Time, relativity and Earth Real Time

Earth2Mars

E
Hello Commanders of the Milky Way,

Today as I was admiring Earth in our virtual (real) Sol system, I noticed that the day and night does not reflect real times. I know that the galaxy's time is synced with our UTC time. Shouldn't we expect to see Earth facing the right direction in relation to real world time?

This brings me to this, I am pretty sure relativity is not actually observed/taken into account, otherwise jumping to to another Star system would throw everything into the past when you get back to where you came from as far as I am aware of.


Regards,
CMDR E2M (effectively invalid in year 3000)
 

Kondensat

K
Earth2Mars said:
Hello Commanders of the Milky Way,

Today as I was admiring Earth in our virtual (real) Sol system, I noticed that the day and night does not reflect real times. I know that the galaxy's time is synced with our UTC time. Shouldn't we expect to see Earth facing the right direction in relation to real world time?

This brings me to this, I am pretty sure relativity is not actually observed/taken into account, otherwise jumping to to another Star system would throw everything into the past when you get back to where you came from as far as I am aware of.


Regards,
CMDR E2M (effectively invalid in year 3000)
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warp drive concepts avoid relativity by compressing spacetime. in fact with this drives, you never move faster than your ship can in normal space.....
so the FSD warps spacetime itself
"problem solved"

but yes.....rotation of earth should be synced with the in game-time
 

Greyhawk

Greyhawk
One thing that you have to suspend the science as we understand it is faster than light travel. You cant get a playable game if you are actually taking relativity into account. So, yeah - its lame but its a game and you just have to brush relativity under the rug.

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Warp drives break causality so I would guess relativity will still hit you with some issues. I'm no physicist so I can only guess but I would think that relativity wont affect you while in the bubble. Once the bubble collapses you will get hit with all the accumulated effects of relativity so as not to break causality. That be a guess only ofc.
 

Earth2Mars

E
OF COURSE! warping spacetime! yup problem solved! thx! I feel happier now.

Earth doesn't seem to be synced with real time though.
 

The Librarian

The Librarian
Unless UTC (currently GMT or Zulu time, depending on your perspective) has re-located in the future? Maybe it's based on Beijing time? :D
 

Zplintz

Zplintz
Orbits and spin of bodies are artificially sped up for us in game to make it more obvious and interesting.
 
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The Librarian

The Librarian
That's quite disturbing. Reminds me of the old game Hostile Waters, where each "day" lasted about 15 minutes. Really annoying to have to keep toggling night-vision, only to be blinded by the sun hurtling into the sky with its @rse on fire.
 
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edd

edd
Greyhawk said:
Warp drives break causality so I would guess relativity will still hit you with some issues. I'm no physicist so I can only guess but I would think that relativity wont affect you while in the bubble. Once the bubble collapses you will get hit with all the accumulated effects of relativity so as not to break causality. That be a guess only ofc.
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Causality isn't immediately broken just by having FTL. As long as you contrive all your FTL in the right way, you're fine. In game, the FSD apparently operates on some special frame (basically galactic rest) and so there's no fear of causality violations.
 

Kondensat

K
orbits are correctly modelled in this game according to newtons laws iirc
so it will take 365 days for earth to circle the sun also in ED

regarding warp drives in general:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936.pdf
NASA breakthrough propulsion labs

beside all the technical impossibilities we see (negative energy density), its mathematically possible and another paper describes a method to reduce required energy by "strange matter"
BUT

according to other papers, a warp drive would kill anything in front of the bubble when exiting the warp by high energetic particles, generated by the travel itself:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0110086v3.pdf
infinite blueshifted = infinite energy = instant death for anything surrounding the bow-wave

so its a nice game-mechanic but FTL travel is and will be scifi for many many years to come.....if not also infinite ;-)
 

SteveLaw

SteveLaw
Yes Earth should be synced with our time. If I didn't know someone from Australia I'd have been a little more disappointed when I visited Earth to find the UK in darkness.
 

Privata

Privata
Zplintz said:
Orbits and spin of bodies are artificially sped up for us in game to make it more obvious and interesting.
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what? realy? thats horrible , I... ohhh I feel sad now... still the best space sim ever but that kind of makes me a bit upset
 

Doctor.Fast

Doctor.Fast
CMDR Ross said:
I sat watching earth for 2 hours once to find out. to straus and that other guy who wrote air on a g string. ( ohh err missus) yeah im sad.
In 2279 I think it was relativity was proved an incorrect theory.
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Nonono, 2279 was the year an Anti-Einstein-activist increased the speed of light to infinity. Therefore, no relativity anymore... :D

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Earth2Mars said:
(...)otherwise jumping to to another Star system would throw everything into the past when you get back to where you came from as far as I am aware of.
(...)
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Nope, the usual misconception of special relativity. No time travel, really! :)
SRT simply states it is impossible.
EDIT to clarify: SRT simply states moving faster than light is impossible.
 
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AH_ImADot

AH_ImADot
CMDR Zhao said:
Privata said:
Zplintz said:
Orbits and spin of bodies are artificially sped up for us in game to make it more obvious and interesting.
Click to expand...

what? realy? thats horrible , I... ohhh I feel sad now... still the best space sim ever but that kind of makes me a bit upset
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I'm 100% sure it's wrong.
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I created a 24 hour 300-image timelapse of Earth's rotation for a video project I'm working on...actually I did it for all of the planets with a 24-hour or less rotational period. The planetary rotation is precisely the right speed. It's just that I don't think FD synced up the position with the real-world position, so noon in England might not show in-game as having England facing directly towards the Sun.
 

CMDR Zhao

CMDR Zhao
AH_ImADot said:
I created a 24 hour 300-image timelapse of Earth's rotation for a video project I'm working on...actually I did it for all of the planets with a 24-hour or less rotational period. The planetary rotation is precisely the right speed. It's just that I don't think FD synced up the position with the real-world position, so noon in England might not show in-game as having England facing directly towards the Sun.
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Yep, you're right. I did exactly the same thing for my submission video to the Ctrl+Alt+Space competition, and rotational/orbital periods are not speed up or anything like that.
 
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LeetNoob

LeetNoob
Ancipital said:
Nope, the game is deliberately built on non-relativistic handwavium. You'll note that there isn't even any visual doppler shift.

If you're itching for that, try this, it's fun:

http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/
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That's really cool, thanks for that, I think I'll have a go of this later.

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So I'm not at home to check, but I assume if the Earths rotation isn't synced to real life, is the Earths orbit? So right now is the northern hemisphere tilted towards the sun?
 
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