Hyperdrive or Wormholes?

[Uncluttered]

A scenario.

You are Zap Zephyre, generic space adventurer.....

Your one-true-love, The Countess Distressa -tricked into thinking you are dead- is about to get married to your evil twin brother.
Once married to the countess, your evil twin brother is going to have the access and power to be exponentially more evil.
You want to stop him.

The Wedding is happening on Earth, center of the ancient Earthican Empire, which controls a sphere of space 15000LY in radius.

Luckily, by growing a goatee and posing as your own evil twin, you escaped his privately run prison on the planet WhateverIV.
You also managed to reprogram his cyborgzombie henchgoons, and appropriate a hyperdrive courier.

You have in your possession, a top of the line courier ship. It has a hyperdrive with speeds capable of c times 7 figures.


Backstory.

The Earthican Empire Started on Earth 16000 Years ago.
At that time, Dark Energy flows within the galaxy prevented hyperdrives from functioning.
Due to dark energy flows or other such plot device, an FTL method that did not violate the lightcone had to be invented.
To keep the empire together, Earthican engineers created a system of wormholes linking each occupied star system.

1000 years ago, the dark energy flows changed, and hyperdrive was invented soon after.
As a results, the Earthican Empire, with it's wormhole network ceased being the only major civilization in the galaxy.

These wormholes are classic Kip Thorn. They were made in pairs. One pair stays home, while the other half is moved to the desired destination, at sublight speeds.
In this case, the wormhole network is centered at earth, and radiates outward in a sphere shaped volume, 15000LY in radius.

A very abridged Example of Wormhole travel.
The Tannheiser gate links Earth to the Centauri Annex. A Distance of 4.4 LY.
Traveling from Earth to Centauri is 4.4 LY, so Centauri is actually 4.4 Years into Earth future.
Traveling from Centauri to Earth is 4.4 LY, and Earth is actually 4.4 Years into Centauri past.
You experience no time passing, as you traverse the wormhole.

An abridged Example of Hyperspace travel.
The distance from WhateverIV, to SpamelotXI, is 300LY.
You travel this distance in about 5 minutes.
Since you left WhateverIV: 5 Minutes have past on WhateverIV, and 5 minutes have passed on SpamelotXI.

You have piloted your ship to the SpamelotXI system, the border of Earthican space. You might guess there is a wormhole link here, and you would be correct.

Your ship and reprogrammed cyborgzombie crew await your decision.


Your mission.

1. Stop a wedding.
2. Punch your evil twin brother in the face.
3. Marry your one-true-love.

The wedding is in 2 weeks.
All technology works as advertized.

Do you take the wormhole network, or use the hyperdrive?

[Chaotic Neutral]

I do what makes me age less and deal with less boredom.

[Uncluttered]

Since entering a wormhole and not being destroyed is 'soft' scifi, hyperdrive is better.

Leave your baggage at home stark.
Once again: All technology works as advertised.

[Uncluttered]

I've made no mention of AI. It is not relevent to this scenario.
Knowledge of physics is. Unfortunately you fail at showing understanding of reference frames.
There are other persons on this forum I'd rather hear from than you.

Also, If this was an AI related puzzle, I'd go straight to Starglider.

You seem to be reading for purposes of flaming me, which would explain the sloppy mistakes in basic reading comprehension you are showing. You've misread the Original Post either accidentally or deliberately.

For instance, this isn't a thread about BUILDING a wormhole network. It's about USING a well established network, or optioning to go through hyperspace.

You show no intention of contributing anything of use or merit. You only want to harass me, because you seem to mistake me for a die hard fanboy like yourself, emotionally invested in his petty pursuit.

Instead of making your choice, and explaining your reasons in useful detail; you seem hell bent on mocking me.
This thread is a puzzle, because I like puzzles. I feel I might have an answer, but I'm looking for informed opinions before I put pen to paper.

Why don't you please shut up, and go post somewhere else. You have nothing to gain here, even if you somehow prove your brain is the biggest. No one is going to give you an award. No one.

It's a big BBS.
Surely there is a thread somewhere about Han Solos vest, or collectible card games and tentacle porn you can jump in and contribute to with your expertise?

If all you want to do is beat your chest, post in "Testing"

[Lord of the Abyss]

He just didn't get the reference.

I don't get the specific reference either, but It's clearly a joke. It's also a fairly funny one at that.

It was a reference to the end of the short story The Jaunt by Stephen King, actually.

[Revy]

It was a reference to the end of the short story The Jaunt by Stephen King, actually.

Creepy bloody story. Gave me the chills when I read it as a kid.

To the OP, this is probably way over my head but can't wormholes be used for time travel? Is there no way to manipulate one end of a wormhole so that the guy could pop out in the Earth system a couple of weeks prior to the whole situation, then simply set up a trap for his evil twin and wait?

