Re: Getting out of this world?

Brian Davis <brdavis@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_H...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:

I don't have the knowledge to base the made up stuff on.
That's why I asked here.

Well, we'd like to help, but you have to have *some* base to
build on. Quite honestly, we have little idea where yours is
(although as another poster mentioned, we're beginning to get an
idea from your responses, which helps).

Don't really understand that. My knowledge doesn't have anything to
do with what you people know. And if you suggest something that I
don't understand, I can still ask.

But without seeing suggestions, we don't even get there. Don't try
to judge me and cut down the options from that. Instead of
discussing, you could have listed theories, and we could have
discussed from there; the real existing part, and what is added as
possibility due to lack of current knowledge.

make up a "fifth force" that at certain energy levels comes
into play (but never below those),

Is there any real theory about such a force, and what would
be the other four?

There have been technical papers written about the possibility of
a fifth physical force, or at least a modification of the inverse
square law for gravity, but this isn't exactly what I was talking
about. I was just handwaving that at high energies (higher than
we've experimented with), there might physical principles,
forces, or situations that simply wouldn't be obvious at lower
energies (and therefore might be "unexpected").

Makes sense and sounds like the kind of stuff I'm asking about.

As to the "other four", well... gravity, the electromagnetic
force, the weak and the strong nuclear force.

Ok, 'the weak and the strong' nuclear force doesn't tell me
anything.

The problem I'm having here is that you seem to want a "theory"
to use, while understanding very very little of modern physics.

It's like using a nail in the wall to hang my coat on without
knowing how to make nails, walls, or put one into the other.

While I would very much like to know a great big lot about physics,
attempts in the past to explain in a newsgroup haven't gone well
(not every method to explain physics works with me, which gets
frustrating for both sides), and reading books is futile, unless you
know one that explains things in a way I understand.

So best is to show me nail and wall combined, say 'this is what it
is' in simple terms, and leave it at that.

As an example: I know that black holes are massive and that mass
pulls in (gravity) other mass, even that of light. Now, if you come
with the standard image of a ball on a net to show how stuff is bent
around it, I stop and say that doesn't makes sense, because the net
is 2D, and space is 3D, so that image simply doesn't work at all.

And formulas are just hopeless, because they don't produce an image.

If you don't know how things stand now, how can we productively
explain to you where there might be "loopholes" or other
blindspots that might provide for what you want?

Just say they're <there> and <there>.

In short, to understand believable mechanisms... you need to
understand what's going on.

Yes, but it should be able to be explained in simple terms, or
described what funny terms mean. A big problem for me is simply that
funny terms don't produce an image, even while I might know the
thing they refer to. (Like I used to have no idea what
'multiplication' is, while well being able to do one; it's a problem
with words, not the concepts.)

because before the LHC (or whatever super-techno-wizzy
thing you want to use)

What's the LHC?

Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the thing they turned on at CERN
that you keep mentioning ("how could it make black holes?", etc.)

Ah. Didn't know what it's called. :) Thanks.

I don't know any super-techno-wizzy...

That was just sort of my placeholder for technobabble that might
be used. I guess I need to be less... obtuse.

:)

I really liked how Hogan did it in "The Genesis Machine"...

I am not familiar with that.

That's fine. I put it out there because it's somewhat relevant to
the discussion. You could certainly dig up more on it if you
wished to. If you are discussing science in science fiction on a
newsgroup about the same, you'll see titles & authors thrown
about often. It's not elitism, it's because it's a useful way to
communicate to others within the subject (takes advantage of a
common background).

As long as you don't object to me not knowing any of it. I don't
think I ever read 'hard' science fiction.

Then make a pattern-scanning quantum supercomputer, that can
record the position of all the subatomic particles in a body at
one exact instant, specifying both their position and momentum,

Is that possible?

No. Not even in theory (current theory), and even if that theory
was in error in practice such a machine is still highly
implausible. But again, if you want to stay within the current
bounds of knowledge, you're going to be disappointed - there is
no known or suspected way to do what you ask. That's not a
limitation of too little imagination (we can *imagine* lots of
ways to do something similar), but a limitation of working within
the known laws of physics.

That's where the unexpected side-effect comes in.

which of course violates the uncertainty principle...

?

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In a very simplified form,
the fact that the product of the positional uncertainty and the
uncertainty in the measured momentum of a particle must be
greater than a fixed value (or perhaps more importantly, it can
never be zero; you can never know both the position and momentum
of a particle exactly).

I've heard about that and don't see why it should be. Basically, I
don't understand the explanation. (In this case, why is it a 'fact'
that it must be greater than zero, and what has zero to do with it
anyway.)

This is basic physics (I learned this in high school, for
instance),

Physics teachers I understood were rare, so even if they mentioned
it (I don't remember it in any case), it left no lasting impression
on me.

And not due to lack of interest. In 5th class I even joined a
physics workshop, all enthusiastic and hopeful, but was sorely
disappointed. Further incompatible teachers squashed any hope in
ever understanding anything.

The later job(re)training brought back some of the enthusiasm,
because the lecturer was just cool (and could explain things in
different ways, including so I understood it), but that's merely
electronics, and I forgot 90% of it by now.

Is any of these science? Or remotely founded on current
technology or science? No.

So there's no computer and scanner to do this, and no way
to build them?

Nope. In fact, there's some very good reasons to think it's not
even possible in theory. But the reason I suggested it is that
the way the theory is constructed (for a "shallow
understanding"), there's a slight sort-of loophole, in that if
the position or momentum is in higher dimensions as well, you
might be able to reduce the uncertainty to zero in our three
dimensions, which would drive it to some high value in the other
dimensions, thereby sort of allowing the particle to be displaced
in a direction out of our normal three dimensions.

