UA Mystery Thread 3: The Canonn

[Kintch]

So, here's something interesting I dug up...


^{Quick and dirty 'collage' by me, using imagery from 'Frontier: First Encounters' and an image posted on [URL="http://canonn.science/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Merope.png"]cannon.science[/URL] site.}

To the left is the system view of Merope, as it appeared in 3250 (First Encounters era); to the right is how the system appears now.

As you can see there are some striking similarities and equally-striking differences between those...

• The two first planets are gone, replaced by an asteroid belt (and/or captured by the first gas giant, although, that's dubious);
• The composition seems to be VERY similar from there on, for quite a bit -- gas giant (4 moons - 3 extra), gas giant (4 moons - same), brown dwarf (3 moons - same) and, finally, minor planet, now captured by the brown dwarf.
• This continues, if we skip one gas giant (missing body?) to a brown dwarf-minor planet pair.
• The most striking difference though is that all of the moons of Merope-3 (or, as it was in 3250, -5) are planets with an oxygen atmosphere, whereas currently they are just little more than barren pieces of rock.

How does that contribute to solving the UA mystery, though?

Well, currently... not so much. Probably not much in the future either, since all eyes are on Merope right now, anyway; alas, I figure it might shed some interesting context to any future findings from those three moons.

That or [tinfoil headdress time] someone or something figured out a way of stripping atmosphere off entire planets and used Merope as a testing ground...

 

[DialBforBiscuit]

I was also wondering about this. How does Merope compare to the other stars in the Pleiades? Weight, size, temperature, all that stuff.

Edit: A word of caution for those taking time-dilation into account: The game doesn't seem to know about time-dilation, and I see nothing that suggests that time-dilation is a thing at all in the Elite universe. Therefore I think we should be careful when adjusting timespans according to our understanding of the flow of time.

It is one of, if not, the brightest star in the Pleiades. And there's part of a nebula .06 LY away from it. Not only is that nebula getting destroyed by the star's brightness, its also reflective. Appearing as an exceptionally bright nebula. Its also where i learned that radiation pressure is a thing. That's what we see in 2015. Not so sure about 3300.

 

[Ziljan]

Sorry to interrupt you but it is gravity and speed.

Gravity is quite literally a form of acceleration. They are both measured in meters/sec/sec. So they are mathematically equivalent, and are also fundamentally equivalent in terms of GR. Speed however, is just meters/sec. So there is no direct speed equivalence to gravity.

I'm sure you could force an equivalent (or comparable) time dilation between a certain relative speed and gravity by solving for the inverse hyperbolic sine of a manipulated Lorentz transformation. Or by invoking some horrible and arcane tensor identity law, But I think that would be massively OT and I do eventually need to sleep tonight

EDIT:

...ahh, I just realized that you probably meant that general relativity includes special relativity and all of its speed related effects. Yes of course you are right and now I feel like a jerk. sorry if my post wasn't clear, I was trying to separate out the components of relativity to show which parts were significant in the twin paradox.

Brilliant stuff Ziljan.

I like the Spacetime interval theory. It fits well with the in game experience of no time dilation. We supposedly don't move through much space when we super cruise, but rather 'make' the space in front of us much smaller.

Since we don't experience any Doppler blue/red shifting in SC, or time dilation, I think it's safe to say that yes, we are moving through some kind of modified and steerable Alcubierre bubble in a pocket of normal space.

 

[Dommarraa]

So, here's something interesting I dug up...

View attachment 68342
^{Quick and dirty 'collage' by me, using imagery from 'Frontier: First Encounters' and an image posted on [URL="http://canonn.science/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Merope.png"]cannon.science[/URL] site.}

To the left is the system view of Merope, as it appeared in 3250 (First Encounters era); to the right is how the system appears now.

Its a real pity that FD didnt bother to bring system data from previous elites to this one. Old systems key to Elite Lore often do not exist, or not in the same place, or have different (sometime massively different) composition.
Merope seems to be reasonably close for a change

 

[metatheurgist]

Is there a thread that collects all the confirmed discoveries about UA's in one place? So us poor casuals can keep track without sifting through hundreds of pages?

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

I dunno. A few hundred years and a bit of Time Lord technology and you can shape solar systems how you want.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Is there a thread that collects all the confirmed discoveries about UA's in one place? So us poor casuals can keep track without sifting through hundreds of pages?

