I think you cut up my post so that the contributing logic didn't make it into the quote. Wormhole, not black hole? Black holes are super-dense suns and a black hole close to Sol shouldn't have gone unnoticed. Speed is relative, especially when it's relativistic. If and only if a wormhole is affected by gravity in the same manner as a known matter object, it could potentially be possible to match orbits sufficiently that you'd be "stationary". Again, I somehow doubt a wormhole is affected by gravity linearly similar. Maybe. I don't know if the setting dictates that the wormholes are close to an L-point... and if the wormhole is also in a sufficiently close enough L-point. Only if the physics is the same for all objects. Piggy-back riding on the particularly short and dumbed down version of string theory, what if a wormhole presents a way of travelling through dimensions and as such is only touching our reality in 1 dimension or is orbiting something in a completely different set of dimensions (effectively orbiting something in empty space)? What if it's a 4+D object and is affected by gravity significantly more, which I think would mean that a stable orbit would be a lot faster than a physical object in the same orbit would be. What would be the ultimate nerd outcome of this thread is a mod for Kerbal Space Program, btw.
https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_blackholes_wormholes.html Dude... A Wormhole is a Black Hole "duo" of Black (entry point) -> White (exit point). I already mentioned the "it has to be farther than the Kuiper belt" some posts ago when talking circulars... As for the rest, I think you are in some part of speculative Sci-Fi that does not align with anything I have ever read or watch... which is an accomplishment in itself. No no no no... /facepalm A Lagrange point is a stable point where to park stuff near a gravity source (so what you park there, stays there relative to what have you parked it close to). Granted, you want to guard the White Holes, since those are the exit points, but even so you can match its stellar derive (the Solar System is moving relative to the center of our galaxy... which is moving away from other galaxies, and so on) and achieve a stable, "geostationary" position relative to it with only the initial impulse... which would have been made already during the construction of the station, like they build new modules in the International Space Station. Anyway, EVERYTHING with gravity has "lagrange points" (and it is not really "a point" but an area of space). So what I was saying is that you park the station around one of the LP's generated by the Black/White hole, not that those singularities need to be on one. No. Physics are applied math. What you cannot express with math is because you cant, not because it's not "math-expressable". If physics change, the underlying principle of mathematics does not change, just the precise equations/variables that physics needs. Irrelevant. If it does not have a gravitational footprint, then there are two options: either it moves "with the galaxy" or it does not. If it is the first option, "lagrange point" becomes ANYWHERE around the singularity. If it's the second, then they are of debatable use as shortcuts for interestellar travel, since the amount of displacements added together by the rest of the galaxy would mean that such wormhole would be of use for an amount of time so limited, it would be useless for the CA as travel method, and then they would not depend on Wormholes... so they can drop wherever they want, and it's impossible to prevent them to do so, needing to fortify every planet of the Human Sphere, and invinting defeat by detail (from a numerically superior enemy, to boot).
@xagroth my dude. I didn't write "other mathematics" I wrote different physics. As in, if the thing has a different gravitational constant. Which is possible because this is fiction. Whether it's possible in string theory I don't know because I never studied physics that deeply. Also, a wormhole and a blackhole are not the same thing. Wormhole is one of the solutions to Einsteins theory, but we're in deep science fiction/fantasy all the same and all it takes is for CB to dictate that a wormhole doesn't need a black hole and that one is orbiting Jupiter closer than Io and that is that. I just don't know the setting well enough whether the wormholes are close to earth or "close" to Sol. I'm just pointing out that there's sufficient white noise possible that it could be literally impossible to find an LP in relation to one of those wormholes. Hell, it might be for such a simple reason as "your space station would get telefragged"
"Gravitational constant"? I assume you are talking about the Einstenian one. It is still irrelevant, for practical uses, like calculating circles with a hundred decimals on Pi. Irrelevant in any case, no gravitational attraction to the "portal" => you don't have to find a position of equilibrium, you just place the Space Station as one would be placed in Deep Space. Wormhole has been used for decades as "hole in the Universe's space-time, allowing for instant transition between two positions". Grab a piece of paper, fold it in two, make a hole, unfold the paper: you have there a black hole and a white hole, which combination generates a wormhole. One-way. Or look at Stargate, and take the eponymus portal as "always open", needing two per address (since those are one-way too). For CB to get out and say " but our wormholes are different!" would be the same as claiming Infinity's weapons are 4dimensional, and they kill you, then fire... (incidentally, THAT is precisely what Lancer's Noble Phantasm in Fate/Stay Night's franchise: Gael Bolg is lance that kills you first, then enacts the act of perforating you heart). Akin to "can't talk about this, we don't have the data to confirm if the speculation is true or not". Might as well not talk at all, frankly.
