Time Dilation and the Jump Drive

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Ptah
Then one could also postulate more bizar physics. Let's call it a quantum freezer, you generate a field that for a brief second you exactly, or close enough, define your momentum, every particle of your ship all at once. (Yes large scale quantum systems like this can happen, e.g. Bose-Einstein condensate but under special conditions) By the uncertainty principle you've just made you position uncertain, make it uncertain enough and you could really be a light year away at the next star. You haven't gone faster than light (or so the explainantion goes I believe) as the wave function that represents your ship (your ship is a wave as well as a particle) always existed a light year away and theoretically exists everywhere, the amplitude was just vanishingly small. By mysteriously defining you momentum so well, all of a sudden your probability of actually being a light year away increased.

Improbability Drive has been around for a long time, according to Douglas Adams. The trick is to make an Infinite Improbability Drive...

 

[Tim Soholt]

Gah. Much more difficult week than I expected. I *think* I've managed to regain my grip on the requisite concepts, but I think I'm going to have to reconstruct the FTL case from scratch. Hopefully I'll have a cogent explanation together by the end of this weekend.

 

[Ptah]

Gah. Much more difficult week than I expected. I *think* I've managed to regain my grip on the requisite concepts, but I think I'm going to have to reconstruct the FTL case from scratch. Hopefully I'll have a cogent explanation together by the end of this weekend.

Brian Greene's book Fabric of the Cosmos talks about this as well. It probably has the arguments you are looking for in Chapter 5. It does come down to the observation that the rate at which time progresses is relative to the velocity differential. This notion is supported by evidence so the going into the past comes from the delta t equations, which depend on c being the speed limit at which information can be conveyed through space.

Yet quantum teleportation won't violate this as the entanglement has already been established. That is the connection of my particles with those at Alpha Centauri already exists, we have just been separated by the expansion of space. I'm really already there and always have been, just the probability of my partilces localizing there for a time greater than the Planke time is vanishingly small, I could never measure it. That is the wave equation that represents "me" extend through all space, it's never absolutely zero.

Causality? Some would say it is an illusion, that we naturally sequence events, relativity says what's on your "now" list will be differnet from mine if we are moving at different velocities. That is you may be seiing into what I call my future. Since it is all relative, the theory goes that all events "just are" in a great space time matrix.

 

[clambo]

Failing Temporal Mechanics

This must be why all those STNG characters are always moaning about how they barely passed Temporal Mechanics at the Academy.

I'm wondering about Marc Miller's comment that a Jump is 168 hours plus or minus 10%. Does anyone here use that 10% in their Traveller Universe? If so how? I'd be interested to hear how you've worked it into an adventure.

-Mark Kinsey

 

[PFVA63]

At the risk of getting too far off topic...

Hi,

In reference to Straybow's comment;

"Improbability Drive has been around for a long time, according to Douglas Adams. The trick is to make an Infinite Improbability Drive..."

It makes me realize how much I miss Douglas Adam's writings. I know this will probably sound really stupid, but looking back over my life I I'm in my mid-40's now) I can kind of identify a handful of events that I think had a real impact on how my life eventually turned out.

One was moving to Texas in 3rd grade and leaving all my old friends having to make all new ones, etc. One was being first introduced to Traveller by a friend, which was my first experience with role playing and also stoked my imaginiation and interest in alot of areas, and another was seeing an episode of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" on PBS which got me interested in the whole world of Douglas Adams, and began to make me realize how some things that are supposed to be reasonable can seem really absurd, while other things that are really absurd can be made to sound almost reasonable.

After reading his books, I think I kind of stopped trying to assume that the universe makes sense and decided to just go along for the ride and try and see the humor where I could find it.

Regards

PF

 

[aramis]

This must be why all those STNG characters are always moaning about how they barely passed Temporal Mechanics at the Academy.

I'm wondering about Marc Miller's comment that a Jump is 168 hours plus or minus 10%. Does anyone here use that 10% in their Traveller Universe? If so how? I'd be interested to hear how you've worked it into an adventure.

-Mark Kinsey

I do use that ±10%. Unless there is a misjump effect, it's simply that the exact duration of the jump is unknown until about 10 minutes before jump exit, and time inside the ship is still in sync with time in the reference N-space universe.

In CT, I presumed that a misjump roll of 12 resulted in decoupling real time and on-board time (roll for each separately), and the 13+ was the classic misjump.

I prefer the MT approach to it; it reduced the lethality and the utility of misjumps.

 

[BlackBat242]

I just say that there is no "dilation", "distortion", etc... and that a jump takes the set amount of time, period. To the second.

The only thing that would cause a difference in either jump time or ship-universe time synchronization, is a problem with the computer or jump engines.

If it takes any less, or any more, then you have misjumped. To what degree, is then determined in the normal way.