Why FTL?

[Tim_Ward]

Wormholes, hyperspace, and warp engines like the alcubierre engine are technically not simply brute-forcing a ship past the speed of light. They're "cheats" to get around it, things that science says may or may not exist someday (unlike brute-forcing a ship past lightspeed which science says will not exist.) They tend to rely on theoretical (but not technically absolutely impossible) inter-dimensionality or the malleability of space, getting around the lightspeed barrier.

Yes. Real but highly speculative science is fair game for any work of science fiction. Even science fiction a lot harder than Stellaris aspires to be. I don't know why this thread is even a thing: in the Stellaris-verse, it turned out Alcubierre was more or less right. Simple.

 

[Ragotag]

...why does Stellaris ... have FTL travel when it is physically impossible to exceed the speed of light* and getting close to light speed is plenty fast enough anyway?

You belong to a species full of hubris. Just because humanity hasn't yet figured out FTL travel does not necessarily mean that it is impossible; it just means that humanity's current understanding of the Universal Laws and state of technology does not make FTL travel feasible.

When the distance between stars is measured by how long it takes the light from one to be observed at the other (Light Years), does getting *close* really seem like enough? I think not considering the average human life-span today.

 

[Drefk2000]

sub light speed or near light speed is not nearly enough. It would for example take us 4 years to visit our nearest star apart from the sun. And there is nothing exciting there. Having a space emprie without some way of travelling faster the light would be impossible. You don't have to physicially break the speed of light to arrive somewhere faster then light would have. You wouldn't want to actually because of the effects of travel at relativistic speeds, such as time dialation.

And besides... it's a game

 

[Wenla]

Dear lord why did you link that, I bingewatched it

They linked and had this:

Quantum entanglement is useless because:

FTL is not about the speed of light, but the speed of causality:

Interesting... AND spooky...

 

[Edopardo]

The speed of light is a very important constant in the universe, increasing it would increase the amount of energy released as part of e=mc^2, which would lead to nuclear reactions quite quickly scouring all life in the universe among numerous other issues.
If you make the speed of light a million times greater, the sun becomes a million times more luminescent as the energy released from nuclear fusion increases drastically; the poor Earth is quite quickly sterilized in the process.

What do you mean? The speed of light would still be one, just like G and ħ. It would be all other pesky units that would cause trouble

 

[Wenla]

stop posting videos that cause me to stop doing my job.......

No, no! Let those come, I have a lot of time to look at those because I'm retired, and those are intersting (and spooky...).

 

[The_Red_Star]

What do you mean? The speed of light would still be one, just like G and ħ. It would be all other pesky units that would cause trouble

c is represented by it's speed in meters per second if I'm not mistaken. So if it goes from 300,000,000 m/s to 300,000,000,000,000 you'd have a bit of a problem.

 

[Edopardo]

c is represented by it's speed in meters per second if I'm not mistaken. So if it goes from 300,000,000 m/s to 300,000,000,000,000 you'd have a bit of a problem.

No, no, no, c=1.
It is well known that we physicists are lazy, so we work in natural units

 

[Praetori]

When we observe stars from earth we look backwards in time since light speed is the limiter. The violation would be of the information principle(?): information cannot travel faster than light or casuality is broken. Since your warp ship will arrive at its destination faster (in time) than the photons emitted from the craft and then start to emit photons at the destination then you have technically traveled back in time relative to Earth's reference frame.

Still it requires that casuality exists.

The information principle is not about passing "information" along but interaction. You could in theory put up a mega mirror on Mars and then shoot someone on Earth and then 8,6 minutes later view the mirror and see back in time and all without violating causality (non live broadcasts would be weird otherwise). It doesn't matter if you'd shoot, "warp" the same distance and then see the event unfold or, view it in a mirror since you can't affect the outcome in any way.

Stable open wormholes is another story though as you could (if allowed) chain them and put several inside another and weird things would happen just as you say but that's not what was discussed.

Jorgen_CAB explained the rest I meant to answer in a much better way so there's little to add.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

What do you mean? The speed of light would still be one, just like G and ħ. It would be all other pesky units that would cause trouble

ħ, he says, because dividing by 2π is so hard. Honestly, particle physicists, amirite?

Then again, if either of us could do maths we'd be doing statistical mechanics.

 

[13Foxtrot]

This is incorrect. There are good physical reasons why things can't move faster than light. It's not just some magical invisible wall. Information is not a physical thing, it's an interpretation of a state. Yes, it is typically carried by physical things but the person I was asking said that it was fundamentally impossible for INFORMATION to travel faster than light in response to someone who was positing information not being carried physically by something from one place to another. Or, say, by tachyons.

I never said it was magical. As I said, as we understand it, Superluminal communication is impossible. Tachyons are hypothetical and have not been observed to exist. Information cannot travel faster than light. Quantum entanglement, as I have come to understand it, does not break the rules for FTL information transfer.

Local reality and relativity are incompatible in the quantum world. Either relativity is wrong and FTL information transfer occurs in a relativistic world or there is a reality beyond our relativistic world where quantum communication rules are not influenced by distance in our relativistic world that we perceive......most believe in the latter as I do. Either way we should continue to investigate.

 

[Edopardo]

ħ, he says, because dividing by 2π is so hard. Honestly, particle physicists, amirite?
Then again, if either of us could do maths we'd be doing statistical mechanics.

Says the man who can only get precision physics from cmb data . I still cringe when remembering the first time I was taught how distances are measured in astrophysics

The 2pi must be added, or else you'll be having pi terms everywhere

Oh, and what is this math thing you speak of?

Do you get off on being a pedantic?