Yeah, Xagroth, if that's your take on it, absolutely let's stop talking, 'cause you're not listening.
This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that if some people want to refuse to accept the setting, because it conflicts with their real world understanding of physics, then there isn't any point discussing the setting with them.
Absolutely not, I read the response, read the linked page, searched for further sources both in real science and in popular fiction, but couldn't actually provide further arguments because what I had already written was being ignored. When the response I get barely even touch on what I wrote, I don't see how it's possible to keep a discussion going. If you'd like to read an exercise in screaming into a void, then by all means pick the discussion up.
I mean, just for a start it's pretty clear that the wormholes in the Human Sphere aren't black holes just on the basis of their number and locations.
You can place something into the same orbit as the wormhole, yes. Assuming that the wormhole mouth actually orbits. Placing something into orbit around the wormhole assumes that the wormhole has sufficient mass to make usable orbits, and we just don't have the data (in-game or IRL). Yeah, that's another problem. We don't know how CB's wormholes work. We know that an actual wormhole requires negative mass (that's what the math says has to happen. We have no clue how to make something with negative mass. But if we could, we know how the math says it will behave. Probably by pushing things away from it, negative mass means negative gravity!). The first wormhole, the one to Ariadna, was actually somewhere around the orbit of Saturn, it was detected by visible changes to Saturn's Rings. I think the new wormholes, the ones that the Circulars use, are farther out, around Pluto's orbit (I'd need to re-read a lot of fluff to doublecheck, and I think that's actually in the RPG materials. Can someone else remember where that bit of fluff is?). If the wormholes orbit the Sun like the rest of the planets do, then you can put stuff into similar orbits relatively close to the wormhole entrance. Lagrange points are a little non-useful at the distances we're talking about, since a Lagrange Point is one orbital radius ahead or behind the object, in that same orbit. At Earth orbital distances, that's 8 light-minutes away (there are a couple sun-observing satellites at the Earth-Sol L4 and L5 points). At gas-planet distances, it's light-hours. When people are talking about using Lagrange points, they're usually talking about the Earth-Moon points, which are ~150,000km away. IF (and only if) the wormholes orbit the sun AND have substantial mass of their own, it'd be possible to place things into Wormhole-Sol Lagrange points L1 and L2. Yes, yes it would.
For a startoff we know that the Wormholes in Infinity are two-way, because the Circular system runs clockwise and counter-clockwise. That already excludes anything even vaguely resembling what we know might be possible from modern physics. The Sol system has at least 12 of them: C1: Neoterra/Shentang-Yutang C2: Neoterra/Acontecimento C3: Shentang-Yutang/Human Edge C5: Bourak/Neoterra C7: Shentang-Yutang/Svalarheima C8: Concilium/Dawn And we are told that, "All of Sol’s trade wormholes are located in the outer solar system, and most of them are near Saturn."
RPG book definitely confirms that wormholes orbit, since it specifies that the Bourak wormhole does NOT orbit Saturn, instead following a slightly longer Solar orbit. It isn't overtly stated, but as the separate orbits mean the wormhole gets further and further from Saturn each year, this could make trade too expensive. One option floated by Haqqislam is moving a caravanserai to the wormhole instead of orbiting Saturn, and while it isnt overtly stated that seems to strongly imply that you can orbit wormholes, which are themselves celestial objects that can orbit planets and stars. That is strange, and our understanding of physics really doesn't seem to support it, but it is definitively the reality in the Infinity setting.