That is something I understand. (Still not agreeing with the basic
assumption, but the rest makes sense.)

Does that make sense?

Yes.

It might not, but trust me - that's not even a good way of doing
it here (just a mildly tolerable way for an audience with little
to no science background). This is why we keep asking you for
details - they set what is or isn't "realistic" or "believable".

I think what best describes it is: consistent with the real world
(here and now).

The other side can be anything. Of course it has to support people,
but there's magic, so no need to make it consistent with anything
but itself. (And for the magic, it has to be unrelated to the real
world.)

How far you have to go to suspend disbelief depends on what sort
of audience you expect to have read it.

Please leave any hypothetical readers out of it. They truly don't
matter for this. All that matters for this is that it has to satisfy
my backbrain. I'm asking the question, I want to write the story, I
have to believe it possible. The only SoD that enters it is me
knowing that it's not really happening in the real world, only in
the story.

So yes, it *does* come into the creative process. Even here in a
newsgroup that ends in ".science".

Not really.

It's really 'none of your business' to wonder about hypothetical
readers. All it can do is remove options I might find acceptable, so
nothing good can come off it, and nothing helpful to me. So please
stop that. (It's just irritating, too.)

I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between hard sci-fi
and blubber, and only care about how much technobabble I'd have
to suffer.

Then I think you need to figure out how much technobabble you or
your audience will need to make this go down.

No need. I only want to mention it in passing. What I need is
something that I can believe. (Or rather my backbrain. It's such a
picky bugger. And it stops supplying 'what happens now' if it runs
into 'no, this doesn't make sense'. As a bit more elaboration, it's
my backbrain that writes the stories - I keep feeling as if I didn't
make it up, just wrote it down - so I depend on it being convinced
to write anything at all.)

Along the same line (digressing somewhat)...

Hey, it's USENET. We do that ;)

:)

...with the hype about the supercollider experiment supposedly
creating black holes, I don't understand how black holes as
small as the particles they use could even be called that.

Then you don't understand black holes (which is OK, most people
don't; heck, I've had graduate level classes in relativity and I
don't). A black hole is something with enough gravity that the
escape velocity is greater than light at some point near it. You
can get that by taking a lot of mass and putting it in a small
space, or by taking a little mass and putting it in a very *very*
small space.

I don't understand that. Basically, how something so small could
then eat at the mass of earth, which is a lot bigger and has more
gravity.

But the effect is the same (or similar, ignoring Hawking
radiation, possible quantum effects, etc.).

I don't like ignoring stuff, even not knowing what you want to
ignore.

For the tone, not for facts; I don't have facts.

Fair enough, but here... we tend to judge things on the facts,
not the tone. That's science.

That's why I'm here. (I'd like to know facts, too, I just don't have
them.)

I don't understand what you're saying as rude. Quite the
opposite.

I put that in because I was implying your scientific knowledge
base if far below the level that it takes to really explain this
sort of thing. Again, no offense intended - it's just a fact of
the dialog.

I freely admit that I don't know much. I am also convinced that it
could be explained.

What matters is my requirement: A real theory, a possible
experiment/project/whatever.

Well, then, again... it's simple. There are no currently accepted
theories that allow for the sort of thing you seem to want. And
again, it's not a lack of imagination - it's you asking for "a
*real* theory". not surprisingly, there are no "real theories"
out there that deal with this sort of thing

That's where the side-effect may come in.

because there's been no evidence that needs explaining that
*requires* this sort of thing.

?

The problem is that I have no idea what theories
exist and what experiments could be done, that
may produce unexpected effects.

Pick one. Pick any one.

One from zero known theories results in zero picks.

Then I would politely recommend that you study the subject more.

That's not helpful.

I've got students who seem to want the same thing (in their case,
"why can't you just tell me the answer?", or "can't you just tell
us which equations to use and what numbers to put in for each
variable?"). As I explain to them, if I did that they wouldn't
have learned anything,

That's what the physics teachers did, which lacked an explanation
and thus I understood nothing.

and more importantly couldn't ever extend that knowledge to cover
novel situations. And if you are writing a story, well... novel
situations are your stock in trade.

:)

Someone _using_ a real known phenomenon is ok, but not some
random made up possible phenomenon.

Then again, the answer is a loud resounding "No". There are no
known theories or phenomenon that get you this sort of thing.

That's where the side-effect comes in. Which of the known theories
could have (unexpected) side-effects? It just has to be possible,
not proven and tested.

Or more clearly: Real theory, possible hypothetical (side-)effect.

Of course no one's building anything to get stuff elsewhere, not
even accidental. That's where the what if enters, only this what if
isn't aimed at what could then happen (I already know that), this is
aimed at what is the 'what if' itself.

Or, to put it another way:

What if X happened when exploring <theory A>? Then Y.

I'm asking for X and <theory A> in that. While normally people
already have the X and then wonder about Y.

So first I need lots of theories, then the spots in them where
current knowledge or rather lack of it makes Y an option.

Not unless you are willing to "make up" some aspects at least (as
in the examples above).

Make up something possible, yes.

If you want a realistic discussion on how to get between two
different places, you really need to specify what those places
are, and how they differ. That really does help.

I did.

--
Tina
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy | Magic Earth series
Excerpts at: <http://home.htp-tel.de/fkoerper/ath/athintro.htm>

.

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