>>330116
Y hello thar Toha Heavy Industries.

Sorry for the thread derail for a moment there. I do so enjoy non-Euclidean physics, regardless of how poorly I can calculate the exact equations. There are many reasons it's "impossible" to go faster than the speed of light, and one of them is the fascinating time travel implications.

My favorite example is travelling between a supernova and a nearby star. (Thought this quest was inspired by that thought experiment initially.) Suppose you went 2x the speed of light away from a star going supernova, to another star one light year away. If you looked out the window upon arrival, you'd be seeing light from the supernova a year ago, when it was still an ordinary star. It would effectively seem like you were a year in your own past, and if you waited a year, the light would catch up and you'd see the supernova.

If instead of waiting, suppose you cause this second star to supernova, and flee from it back to your original location at again 2x the speed of light. Once you reached your original location you would be seeing light a year in the second star's past, and you'd have to wait a year to see that second star to supernova.

I don't know exactly how the geometry works out, but once you account for relativity things get impossibly weird in this situation. From the perspective of the second star, it goes supernova immediately, and then your original star goes supernova one year later. So if you were seeing light one year before the second star's supernova, your original star couldn't supernova for 2 years, otherwise the light of its supernova would reach the second star too early! When you left your original star was going supernova immediately, but when you returned it wasn't going to do so for another 2 years. So faster-than-light round trip space travel is effectively the same as travelling backwards in time, to a universe in a state of lower entropy than before. That violates thermodynamics (since entropy can never decrease ever) and causality, since you would return to your original star 2 years before you even left!

>>330268
the fuck you talking about?!? you go 2x speed one way and yes it will take a year to see but when you go back it will still be gone.

>>330268
lern2lightcone

And yes, the instant you pass the speed of light, you break causality, but that doesn't prevent shit from happening unless you act on it.

>>330269

Light isn't something like tennis balls or bullets. It's travelling at the speed of reality itself, the maximum speed of propogation. When you go back, the photons you are 'approaching' don't come at you three times as fast. They come at you at the same speed as if you were standing still. Things travelling at that speed are always travelling at that speed no matter how fast you are going. That's the whole basis behind all that relativistic weirdness, is that you can't outrun light, and you can't get anything to even seem to go faster than it. Space warps before that happens. Wicked stuff.

I sometimes like to call the speed of light "Nature's penis contest" because no matter how fast you go, light is always going 300,000,000 m/s faster than you.

>>330271

What does a light cone have to do with... how the heck would you know that it doesn't prevent shit from happening? All I explained was that it's impossible to travel faster than light. I didn't say shit did or did not happen once you go and do the impossible. That stuff is pure speculation and science fiction.

>Suppose you went 2x the speed of light away from a star going supernova, to another star one light year away. If you looked out the window upon arrival, you'd be seeing light from the supernova a year ago, when it was still an ordinary star. It would effectively seem like you were a year in your own past, and if you waited a year, the light would catch up and you'd see the supernova.

Nope, you would arrive HALF A YEAR before the light reaches that star. 1 lightyear / 2c = 1/2 a year.

Your math is totally wrong. I have yet to understand how FTL communication or travel causes paradoxes. If you're going the same speed both ways, there is always going to be SOME time spent going there. I mean, light doesn't travel from one object to another in 0 time units so why would even a slight amount of FTL result in arriving in negative time units?

The NUMBERS say that, but that is because our model of physics is inherently incomplete.

>>330282

Yeah, okay half a year. And you'd arrive back home then one year before you left!

>> Your math is totally wrong. I have yet to understand how

Uh huh.

>> I mean, light doesn't travel from one object to another in 0 time units so why would even a slight amount of FTL result in arriving in negative time units?

From the reference frame of light itself, it does travel from one object to another in 0 time units. But my point is that light is not the same as running with a tennis ball. If the tennis ball is going at 30 miles per hour, and you run at 15 miles per hour, the tennis ball will seem to pass you at 15 miles per hour faster than you. If the photon is going 3e8 m/s and you run at 1e8 m/s, the photon will seem to pass you not at 2e8, but still the full 3.8 m/s faster than you. It will also seem to travel at 3e8 m/s to someone standing still watching both you and the light, but they will also see you running at 1e8m/s. Thus they will see the light passing you at 2e8 m/s, while from your perspective it passes you at the full 3e8 m/s. The speed of light is constant in every reference frame, and that means that time and space get fucked up in order to preserve that property.

