Guide / Tutorial DCello's Science Guide to the Galaxy

Kancro Vantas

Kancro Vantas
OMG!!!! This is incredibly educative!!!! Thank you so very much DCello!!! People like you and many others here to be honest, make this game so much better...I mean, I've learn lots by reading the forums alone.

So much so, this read I picked at work, and came home to finish it...just spent like 40 mins because I had to re-read many lines 'cause some concepts are really, you know, bending it! Amazing science!! Thanks thanks thank!!

Repped and then also bookmark it -I dont know how to save threads yet..lol...

PS. Still scratching my head over the last 3 lines...the Tokyo Hong Kong conflict...lol...I'll get there!! I'll get there!!!....
 

WalterHWhite

WalterHWhite
Bookmarked but yet to read properly.

This is one of the reasons I love this game. Not only is it like-minded people who played the game in the 80's, but some are physicists/mathematicians who can talk about the subject at length without a whiff of wikipedia.
 

Aquamonkey

Aquamonkey
DCello said:
Sound is a wave. A wave is a specific frequency of electromagnetic radiation.
Click to expand...
This could be reworded to be more clear. Not all waves are EM radiation. The part immediately following is about pressure waves. Sound transmitted through electromagnetic vibrations is in a collapsed section.
 
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DCello

DCello
Kancro Vantas said:
OMG!!!! This is incredibly educative!!!! Thank you so very much DCello!!! People like you and many others here to be honest, make this game so much better...I mean, I've learn lots by reading the forums alone.

So much so, this read I picked at work, and came home to finish it...just spent like 40 mins because I had to re-read many lines 'cause some concepts are really, you know, bending it! Amazing science!! Thanks thanks thank!!

Repped and then also bookmark it -I dont know how to save threads yet..lol...

PS. Still scratching my head over the last 3 lines...the Tokyo Hong Kong conflict...lol...I'll get there!! I'll get there!!!....
Click to expand...

Thank you! Do feel comfortable to ask anything if you still have doubts about, or even about something that wasn't covered in the guide. :)

Aquamonkey said:
This could be reworded to be more clear. Not all waves are EM radiation. The part immediately following is about pressure waves. Sound transmitted through electromagnetic vibrations is in a collapsed section.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll look it over when I got the time. :)
 

Nutter

Nutter
Excellent - Very well put together guide! Rep +1

For your sound section please feel free to use any of my 'Sound Lore' that I put together last year, it ties in with your 'computer sound generated'

You can find my Why you have sound in space post HERE

Nutter
 

HipToss

HipToss
This should be a sticky mods! Have you thought to PDF this and put it out in the interwebs for us to download? +1
 

Guyperson

Guyperson
DCello said:
This means that the effect of an object is felt in everything around it, even sometimes slowing light down.
Yes, light is *not* a constant -- the physical constant of the speed of light known as 299,792 kilometers per second is only applicable on vacuum. In fact, light on Earth moves at 299,700km/s (90km/s slower than normal) and goes through glass at only 200,000km/s.
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That's not exactly the best interpretation to take away from the speed of light through a medium and could lead to false assumptions. The speed of light is indeed a constant that is the same everywhere. What we perceive as a slowing of light through a medium isn't actually a reduction of the speed a photon travels.

What's happening is that the photons are interacting with matter, colliding with electrons throughout the medium, at which point they cease to exist as photons and become additional kinetic energy for said electrons. Since an electron really hates being at higher energy, it quickly drops back down and kicks out the photon. The photon is traveling at c the whole time it exists as a photon; it's just being repeatedly converted to something that isn't a photon and back again a short time later.

It's an important distinction because this means you can't actually slow down a photon in free flight, regardless of whether it's in the vacuum of space or crossing the distance between two atoms in a sheet of glass. You can redshift it until it falls off the end of the radio spectrum, feed it to a particle or bend the path it rides through space to the point that it never reaches an observer, but you can never slow it to less than c.
 

edd

edd
Guyperson said:
It's an important distinction because this means you can't actually slow down a photon in free flight, regardless of whether it's in the vacuum of space or crossing the distance between two atoms in a sheet of glass. You can redshift it until it falls off the end of the radio spectrum, feed it to a particle or bend the path it rides through space to the point that it never reaches an observer, but you can never slow it to less than c.
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You need to be more restrictive than that - you need to restrict yourself to just local measurements too.

Personally I consider it more a matter of terminology than physics, but lean towards the 'c is a constant, the speed of light isn't' camp.
 

DCello

DCello
Guyperson said:
That's not exactly the best interpretation to take away from the speed of light through a medium and could lead to false assumptions. The speed of light is indeed a constant that is the same everywhere. What we perceive as a slowing of light through a medium isn't actually a reduction of the speed a photon travels.

What's happening is that the photons are interacting with matter, colliding with electrons throughout the medium, at which point they cease to exist as photons and become additional kinetic energy for said electrons. Since an electron really hates being at higher energy, it quickly drops back down and kicks out the photon. The photon is traveling at c the whole time it exists as a photon; it's just being repeatedly converted to something that isn't a photon and back again a short time later.

It's an important distinction because this means you can't actually slow down a photon in free flight, regardless of whether it's in the vacuum of space or crossing the distance between two atoms in a sheet of glass. You can redshift it until it falls off the end of the radio spectrum, feed it to a particle or bend the path it rides through space to the point that it never reaches an observer, but you can never slow it to less than c.
Click to expand...

You're talking about photon interaction and matter transfer, not the speed of light. Talking about photon interaction would be too boring and unnecessarily length an already long text -- I had to keep the Guide accessible and easy to read, and it's why I talked about light slowing down and not "the elementary particles called photons that comprise most of the wavelength radiation we've come to known as light". Light slows down. Period. :)

edd said:
You need to be more restrictive than that - you need to restrict yourself to just local measurements too.

Personally I consider it more a matter of terminology than physics, but lean towards the 'c is a constant, the speed of light isn't' camp.
Click to expand...

Yes, this is succinct enough. Would you mind if I adapted your "c is a constant, the speed of light isn't" quote into the article?
 

Jack Shaftoe

Jack Shaftoe
Great guide, rep given! I've always loved science, and the kind of lore explaining exactly how the different in-game parts are explained. I'm not too adept at sifting the forums for the little Dev snippets here and there explaining their vision for the science aspect of the game, and I really appreciate your efforts!
 

Guyperson

Guyperson
DCello said:
You're talking about photon interaction and matter transfer, not the speed of light. Talking about photon interaction would be too boring and unnecessarily length an already long text -- I had to keep the Guide accessible and easy to read, and it's why I talked about light slowing down and not "the elementary particles called photons that comprise most of the wavelength radiation we've come to known as light". Light slows down. Period. :)
Click to expand...

It's more succinctly called propagation speed, but anyway...

The point I was getting at was that you're (probably unintentionally) implying in your section on mass/FSD interaction that a mass' gravitational effects can slow a ship's FSD down like it slows light down, but this is absolutely false because gravity has no such effect on light. Your comparison of that assertion to light moving through a medium is just confusing and as I explained that phenomenon is even less related. Comparing the effect in game to a truck trying to drive through increasingly deeper mud would have been no less accurate and a lot more accessible to people.

There's probably no need for that comparison to the propagation of light in the first place as it's already adequately explained that the presence of mass interferes with the FSD, causing ships get mass locked or have their top frameshift speed reduced as they move deeper into a gravity well. Either way simplifying the explanation is your goal.
 
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