35 réponses à ce sujet

[opparator]

Hi there,

I always found the explanation of FTL communication a bit unsatisfying.
The codex and the book "Revelation" says, that interstellar communication is possible via automated drones, that take the nearest mass effect relay route to deliver data to a given destination. Fuel is expensive and delivering data takes time, so a more practical solution are small mass effect relays, that connect with each other via a tunnel of zero mass space, through which a laser delivers the information in real time to a receiving array hundreds or even thousands of light years away.
I always wondered how long it takes, untill two communication arrays are connected after they had been assembled and activated - If they are still assembled today.
Does the mass free tunnel travel instantaneously to the receiver or at the speed of light? Wouldn't it take centuries then, untill two relays are connected?
Have they been built by protheans or by today's council races? If they are still being created by modern council members, why haven't they developed their own mass effect relays? Big ones, not for communication lasers, but for people and starships. The technology should be not too much different.

[FuturePasTimeCE]

if a ship can enter hyperspace, aswell as other objects, so can radio signals right? it's probably easier to send radio signals into hyperspace than traveling FTL. hyperspace is like pure energy, and radio signals are pretty much are the same and all... FTL is just extending radio communication radius... that'd be like wondering how the radio works.

but in all honesty. i don't know.

Modifié par FuturePasTimeCE, 13 septembre 2010 - 03:33 .

[Whatever42]

I confess, the whole mass effect concept baffles me. I know dark matter pushes the galaxy to expand "faster than the speed of light" although that's really an inaccurate way of looking at it and it also wouldn't apply to physics within the galaxy.



Reducing a mass to zero magically might conceivably result in light speed travel without violating Einstein's speed limit but FTL? Maybe dark energy is supposed to create a negative mass or something.



Regardless, I don't know how this would apply to energy, which has no mass. Also, it doesn't imply tunneling - these aren't wormholes.



The quantum entanglement communications in ME2 is still impossible according the current theory but it makes more sense to me - I can pretend we learn something new that makes it possible. Its a little less magical to me.

[Turian Antiquarian]

Why pretend to deal with this?
You can't. No one can, It always boils down to some violation of the law of conservation of mass.

It will just get you to where star wars wikis are today. They started the whole "doesn't make any sense" thing. look-up "death star"

[opparator]

I'm not troubled by the science fiction laws of nature that were established in the mass effect universe. I have accepted them like I accept the warp drive in the Star Trek franchise. I just wonder how they established the FTL tunnel between two communication relays. When you turn on both communication relays, how much time will pass till the tunnel is established to send a communication laser through it. Does the tunnel, or the energy creating the tunnel, travel faster than the speed of light, so the tunnel is created in reasonable time to actually use it someday?
It would be quite useless if you had to wait a 1000 years to establish a tunnel between two far away relays.

Modifié par opparator, 13 septembre 2010 - 07:54 .

[xbeton0L]

from what I understand OP, FTL communications has something to do with quantum mechanics. this means, that they wouldn't use relays to communicate. this also doesn't include the possibility that "light" itself can be accelerated, as far as Mass Effect constants will explain, thus shortening the time it takes for light to reach it's destination.



truth be told, we do not know how dark energy or dark matter work yet. and we're not sure how they will affect "light" matter or energy. technically FTL drives in ME use fields generated to reduce their ship's mass. this may also alter the flow of light, but no evidence of this exists yet on wikipedia.



FTL communications would have to deal with quantum entanglement. no other alternative, realistically speaking.



there are some inaccuracies, and some exaggerations made by Bioware in ME that don't make sense in our real world. some that wouldn't even be possible. though I would love to see biotics in real-time making stuff float around.

[Hathur]

opparator wrote...

I'm not troubled by the science fiction laws of nature that were established in the mass effect universe. I have accepted them like I accept the warp drive in the Star Trek franchise. I just wonder how they established the FTL tunnel between two communication relays. When you turn on both communication relays, how much time will pass till the tunnel is established to send a communication laser through it. Does the tunnel, or the energy creating the tunnel, travel faster than the speed of light, so the tunnel is created in reasonable time to actually use it someday?
It would be quite useless if you had to wait a 1000 years to establish a tunnel between two far away relays.

