The black globe

[Carlobrand]

Fiddlin' a bit with house rules for the black globe, the energy it absorbs, its invisibility, and it occurred to me:

The black globe absorbs energy. It absorbs the EM spectrum, kinetic energy associated with missile impacts, neutrinos emitted by the power plant - and gravity. Gravity, as a fundamental force, is a source of energy. You can detect ships using a mass detector. Supposedly, you cannot detect a fully globed ship. Ergo, the globe is blocking gravity - those inside are not affected by gravitational forces outside of it, and those outside are not affected by the gravitational force produced by the globed ship's mass.

Or, are we limiting the globe's effect to matter and electromagnetism?

 

[kilemall]

Quantify what EP a .5G/1G/2G field delivers to the BG per turn.


I would think a huge amount given the mass of a planet.


Might make the BG have some interesting limits= and unfortunate munchkinry, such as charging up ships by turning the BG on at the edge of grav fields for multiple spinal shots and the like.

 

[Orr]

... its invisibility...

Globes are invisible? They don't radiate, but that doesn't mean they can't be detected through occlusion or other means. Doesn't Book 5 mention firing at ships with a 100% flicker rate because you know they can't change course.

The black globe absorbs energy. It absorbs the EM spectrum, kinetic energy associated with missile impacts, neutrinos...

Neutrinos? So your own power plant can overload your own field?

... and gravity.

Really? Is that in T5 or something?

Or, are we limiting the globe's effect to matter and electromagnetism?

Unless T5 rewrote the rules I'd say yes.

 

[mike wightman]

Gravity isn't a force in the same way electromagnetism, strong and weak are.(In point of fact according to general relativity it isn't a force at all).

A ship with a black globe up is still following its geodesic through spacetime and so will be affected by what we perceive as gravity.

 

[Carlobrand]

Quantify what EP a .5G/1G/2G field delivers to the BG per turn...

Presumably one can quantify based on the kinetic energy that would be imparted had the globe not been there.

...Globes are invisible? ...

The original rules as written made them render the ship invisible when on full. Then an errata made them render the ship invisible when set to a flicker rate at which the ship's own radiations matched the background - but that really wasn't workable either because they'd be flickering neutrinos that would give the power plant away and, even excluding that, the ship itself occludes the star field. You'd end up seeing a little piece of the star field that was dimmed due to the black globe flicker effect, at the center of which was a flickering neutrino source with a black ship-shaped shadow that occluded the star field. So, no, not really invisible when you thought about it, but that was what the game declared.

I'm currently running with invisible to ships because ships are not able to examine the entire 360 sphere with the focus needed to pick up an occlusion measured in milli-arcseconds, but visible to starports. Which is probably a stretch too, but the invisible thing does produce some interesting encounters, so I'm not certain I'm ready to let go of it.

Neutrinos? So your own power plant can overload your own field?...

Well, yes, but the neutrinos are the least of your worries. Your own heat output will get you long before the neutrinos get to be a problem.

...Really? Is that in T5 or something?...

That's my inference from the ship not being detectable on mass detectors, which is a sensor tech that shows up in MegaTraveller. Otherwise you don't have an invisible ship - you have a black body mass that's giving off no EM and that doesn't reflect your own active sensor bleeps, and the sensor tech screams, "BLACK GLOBE!!!"

Gravity isn't a force in the same way electromagnetism, strong and weak are.(In point of fact according to general relativity it isn't a force at all).

A ship with a black globe up is still following its geodesic through spacetime and so will be affected by what we perceive as gravity.

And would therefore be detected on mass sensors, and is not invisible.

Gravity is a fundamental interaction. The four fundamental interactions are quite different from each other, but three of them are carried by a particle - photons for EM, W and Z bosons for the weak, gluons for the strong. Science has been expecting gravity to be mediated by some particle as well, but we haven't found it yet and alternate theories suggest there isn't one and gravity works like you're describing. However, the game subscribes to the gravity particle concept, as near as I can tell.

The field clearly stops photons, it clearly stops hadrons, and it clearly stops mesons, so it seems to be stopping everything quark-based. Not completely sure, we don't have anything in the game like a boson or gluon emitter - unless that's how the nuclear damper works - but it seems to be a reasonable assumption. Gravitons are thought to be bosons - if they exist - so would likewise be affected.

 

[Adam Dray]

Google "entropic gravity" for what is (I think) the hottest gravitational theory so far. Gravity emerges from classical mechanics combined with information science (holographic principle).

But I get that you're trying to make black globe generators and their effects work. I think Mike's right that there's no reason the black globe can't continue along its geodesic but I also understand what you're saying that it ceases to be invisible at that point (that would create gravitational waves and such), so for the BGG to work at all as it does in canon, there must be some kind of graviton particle to carry gravitational effect, and the black globe absorbs those.

The other possibility is that the black globe warps space around the ship, like pulling a blanket over your head to hide from a two-dimensional creature on the surface of the blanket. That isn't strictly canon either, since the space inside the globe would disappear entirely from the main universe while it was inside the globe.