Believe it or not, I read and considered your posts. Not all of what I write (even in the second paragraph inmediately under a quote of another poster) is directly related as an aswer, but as explanation, derivation, or exploration of possibilities. Mind you, I don't care about "being right" or "being wrong", just about drawing a picture. Saying "this is it, and it's done" or "this is it, and there is no data" opens no options, so you can a) choose another approach, posture, idea, or whatever, or b) go for another theme entirely, not "we know nothing for sure, and calling me on that because that ruins the fun to those who know this thread is wet paper is not fair". Seriously. In absence of setting-defined data, there are two options: cover it with stablished stuff that relates to it (real or "trope-ified") Problem is, are they defined anyway somewhere? Or are they "holes we call wormholes because it sounds cool, but we never botehered defining"? If its the first thing, I will be happy to read the definition. If it is the second, we are (again, see "posthuman") reading a case of "it's a stablished definition, but we use it differently without bothering with our definition". Also, there is another possibility, that being of a single black hole that can be used both as entrance and exit (in the Honor Harrington universe, for example, a single black hole can be used to access several others, by way of changing the approach the ships do. The tricky part is, of course, incoming traffic). Incidentally, considering how "white holes" expel matter and energy, while black holes do the opposite, my take of having clusters of them (not detectable) is not directly wrong, since it is possible to have a "Scylla & Charibdis" effect, and thus the Minotaur Drives are named as such (since the Minotaur could find his way perfectly inside his Labyrinth). Note it's all speculation. Yup, I mentioned that if it has no mass at all, then it is the same as placing a space station in Deep Space. There is no need for constant fuel expenditure in space (aside from reaching someplace faster). For the record, about the Lagrange Points, I had forgotten they are defined between two bodies (for a single one, it's simply an orbit), but they could be defined between the entry and exit points of an white/black hole dual system. Frack. Not at you, but at the setting :/ This implies either something showing up (the wormholes), or something totally different (mind you, what you have cited place them between 10 to 20 AU from the Sun... and I was thinking more in the 40-50 AU, from the middle to the extreme of the Kuiper Belt...). "Near Saturn" is kinda the bummer, since if it were to mention only distance to the Sun, then we would have a lot more of leeway (a full sphere's area), but "Near Saturn" means, with Section9's mention of the first one being directly in orbit, that they have to have mass, but not much (else they would be plunged/plunge the planet!) and they move with Saturn. Incidentally, we know there are 12 "transition destinations", not 12 wormholes, unless it's stated that those are one-way and with a single destination each? I think we talked about this before, but can't find it actually :S
@xagroth I usually care a whole lot less about being right than I do about being understood. I got exasperated with your responses because you were focusing on a single one of my half-baked ideas for why Black-hole-white-hole might not work (or rather for why the idea of "just put orbitting stations" isn't working in the setting according to the info that's trickled down so far). It is impossible to have a conversation with someone like that. (For reference, the only thing you seemed focused on was "what if they aren't affected by gravity" which I'm not even sure is something I directly suggested but rather an artefact of the expression I chose to use)
Well, it's possible that the wormholes themselves have relatively little mass. A grain of sand will still orbit, as long as it has the speed and distance from whatever it's orbiting. That's what most of the Rings of Saturn are, sand grains. Low-mass wormholes would avoid most of the issues with getting sucked into the nearest planet without being in the L4/L5 points (usually called Trojans). Note that Lagrange points are strictly speaking solutions to the Three-Body Problem. Other astronomical bodies gravity will pull things off of those points, but as long as you are using the two closest bodies Lagrange points the gravitational effects of those other bodies will be minimal (although still something you'd have to correct for). Putting the wormholes around Saturn gets into fugly-complicated math (possibly to the point of being unsolvable, but that's way, way over my math paygrade) to figure out where the stable-ish Lagrange points are, because there are 5 points for each moon and each of the other moons are close enough to have significant gravitational effect. The way such problems usually get solved is to treat each set in terms of pairs (so Earth+Moon is considered a single mass orbiting around the Sun, Earth-Moon orbit around each other and the Sun perturbs that orbit, etc). CB's wormholes require Einstein to be wrong, technically. This isn't entirely a problem, as we already know that there are some places where Relativity doesn't apply (quantum mechanics being the big one I know about). The problem is that FTL travel is, by Relativity, the same as Time Travel. The simple answer for writers is: FTL, Causality, Relativity, pick two. You can theoretically keep Relativity if your Wormhole network is a tree diagram, not a loop, OR if the travel time through the loop is equal-or-greater-than the time it'd take light to travel the distance. (again, the specific reasons for this are way over my math paygrade). So there has to be something in CB's setting that allows two-directional travel through the wormholes faster than light. (Though it is possible that sending a light-speed signal through the wormhole mostly avoids this. We'd have to build some traversable wormholes to find out, though). But we are wandering rather far from how ship combat works in Infinity. OK, the wormholes do impact strategic-level operations, not tactical. But for purposes of strategic calculus, all we really need to know is travel times for both ships and comms, we don't need to know how the wormhole network works.