Well, In the novel Revelation, when Anderson sent a high priority message from the Citadel out via the mass relays to his intended recipient... it took quite a few hours to reach... so it's not instantneous -- even with the relays.

Modifié par Hathur, 13 septembre 2010 - 08:40 .

[Malanek]

FuturePasTimeCE wrote...
if a ship can enter hyperspace, aswell as other objects, so can radio signals right?

I don't think so. I'm no ME2 lore expert (any of this could be wrong) but I think to use the Mass Relays you need a drive core. Radio waves would just flow past a relay.

Using the mass relays is many, many, many times faster than lightspeed so the information is packaged into drones which then use the mass relays. Just sending the data via lightspeed would take years, centuries or even milleniums to reach where it needed to go.

In ME2 the normandy uses quantum entanglement which is sort of like a computer that exists in two places at the same time, one on the normandy, one with the illusive man. It is effectively links two points and can't be used to communicate with anyone else, say the Citadel for example.

[dakkman]

It's actually explained in the game if you speak to EDI. The Normandy 2 uses quantum entanglement. It's actually based on genuine science, with a bit of sci-fi tossed in. Although quantum entanglement has been conjectured for decades, more recently its been proven that you can transport energy through two entangled particles, literally 'teleporting' the energy, without having to move it through space. For those who don't know what quantum entanglement is... scientists can split a photon into two 'entangled' parts. They are referred to as 'entangled' because when you separate the entangled pair geographically, they continue to behave as a single photon is some respects. They share the same existence, even though they can be phycisally located in two far away places. You can introduce energy into one of the entangled members, and extract it immediately from the other, even though it may be located very far away. There are other complications I won't get into, But that's a rough idea of the principles involved.

[dakkman]

Hathur wrote...
Well, In the novel Revelation, when Anderson sent a high priority message from the Citadel out via the mass relays to his intended recipient... it took quite a few hours to reach... so it's not instantneous -- even with the relays.

In ME2 EDI explains that the new Normandy uses quantium entanglement, which is instantaneous, because it doesn't involve a signal having to cross space.

For anyone who doesn't know about quantum entanglement, or how it can be used to teleport energy instaneously across vast distances, to a google search. You'll be fascinated. And yes, it's genuine science, and has been achieved in experiment.

[HTTP 404]

ask EDI

[Shadow_broker]

SCIFI



Suspending Common intelectual facts Instantly

[Spartas Husky]

Is not a big deal. Way I figure it ,is how the 2nd dude explain it.

Just like ships can travel faster ia FTL speeds, singals can do.

I guess, to me, civilizations to some extent have managed to duplicate the mass relays on a very crude way. Opening permanent tunnels, were energy can travel faster, aka radio signals.

Now why can't create just bigger relays.

Well, the relays are ungodly, expensive, from what we can tell in the games, are very few in number, hard to protect, hard to manufacture. And have trouble keeping up with high volume of transit, from just "mass less" ...."things" like radio waves.

So if to build a bouy relay takes you to cut off both your legs... I dont know what it would take for em to make fulls cale relays lol.

Modifié par Spartas Husky, 15 septembre 2010 - 04:36 .

[dakkman]

Shadow_broker wrote...

SCIFI

Suspending Common intelectual facts Instantly

Actually, it's less sci-fi than many other aspects of the game. Quantum teleportation of energy is based on real science. The sci-fi part comes in here... a certain amount of information has to be conveyed by conventional means to coordinate the teleportation of energy. So at this point in time, in order to use it to communicate instantaneously across vast distances, you'd have to already be able to do so. But I'm thinking that science will find a way to 'bootstrap' the process.

Modifié par dakkman, 15 septembre 2010 - 04:46 .

