posted in response to the above article.
10 July 1996
Good theory.. I like it... just a couple of things to add:
The currents/gravitational incline that can pulls the ships off course would be consistent with this... there is a fairly large amount of mass at the center of our galaxy currently (that’s what causes the spiral arms to rotate about it), and if the galaxy were in a much smaller/earlier state this would be exert a detectable force on ships... it would eventually suck them in like a whirlpool. This could also be why no ships come back.
Current theories about this period of the universe's development describe this as like a really hot particle soup.. this fits with the higher/visible background radiation, but posses some problems (see later on in my post). Also this soup of particles would not be uniform in density, there would be patches of higher density (that would eventually coalesce to form solar systems), and they (these higher density areas) would also have some rotational energy about its higher density center (suns tend to loose a lot of rotational energy when they are forming by throwing off planets). This would make for lots of currents as the pre-solar systems exert gravitational force upon each other, collide, merge.... all of these would way-lay a ship adrift and pull it off- course.
Imagine a immensely vast whirlpool, turning reasonably slowly but with huge amounts of momentum, and a very deep center. Contained within are millions, if not billions of smaller whirlpools, all interacting with each other... now I can see why hyper-space would not be a particularly safe place to be. Nor an easy one in which to navigate... Expanding on this theory a bit further... it wouldn't too much of a leap to suppose that each point in real space corresponds with the same point in hyper-space (its earlier self?), but all of the points in hyper-space are in a state of constant flux.. moving about all over the place, jumbling around... perhaps not all that fast, so it doesn't change to much over the period of a ships passage through, but over the months and years, the topology could change dramatically, so each course would have to be plotted anew from beacons... there could be no maps or 'roads'.
How do you get to 'new' places... hmmmm.... travelling in real-space, is still (as far as we have seen) way to slow, even to just go to the nearest system would take years at light speed... don't think that’s how they do it. How about if you map the topology of hyperspace as it is right now, from all the beacons in your vicinity.. you could then use this to build up a map of what the local area of hyper-space looks like (currently).. then extrapolate this a to include the star system 'just over there' that you want to visit.. then get there as fast as you can, before it all changes. (just another couple of points, you wouldn't want to be anywhere near the middle of the system when you come out, because you might enter real space in the middle of its sun, nor would want your first jump in to be in the plane of the ecliptic, because you might collide with a planet.)
Perhaps ships sensors can detect gravitational anomalies in hyper-space, and predict from the higher density regions where solar systems are likely to be. Perhaps not. None the less, it would still require some pretty grunty sensors and computational power to do the predicting.. not something that you fit to every ship.. just the exploratory classes (accounts for some of their size?)
This would also account for the races propensity for sticking jump gates all over the place even before surveying the planetary bodies in the system (it would make more sense to see if there is anything you want to come back to, before building a rather big and expensive jump gate.. but they do anyway, then send in the survey ships)... the more jump gates you have (even around useless systems) the higher density of beacons in your hyper-space area and the better your predicting power becomes (like predicting the weather.. the more samples you take the better your estimates/guesses), and the safer it is for everyone.
I would think that the jump gates would tend to keep a "small" gate to hyper- space open and just stick the beacon through this, and only open up the huge one, when ships need to come through. The beacon would have to be connected to the jump gate, or it would drift and loose its relative position with real space.
The higher density of particles in hyper-space would also account for radical drop in sensor range and transmitting power... there would simply be a lot more particles in the way (like reduced visibility in muddy/silty water) and this could cut things down to around the 1000km figure we have been given. So, the more contacts you have with real space (jump-points) the better your ability to communicate between distant real-space features.. (boy, I would of hate to have designed the routing protocol for that!)
Now the only possible problem with this theory (now the problem!).. ships don't seem to have much in the way of shielding, nor do the seem to have any "force" shields. I would think that travelling through hyperspace 1) it would be a lot hotter and 2) you would collide with particles a lot more often. Any ideas anyone?
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