Faster Than Light by AnthonyT

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Faster Than Light

POSTED BY: ANTHONYT
UPDATED: Monday, August 2, 2004 10:22
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VIEWED: 15665
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Wednesday, August 13, 2003 2:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
And I think I remember the term being hundreds of earths, yeah? I'd think that means at least 200 planets colonized. A Jovian can have twenty or so big moons, I reckon. The system would have to be HUGE.

-Anthony

I seem to recall Mal saying something like, "There's more than 70 earths spinning and the meek aint inherited one of them.”

It could be that hundreds of new earths were terraformed, but they weren’t colonized yet. That would still mean a huge system.

On a different note, some people say that the time period says there is FTL because they couldn’t get to a new system in that much time. This isn’t necessarily true, it could be they had sleeper ships and they didn’t count the knocked out time. This might lead to some ships being lost on the way; not a happy moment when you wake up to find out that friends or family on the next ship over have been dead for centuries.

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Wednesday, August 13, 2003 4:31 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Near light speed is just as good as a sleeper ship, if you can accomplish it. Ten years might pass for the wide world, but you could get to the nearest stars in a day or two of ship-time. No need for sleeping units there.

The problem isn't colonizing a new system. The problem is moving between systems and maintaining a government if this is a multi-system show.

If this is a single system show, the problem is explaining how so many worlds of near-earth gravity and heat could possibly exist so close together.

--Anthony

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Wednesday, August 13, 2003 1:11 PM

GROUNDED

"the problem is explaining how so many worlds of near-earth gravity and heat could possibly exist so close together."

...and why you never see them, or the star, until you're about to land!

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Saturday, July 31, 2004 7:59 PM

XJAYMANX

wait! finally, i think i may have found some good evidence for faster-than-light (FTL) travel in a "galactic" setting (which is my preference). in the episode "Safe", when Book gets shot, if you forward 22 minutes into the show, wash and mal are looking over star maps. and i say "star maps" because if you see wash's maps, they look a lot like a galaxy and there are a hell of a lot of dots for a solar system, even a large one.