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Provided it is bad news, it travels almost instantly. Just slightly slower than gossip.

[ObserverStatus]

Whatever666343431431654324 wrote...
Regardless, I don't know how this would apply to energy, which has no mass. Also, it doesn't imply tunneling - these aren't wormholes.
 me.

Energy does have mass, thats why mtl is impossible.  The more energy you use to accelerate an object, the more the energy weighs it down.

[dakkman]

opparator wrote...

.
Does the mass free tunnel travel instantaneously to the receiver or at the speed of light? Wouldn't it take centuries then, untill two relays are connected?

The Normandy uses quantum entanglement, which avoids having to move anything through space. So there is no signal as such. No tunnel. They add energy to one entangled photon, and its entangled pair shows a like increase in energy. As soon as you can create two states like that, then you can begin to transmit information.

[Whereto]

how could would it be if it is real. Most of it is on par with finding mass effect engines on mars but our understanding could change in 100 yrs and well might all be like i knew we could go faster than light. Doubt it but u never never know

[Severyx]

All this is explained in game, either by codex or by EDI.

As people have mentioned, EDI explains how your communication with TIM is via a quantum entanglement system. In the Mass Effect Universe, quantum entanglement is instantaneous and accurate enough for full holographic transmissions no matter how far apart the two endpoints are and is not affected by mass effect distortion fields, since the blueshift has no effect on particles.

This is the ONLY communication you can make while in FTL. In order to send out or receive regular communications or data to/from the tightbeam buoys dotted around space, you need to drop out of FTL to do it. Why? Because the mass effect distortion field blueshifts the wavelengths of all radiation and microwave transmissions. In other words, the mass effect distortion field required for FTL makes outgoing/incoming information unusable.

And then there's the fact that normal transmissions/data fetching are all reliant upon the speed of light... This is slightly modified by the mass effect tightbeam buoys (which use extremely small tunnels of mass effected space to send data). Since data has no mass, it doesn't go 'faster', it just makes it completely unobstructed to maximize speed.

Sorry. TriVIabot dumped his info again.

Modifié par Severyx, 15 septembre 2010 - 12:19 .

[Lord_Tirian]

Severyx wrote...

Since data has no mass, it doesn't go 'faster', it just makes it completely unobstructed to maximize speed.

Eh, then it would travel at light speed... which would be rather slow on a galaxy scale.

I just assume whatever makes ships go "wheeee!" next to a (mass effect) relay can do the same to a tightbeam.

It's not like there's a deep fundamental difference between these two things (well, apart from the lack of rest mass, but that's not that fundamental, as far as I'm concerned). And if you postulate that the relays operate in a preferred rest frame - special relativity goes down the drain here, though - you don't even have causality issues.

Modifié par Lord_Tirian, 15 septembre 2010 - 02:04 .

[Whatever42]

bobobo878 wrote...

Whatever666343431431654324 wrote...
Regardless, I don't know how this would apply to energy, which has no mass. Also, it doesn't imply tunneling - these aren't wormholes.
 me.

Energy does have mass, thats why mtl is impossible.  The more energy you use to accelerate an object, the more the energy weighs it down.

Let me rephrase - information in this context would be digital - some electromagnetic representation of information. It would be basically be light. Photons have no mass. Hence, no mass to accelerate. I'm also still not sure how tunneling works into it. Still, lets assume that even though photons have no mass that they can still be accelerated.

Here is an interesting, thought, though. We all travel through the same rate through spacetime. The faster you travel through space (absolutely and relativistically), the slower you travel through time and vice versa.  So if you travel FTL than shouldn't you be traveling backwards in time? Yeah, I know superman stuff.

But this is space opera so I won't nitpick the mystical dark energy too much!

[opparator]

Severyx wrote...
And then there's the fact that normal transmissions/data fetching are all reliant upon the speed of light... This is slightly modified by the mass effect tightbeam buoys (which use extremely small tunnels of mass effected space to send data). Since data has no mass, it doesn't go 'faster', it just makes it completely unobstructed to maximize speed.