I think the latter is a more likely interpretation. After all, if we take Traveller at face value and believe that the BGG creates the equivalent of a small black hole, then it can still be detected as it occludes background radiation, as it moves and creates gravity waves, and so on.

 

[Carlobrand]

Google "entropic gravity" for what is (I think) the hottest gravitational theory so far. Gravity emerges from classical mechanics combined with information science (holographic principle).
...

Very interesting. That really tests my old noodle, even in the simplified way in which Wikipedia puts things; the other ones were giving my creaky old brain a bit of a headache.

Belated thought: the globe is interfering with the maneuver drive. It would have to, or you could change vector while fully globed, ergo it's absorbing whatever the grav thrusters are emitting, else you could get around maneuver restrictions by slapping on an old-fashioned grav thruster, and it's absorbing or blocking whatever the maneuver drive is doing to make the ship move. If we say it's affecting EM only, then a ship can maneuver with the black globe up - whatever else we might say about invisibility.

(It'd be interesting to say that, whatever gravity turns out to be, the future-techs found a way to create massless spin-2 bosons to simulate gravity. It'd be interesting to see what new effects could be derived by creating particles with spin and charge combinations other than those in the standard model.)

 

[Adam Dray]

If you are inside a pocket universe when inside the globe, then it follows that

1) You cease to move outside the pocket universe, unless it's a "jump-like" effect (imagine a cat moving under a blanket, and a two-dimensional creature on the blanket unable to see the waves the cat is causing because it doesn't see any blanket curvature).

2) Your thrusters might have an effect inside the pocket universe! Why wouldn't they? If it's an infinitely small dimension you're in, then when you re-emerge into the normal universe, you probably haven't moved much at all. You're just wasting energy and maintenance cycles by having them on though.

3) EM can't get into the bubble. All of your sensors are dead while globed. They have to. Otherwise, imagine that you cast a radar signal out looking for a globed ship. If the globe allows signal in and detects it, then some of that radar wave does not bounce back to the searcher, and they detect you that way. The globe must be entire transparent to signal, not totally absorptive.

That is, essentially a black globe is a pocket universe. You can't see them. They can't see you. You can't move.

In my Nova Roma setting, ships move by bringing up a black-globe-like effect and taking advantage of a "rounding error" in the universe at the Planck length by flickering the globe on and off at a very rapid rate. If they flicker slow enough, they can get EM in and out.

 

[Orr]

The original rules as written...

You're trying too hard, just like those poor souls who tried using a few rules in TCS to extrapolate a budget for the Imperium.

The rules can only be pushed too far and only so much can be inferred from them. Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, we need to remember that it's a game and make believe.

 

[Adam Dray]

You're trying too hard, just like those poor souls who tried using a few rules in TCS to extrapolate a budget for the Imperium.

The rules can only be pushed too far and only so much can be inferred from them. Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, we need to remember that it's a game and make believe.

See, I hate this attitude, which feels dismissive and patronizing. We're having fun trying to fit more science into our science fiction game.

Yes, it's a game, so it's not reality. Yes, it's a fiction game, so we get to make up stories and craft things a bit to our liking to suit our story needs.

But there's also a science component to science fiction.

Personally, I play SF games for the science of it, whether it's physics, astronomy, or sociology. I enjoy the "what-if" and chafe at ideas that do violence to my intuition or beg scientific credibility.

I get that we hand-wave a number of things to have a playable game: jump drives, gravitics, reactionless drives, even feudal technocracy as a concept.

But why tell us to shut up and sit down, essentially? Let us have our fun. If you're not enjoying it, move along.

 

[Orr]

See, I hate this attitude, which feels dismissive and patronizing.

Reminding you to keep some perspective isn't patronizing, unless LKW was patronizing us in his many JTAS editorials. I've been reading Grognard lately and am struck by how many times he discusses this very issue.

But why tell us to shut up...

No one told you shut up, Adam. Whatever "answers" you come up with to these "questions" are fine. You just need to remember those "answers" will have more utility for you and less utility for others.

 

[aramis]

See, I hate this attitude, which feels dismissive and patronizing. We're having fun trying to fit more science into our science fiction game.

Reminding you to keep some perspective isn't patronizing, unless LKW was patronizing us in his many JTAS editorials. I've been reading Grognard lately and am struck by how many times he discusses this very issue.

Many times, I felt LKW's editorials were on the border of patronizing.

But why tell us to shut up and sit down, essentially? Let us have our fun. If you're not enjoying it, move along.

No one told you shut up, Adam. Whatever "answers" you come up with to these "questions" are fine. You just need to remember those "answers" will have more utility for you and less utility for others.

As for the second issue.... I'd been considering telling you to back down, as you're likely to be more annoying than helpful with your current tone. It has come across as "STFU-It's only a game"...

Sure, it's important to remember "It's only a game," but that's absolutely unhelpful in this context. It's almost trolling. Not quite, but almost.

 

[Carlobrand]

You're trying too hard ...