Well, I tend to be quite monomaniac when distracted, and it has been a rather intense couple of days. I suppose my focus on gravity was simply because I see no reason for having any kind of difficulty in having space battle stations to guard the wormholes (aside from the strategic considerations of "static defense Vs mobile defense", that is). Anyway and moving on! Please consider that there is no such thing as a "weak gravity" black hole (they are called as such because not even light, which has no mass and is thus the Einstenian fastest thing, cannot escape from them), and a paired white hole should have the same gravitational push (or somewhat weaker, I suppose, if we consider an increase in entropy), so "infinity's wormholes" would need to be... well, bidirectional Stargates. Frigging Ori... At a tactical level, the Wormholes are a factor to consider: do all ships come from the same exit point? Do wireless communications travel through the wormholes? Do wormholes exert sufficient gravity to alter a ship, or it's ordnance, vector in a way sufficient that it needs to be taken into account (and do the non-propelled physical projectiles, slugs for short, become trapped by those wormholes, and lost in "transit", so it's safe to fire at there big chunks of matter)? Anyway, keeping with wormholes, and now talking ships crossing: We can safely assume, I think, that the Circular's timetables are a matter of public knowledge, and those represent almost all of the transitions being made in the Human Sphere (Military transitions being mostly a matter of military exercises and the redeployment of ships that are too big to dock with a Circular, which I think will be mostly "military circulars", in the way that they won't be expected to engage in battle but to move other assets that do). Adding this to the circular's "Galaxy Express" nature, they will follow a predicted path, so the static defenses won't be in the way of the circulars. Those defenses need to be close enough to the wormholes to intercept unautorized transitions, but far enough to be able to identify hostiles as such without being inmediately blasted to smithereens by an incoming enemy ship that transitions and starts firing at everything (or a bomb sent to take out enemy defenses).
