110 réponses à ce sujet

[Dave666]

I've been in a few debates about Relays and we've never been able to come to a proper concensus about how they work.

My understanding of how they work is this:

The ship arrives at the Relay, gives the Relay the destination and the ships Mass.

The Relay then creates both a Mass Free Corridor and a powerful Mass Effect Field around the ship and then catapults the ship to the destination.

The travel is instantaneous (or so close to it that it makes little difference), which means that the Relay must throw the Ship at tremendous speeds.

I could be wrong on this next part but its my take on it.

In space there are a lot of foreign objects, meteors, asteroids and various space debris, and since hitting those would be rather bad for the ship it makes sense to me that the Relays can communicate between each other, if travel is instantaneous then a signal between them could be also.

So Relay A sends to Relay B, Relay B says there's debris at x position and Relay A corrects for this, this to me would explain 'drift', depending on whether or not there were any debris in between then there would be more or less 'drift'.

Problems with this arise however when we introduce The Conduit.

The Conduit was basically a smaller version of a Mass Relay, however it seems to be extrordinarily accurate compared to normal Relays because had there been any drift then the Mako would have missed the Citadel entirely and what with old Newton being the Deadliest SOB in space the Mako would have kept going 'til it hit something.  There's also another problem with The Conduit, when the Mako is catapulted to its recieving relay it arrives inside of the Citadel, how did it manage to pass through solid matter and not splat against the side of the Citadel?

So how the hell do Relays work?

Are they simply fancy versions of catapults, or are they teleporters?

Modifié par Dave666, 15 avril 2011 - 10:58 .

[Almostfaceman]

I get extra thread credit 'cause you and I have already discussed this. 

Modifié par Almostfaceman, 15 avril 2011 - 10:58 .

[Dave666]

Almostfaceman wrote...

I get extra thread credit 'cause you and I have already discussed this. 

True, but it was off-topic in that thread and I didn't want to take up too much space in it.

Also, while we had a good debate we were never able to reach a concensus.

I'm hoping that we'll get a good discussion going and finally get to grips with them. 

[bald man in a boat]

 "Mass relays function by creating a virtually mass-free "corridor" of space-time between each other. This can propel a starship across enormous distances that would take centuries to traverse, even at FTL speeds. Before a vessel can travel, the relay must be given the amount of mass to transit by the ship's pilot before it is moved into the approach corridor. When a relay is activated, it aligns itself with the corresponding relay before propelling the ship across space."

http://masseffect.wi...iki/Mass_relays

[Nathan Redgrave]

It's possible that Quantum Entanglement may be part of how Mass Relays can align themselves with one another over such great distance despite variations in orbit and whatnot.

[Dave666]

Nathan Redgrave wrote...

It's possible that Quantum Entanglement may be part of how Mass Relays can align themselves with one another over such great distance despite variations in orbit and whatnot.

I'm certainly not ruling it out, if Quantum Entanglement is used in much the same way as it's used to talk to TIM then its a possibility.

[NoUserNameHere]

Ships go in. Ships go out. Can't explain that.

[didymos1120]

I really don't see how relays could possibly work up course corrections across light-years long and by necessity perfectly straight corridors of space. There's just way too much stuff out there, some of it being entire stars and/or planets, for that to be even remotely feasible. And the longer the distance, the more precise the targeting must be. I.e., very little leeway exists for corrections, because a tiny alteration of trajectory at the start can put you way the hell off target, to the point that the actual destination could easily be nowhere near the allegedly receiving relay (and that means it plain wouldn't work a great deal of the time: the relays have to link up). It's always seemed pretty obvious that they're doing something much funkier than just being glorified catapults. What that is? No clue.

Modifié par didymos1120, 15 avril 2011 - 11:28 .

[bald man in a boat]

^Pretty much that.^

[Dave666]

Agreed, this is pretty much why I created this thread, 'cause it doesn't make sense.

Modifié par Dave666, 15 avril 2011 - 11:37 .

[greyman33]

Nathan Redgrave wrote...

It's possible that Quantum Entanglement may be part of how Mass Relays can align themselves with one another over such great distance despite variations in orbit and whatnot.

I would say that it is probable that this is how they align and sync with one another.  It would make sense, really.  Not only would that be the only way they could reasonably contact one another quickly enough.  Further, we know the relays are Reaper design, and we also know that the Reapers make extensive use of quantum entanglement to control and communicate with their avatars (Harbinger, Grayson in Retribution, etc.).

All that being the case, I would be surprised to discover they interacted with one another in any other way.

[Olwydd]

I assume that you'd have to leap-frog across multiple relays to traverse large distances. You'd hop from one relay to the nearest one in the general direction you want to be going (probably only a cluster over), repeat until you arrive at your desired destination. Just hope you don't hit an errant asteroid, quasar, etc between clusters. But since space is vast, and you're dealing in 3 dimensions, the chances of this are likely remote.

Modifié par Olwydd, 15 avril 2011 - 11:48 .