I respect the view and the kindness which drives it. It'd be pretty easy just to let me rant and ignore me, and expressing that particular view always runs the risk of getting a negative reaction, so I appreciate your willingness to speak. With decades playing this game, I think we've all had the experience of working long and hard on some idea and then looking back a few years later and feeling a bit silly about it. Certainly there are a couple of my old posts that I look back on and think, "What the heck was I thinking?" I think you're just concerned I'd be investing a lot of time and energy in something that may well end up as a frustrating dead end, and I thank you for thinking enough of me to say so. Still, I've learned a lot by pushing too far. Even when I've ended up completely frustrated and scrapped an idea completely, I've come away from it with the pleasure of learning things I hadn't known before.

As the disclaimer says, I know it's just a game, and it's vastly more important to have fun than to be perfect, but I really enjoy pushing hard at the edges - that's where the best treasures are hiding.

Right at the moment I'm fascinated by the number of different ways quarks can come together to create particles besides the protons and neutrons I'm familiar with, particles some of which we're not sure exist and some with lifetimes measured in zeptoseconds and yoctoseconds, which are words I didn't even know existed until a moment ago - which apparently is a whole lotta zeptoseconds and yoctoseconds. No idea what their properties might be or even if we have a way of guessing what their properties might be. Apparently, there are a whole mess of different types of mesons too. I'm wondering if future science might come up with ways to make those exotic particles persist and to make some bizarre form of matter from them, or ways to create elementary bosons other than the ones we know and to do something with that, perhaps even evolve a new and entirely artificial fundamental interaction and find something to do with it - like a black globe. There's room here for all manner of strangeness that could be tapped for science fiction and gaming, and I haven't even a clue as to what might be possible.

 

[kilemall]

Well, at a minimum you have to decide what the nature of gravity is for YTU, what is manipulated by various gravitic techs, what game effect you want BGs to have, and then you can decide this question.

 

[Carlobrand]

What I'm thinking is gravity - whatever it is - is blocked by a black globe but interacts with the black globe. Thus, your mass detector is not going to detect the ship at the center of the globe because the ship's very slight gravitational influence is acting on the globe and stops at the globe, and a gravitational source outside the globe is not going to affect the occupants of the ship - which should make for some interesting uses - but the planet is going to interact with the globe as if the globe were the ship; the ship, at the center of the globe, is going to be carried along with whatever happens to the globe.

 

[kilemall]

What I'm thinking is gravity - whatever it is - is blocked by a black globe but interacts with the black globe. Thus, your mass detector is not going to detect the ship at the center of the globe because the ship's very slight gravitational influence is acting on the globe and stops at the globe, and a gravitational source outside the globe is not going to affect the occupants of the ship - which should make for some interesting uses - but the planet is going to interact with the globe as if the globe were the ship; the ship, at the center of the globe, is going to be carried along with whatever happens to the globe.

If the globe is acted on by gravity, then it has mass- perhaps a lot less apparent mass to the outside world so it doesn't read as a ship, but detectable.

 

[mike wightman]

Photons are acted on by gravity and they are mass less.

 

[robject]

We're having fun trying to fit more science into our science fiction game.

Yes, it's a game, so it's not reality. Yes, it's a fiction game, so we get to make up stories and craft things a bit to our liking to suit our story needs.

But there's also a science component to science fiction.

In support of Adam's feelings, I quote Robert E Howard:

(Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to
advance any theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a
fictional background for a series of fiction-stories. When I began
writing the Conan stories a few years ago, I prepared this 'history'
of his age and the peoples of that age, in order to lend him and his
sagas a greater aspect of realness. And I found that by adhering to
the 'facts' and spirit of that history, in writing the stories, it
was easier to visualize (and therefore to present) him as a real
flesh-and-blood character rather than a ready-made product. In
writing about him and his adventures in the various kingdoms of his
Age, I have never violated the 'facts' or spirit of the 'history'
here set down, but have followed the lines of that history as
closely as the writer of actual historical-fiction follows the lines
of actual history. I have used this 'history' as a guide in all the
stories in this series that I have written.)

 

[whartung]

In support of Adam's feelings, I quote Robert E Howard:

See, this is important.

One of the struggles folks have is that we project physics et al as we know it on to the physics et al AS PRESENTED in the game, with the crass assumption that our "science" is the "correct" rather than than as the games view is correct and we just don't quite understand it yet.

Traveller has it's share of "Heisenberg compensators", but folks seem to refuse to accept the science "as is" and work within the limitations and "realties" that they proclaim.

Not saying that Traveller is, like, consistent or perfect, but rather perhaps they can be taken at face value.

And, oh, I'm as guilty of this as anyone.

 

[mike wightman]

I don't mind magic technology based on physics we don't understand yet provided that it is consistent - no Star Trek technology of the week.

Traveller has a few magic technologies, many of which can be lumped together, and usually does a decent job of maintaining consistency as you advance up the TL scale.

Gravitics - artificial gravity, acceleration compensation, maneuver drives, air/rafts etc. (my personal view is that there should also be a heat sink tech lumped in here too), beyond our current physics
Jump - what's there to say
Damper - manipulation of strong (nuclear damper) and weak (meson) nuclear forces but way beyond our current physics
Globes - physics we can't even guess at yet