I'm not sure that wormholes = paired black+white holes, but I are not an astrophysicist. I mean, the usual explanation of traversable wormholes is one of an alternate route through normal spacetime, and as I mentioned the math for a wormhole requires it to have negative mass (which means it should push things away from it, if I understand gravity theory correctly). I do appreciate that I'm probably horribly misunderstanding something. I wonder if I could get Neil DeGrasse Tyson to explain some things, he does an amazing job of being brilliant and yet able to speak in non-brilliant English to communicate things to idiots like me. Assuming artificially-created stargates CB-wormholes(tm), my assumption is that the mass of the stuff creating and holding the wormhole open is slightly greater than the negative mass of the wormhole itself, so the entire structure of wormhole+equipment is close to massless. So the gate structure can orbit a planet, or be placed into orbit around the star, without too much trouble. Talk about megastructures and fucking enormous bulldozers! However, this implies that it would take an enormous thrust fighting against the negative-gravity of the wormhole entrance to get in, and, if we're talking paired black+white holes, enormous thrust fighting the positive-gravity of the wormhole exit to leave. If we're not talking paired black+white holes (ie, both entrance and exit have negative mass), then you'd need to do some equally-enormous deceleration burn to avoid getting chucked out of the exit at a significant fraction of cee (and enormous gees of acceleration). Well, according to Campaign Paradiso, arriving ships do not all arrive on the same vectors. At least not from the wormhole the EI is using. This apparently has to do with the distance from EI space to Paradiso being multiple times greater than the distance between Human systems. I thought I read that comms are physically carried through the wormholes and then re-broadcast, but I'm not sure where. Yeah. I also think that the Circulars may be Accorded Neutral Ground, so even during the NeoColonial Wars, PanO and YJ ships might have been docked on the same Circular without shooting at each other, or even brawling in the bars. In relative terms of scale, I think we should look at Circulars more like Ocean Liners than trains, even though their visuals make Circulars look like trains. I mean, you're not packing 3000 people into the Orient Express for a week-long trip (most passenger trains were ~20 cars long with ~30 passengers per car), but you can pack that many into the Princess Caribbean for a month or more without them getting bored. Actually, the Circulars are probably nearly cities in their own right, so there are probably different ethnic blocks all over the place like NYC or Shanghai. I might even set them up that way. Agreed. There's a decent, if insufficiently-detailed-for-military-targeting, overview of the entire system's defenses in Campaign Paradiso, which I assume is broadly comparable to all systems, if simply greater in strength. Do I need to retype that here, or does everyone have access to it? Anyway. The setting has some level of FTL comms, due to EVO Hackers explicitly being in another star system. Not sure how much faster-than-light these are, but QM implies spooky action at a distance with no time delay. However, the events of the Uprising make it clear that the major league FTL comms are not commonly used. If they were, the different locations would not have been anywhere near as successful as they were, because the Imperial Service would have had more warning time to respond. However, quantuum-comms means paired receivers, or dedicated receiver-networks, and then those comms changing from the QM stuff to normal radio/laser/wires/fiber to talk to other systems. Only an utter fool would connect the ship control and combat systems directly to the FTL-comms system, even though it's supposed to be limited to your side. You set those separate enough that a power failure or damage in one place won't take down the entire ship. So I'm not sure active hacking is going to be possible at spaceship combat distances. Not even 'close' range like half a lightsecond (ie, distance from Earth to Moon, 150,000km). There's just too much delay in seeing the system responses, you'd need to be within ranges normally seen on a planet to hack someone. Within a couple thousand km, probably. Active electronic warfare, sure, that's a given. I'm assuming some level of naval dazzle camo, in both reflected and emitted frequencies (yes, they're going to try to make a spaceship look like a car, or more likely an asteroid, as long as it's not under thrust), to try to conceal shapes on the hull like gun mounts. The challenge with the thermal emission dazzle camo is getting that to line up with the optical dazzle, because the two not agreeing would be a sure sign that someone is screwing with you and is therefore a threat. I don't think that being at Battle Power will be concealable, not even spoof-able. Just too much damn heat to radiate away. The only possible way to avoid the thermal signature of being *ready* to blow someone to vapor would be to use chemical lasers and/or slugthrowers, and those require significant ammunition resupply (as opposed to simply waiting to cool back off to keep firing a free-electron laser). Chemical slugthrowers also have issues with the timing of the ammunition combustion. Modern firearms have about a 50fps (15m/s) variation in muzzle velocity with match-grade ammunition, and that's not good for space combat unless you are holding your fire until the gun cannot miss. Didn't I already talk about how obscenely close a range that is? couple hundred km? Nukes will probably be a fairly common weapon in space, they're the functional equivalent of HE shells (gotta be really damn close to a nuclear blast in space, though). Bomb-pumped x-ray lasers would be the equivalent of explosively formed penetrators, and nuclear shaped charges are a thing as well (equivalent to HEAT rounds).