could this be proof?

~~~
We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero! ~ Wash

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Saturday, July 31, 2004 9:48 PM

the movie is not the Series. Only the facts have been changed, to irritate the innocent; the names of the actors and characters remain the same

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:

I have heard about particles that transcend c. Conventional wisdom when I was in High School suggested that this was impossible.

That is a misconception. As someone else posted in this thread, it is accelerating through c in normal (the four dimensions we notice) space-time that is impossible. A particle with non-zero mass would have infinite (more correctly: undefined) mass @c.

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Wutzon: String Cheese Incident, "Valley of the Jig", from "On the Road - Summer '03"

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Saturday, July 31, 2004 9:58 PM

the movie is not the Series. Only the facts have been changed, to irritate the innocent; the names of the actors and characters remain the same

Quote:
Originally posted by justme:

Another clue to Serenity having inertial-drive is the Episode Out Of Gas, where the engine stops running and Serenity stops moving.

Ya, and that's also the episode in which the Cap'n argues with the pilot re doing something to make the signal go farther.

C'mon folks, can we not just admit that we love a show written by great storytellers with little knowledge of physics as it is understood today? The gaffs bother me, but not as much as thin characters and weak storytelling would.

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Wutzon: Derek Trucks Band w/ Jimmy Herring, "555 Lake", from "Wintertime Blues"

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Saturday, July 31, 2004 10:20 PM

the movie is not the Series. Only the facts have been changed, to irritate the innocent; the names of the actors and characters remain the same

Quote:
Originally posted by Calhoun:
Can anyone provide the blueprints for serenitys propulsion systems. I'd like to build me one and enter it in the X-Prize contest.

Build quick; the contest ends New Year's Eve. And you must provide the Ansari X Prize Foundation with 60 days notice of your intent to attempt your two qualifying flights within two weeks of each other. Plus, if you plan to launch from the USA, you must get a license for each flight (may also apply to many other countries).

In short, my money's on SpaceShipOne from Scaled Composites, with a small covering bet on WildFire from the Da Vinci Group.

http://web1-xprize.primary.net/index.html

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Wutzon: Little Feat, "Spanish Moon", from "Waiting for Columbus"

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Saturday, July 31, 2004 10:46 PM

the movie is not the Series. Only the facts have been changed, to irritate the innocent; the names of the actors and characters remain the same

Quote:
Originally posted by JavidRho:

One clue might be seen in "Serenity", when they pass the Reavers ship. Does anyone else wonder why they pass so damn slowely? It looks like you could get out and walk faster. Maybe they were inside some sort of hyperspace tunnel

Since the angle of relative motion of the two ships is not even consistent in the two views we are given (from inside Serenity and from outside looking @both ships), I wouldn't worry too much about the drive mechanism. An important point is that if both ships were just coincidentally passing each other without altering course, they were travelling @something between walking & car driving speeds, and couldn't even get to a neighboring continent in less than days, let alone another moon.

Why don't we presume that the Reavers detected Serenity, and altered their course & speed for that slow flyby & lookover?

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Wutzon: Calobo, "Billy & Bongo Blues", from "Live @the Crystal Ballroom"

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Sunday, August 1, 2004 1:48 AM

ROBINHOOD

I really can't believe I'm reading all of this...is FTL available in the Firefly Universe...what type of propultion systems do they have....blah blah blah. Well....who the &$*@ cares...I don't.
The fact that many of you do makes me suspect you've been watching nothing but StarTrek for decades.This sort of insignificant technobabble really annoys me.
I even saw a conversation about the ins and outs of repairing the holographic pool table and window on that little moon a while back. I just find that incredibly sad. Especially when y think that when the writer himself thought of those 2 features, he did it simply because, well, they'd look pretty cool and fun too. Is that so difficult or rather too simplistic to take in?
Why not just try and watch the show...y know...enjoy it....for what it is...a Shining Sci Fi show with proper characters, exciting story lines, incredible special effects and not a tiresome, badly acted, badly scripted,usually ultra dull, conveyor belted set of spin offs that should died long ago.

Yep..........................that went well!

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Sunday, August 1, 2004 2:02 PM

CALHOUN

Quote:
robinhood wrote:
Sunday, August 01, 2004 01:48
I really can't believe I'm reading all of this...is FTL available in the Firefly Universe...what type of propultion systems do they have....blah blah blah. Well....who the &$*@ cares...I don't.
The fact that many of you do makes me suspect you've been watching nothing but StarTrek for decades.This sort of insignificant technobabble really annoys me.
I even saw a conversation about the ins and outs of repairing the holographic pool table and window on that little moon a while back. I just find that incredibly sad. Especially when y think that when the writer himself thought of those 2 features, he did it simply because, well, they'd look pretty cool and fun too. Is that so difficult or rather too simplistic to take in?
Why not just try and watch the show...y know...enjoy it....for what it is...a Shining Sci Fi show with proper characters, exciting story lines, incredible special effects and not a tiresome, badly acted, badly scripted,usually ultra dull, conveyor belted set of spin offs that should died long ago.

I understand where ya coming from RobinHood but some people such as myself have watched and enjoyed every aspect of Firefly many, many times. Its fun to over analyse and postulate on what could/would/should have happened. My imagination is boundless and this is my way of keeping Firefly alive....(then again maybe its all in my head)

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Sunday, August 1, 2004 3:50 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

From watching the show I got the feeling that the human race had become quiet advanced, but was not super advanced like star-treaks beam me up and phasers and all that kind of stuff

I get the feeling that the majority of space ships in firefly do not use anything above light speed but I get the feeling that some of the larger ships such as the Alliance ships might be able to use a type of loop hole by using something that hasn't been seen before like wormholes or dimension jumps. We haven't seen any aliens in the show and the series has a more down to earth feel about other space so I doubt the ships have warp speeds like Startrek. I think the voyages to colonize and set up habitation in other lands could be a little like the voyages of Magellan, the Vikings or Colombus. A very long journey but very possible, the ships in firelfy might go on journeys to other parts of our Galaxy but I'm sure they are more local areas such as the closer stars to our sun like Barnard's Star or Alpha Centauri.

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Sunday, August 1, 2004 6:08 PM

XJAYMANX

hey, a poster from another firefly site provided the same map that appears 22 minutes into the "Safe" episode, and 7 min 20 sec into the "OiS" episode... apparently, it's from the Firefly "promotional pack"... enjoy! sure looks like a galaxy, don't it?