[Whatever42]

Ok, here is an explanation.

In reality matter is not really solid. When you slap your hand on the table, the atoms in your hand never make contact with the atoms in the table. That's because you are almost entirely empty space. That's right- there is very little matter in you. Your atoms are far apart. And atoms are almost entirely empty space. And even the particles of the atom are composed of sub-atomic particles which are probably also empty space.

So you are really made up of weak and strong forces.

So the same technology that changes your mass also changes the nature of these forces so they could not interact unchanged forces than essentially you and the rest of the universe would essentially cease to exist to one another and you would be able to interact with each other in any way.

[bald man in a boat]

The problem with that Whatever is that the Relays reduce mass and then propel an object. "Virtually no mass" is not "NO MASS". There's no mention of subspace, particle acceleration or anything of the like.

Basically a very light Prothean science team, Saren and Shepard were propelled at extremely high speed into the outside of a very heavy Citadel.

[Olwydd]

They squeezed in through the plot hole?

[didymos1120]

Olwydd wrote...

 But since space is vast, and you're dealing in 3 dimensions, the chances of this are remote.

Not really: the corridors are all confined to within the galactic disk, and they span light-years. Often hundreds or even thousands of light-years.  The odds of something being along path are actually pretty damn high.  Plus, the whole point of the network is to send you from one place with a lot of stuff to other places with a lot of stuff. 

[Whatever42]

Yup, but if it changes your mass inside this corridor then it makes sense that would somehow affect the forces binding your atoms together. If that didn't happen then I suspect bad things would happen. Electrons being suddenly virtually massless might just fly off altogether like neutrinos or go hurtling into its nuclei. Who knows what would happen between atoms and inside atomic nuclei; you might be able to fit the Normandy into a matchbox.

We know neutrinos, being virtually massless shoot through anything, even stars. So each of the individual particles in our bodies and in our ships are virutally massless. And the forces binding those particles together have to be fundementally changed as well so assuming that they will not longer interact with the other strong and weak forces in other objects isn't a huge leap.

Essentially, we become intangible with the universe.

Modifié par Whatever666343431431654324, 16 avril 2011 - 12:14 .

[PicdiCr80]

http://t0.gstatic.co...3uoT5vDNIG5_UNw

[bald man in a boat]

I think marijuana will make all this easier to grasp. I'll be back in a few.

[didymos1120]

The way it's described in Revelation actually makes it sound like teleportation:

"A discharge of dark energy swept out from the spinning rings like a wave, engulfing the ship. It shimmered momentarily, then disappeared as if snuffed out of existence. Instantaneously, it winked back into reality a thousand light-years from its previous location, emerging from apparent nothingness with a bright blue flash in the vicinity of a completely different mass relay."

[Almostfaceman]

didymos1120 wrote...

The way it's described in Revelation actually makes it sound like teleportation:

"A discharge of dark energy swept out from the spinning rings like a wave, engulfing the ship. It shimmered momentarily, then disappeared as if snuffed out of existence. Instantaneously, it winked back into reality a thousand light-years from its previous location, emerging from apparent nothingness with a bright blue flash in the vicinity of a completely different mass relay."

Well, according to the codex - the trip IS instantaneous.  It may as well be teleportation.

[Olwydd]

didymos1120 wrote...

Olwydd wrote...

 But since space is vast, and you're dealing in 3 dimensions, the chances of this are remote.

Not really: the corridors are all confined to within the galactic disk, and they span light-years. Often hundreds or even thousands of light-years.  The odds of something being along path are actually pretty damn high.  Plus, the whole point of the network is to send you from one place with a lot of stuff to other places with a lot of stuff. 

Even within the disk, you're dealing with a a 'thickness' of several hundred light-years, which is a decent amount of wiggle room. I also doubt most relays opperate at spans of several hundreds of lightyears or greater. More likely, there are thousands more minor relays interspersed throughout the galaxy than seen on the galaxy map. Travel between distant systems is likely  undertaken through a great many small-distance jumps performed between relays in nearby clusters. This would make traversing the galaxy somewhat time consuming, due to all of the necessary stops, but would drastically decrease the chances of collision.

However, this still doesn't explain how the mako made it through to the Presidium without being obliterated (and taking out much of the Citadel with it).



Edit: spleling and grmmar is my friends

Modifié par Olwydd, 16 avril 2011 - 12:30 .

[Whatever42]

It's not exactly like teleportation, though. There does appear to be the movement of the ship through space, even if it is very, very fast. The corridor is momentarily visible.



The instantly disappearing and reappearing would make sense, though.

[Bomb In My Pants]

I think that they're just big space stations that make warp bubbles kind of like in Star Trek. But without needing nacelles.

[emmanuelsieyes]

Setting an object's mass to zero isn't going to cut it. There are particles that have 0 mass. They're called photons, and that's what light is made out of.

There are some theories as to how to achieve FTL speeds. One of them involves removing momentum from an object. However, even massless particles, like photons, have momentum.