Well, I'm running with the "dumb assumption-simplification" with the pairing: if not even light can escape from a Black Hole's gravity sink, a "white hole" is the size where everything pours out, I don't know if they are called "white holes" just because they are the exit point from a wormhole, or because the time alteration gravity generates on the Black Hole's side means a white hole is incredibly bright (and lasts less... or more... or whatevs). The simple explanation I have always heard in Sci-Fi was that, if space is a piece of paper (of infinite size) a wormhole is marking a point there, folding the paper, and marking the output point touching the original one... (all while the space is 3D and "unfolded"... headache!). It's all theoreticall, though: we know of Black Holes because they are 100% black patches in the observable space, and the white holes are hypothesized because of conservation laws. And "travel" using those means surviving the gravitational forces of the entry point (so high not even light can escape!). That smells to me the same as "depart from port X, have a 0.01% failure on the straight route you are taking, arrive at X nautical miles from the port Y that was your intended destination", since the farthest the travel, the more noticeable the error. Or they could just enter at slightly different angles to avoid being clustered at arrival, of course. I mentioned the fast mail boat several times, so you might have taken the idea from there (I took that one from the Honorverse, too), and I mentioned it not only for data and news, but for keeping the EI and Aleph's instances in the different planets "on the same baseline personality" I would go with a "space station that moves and makes intersetellar travel", frankly. I prefer the train analogy because of their "route-fixed" nature (and that it requires preparation, exploration, and there is no way to change route), instead of the "tonnage displaced" measure you prefer. In the end, it's mostly the same, and I would assume them to have everything you can expect to find at any port. Ok, If we include FTL comms into the equation, then at military points the situation gets simplified: whoever tries to enter unexpected is shooted at (to disable at least), at those systems you want closed no matter what (for example, Paradiso: only circulars and pre-authorized transitions, since we can assume there are some warships deployed at the other side of the holes, as fallback positions). As for hacking, while infiltration is something I agree with you is impossible without plunging some wire on the enemy ship (for example, a torpedo that will carry an EVO hacking device and embed itself on the enemy ship...), but there could be brute-force hacking attempts, and of course "pre-spied" accesses (like stealing the access codes at some point that is effective, since I assume those are changed daily, or bio-locked).
With the difference that there is nothing to absorb whatever is thrown by the nuke. Radiations, shrapnels ... I suppose one should be either very careful or desesperate to use that sort of weapon, since there is a high risk of collateral damages. I mean, if you shoot at something and some particle is thrown back at you, you will be hit. There can't be a safe distance in space. Of course, any military grade ship should be safe from such impacts, but it can and will endanger civilians, including yours. Another thing is, if you're using such weapons on orbit, it can have a very nasty effect on whatever you're orbiting around. The americans did a space nuclear nuke once, it had a lasting effect on Earth. If you're fighting for it, it may be because you actually want to keep it for you after the fight. I'm not sure using weapons with such wide area could be a good idea. If i was a military commander in space, i would rather favor precise and penetrating weapons.
There is Distance (in space, that has a capital "D", for hundreds of thousands of Km of distance between ships. No Star Trek battles, no spitting the enemy). To this, it couples that while yeah, radiation will go, no, it won't be more deadly that the usual assortment of radiation in space (in case you wonder, the Earth is protected by a magnetic field from the Sun's deadliest emissions, look for the Aurora Borealis if you want to walk by the full explanation); as for the explosion by itself, since there are no matter (or almos no matter) in space, and the distances are like from coast to coast in the USA at least, well, only point-blank hits are something to worry about, and those will be akin to "burnings" to the ship, instead of "bullets". While there should be some sort of Concilium law about not firing in X range to an inhabited planet (unless the CA is shooting first, those pesky aliens signed nothing, so they might, I don't know, blow up the planet), there is a mention in Uprising about the JSA ships using civilian installations as shields to hide and protect themselves from YJ retaliatory fire (I wonder how they left... it's not like you can run wiht hostages in that way XD), but the Infintiy ships carry more weapons (spinal weapons, and "anti pest" cannons), so there is always the old and trusted "fire a chunk of matter very fast, with some explosive keyed to self- destruct at a point in their travel".
