Timeline for Could special relativity be caused by aliens jamming the Solar System?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
30 events
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| May 29, 2020 at 0:12 | comment | added | stux | To add to @user14111's comment, the "jamming" portion of this question reminded me of the "zones" this story: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep | |
| May 28, 2020 at 22:49 | comment | added | Oak | The answers given are pretty good regarding your question, but if I may, I'd like to propose an alternative; Mystery Goo. See, it's undetectable, and doesn't penetrate the atmosphere. But it works, due to wibbly wobbly timey wimey mechanisms, in a way that it flows inward (and is pumped in from the outside of the solar system). Whenever a ship attempts to go anywhere outside the galaxy, it's slowed down and unable to progress, but won't be affected if it's just going to other planets/moons within the galaxy. Since communications are jammed, no one on Earth would realize they're not going far. | |
| May 28, 2020 at 15:28 | answer | added | Tristan | timeline score: 0 | |
| May 28, 2020 at 14:58 | comment | added | Tom J Nowell | Any answer will probably need to involve some sort of solar system sized illusion as we've confirmed parts of relativity by observing distant objects at galactic scales. This isn't without precedent in scifi, e.g. sophons in the dark forest trilogy did something similar | |
| May 28, 2020 at 14:17 | comment | added | Yuzuriha Inori | There are ways in which once such a structure can be put in place. But once put in place, this structure is not inconsistent to any known theories. I posted an answer that goes through what can be wrong, and in the end how one can expect such a structure to occur. | |
| May 28, 2020 at 14:09 | comment | added | Oscar Bravo | @kutschkem Exactly! And now Olber's paradox is no longer a paradox. Every line of sight ends on a star and so the entire sky is as bright as the surface of the sun. Isolation increases by a factor of about 200,000 and the Earth evaporates. And all other bodies in the Universe. | |
| May 28, 2020 at 14:02 | answer | added | Yuzuriha Inori | timeline score: 1 | |
| May 28, 2020 at 7:45 | comment | added | kutschkem | @user6760 ... aren't we already hit by the energy output of every star? Just the output that far away stars had at some past time? Or are your concern that we would be hit even with radiation from stars outside of the observable universe (because now the observable universe is infinitely big)? | |
| May 28, 2020 at 4:31 | comment | added | thirtythreeforty | This premise is very similar to the Zones of Thought created by Vernor Vinge, in which FTL, AI, and agrav are all technologies gated on the region of space you're in. Read A Fire Upon the Deep. | |
| May 28, 2020 at 3:26 | comment | added | user14111 | @sabbahillel I posted my comment before reading yours. I'm sure we're talking about the same story, "Local Effect" by D. L. Hughes in Analog, April 1968. | |
| May 28, 2020 at 3:18 | comment | added | user14111 | That idea has been used in a short story, "Local Effect" by D. L. Hughes, in Analog, April 1968. The aliens in the story "jammed" us unintentionally, as a side effect of a derellict space drive. See this Q&A from scifi.SE: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/155780/… | |
| May 28, 2020 at 0:29 | history | edited | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 27, 2020 at 23:01 | comment | added | sabbahillel | There is a story in which the alien space ship crashes and the space drive causes the speed of light experiment results. At the end the slides recover the wreck. They leave and accelerate past the speed of light to go home. They end considering what will happen now that the space drive has stopped biasing the results | |
| May 27, 2020 at 22:09 | answer | added | LSerni | timeline score: 5 | |
| May 27, 2020 at 22:06 | comment | added | Askar Kalykov | It's like with conspiracy theories - you have to build system several magnitudes more complex to explain (emulate in this case) how we see things work for us. | |
| May 27, 2020 at 22:00 | comment | added | Robbie Goodwin | @o0' your mission, should you have chosen to accept it, would have been to explain. To you, what does instantaneous speed mean? Is that different from instantaneous travel? Since it's your mission, what other effects do you think this might have? Since all that trivial relativistic stuff is so last century, what can you tell us about how aliens are jamming our system? Starfleet's prime directive forbids interfering with the development of alien civilizations. Is that the one? How would preventing us from leaving the system fall foul of our developing the technology? | |
| May 27, 2020 at 16:33 | comment | added | jamesqf | You would have to explain why we observe red shifts (and corresponding aging of galaxies &c), black holes, gravitational waves... | |
| May 27, 2020 at 15:23 | answer | added | HDE 226868♦ | timeline score: 13 | |
| May 27, 2020 at 15:03 | answer | added | The Square-Cube Law | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 27, 2020 at 15:00 | comment | added | chepner | Note that there is a difference between "light speed is instantaneous" and "there's no limit to the speed you can achieve". The latter implies that the speed of light can vary; the former that it is fixed (but infinitely fast). | |
| May 27, 2020 at 14:30 | answer | added | Willk | timeline score: 5 | |
| May 27, 2020 at 13:42 | history | became hot network question | |||
| May 27, 2020 at 13:30 | comment | added | DWKraus | Light would still need to move at the speed of light, but that's not to say aliens couldn't be somehow jamming whatever allows FTL in your universe (hyperspace transit, the formation of pocket universes, etc.) so that the physics we can experiment on but not observe outside or solar system is altered. | |
| May 27, 2020 at 9:49 | comment | added | user6760 | so shouldn't we be thankful otherwise we will be hit by every single energy output from every damn star right now :D | |
| May 27, 2020 at 7:45 | comment | added | AlexP | Nothing works in a world where the speed of light is infinite. The speed of light is intimately linked to the strength of electric and magnetic forces, $c = 1 / \sqrt {\varepsilon_0 \mu_0}$. If the speed of light is infinite, this means that $\varepsilon_0 \mu_0$ vanishes. Chemistry (including basic life processes), eletric generators and electric motors, etc. stop working. | |
| May 27, 2020 at 7:20 | answer | added | KerrAvon2055 | timeline score: 6 | |
| May 27, 2020 at 6:04 | answer | added | L.Dutch♦ | timeline score: 8 | |
| May 27, 2020 at 6:01 | history | edited | o0'. |
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| May 27, 2020 at 5:47 | history | edited | o0'. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edited body; edited title
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| May 27, 2020 at 5:42 | history | asked | o0'. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |