How about a ship that travels inside a time bubble. Time passes much faster inside the bubble than outside. i.e. you have a ship that travels at .5 speed of light but time inside the bubble time is 100x faster than normal time, so over all the ship travels at 50x speed of light (when viewed from outside).

Not very useful for transporting people since inside the bubble a 100 light year trip will still take 200 years to complete but only 2 years to the outside world. Maybe good for transporting non-perishable goods between stars.

I dunno about that. Anybody who reads (or writes) SF would probably loathe this idea - perhaps not a major audience, but we''re vocal.

Hmm... at first I entirely disagreed, but maybe not. It might require too much hand-waving for "hard" Sci-Fi''ers (think Arthur C Clarke) (I don''t know how well you could justify it through modern physics) and wouldn''t lend itself to the sorts of stories "space fantasy"/"space drama"/"whatever you call Star Trek et al." Sci-Fi''ers would enjoy.

Of course, this is for a game, so you''re probably looking for a story for the "Star Trek" style Sci-Fi. Although, you might be able to do something with it. Say, you send some colonists through a time bubble to a distant planet. I''m sure you could do something interesting with that.

Yup. That''s the boundary between hard SF people and...everyone else. (Although I enjoy both...but Asimov beats out just about anyone.)

The suspension of disbelief is pretty important in hard (or even general) SF stories regarding space travel, and the same is likely true of video games. (Although I structured the first four I suggested to maximize the ooh-pretty-lights effect. Redshift/blueshift could look pretty cool if done well.) If you come up with something patently impossible...a lot of people, even non-SF types, may scoff. "This guy doesn''t put in the effort to seem credible...what''s the point?" Of course, if you''re not writing for a story, go nuts.

I actually think another way to suspend disbelief is to stay away from realistic explanations connecting your universe to the real universe. If everything in the game/story world is alien, the audience will not have a problem with weird, unexplained stuff. Just make them ''natural''/''obvious''/''given'' facts. I think this is kind of how the Star Wars universe worked, it was set ''a long time ago'', having no connection to our own world, and all the crazy stuff like green aliens with little elephant''s trunks and space travel is just part of that world.

Marijn

A lot of SF readers disliked Star Wars and Star Trek, because they showed casual disrespect for the laws of physics. SW somewhat less, however, as its version of hyperspace is somewhat legitimate. And if you try to make everything in a world alien, good luck, because I can''t remember a time when it was convincingly done.

quote: Original post by Edward Ropple
A lot of SF readers disliked Star Wars and Star Trek, because they showed casual disrespect for the laws of physics. SW somewhat less, however, as its version of hyperspace is somewhat legitimate. And if you try to make everything in a world alien, good luck, because I can''t remember a time when it was convincingly done.

This, to some extent, bothers me. Physicists are getting cocky again (I mean no disrespect; I am a physics major). It was only relatively recently that we learned classical physics was qualitatively wrong (quantitatively it''s a good approximation). Modern physics is young, and it seems that we think we already have most of it (or, at least the "important bits") figured out.

Basically, I don''t see why it''s such a strain on one''s suspension of disbelief to believe that they know something we don''t.

I believe Arthur C Clarke is a good "hard" SF author, and it''s obvious that he puts a lot of attention to scientific detail, but even he leaves things in the "they know something we don''t" realm. Take the monoliths in the "Space Odyssey" series or the mapping of human consciousness into the quantum fluctuations at the end of "The Light of Other Days" (which Clarke apparently found more believable these days than putting consciousness into a lattice of light as in the Space Odyssey series).

Taking this "they know something we don''t" perspective, I never saw much wrong with the science in SW (a bit more in ST, but not so much). Of course, I still find bad science annoying. I cringe every time I see that scene in Eva where they mention that the angels are made of a matter that exhibits both particle and wave properties.

Dude, have you ever read any Star Wars? Hyperspace is not normal space, but a seperate dimension. You are not "untouchable" there either. You can, for instance, still smack into the gravity well that a planet or star in real space projects into hyperspace.

And where do you get that Warp Drive/Hyperspace is cheating on relativity? Relativity assumes that the speed of light is a constant. All you need to do is change the speed of light, or make the speed of light not not applicable. Both are possible when you dimension-shift.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Dude, have you ever read any Star Wars? Hyperspace is not normal space, but a seperate dimension. You are not "untouchable" there either. You can, for instance, still smack into the gravity well that a planet or star in real space projects into hyperspace.