First of all, I'd appreciate it if you kept insults to yourself. No one has called you any names, so kindly have the same deference to the rest.

EDIT: Thanks for editing the last term out.

Second, it was a (fairly terrible) joke on natural units. I'm fairly well aware of how units and energy work, seeing how it's a rather import part of my work.

 

[The_Red_Star]

Second, it was a (fairly terrible) joke on natural units. I'm fairly well aware of how units and energy work, seeing how it's a rather import part of my work.

Playful insults and namecalling is how we address one another in my social group; it's a generation Z thing. My apologies.

 

[Edopardo]

Playful insults and namecalling is how we address one another in my social group; it's a generation Z thing. My apologies.

it's the same in mine, but that's because I know them. Doing that with strangers is not a great idea
No harm done, though. Let's go back to discussing impossible physics

 

[Maarten99]

It is well known that we physicists are lazy, so we work in natural units

To quote my physics professor : "And here you have a constant. But we won't write that as a single letter - we will divide it by 2*Pi. So now, each time you need that constant, you'll have to write 2*Pi*Epsilon. Now your equation is a little longer, and you look a little smarter !"

 

[Safehold]

FTL communications pretty much has to exist unless you want to run a single solar system and have status reports that are years, decades or centuries old when they arrive.

It'd be an interesting game, but it's not the genre Stellaris belongs to.

Edit: Actually, thinking about it, Paradox have been quite selective and cunning with their "FTL".

Warp drives as proposed move space, not the ship, and don't actually break the rules or accelerate the ship.

Wormholes just connect two points in space and the ships move through normally.

Hyperspace has the ship move outside the normal universe and return, further away.

None of them would cause time dilation effects. Ironically, that's really a STL issue...

As far as communication goes... well, if you can get a ship there, you can probably get a small robot courier there, possibly faster than a ship. Wormhole stations would be able to swap intel with any system in range just by opening a small wormhole for the purpose. Once the courier hits the target system they can laser or radio the data and head back. It's also conceivable that wormholes could be directly modulated as a means of communication, though the courier trick would probably be more efficient and give bettter data density.

I think so as well, since Paradox likes to simulate things very accurately, so if they don't want to deal with transmission lag, it would be useful to have FTl techs that bypass the light speed limit via some kind of trick. But I think courtiers are somewhat more secure than beaming data out, since anyone can manufacture or intercept it if they knew where it came from.

The courier could even be a cyborg and have a lot of SSD drives installed on em, encrypted using various stuff.

For normal non classified information, trade vessels would probably be the go to method, which would make it similar to some frontier towns using horses. Well, that would be that "information control" edict that limits ethics divergence then. Better than the CK2 method of teleporting generals into the Holy Land to get Crusader, at least.

EDItted in:

(Disclaimer: I really have no idea what I am talking about)

Quick question, why does Stellaris (and other Space Games I assume) all have FTL travel when it is physically impossible to exceed the speed of light* and getting close to light speed is plenty fast enough anyway?

* or so I have been told...

EDIT:
My question has been answered, thanks!

They use tricks and shortcuts, sort of like how time travel theories work with wormholes and exotic matter.

If you are interested in the latest effective FTL theories, check up on the Mexican physicist, Alcubierre and his drive. Mathematically, it requires the use of exotic matter or in this case, the Casimir effect, various quantum states that can achieve the same effect as exotic matter, except done through the Standard Model of quantum physics.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

Says the man who can only get precision physics from cmb data . I still cringe when remembering the first time I was taught how distances are measured in astrophysics

Hang on. You mean there's any purpose to measuring more precisely than order-of-magnitude? Are your errors bars smaller than your data? Are your constants constant? What a weird field.

 

[Safehold]

Faster than light travel is possible in real life though... neutrinos are thought to be the first particles discovered that are considered tachyons, which means they are particles that move faster than light. Just because we haven't figured out a way to move faster than light, doesn't mean it isn't possible.

To be a little bit more specific, the theory of Einstein's Relativity, if that is the right source, is that for mass to travel up to light speed or beyond, requires an increasing amount of energy to the point where it becomes infinite.

Now accelerating a photon to light speed isn't that difficult, because that's just energy, even if it is a wave/particle hybrid in behavior. If there was a way to convert mass into tachyons to ride a tachyon stream or some other energy, and then convert us back to matter with the same pattern quantum data field at the destination, then effective FTL might be achieved in that manner. But trying to accelerate matter to light speed or beyond, still hits against the mathematics and physics of the known universe. Just the known universe though.

The reason why I split the difference between faster than light vs effective faster than light, is because the physicists like to be specific. So if you ask the EM drive's creator "is that a reactionless drive", he answered in a video that "it has a reaction to get the propulsion". Even if that is merely the reaction of electro magnetic forces. But many people use reactionless drives in reference to a Newtonian drive, which is not quite the same thing as not having a reaction drive the propulsion force.

 

[Praetori]

Faster than light travel is possible in real life though... neutrinos are thought to be the first particles discovered that are considered tachyons, which means they are particles that move faster than light. Just because we haven't figured out a way to move faster than light, doesn't mean it isn't possible.

"And the bartender said sorry, we don't serve Tachyons."
- So this Neutrino walks into a bar.

 

[Destiny's Player]

Once again, I don't really understand, how does FTL equal time travel? From my limited understanding of physics, it'll only result in the visibility of time travel, but the object WON'T appear in the new place before it left, it will simply look like that because photons won't be fast enough to catch up to it, resulting in an afterimage, not time travel. Is there something in relativity that overwrites regular logic when approaching relativistic speeds? Sorry for my ignorance, but I'm no physicist, merely a linguist-in-training who likes to read up on physics.