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beccaelizabethI've been wondering about stargates and relativity. Not specifically the Stargate franchise gates, but instant travel worldgates. Is worldgate generic? Stargate has to be tm every which way by now. ANYway: big gate where you walk through it and instantly go from one planet to another.
I was thinking, if you walk across a room, all of you is going at the same speed, and the planet you're standing on is going at whatever speed it's going in whatever direction it's going but you don't feel it because you're going along with it. But if you're walking across a galaxy then you have two planets going at different speeds in different directions that only make any sense at all if you only measure them relative to each other in this one calculation. So you have to assume the worldgate can figure out where it's aiming even with all this movement going on. And since you arrive out the other side at walking speed then it don't matter if the planets are heading towards each other really fast, you don't keep any of that when you go through the gate. Somehow the gate vanishes the difference, or makes it up, or something.
... I can sort of understand the stargate as what happens when you bend the bit of paper over and punch a hole, because then you get from one end of the paper to the other instantly, no problem. But the bit of paper is constantly moving in every direction, and also growing, which strikes me as a rather more complex problem that I can't hold in my head all at once. Yet explains why The Doctor has difficulty with his driving, because he's trying to fold a four dimensional bit of paper that isn't even staying the same paper cause he's not the only time traveller out there.
ANYway2: You step in one side and out the other and it's instant.
But there's that weird thing where time isn't the same time everywhere.
Which I don't properly get my head around right there, let alone when you add imaginary stargates to it.
But: Twin thing, you send one twin away really fast and then he comes back really fast and when he gets there he's kind of the same age and his twin is all ancient. I've read lots of science fiction, read about whole civilisations dealing with that, I get that story.
But what about if you send him away really really fast and then have him step back through a stargate?
His time is going all slow on his end, but our time is going ordinary speed on our end. So the 'step' part would take ages for him and then he'd arrive at our end with a hand sticking out and it would age at our speed so his hand would get ancient before he got back. Or something. I don't know.
It would also depend if the gate makes just a hole you step through or if it's more like a transporter and pulls you apart and encodes you and sends you. Because if it pulls you apart at one end and puts you together at the other and it has a buffer you can store all the data in then it would still work, you'd step in, step out, no weird half ways, you're in the buffer. It would still take ages and ages though.
If you're going near light speed and you try and send a message home does your bit rate go really low? like you'd start out on broadband and your ship would go faster and your modem would go slower and you'd get to dial up and say sod it and just not be in communication with other speeds.
I think it's when I've been studying English hardest that I start wishing I'd stuck with science. I hear it has actual answers you can figure out and be pretty sure of. I like the sound of that.
I was thinking, if you walk across a room, all of you is going at the same speed, and the planet you're standing on is going at whatever speed it's going in whatever direction it's going but you don't feel it because you're going along with it. But if you're walking across a galaxy then you have two planets going at different speeds in different directions that only make any sense at all if you only measure them relative to each other in this one calculation. So you have to assume the worldgate can figure out where it's aiming even with all this movement going on. And since you arrive out the other side at walking speed then it don't matter if the planets are heading towards each other really fast, you don't keep any of that when you go through the gate. Somehow the gate vanishes the difference, or makes it up, or something.
... I can sort of understand the stargate as what happens when you bend the bit of paper over and punch a hole, because then you get from one end of the paper to the other instantly, no problem. But the bit of paper is constantly moving in every direction, and also growing, which strikes me as a rather more complex problem that I can't hold in my head all at once. Yet explains why The Doctor has difficulty with his driving, because he's trying to fold a four dimensional bit of paper that isn't even staying the same paper cause he's not the only time traveller out there.
ANYway2: You step in one side and out the other and it's instant.
But there's that weird thing where time isn't the same time everywhere.
Which I don't properly get my head around right there, let alone when you add imaginary stargates to it.
But: Twin thing, you send one twin away really fast and then he comes back really fast and when he gets there he's kind of the same age and his twin is all ancient. I've read lots of science fiction, read about whole civilisations dealing with that, I get that story.
But what about if you send him away really really fast and then have him step back through a stargate?
His time is going all slow on his end, but our time is going ordinary speed on our end. So the 'step' part would take ages for him and then he'd arrive at our end with a hand sticking out and it would age at our speed so his hand would get ancient before he got back. Or something. I don't know.
It would also depend if the gate makes just a hole you step through or if it's more like a transporter and pulls you apart and encodes you and sends you. Because if it pulls you apart at one end and puts you together at the other and it has a buffer you can store all the data in then it would still work, you'd step in, step out, no weird half ways, you're in the buffer. It would still take ages and ages though.
If you're going near light speed and you try and send a message home does your bit rate go really low? like you'd start out on broadband and your ship would go faster and your modem would go slower and you'd get to dial up and say sod it and just not be in communication with other speeds.
I think it's when I've been studying English hardest that I start wishing I'd stuck with science. I hear it has actual answers you can figure out and be pretty sure of. I like the sound of that.