~~~
We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero! ~ Wash

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Monday, August 2, 2004 2:33 AM

LTNOWIS

Why are there two sets of circles? I tend to think it's another one of those "looks cool, means nothing" type things. But you can clearly see how some areas are much more remote than others.

Also, when we discuss the possibility of FTL, antigravity, lasers, or the like, we need to be humble. In the next 500 years we'll probably discover a lot in the field of psysics. Before trains became popular people said going more than 30 miles per hour would rip the fabric of time or something. A few months before the Wright brothers flew, everyone thought heavier than air flight was completely impossible. So don't be too skeptical about crazy Sci-fi stuff.

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Monday, August 2, 2004 2:49 AM

CROWLEY

Quote:
Originally posted by JavidRho:
So, I propose that the science-minded among us try to figure out another way to move between solar systems that does not require warp drives or jump gates.

One possibility for FTL travel I've been thinking about is expanding the waveform function of particles (at least I think what it's called in English). According to quantum physics, a particle isn't located in exactly one point, but rather exists in a certain area. From what I've read on the subject, this means that the particle is sort of 'teleporting' around in the area: it ceases to exist in point A and continues to exist in point B. One of the effects of this is quantum tunneling: if you impact a particle on a very thin obstacle, there's a chance it passes right through it, as it's waveform reaches the other side of the obstacle. I've read about an experiment where light was made to travel faster than light (light also is both particle and wave) by projecting it through several extremely thin gold plates: most of the light was of course reflected back, but a few quantums (light particles) made it through.

Now, my theory of FTL travel relating to this: what if you could somehow uniformly control the waveform of all particles in an object and make them 'move' continuously in the same direction? As I understand the waveform of a particle never reaches zero: you take an electron, and there's an EXTREMELY low possibility that it would wink out of existence here and continue it on the other side of the universe. Other thing is that I don't know if there really is an upper limit to how often the particle changes location like this. You could make the particles of a given object change location at only subatomic distances at time, but they could do it billions of times per second.

But I have absolutely no idea how this could be accomplished.

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Monday, August 2, 2004 7:45 AM

XJAYMANX

ltnowis ~ hmmm, two sets of circles.

my best and only guess is that it represents two hemispheres of the known galaxy. north and south or something like that.

i guess it might be easier to find a system through only 4 layers (in either hemisphere) instead of through all 8 layers at once.

(of course, 4 layers is already pretty dense as it is)

~~~
We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero! ~ Wash

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Monday, August 2, 2004 10:22 AM

RAISTLYNNE

In my opinion, I'd say they do NOT have FTL capability on Serenity. I think everyone left Earth in Generational ships that traveled for 100's of years to arrive in another habitable star system. To escape some sort of catastrophe that occured on Earth most likely.

Obviously Serenity has inertial dampening capabilities as well as artificial gravity. I speculate these are built into the ship's structure. I say this do to the fact that much of the mechanical repair work done on the ship seems to be nuts and bolts low tech stuff. When they lost engines in Out Of Gas they still had gravity. Their fuel is probably kept in self-contained, compact power cells. Nonvolatile material that requires a catalyst to enable the reaction to take place.

To this idea of NO FTL, I'd say that Serenity is in a solar system with a great deal of habitable planets and moons. Due to the war for unity of the system, and the ongoing(?) terraforming, I'd say this star system hasn't had human occupants for more than 100 years. It's just my hunch, with little or no facts to back it up.

This is just another thought, but with the "crises" on Earth, more Generational Ships were probably launched to other areas of the universe. Maybe the Reavers were in these ships but something went wrong with their food supply and they had to resort to cannabalism? Kind of far out there, but could happen. (Soylent Green scenario?)

P.S.: Thankfully this show doesn't have all the handy miracle devices to support the flawed or unworkable sciences of Star Drek!! Yeah, I know I'm going to catch Hell for saying this from all the Trekkies.

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