Both the observer and the runner measure light at the same speed, but they measure different rates that it catches up with the runner. Since in this case it takes light longer to catch up to the runner from the perspective of the observer, the runner will seem to the observer to be slowed in the passage of time by a factor of 2/3. So when the runner counts light passing by in 3 seconds, the observer sees that counting happening slower. Every 2 seconds the runner counts takes 3 seconds from the observer's perspective. Even weirder, the runner will see the observer slowed down, counting 2 seconds for every 3 seconds the runner counts. So they both see each other slowing down. And uh... that's kind of where I get lost. But the point is FTL would literally slow you down so much into travelling backwards through time! Or the acceleration would or something...

does it? we have no idea what things are like from the perspective of things going that fast. for all we know it DOES look like the photon is moving slower.

Test Pattern 2010/07/20(Tue)00:36 No. 20498 ID: 8bdb6a
File 127961136665.jpg - (21.29KB , 800x256 , The%20trees%20are%20really%20sneezing%20today[1].jpg )

>But the point is FTL would literally slow you down so much into travelling backwards through time!
That's not really how that works. Relativity doesn't predict what would happen if you went FTL. It predicts that you CAN'T go FTL.

Though, it does say that if you did, it would mean you're potentially backwards in time compared to another place, but only depending on your relative velocity after you arrive. At least, as I understand it.

Basically, faster than light travel violates causality, but only due to lesser-known aspects of relativity, which are complicated, counterintuitive, confusing, and tantalizingly easy to ignore.

>Einstein ruined FTL forever

>>330298
It predicts you can't go AT lightspeed. And, presumably, the only way to get to FTL speeds is to pass through lightspeed. The difference is important because if you can create a discontinuity in your acceleration where you bypass that, you can go faster than c.

>>330294
>And you'd arrive back home then one year before you left!

Okay okay, let me spell out exactly why this is wrong.

>So if you were seeing light one year before the second star's supernova, your original star couldn't supernova for 2 years, otherwise the light of its supernova would reach the second star too early!

Here. This is where you're completely wrong. You traveling to another location and setting off an event does not cause another unrelated event to change what time it occurred. Think of a third, omnipresent observer. It sees the correct flow of time at all locations. You would have left the original star right as it supernova'd. Half a year later you reached the second star (which is a lightyear away, though the distance actually doesn't matter.) and exploded it. Then you returned to the original star. You were away from the first star for one year. The shockwave from the first star will reach the second one as soon as you arrive at the first. Half a year later, the shockwave from the second star will reach the first one.

Think of light as expanding ripples, not as some kind of reality defining phenomenon. The only issue with the speed of light is that when we try to go faster than it (or even just anywhere near its speed) then our perception of time slows down so that it keeps going faster than us, yet we are still accelerating in our frame of reference. It's a perception issue, not a real change in the universe's clock.

>From the reference frame of light itself, it does travel from one object to another in 0 time units.
From the perspective of someone who is actually going the speed of light... yes, you get there instantly. HOWEVER that is not actually true, it is simply an illusion caused by time dilation. After all, any outside observer can see that it takes time for light to travel from place to place.

>Every 2 seconds the runner counts takes 3 seconds from the observer's perspective. Even weirder, the runner will see the observer slowed down, counting 2 seconds for every 3 seconds the runner counts.
You realize that this isn't weird at all right? Of course the runner will see the observer counting 3 seconds every time he counts 2. That is because he is actually doing that. The runner's perception of time slows down, so he thinks he's going faster than he really is. 50% faster in fact.

From the standpoint of the runner, it is in fact possible to go 'faster' than the speed of light, but everything else in the universe speeds up too, including light.

>>330314
Okay, so, I haven't been thinking about this stuff at all for a few months, but I want to say that you and Mneme are both at least partially wrong, and Test is right, at least concerning the parts he didn't gloss over.

Essentially, if I remember correctly, it's something like FTL travel, and even for that matter FTL comm, inherently and consistently violate causality under the rules of relativity in our own world, because it's always possible to find a frame of reference in which something traveled back in time. The only way to get around this problem of causality violation is to alter the rules of relativity (by, for example, excising the provision that there are no special frames of reference, and then confining all FTL nonsense to a specific special frame). The end result is as Test said: under normal relativity rules, FTL is supposed to be impossible, and using it causes all sorts of weird shit. But don't quote me on that; I'd need to go over this stuff again to give you a properly accurate answer.

(Also Toasto I actually haven't got a damn clue as to how accurate your statement is.)

>>330318

>> you and Mneme are both at least partially wrong, and Test is right,

>> The end result is as Test said: under normal relativity rules, FTL is supposed to be impossible, and using it causes all sorts of weird shit.

