Black Globe outside of vacuum?

[SJE]

Let us say you had a (nearly) spherical ship that had settled in a landing pad or soft ground on a planet with a normal atmosphere.

It is equipped with a Black Globe Generator, and somebody switches it on without any flickering. A great big black globe absorbing all energy (including light) appears.

So, it would start absorbing energy from ambient light hitting it, but what happens with physical matter? Is it absorbing matter too or cutting through it when the globe is generated? Or is it just a black sphere? Can it be penetrated by someone poking a stick into it or crossed? Or is it utterly impenetrable to matter as well as energy?

Mucho gracias!

 

[BlackBat242]

Someone switches it on with solid matter in the normal location of the surface of the sphere, the black globe system is destroyed explosively, releasing the full energy contained in, and being used to generate, the globe.


Not BTB, because the writers never imagined any player/PC being so stupid as to try it and thus didn't put it in the rules, just rational expectation of the physical result.

 

[Spartan159]

Somewhere there is an example of a garrison on a planet being equipped with a black globe, during the 5th frontier war, and it just created a sphere that fully enclosed base and ground. IIRC, relief forces had to knock on the globe using Marine combat language for them to open up.

For what it's worth half a sphere of dirt and rock would make a good heatsink I'd think, but I'm no scientist.

 

[McPerth]

IIRC, the Black Globe is not fully understoon by Imperial scientists, having been reverse engineenered from some of them found in an Ancient Site

ITTR having read somewhere (sorry, cannot point the exact source) that when they were studying them, that latter lead to being able to replicate them, someone turnoed on on with a small Black Globe sphere, and it could not be turned off because no one was left inside and there was no way to cross it.

As I always understood them (though I'm not sure if I've read it or just assumed it), though, the BG also absobs matter, so equipying a ground base with a BG would not be possible (an i've read no references to them before this Spartan159 post)...

 

[whulorigan]

Somewhere there is an example of a garrison on a planet being equipped with a black globe, during the 5th frontier war, and it just created a sphere that fully enclosed base and ground. IIRC, relief forces had to knock on the globe using Marine combat language for them to open up.

For what it's worth half a sphere of dirt and rock would make a good heatsink I'd think, but I'm no scientist.

From T5.09, p.378:

Penetration of Globes. Almost nothing penetrates a Globe. All incoming matter is stopped by the Globe surface. All incoming energy is converted to heat and absorbed by the appropriate reservoir. The interior is in zero gravity. The interior does not feel turbulence, vibration, or impact.

Nuclear Damper fields and Meson Screen fields do not penetrate a Black Globe. However, the interior can sense the rate of energy absorption; thus it can sense intermittent or coded pulses applied to the globe (modulated laser, gravity, electromagnetic, or even mechanical).

The Star Marine Guards defending the Imperial Embassy on Arden during the Fifth Frontier War retreated to a Black Globe Safe Room when locals stormed and burned the compound. The 100-meter diameter globe neatly sliced through walls (and a few attackers) to envelope about a quarter of the installation. Over the course of a month, it resisted fire, bombs, and other attacks. When forces from the Imperial Fleet arrived, they used a coded laser to signal the interior that all was finally safe, but to confirm the signal, an outside Marine tapped the rhythm to the Marine song: tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-taptap. The interior Marines deactivated the barrier, happy at the prospect of eating something other than stored rations.

Before the quote of T5.09 above, I would have probably said the same thing as BlackBat242.

 

[Spartan159]

From T5.09, p.378:

Yup, that was it! Thanks!

 

[BlackBat242]

Well, there are lots of things in the T5 rules that completely change how physics works in the Traveller universe.

 

[mike wightman]

I think for a long time people have viewed the TL15 Imperium as TL9+ rather than the universe of marvels it truely is.

The black globe is physics the TL15 Imperium doesn't understand.

They do understand gravitics, acceleration compensation fields, jump drives, dampers and meson tech (and have a magic heat sink technology that no one ever mentions).

At even higher TLs you get different fields, globes, reality manipulation and all sorts of magic.

The technology chapter of T5 has many examples of stuff that has me scratching my head - but in a good way. It is internally consistent.

 

[Spartan159]

In going over T5.09 again, on page 379 it says this:

On Worlds. A Black Globe activated on a world surface or in atmosphere receives damage at a rate equal to world size plus atmosphere per turn as it absorbs ambient energy from the environment.

 

[whulorigan]

In going over T5.09 again, on page 379 it says this:

On Worlds. A Black Globe activated on a world surface or in atmosphere receives damage at a rate equal to world size plus atmosphere per turn as it absorbs ambient energy from the environment.

Presumably the Imperial Marines on Arden example above either had a disposable heat sink (momentarily lowering the field to eject), or was using a canceler option to negate a small portion of the field in order to attach the mechanism to an external heat sink underground.