This helped me a lot:

We should definitely add these links to the first Post of this thread:

The first discovery, from Bouffant, of the new morse containing strange letters patterns:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=175726&page=455&p=2904285#post2904285

First analysis:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=175726&page=471&p=2913409&viewfull=1#post2913409
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=175726&page=472&p=2913780&viewfull=1#post2913780

Michael Brookes Pops up:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=175726&page=476&p=2914832&viewfull=1#post2914832

Fyo awesome sum-up of all the signals found:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=175726&page=497&p=2925991#post2925991

The moment when MJK proposes that the sequences could be a map somehow:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=175726&page=498&p=2926296&viewfull=1#post2926296

My complete list of all the signals for every ship:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=175726&page=515&p=2932656&viewfull=1#post2932656

RedWizzard's Synopsis of all the events regarding the UA:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=175726&page=518&p=2935308#post2935308

RedWizzard's version of Anjin's Morse Drawer:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1402878/UA_draw.html

In short:

1) The UA scans celestial bodies in a system and transmits that data.
2) The UA scans nearby ships (<1000m) and transmits a 2D image of it.
3) The UA seems to always point towards the Merope system
4) In the Merope system, the UA points straight at the core of the star.

 

[Kyp Shard]

Some final random thought: does anyone know if there is something about the star at Merope that makes it different or remarkable from the other stars in/near the nebula?

It is one of, if not, the brightest star in the Pleiades. And there's part of a nebula .06 LY away from it. Not only is that nebula getting destroyed by the star's brightness, its also reflective. Appearing as an exceptionally bright nebula. Its also where i learned that radiation pressure is a thing. That's what we see in 2015. Not so sure about 3300.

It's also the oldest star of the Seven Sisters.

PS> DialBforBiscuit - I love your username

 

[unrealization]

It is one of, if not, the brightest star in the Pleiades.

Are you sure about that? I think to remember that it may actually be the faintest and was discovered later than the others.

Edit: It seems we're both wrong. It appears to be somewhere in the middle in terms of brightness.

 

[Timsk]

In short:

<snip>

3) The UA seems to always point towards the Merope system.

Not always. A few have been observed looking the other way, for some as yet undefined reason (or bug).

 

[DialBforBiscuit]

Are you sure about that? I think to remember that it may actually be the faintest and was discovered later than the others.

Edit: It seems we're both wrong. It appears to be somewhere in the middle in terms of brightness.

According to this it is the fifth brightest. Link is also tasty sauce for the inquisitive fellow.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Are they transmitting that way or are they just orienting themselves that way?

 

[rizal72]

Are they transmitting that way or are they just orienting themselves that way?

The UA orients itself immediately after entering the instance. So, everything else it does, it does it while being oriented.

 

[danubezoe]

I started to form a post here, some of it have been mentioned earlier, do someone know more witchspace theory? anyhow, here it goes:

So I have investigated celestial objects in Merope for some days now, I then set course (in supercruice) towards Sol. About 120 000Ls out I realized I’ve drifted off, ships engine humming below, now, why do the UA point at the star in Merope? Well, simple really. Wherever else in the galaxy if you point at Merope and transmit something, the ‘cone’ of transmission signal will, after a couple of Ly envelope the whole system so whatever is receiving could be anywhere within Merope, nothing new there, the stars chemical composition gives a spectral signature that the UA can orient itself towards. Within the system it does the same but the UA was never intended to scan Merope.
What do we ‘hear’ when the UA transmits? The signal itself or just “transistors, pumps and valves” that go on-and-off when transmitting. I realize I know too little about the external 'microphones' that relay sounds from the vacuum around me.

Now about the distortion Field: Whenever close to my UA it emanate a distortion field making a visible blur on anything observed through it. In an atmosphere this blur is easily explained by gases with different densities but this should be pretty hard to do in space unless the UA continually releases matter. A different explanation might be gravitational distortion, this could explain why a UA is perceived as a SSS, it have a large enough mass to register as such although it’s about the size of a cargo canister. Now, I’m not confident with either theory on the distortion field so perhaps a witchspace portal may create this disruption in normal space. I feel I know too little about Witchspace too.

This is what I do know and it sort of fits.

Spoiler

Now you're with the Faraway Orientation Systems Controller; FOSC—or SysCon—sets you up for the big jump. You're going to cover maybe seven light years in a few minutes, and you might think that's a lot of space to get lost in, but that isn't how it works. Faraway is a tunnel, like any other tunnel. Inside that tunnel is the realm called Witch-Space, a magic place, a place where the normal rules of the Universe don't necessarily work. And every few thousand parsecs along the Witch-Space tunnel there are monitoring satellites, and branch lines, and stop points, and rescue stations; and passing by all of these are perhaps a hundred channels, a hundred
'lines' for ships to travel, each one protected against the two big dangers of hyperspace travel:
atomic reorganisation, and time displacement. Jump on your own through hyperspace, across more than half a light year, and you'll be lucky to make the same Universe, let alone your destination. You might emerge from Witch-Space turned inside out (which is not a pretty sight). You might be stretched in all the wrong angles, and although the ship keeps travelling, that jelly mass of broken bone and flesh inside the cabin is you. According to legend, you might come through okay and breathe a sigh of relief, only to go into Earth orbit and wonder why that big lizard, with the teeth and the long tail and the green scales is roaring up at you, and warning you off of his nice Jurassic patch of prehistoric desert. To go Faraway is a killer, unless you obey the rules.