You know, I started out by saying it's impossible to go faster than the speed of light. You could at least give me that smidgen of credit. What I was trying to say is the reason it's impossible is that assuming it were possible, you would have failure of causality and a violation of thermodynamics. Since you cannot have failure of causality, or violation of thermodynamics, by contradiction it cannot be possible to travel faster than light. I also said FTL causes all sorts of weird shit.

>>330314

I don't see time dilation as a mere illusion. The clocks really do run slower. Exotic particles decay at a slower rate. People age slower. Whenever you accelerate, changing your reference frame, your time really does move slower than that of your original reference frame. It's not an illusion.

Also, the runner really does see themselves, from their own reference frame, more and more unable to accelerate, maxxing out at the speed of light. What shortens their journey is length contraction, the distance between them and their destination shrinking to account for their failure to speed up. So if you take the limit, at the speed of light the distance between you and whatever you're headed at is 0, ergo it takes 0 time units to travel that distance. But you won't be able to traverse any distance faster than the speed of light. Unless you're a spacefaring wolf man race.

Vel Quest is going to slow down a bit until I get a new tablet. I'm going to draw on paper and scan the images for a while, but my scanner hates me, so I have no idea how long that will take.

Also, if you want a simple explanation of how the jumpdrive works, watch the movie Event Horizon. On second thought, do that anyway. Event Horizon is awesome.

>>330326
Mystery of why Professional was missing an eye? SOLVED

>>330326
I always figured the unstoppable monstrosity is actually some furry hating entity from the warp.

>>330330
oh god it's 4chan

of course, it would be neat to find how to stop the unstoppable thing. ether figure out what it is made of and hit it with the opposite to disrupt or something the same to overload.

>>330325
I said "partially wrong." Give [i]me[/] a smidgen of credit, eh? :B

or, instead of going faster, you make the distance shorter.

>>330325
>I don't see time dilation as a mere illusion.
I never said it was. I said the perception of it taking less time was an illusion, CAUSED by time dilation. Events around the runner still happen at the same speed, they just LOOK faster.

>Also, the runner really does see themselves, from their own reference frame, more and more unable to accelerate, maxxing out at the speed of light.
Um, they never see themselves max out at the speed of light. Light always goes c faster than them from their viewpoint. Granted you are correct that it gets harder and harder to accelerate, because the energy involved in the runner's momentum starts making the runner heavier.

>What shortens their journey is length contraction, the distance between them and their destination shrinking to account for their failure to speed up.
What? This is crazy. You don't warp space by going faster. Uh, aside from the added gravity anyway. This is another error in perception caused by time dilation.
"Length contraction refers to measurements of position made at simultaneous times according to a coordinate system. This could naively lead to a thinking that if one could take a picture of a fast moving object, that the image would show the object contracted in the direction of motion. It is important to realize that such visual effects are completely different measurements."
There is no actual change in length, though a lot of people assume there is. It's just an interesting mathematical phenomenon.

>>330318
>because it's always possible to find a frame of reference in which something traveled back in time.
Why should that matter? If time is constant throughout the universe from one person's perspective (and it should be, since c is constant), just having the light coming from someone's destination hit you before the light from the origin doesn't mean they actually left before then. The origin's light is just older. The only time I can imagine this being observed is when the origin is farther away than the destination, after all. I mean, if you can determine how far away everything is and what speed everything is going then it should be possible to collect information over time to have a model of what happened during one slice of the universe's objective (as in, from the perspective of someone at rest) timeframe. Then you would clearly see that nobody went back in time just from FTL travel.

>>330352
I said this wasn't really fresh in my mind, didn't I?

But after looking around at some stuff in my quantum textbook and also the internet I'd recommend
http://sheol.org/throopw/tachyon-pistols.html
and
http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html
as some explanations of the subject written by someone who isn't rusty, tired, and badly paraphrasing something he read several months ago.

Oh goddamn how hard can it be to remember which arm Vel is mutilating? At least Vel's robot arm hasn't switched sides. I think.

Here's an interesting thought I came up with. If the speed of light is the maximum possible speed of propagation, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that, for example, a 20-year-old person only exists within a radius of 20 lightyears. Okay?

Okay. Imagine two points in space: A and B. They are exactly one lightyear apart. You stay at A for one year, during which your existence reaches B. You then move instantly from A to B. Now your existence at B starts propagating at the speed of light, and your non-existence at A does likewise. But since your existence at B hasn't reached A yet, from A's perspective you don't exist at either A or B. On the flipside, from B's perspective you exist at both.

It is possible, using the jumpdrive, to perceive yourself to exist in several places at once.

>>330372
It also seems extremely difficult to remember to change my name to Qrubb in this thread

>>330353
Wait. That first article says that BOTH people moving see the OTHER as having a slow clock? Then when they stop moving relative to eachother, which one's clock is slower?

