The mysterious Beta Grove, revisited. SPOILERS - by Bluegrime
Bluegrime on 22/5/2008 at 02:32
I'm back! Woos. Go me. Anyway!
The mysterious Beta Grove.. Its been speculated how the Grove managed to reach Tau Ceti in time to hit it, grow The Many into the large number of eggs that are described by the folks on the ground, and somehow beat the Von Braun by a wide enough margin in spite of the FTL drives on the VB.
My theories?
1. Time slows down in light speed travel.. Its a theory, but until someone can race the suns rays and call it a draw, theories are all there is. So. Time slows down.. The game says a few months have gone by, on the Von Braun.. Buuuut, it dosen't say if more or less time has gone by in the rest of the universe. For example, lets say that in the time between Citadel and the Von Braun's launch, it got a bit of a head start. Now, lets say that time really does slow down.. Depending on how MUCH of a difference FTL travel makes, it could theoretically give the Grove thousands of years.
2. The Grove came with the Von Braun. How, you ask? The Von Braun probably made its way fairly clear of Earth before it went FTL. Aside from being convenient for my theory, its also just commen sense to not try out something like that right next to a planet you live on, in case of things going sour. So. The VB flies out, and given that its starship engines ( Unless they gave it nothing BUT faster then light and no short range maneuvering abilities? ) vs. what appears to be the Grove simply being pushed off without any built on thrusters, the VB probably would be able to catch up fairly quick. It goes FTL, takes the Grove with it, and when the VB brings itself to a stop, but the Grove dosen't get that benefit. So it zooms in at FTL speed, slams into Tau Ceti, and gets a bit of a leg up in terms of getting things done.. The VB stopped in the system, but not right over Tau Ceti IV. So, it puts out distress signal, and.. Well, you know the story from there.
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Thoughts? Criticisms?
Trance on 22/5/2008 at 12:33
The second one seems like a real stretch, but so is the whole situation of explaining Beta Grove's presence. We don't know which direction the grove was jettisoned in, nor the speed it traveled at post-jettison. Those aren't really important to the game itself. So it's all speculation.
And I thought the Von Braun's FTL system worked by redefining a region of space to new rules, meaning relativity could be trashed on a whim. I doubt they'd let the Von Braun launch with FTL technology that didn't actually go FTL. The intro announcer guy even said, "Imagine -- being able to travel to distant star systems in a period of weeks!". But who knows, it could happen. The Von Braun sent a transmission to Earth but we didn't get to see if Earth sent a reply. But you have to be travelling at a nice chunk of lightspeed to get time distortion that severe, and if you are then it wouldn't take a thousand years to reach the system. Probably only a century.
Welcome back, btw. :)
ZylonBane on 22/5/2008 at 13:29
My "It hitched a ride with V'Ger" theory is more probable than either of those.
RocketMan on 22/5/2008 at 17:22
Quote Posted by Bluegrime
I'm back! Woos. Go me. Anyway!
The mysterious Beta Grove.. Its been speculated how the Grove managed to reach Tau Ceti in time to hit it, grow The Many into the large number of eggs that are described by the folks on the ground, and somehow beat the Von Braun by a wide enough margin in spite of the FTL drives on the VB.
My theories?
1. Time slows down in light speed travel.. Its a theory, but until someone can race the suns rays and call it a draw, theories are all there is. So. Time slows down.. The game says a few months have gone by, on the Von Braun.. Buuuut, it dosen't say if more or less time has gone by in the rest of the universe. For example, lets say that in the time between Citadel and the Von Braun's launch, it got a bit of a head start. Now, lets say that time really does slow down.. Depending on how MUCH of a difference FTL travel makes, it could theoretically give the Grove thousands of years.
2. The Grove came with the Von Braun. How, you ask? The Von Braun probably made its way fairly clear of Earth before it went FTL. Aside from being convenient for my theory, its also just commen sense to not try out something like that right next to a planet you live on, in case of things going sour. So. The VB flies out, and given that its starship engines ( Unless they gave it nothing BUT faster then light and no short range maneuvering abilities? ) vs. what appears to be the Grove simply being pushed off without any built on thrusters, the VB probably would be able to catch up fairly quick. It goes FTL, takes the Grove with it, and when the VB brings itself to a stop, but the Grove dosen't get that benefit. So it zooms in at FTL speed, slams into Tau Ceti, and gets a bit of a leg up in terms of getting things done.. The VB stopped in the system, but not right over Tau Ceti IV. So, it puts out distress signal, and.. Well, you know the story from there.
----
Thoughts? Criticisms?