And where do you get that Warp Drive/Hyperspace is cheating on relativity? Relativity assumes that the speed of light is a constant. All you need to do is change the speed of light, or make the speed of light not not applicable. Both are possible when you dimension-shift.

Hyperspace is not, read my earlier posts (though SW never explicitly states that its hyperspace is anything but FTL). However, "warp speed" is. The idea that the speed of light is no more a barrier than the speed of sound and that you just have to step on the gas to go two, three, ten times the speed of light is patently ridiculous.

"I cringe every time I see that scene in Eva where they mention that the angels are made of a matter that exhibits both particle and wave properties. "

Whats wrong with that? Photons exhibit both particle and wave properties is not possible the other substance could posses this characteristic. One of the problems with science in my opion is that it all are earth weighted. We consider earth and our solor system to be the universal standerd for all things. Stars are compared based on our sun, planets based on our earth even the pressure scale measuered in atmospheres uses the earth as the base point. What are we going to do when one day we discover aliens and realize that earth is nolonger the center of universe??

"However, "warp speed" is. The idea that the speed of light is no more a barrier than the speed of sound "

If your refering to the Star Trek warp speed then your slightly mistaken. Warp engines in Star Trek surrond the ship in a warp bubble that bends the laws of time and space for everything inside to travel faster then the speed of light without suffering the effects of releitivity. Its also based on a logrithmic scale with 0 be full stop and 10 being infinite velocity.


The current fad in FTL travel with scientists is worm holes the idea that you don''t have to travel faster then light. Instead you create or find hole connecting two locations then the travel times is merely the time it takes to pass through the hole.

The main problem with near light travel, is the time dilation effect the closer you get to the speed of light the the slower time passes reletive to the rest of the universe, So 1 week could me a month, a year or even decade has passed for the rest of the universe. There was story written about this I think it was "called the forever war".

It might make an interesting game I have no idea how you would implment it though. You have battle secdualed years in advance you set out now fight a battle with the aliens and return home for only a few weeks have based but by the time your back 10 years have gone by and earth has changed greatly.


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quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
"I cringe every time I see that scene in Eva where they mention that the angels are made of a matter that exhibits both particle and wave properties. "

Whats wrong with that? Photons exhibit both particle and wave properties is not possible the other substance could posses this characteristic.

If you''d read a couple pages farther in your modern physics text you would have found out that everything exhibits both particle and wave properties. I cringe because they say it like it''s something special about the angels.

quote:
One of the problems with science in my opion is that it all are earth weighted. We consider earth and our solor system to be the universal standerd for all things.

Well, we don''t have any reason to believe that things behave differently beyond our solar system. In fact, we have reason to believe that things beyond our solar system behave just like they do in our solar system.

quote:
Stars are compared based on our sun,

And on what we can observe of the other stars. For instance, each element, when excited, emits a unique spectrum. We can tell what others stars are made of by examining this spectrum.

quote:
even the pressure scale measuered in atmospheres uses the earth as the base point.

Pa (Pascal) is also a measure of pressure which is based on SI units.

quote:
What are we going to do when one day we discover aliens and realize that earth is nolonger the center of universe??

Probably stick with the measurements we''ve been using for however many years and use a conversion factor when switching between our units and theirs (similar to how there are conversions between US and SI units)

quote:
...explaining warp speed to Edward Ropple...

The current fad in FTL travel with scientists is worm holes the idea that you don''t have to travel faster then light. Instead you create or find hole connecting two locations then the travel times is merely the time it takes to pass through the hole.

It seems "worm hole" means different things to different people. The two semi-scientific ways I''ve seen it used involve the bending of space due to massive objects, black holes in particular, and strange happenings in the quantum fluctuations. The first I never understood (if space is bent, you still have to travel through just as much space. If space is broken, I''m guessing you have to get much too close to the black hole before anything interesting happens) the second sounds like it''d take way too much energy ("The Light of Other Days" by Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter)

quote:
...time dilation...
There was story written about this I think it was "called the forever war".

You know who wrote it? Sounds like it could be interesting.

quote:
It might make an interesting game I have no idea how you would implment it though. You have battle secdualed years in advance you set out now fight a battle with the aliens and return home for only a few weeks have based but by the time your back 10 years have gone by and earth has changed greatly.

I''ve heard some interesting stories involving time dilation, but I don''t know how well they''d translate into a game.