>>330375
I... fuck, this makes my head hurt still. I think it depends on whether or not getting shot => no longer moving, and even then I'm still not sure.

>>330375

Whoever accelerates to match the other's speed sees time as going slower. Remember you can only change a reference frame by accelerating (assuming gravity to be a form of acceleration). If they both change speeds equally until they're going at the same speed in the same direction, then they'll both have passed through the same amount of time. If one changes speeds while the other continues to move/not move at the same velocity, then the one who changes speeds is the one who seems "slowed" in time, while the one who remained at a constant velocity passed through more time than their counterpart.

Don't worry this was a big deal for Einstein too. He thought up Special Relativity for comparing reference frames in like one evening staring at a clock, but then spent years developing what was called General Relativity, which is pretty much what happens to reference frames when they change velocity or direction, aka accelerate.

General Relativity is heavy stuff. I haven't been able to quite imagine what it would look like from the perspective of the one accelerating, as their perception of the other going slower through time somehow transitioned into their perception of the other being much faster in time and farther ahead (and older) once they match velocities. All I can tell is that both people see each other as slower in time, but the accelerating one somehow finishes seeing the non-accelerating one as faster in time.

>>330380
and Einstein was only able to think it up because of a brain abnormality.

Qrubb 2010/07/31(Sat)10:39 No. 21087 ID: c33cc8
File 128059794270.jpg - (83.52KB , 709x740 , calai.jpg )

I think it wouldn't be spoiling anything to reveal that Silver Kingdom is taking place in the same 'verse as Vel Quest.

Pictured: an alternative character design for Calai.

Qrubb!Ws4fTChZp6 2010/08/17(Tue)12:05 No. 21948 ID: c33cc8
File 128207192350.jpg - (53.85KB , 517x481 , size comparison.jpg )

Okay here is an image to disguise the fact that this is just me testing a tripcode

YAY COLOR

Qrubb!Ws4fTChZp6 2010/09/10(Fri)12:07 No. 22917 ID: 4a6c93
File 128414567370.jpg - (85.09KB , 1232x1212 , purple haze.jpg )

So I was getting to know Photoshop a little better and I drew this. Maybe I'll even make a quest update sometime soon.

Could this be how Caril lost his eye? Probably not.

>>332717
Yeah, he's way too badass for something like that to take his eye.

>>332719

Given how he acts, though, it's pretty likely he lost it while trying to stab something.

That seems to be his go-to plan.

Qrubb 2010/10/09(Sat)09:43 No. 24636 ID: 4a6c93
File 128664263363.jpg - (54.03KB , 792x1224 , Executioner nekkid.jpg )

I

Qrubb 2010/10/09(Sat)09:44 No. 24637 ID: 4a6c93
File 128664264463.jpg - (60.99KB , 792x1224 , Executioner dress uniform.jpg )

am

Qrubb 2010/10/09(Sat)09:44 No. 24638 ID: 4a6c93
File 128664266473.jpg - (68.66KB , 792x1224 , Executioner BDU.jpg )

bored

Also have some pictures

Anonymous 2010/10/09(Sat)10:47 No. 24641 ID: 6550ad
File 128664646874.png - (156.83KB , 792x1224 , Space furries with Steve shirts.png )

Derp!

>>334441
This here is clearly the work of a true visionary in fashion. I forsee that soon everyone in the quest will be wearing it.

Velenor 2010/10/09(Sat)17:01 No. 24651 ID: 197650
File 128666887057.png - (68.84KB , 485x750 , fuckinglegs.png )

I don't even read this quest

Qrubb 2010/10/15(Fri)08:31 No. 25065 ID: 4a6c93
File 128715666878.jpg - (60.64KB , 780x994 , dat sev.jpg )

Look it's not what you think. I did this to... practice shading! Yes, that's it.

>>334865
Hmm. Looks like you need a bit of advice with shading. The head and arms look great, but the ass and legs look flat. The shading should go further in on the buttcheeks, and the legs should have shadows going further down them. I'm assuming the light is coming from slightly above and to the right?

>>334865
>>334870

It does admittedly look like she's pressing her ass against a glass wall.

Qrubb 2010/10/17(Sun)12:40 No. 25123 ID: 4a6c93
File 128734442969.jpg - (59.92KB , 780x994 , dat sev v2.jpg )

>>334870
>>334891

look what you did you made me spend entirely too much time on this picture and delayed the next update I hope you are happy

>>334923
Now it looks like there's a light behind her on the ground shining up on her ass and thighs.

>>334928
Indeed.

In that case there should be light on the lower end of the tail as well.

>>334923

Her ass now satisfies me.