WELCOME BACK :D
1. It's not a theory, it's fact. Either way, time slows down for the accelerating reference frame. It's just about impossible that the grove was travelling at anywhere near light speed or that it was accelerated to that speed by being jettisoned. The FTL ship works via space-time distortion, which is EQUIVALENT to super-luminal travel and thus would slow down time (actually it would reverse it but for arguement's sake....) for the Von-Braun. From it's perspective, everything else around it would slow down, including the events taking place on Tau Ceti. This, in fact works against the hypothesis that relativity gave the hybrids the time to evolve. If I'm going about this the right way, I suspect that if the hybrids were at development stage X when the Von Braun engaged FTL, then they would arrive at Tau Ceti to find the hybrids at a development stage less than or equal to X.
Of all the whack ideas that remain to explain this plot discrepency, the most believable might be that the grove got sucked into a wormhole and deposited on the planet. That could resolve the conflict and is mildly believable.
Yakoob on 22/5/2008 at 19:00
Quote Posted by RocketMan
It's not a theory, it's fact.
Hahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Zygoptera on 22/5/2008 at 21:37
Time 'slowing' the faster you go is a fact so it isn't really that funny, except that it in fact gives the Many less time to evolve.
If I had to solve that problem I'd kill three birds with one stone.
Firstly, how to get the Many to Tau Ceti, quickly, at such a velocity that they don't burn up/ get pulverised on impact, secondly, how FTL was discovered, and thirdly why everything on the VB is so unreliable.
So how does it work? Make it so that the explosion of Citadel resulted in some of its debris, including beta grove, apparently traveling faster than light, perhaps as a biproduct of the enormous explosion its destruction generates or some other treknobabble explanation, details are unimportant- and of course this has never been observed before because, presumably, explosions of that magnitude and type have very seldom been observed before. The grove is still traveling at its standard rate velocity wise, but considerably faster than light relatively speaking- and it has a Shodan component on board so some sort of directional control and ability to land can easily be assumed. Make it so that Delacroix is the one to work out why the FTL happens, and how to replicate it in a practical manner. And make it so that one of the side effects of this mode of travel, per the old theory, was greatly increased entropy, in this case primarily manifesting itself in a very high mutation rate for simple fast replicating organisms such as viruses, and, by extension nanites.
That way you have explained a whole lot of unanswered questions, why the Many has evolved so quickly, why certain systems on the VB are so hugely unreliable (because they contain the susceptible, replicating nanites) while others are not, why Delacroix is tied to Triop despite obviously having a strong dislike for them and them presumably suffering some sort of prestige implosion after Citadel (needed Citadel schematics and tech readouts, and data from Triop satellites etc), why FTL has evolved so quickly yet most other technologies do not seem to have evolved much in the SS1 to SS2 period, etc. It also potentially answers why the weapons are so unreliable- they rely for maintenance on self replicating nanites (as opposed to the non self replicating ones similar to those in the nanokeys which prevent unauthorised personnel from using weapons they are not cleared for, explaining why not everyone can fire guns from the start) which have gone haywire and are no longer doing their job, and are gumming up rather than cleaning the weapon every time the normal 'repair' signal goes out.
Yakoob on 23/5/2008 at 06:45
Quote Posted by Zygoptera
Time 'slowing' the faster you go
is a fact
Why? Because some german scientist with a blackboard said so?
rachel on 23/5/2008 at 09:10
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Why? Because some german scientist with a blackboard said so?
No, because the German scientist's theories were (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation) tested and confirmed by experiments you dumbass.
RocketMan on 23/5/2008 at 17:09
As Raph and other have said, it's not just speculation. Relativity and it's time-dilating effects are a pillar of modern science. The phenomena described by it are repeatable and deterministic.
A practical example of using special relativity to our advantage is cold fusion.
Normally, it takes tremendous temperatures in excess of 15 million kelvin to fuse hydrogen atoms together. This temperature can be reduced dramatically if you can somehow overcome the coulombic forces driving the nuclei apart long enough for the strong nuclear force and quantum tunelling to cause them to bind. Scientists have used heavy electrons (muons) to do this by forming an H2 molecule with muons instead of electrons. The heavy muons orbit more closely and therefore bring the H nuclei closer together allowing them to fuse more easily. The big problem is that muons decay very quickly and are useless in practice because of this. Fortunately scientists have achieved this type of fusion by increasing the aparent life-span of the particles by slowing down time for them by accelerating them to nearly the speed of light in particle accelerators and injecting them into the H2 molecule. At these relative speeds the muons live long enough to catalize fusion.
