Talk To Glowfic Characters

[alicornucopia]

So we've started answering comments in "How To Read Effulgence" in character, and that's not really the ideal platform for those conversations. This is! You may address characters here and we may opt to answer in character. You will get a kind of loosely "backstage" out-of-continuity version of the character (in continuity proper, you cannot talk to them, since you aren't there) and if you want them at a specific (past relative to where we're writing) point in time, feel free to specify (e.g. "Addy in 1932", "Shell in her box", "the Joker while committed", "Minus right after he woke up from turning", "the alethiometer on the subject of 1207").

Any glowfic author may use this thread to receive questions.

You may also be interested in Make My Characters Talk To Each Other.

Comments

Re: Time Travel?

[theonebutcher]

Yes. Theoretical Physics one to five, in five I had a One Point Zero. You don't really get paradoxes out of FTL-comms. I left most things out. Time dilation and space contraction for example. But the core that there wouldn't be any paradoxes if we could teleport FTL stands. The Light-Sound Analogon is not something I would present to any professional... because it leaves a LOT of things out.

Anyway there are a lot of things which move more than c relatively. But they might as well be in different universes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_volume

Re: Time Travel?

[linkhyrule5]

I am going to be unapologetically very suspicious of that, because most of what you just said is pretty much irrelevant, but in the interest of taking you seriously: What is the problem with this diagram? Blue path is the path of a teleporter.

(http://tinypic.com/r/2rgdrba/5)

Re: Time Travel?

[theonebutcher]

I'm sorry but this will sound snarky: What's wrong is that the axes are not labeled and arrowed and I have no Idea what it should represent. First I thought the yellow lines are supposed to be some kind of light cone of the object in the red line, as viewed from a moving observer, but that doesn't make it make sense.

As far as I can tell a teleporter was moving with a large speed in front of the yellow lines and then teleported onto the line whose speed he matched. I did not see any instance of cause preceding effect or someone being able to percieve his own future.(My definition of time travel here.)

Re: Time Travel?

[linkhyrule5]

I whipped it up in five seconds to call your bluff, sorry. Your average pretender to relativity won't know what a Minkowski diagram is.

Taking you significantly more seriously: Yellow lines are the reference frame of the teleporter. The teleporter starts at the origin, instantaneously accelerates to the velocity indicated by the yellow lines, teleports against his direction of travel, instantaneously decelerates, and teleports back to his original position; blue lines therefore trace spacelike paths, since teleportation takes place along a line of simultaneity. When the teleporter reaches the end of the blue line, he is separated by a negative timelike interval from the beginning of the blue line; Novikov aside, he is capable of "changing the past."

Re: Time Travel?

[theonebutcher]

Yeah here lies the crux of the matter. Ever heard of the Twin Paradoxon? Each twin could say HE is the one resting and the other one is the one traveling by using their own spaceship as a frame of reference. From an observer in the middle they remain the same age until the moment one of them changes speed. But one of them feels the acceleration of turning around. Same thing here. You change frames of reference. Which means acceleration. Einstein said one couldn't tell the difference between accelerating and standing still in a gravity well. Which is why you have to use General relativity to model the speed change as a spacetime curvature. An instant velocity change might as well be an event horizon. Even a gradual but really speedy change would bend spacetime in a way he would STILL arrive after he departed. Only to see the light of himself zipping into the past(If I understood your diagram correctly It would have been better to continue the blue line a bit in both directions).

The problem with simultaneity in a Minkowski diagram is that it's still just a way of looking at the data we get. What things are truly "simultan"(excuse my German, I can't find the correct English spelling...) nobody knows because we don't have ftl signaling yet.

I will now move out of my area of expertise:
Maybe we are moving at outrageous speeds relative to some aether and simply don't notice because we can't see the effects of the True Laws because we are smack dab the middle of a linear looking section of a more complex term. The Universe only turned opaque when Atoms formed.

Or, more importantly: Big Bangs are entirely possible to be an event that happens fairly often, bending spacetime into pocket Universes by virtue of their extreme densities.

On to personal matters:
Now that was rude. If you are who I thought you are you should already know me for my accurate and trustworthy comments to your fics. Oh but wait, you are the guy from Innocence, not the one from Dark Lords of Nerima. Still I thought you knew me from Dungeon Keeper Ami, where I do a ton of physics and metaphysics therefore you are forgiven and next time:

If it costs you little:Trust but verify, not only verify. A proper diagram would have saved me a quarter of an hour of trying to make sense of this one.

Re: Time Travel?

[linkhyrule5]

Hm. That is a very interesting point. I'll get back to you after I take my GR course in a year or so :P. I don't think it should affect the trajectory but GR has proved me wrong before, so.

And apologies - illusion of transparency and all that, I knew it wasn't spectacular but I didn't know it was incomprehensible. I wasn't going to spend a quarter-hour making a really good drawing, either, before I had decent confirmation I was talking with someone who knew what they were talking about.

(And huh, you're on DKA? I should pay more attention to usernames.)