So far so good. So these mass effect tightbeam buoys create small tunnels of mass effected space to send data through. The tunnel has to be created before you send a message through, otherwise the message would be bound to the speed of light, and would travel for ages. I'd like to know, how fast these tunnels can be created or were created by the builders of the buoys.

Does the tunnel appear in realtime, anytime a message is expected or is the tunnel always active once two buoys were connected?

If the creation of a tunnel happens at very high FTL speeds it would be plausible to have a vast network of tightbeam buoys. But if the creation of the tight beam would be limited by the speed of light, it would have taken thousands of years to connect the entire galaxy's buoys. So in this case the communication buoys network had to be built by the Protheans or an even older species to be usable "today".

Modifié par opparator, 15 septembre 2010 - 04:08 .

[Yxiomel]

Whatever666343431431654324 wrote...

bobobo878 wrote...

Whatever666343431431654324 wrote...
Regardless, I don't know how this would apply to energy, which has no mass. Also, it doesn't imply tunneling - these aren't wormholes.
 me.

Energy does have mass, thats why mtl is impossible.  The more energy you use to accelerate an object, the more the energy weighs it down.

Let me rephrase - information in this context would be digital - some electromagnetic representation of information. It would be basically be light. Photons have no mass. Hence, no mass to accelerate. I'm also still not sure how tunneling works into it. Still, lets assume that even though photons have no mass that they can still be accelerated.

Here is an interesting, thought, though. We all travel through the same rate through spacetime. The faster you travel through space (absolutely and relativistically), the slower you travel through time and vice versa.  So if you travel FTL than shouldn't you be traveling backwards in time? Yeah, I know superman stuff.

But this is space opera so I won't nitpick the mystical dark energy too much!

That's not how it works. If you put a speed faster than light in to the time-dilation formula, you get an imaginary number, not a negative: it goes like sqrt(1 - v^2 / c^2)
It's all pseudo--science, I wouldn't give ti much thought. Its a nice deus ex machina to make all the "magic" in the game work, and nothing else. Even the quantum entanglement idea is a perversion of real science, rather than real science.

Anyway, as I understood their concept, comm relays have a beam of mass effect field between them, allowing whatever signals sent through to break the laws of normal physics. I assume such a field can be propogated at whatever speed you  like, since it breaks physics anyway. Iirc, game codex already establish that ME fields alter light-speed as well as change masses, which is why light red and blue-shifts they way it does for a vessel travelling FTL. (You can look up FTL on the wiki for more info, suffice to say, its a different red/blue shift phenomenon than experienced in real life).

[Whatever42]

Yxiomel wrote...

That's not how it works. If you put a speed faster than light in to the time-dilation formula, you get an imaginary number, not a negative: it goes like sqrt(1 - v^2 / c^2)
It's all pseudo--science, I wouldn't give ti much thought. Its a nice deus ex machina to make all the "magic" in the game work, and nothing else. Even the quantum entanglement idea is a perversion of real science, rather than real science.

Anyway, as I understood their concept, comm relays have a beam of mass effect field between them, allowing whatever signals sent through to break the laws of normal physics. I assume such a field can be propogated at whatever speed you  like, since it breaks physics anyway. Iirc, game codex already establish that ME fields alter light-speed as well as change masses, which is why light red and blue-shifts they way it does for a vessel travelling FTL. (You can look up FTL on the wiki for more info, suffice to say, its a different red/blue shift phenomenon than experienced in real life).

Ah, I understand where all that's going now. Thanks very much for the explanation.

It doesn't sound any sillier than folding space or travel through wormholes so I can get past that. I just didn't really grasp the fantasy logic behind the physics. Thanks for the assist!

[Yxiomel]

Hehe, I'm glad that made enough sense to help you. I think of the Mass Effect FTL travel like the Futurama FTL.

"You can't go faster than the speed of light, it's impossible!"

"That's why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208!"