Someone else tried to explain this once, I find the explanation amusing but I’m not convinced it is helpful.

Spoiler

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4143

Anyway, witch-space time displacement, if someone can make that work in a predictable manner, perhaps the UA and their creator originates from a different time. Theory-Wise this is pretty poor stuff, I can't think of any means to test it, but as a collective perhaps someone else have an idea?

 

[Han_Zen]

Looking at the admittedly slim possibility that FDs use of the AEO name is connected to the Apollo Earth Orbit charts (marked AEO), I was looking at the central pacific region. This is the region where they boosted out of earth orbit and into outer space.
It's also the spot where Ahab found Moby , but that is a different story.

Looking at the regions significance for the Lunar missions, I found this little story about Gemini IV written by Cooper Gordon:

"I know of only one possible UFO seen in space by an astronaut, which was duly reported at the time. It occurred in 1965, when James McDivitt and Ed White were passing over Hawaii in Gemini 4 and spotted what McDivitt described as a 'weird-looking metallic object' with an 'arm sticking out.' The object was moving away from the spacecraft. It wasn't on their list of space junk, so he took some pictures. It was so bright with the sun shining off it that it was difficult to see much detail, and the astronauts frankly didn't know what they were observing. Later there was some speculation that it could have been the second stage of their Titan II booster, but McDivitt had seen the rocket section trailing them earlier and identified it as such."

James McDivitt described the object: "like a beer can or a pop can, and with a little thing like maybe like a pencil or something sticking out of it."

Was it an UA he spotted?

 

[Dommarraa]

Are they transmitting that way or are they just orienting themselves that way?

We have no evidence that it is a directional transmission. We hear the transmitting, and we see the orientation, both of which are new behaviour. Not bonkers to assume the 2 are connected, especially as it seems logical.

 

[DJ]

For those that want to see, here is the worlds worst drawing of a vulture, before I realised it would take me about 60s to make a computer draw it for me!

View attachment 67406

And now we can sleep at night? Unless there is another puzzle?

In any case, it makes sense that it scans the ship first then sends back the image to someone or something?

M

Just heard the news! Awesome work Cmdr MJK, enjoy your visit to Cambridge!

 

[Darwin]

Just a heads up. Beware of carrying more than 2 UA at any time. 3 hits to the Cargo hatch (just 1 damage cycle) is sufficient to cause a malfunction and jettison your cargo, even if you already have the cargo hatch set to Repair mode.
This may also happen with only 2 UA, but not often enough for me to worry about.

Thanks, I have noticed that even with 1, large modules usually take 1% hit, but smaller modules like the cargo hatch and KWS can sometimes take 10% or so in a single hit.

Hats off to the pre 1.4 UA holders, not only finding one but doing so much moving around and testing while checking the right panel almost constantly!

Planning to try and get to Merope tonight for some double deployments, cargo hatch permitting...

 

[Ian Skippy]

I've finished testing the 'Hansel and Gretel' hypothesis At Taurus Dark Region, California, Barnard's Loop, Witch Head, Orion and Orion Dark Region, both when dropping two AU simultaneously or individually. They always point at Merope. The only way this theory could still be valid is if the next 'pebble' would be one of the regions thousands of LY further along the Sol->Merope axis, an idea for which we have no reason whatsoever to propose it. I'm heading out for some really daft experiment at Merope, and will head back to the Bubble afterwards. The results of the trip are a bit of a dissapointment, but it was fun to test my new exporer ship and Witch Head got me a new desktop background.

Spoiler

Not always. A few have been observed looking the other way, for some as yet undefined reason (or bug).

Unless people can replicate it I'm not considering it a valid piece of evidence. YMMV ofcourse.

 

[rizal72]

I have a question for Michael Brookes, hoping he's still lurking this thread as he usually does:


We've been told that there was something in 1.3 we didn't discover about the UA: is this thing still present in 1.4? Or the old UA behaviors have been “overwritten” by the new ones?


Thanks.