[PainRack]

Can't we all just get along?

Or do we need to get the mod involved here?

[Stark]

Creepy bloody story. Gave me the chills when I read it as a kid.

To the OP, this is probably way over my head but can't wormholes be used for time travel? Is there no way to manipulate one end of a wormhole so that the guy could pop out in the Earth system a couple of weeks prior to the whole situation, then simply set up a trap for his evil twin and wait?

That's the whole point of his question.

[Purple]

So wait, I don't understand this.
If I take the worm hole from Centaury to Earth I will end up 4.4 years late for the wedding or something?

[Vendetta]

The answer is both.

The hyperdrive alone, if it is capable of a seven figure c factor will get us from the edge of Earthican space to Earth itself in a little over five days. However, this is five days for my evil twin to learn of my escape and plan accordingly.

Therefore, I make a few carefully calculated wormhole jumps, using the hyperdrive to move myself to the endpoints of the wormholes, because a wormhole journey involves a trip through relative time but the hyperdrive does not, I can travel through time at will at least as far as the creation and destruction of the wormhole network.

I use this advantage to time my arrival precisely on Earth such that I arrive to punch my evil twin in the face whilst he is distracted by gloating over my original capture.

[Uncluttered]

The answer is both.

The hyperdrive alone, if it is capable of a seven figure c factor will get us from the edge of Earthican space to Earth itself in a little over five days. However, this is five days for my evil twin to learn of my escape and plan accordingly.

Therefore, I make a few carefully calculated wormhole jumps, using the hyperdrive to move myself to the endpoints of the wormholes, because a wormhole journey involves a trip through relative time but the hyperdrive does not, I can travel through time at will at least as far as the creation and destruction of the wormhole network.

I use this advantage to time my arrival precisely on Earth such that I arrive to punch my evil twin in the face whilst he is distracted by gloating over my original capture.

The other thing I'm trying to figure out--as far as I know-- Would you end up being 15000Years late for the wedding if you took any other route?

Does an established wormhole network necessitate its own existence by changing spacetime?

Would instantaneous transportation in the same frame actually be too slow? Or am I wrong? (and why?)

Would you even be on time (not early or late) by using hyperdrive between systems that rely on a wormhole?

Is the Earthican Empire trapped in amber?

How long would it take to safely dismantle the wormhole network?

If you destroy a wormhole, is the stationary end now in an impenetrable fortress?

Will Zap Zephyre be able to enjoy punching his evil twin in the face again, or will the cyborgzombies replace his brain with a Sinclair ZX-81?....Stay tuned!!

[Edi]

Norade's trolling and most of the related tangential stuff split here.

It was easier to toss the entire early part of the thread than try to untangle it, though the reference tangent should be preserved here in one of the posts that quotes previous ones.

[Patrick Degan]

There are actually some interesting questions to consider here.

For a start, it's not necessary to posit "dark energy" having retarded the development of hyperspace travel. The fact that it's pretty much ruled out in principle is enough to restrict it as an alternative. That leaves you with the wormholes, which aren't quite ruled out in principle but have a mountain-range of physical and engineering problems of their own which also make them unlikely.

However, let's assume that these have somehow been bypassed, and the Earthican civilisation spent a half-million years establishing the wormhole tramway network between star systems. You now face a new and interesting set of restrictions on travel.

For a start, I think you'd want the termini of any given wormhole to reside a comfortable distance outside the periphereal boundaries of the two star systems which are connected. You really don't want to perturb the orbits of your planets or any of the debris in the system's Kuiper Belts, so for safety's sake, you want the gates to be located maybe one lightyear away. These would, of course, have to be set in orbits around the galactic core proximate to the star system in question. It also means, over time, that the distances between the gates and the systems will increase, but you may have quite a few centuries before this would become an insurmountable problem. Mainly, it means that it will take time for any starship crawling at STL velocities to reach the wormhole gate from any civilised world, so you've got relativity penalties piling up on that end of any trip. And more relativity penalties will pile up when you exit and start your STL transit toward the destination system.

We can posit that transit between wormholes would be more or less instantaneous. However, each terminus will exist at its discrete point in space/time when it was initiated and their existence will continue conterminous with one another, day by day. A gate connecting Earth with, say Rigel, will take any starship to the Rigel of 965 years in Earth's future, and a starship returning from Rigel to Earth will take that ship to the Earth of 965 years in Rigel's past. And you will arrive at the terminus on the same day in each time zone: depart the Rigel Gate on 15 January, 803371 and you will reach the Sol Gate on 15 January, 802406, but you won't be able to arrive a day earlier or a week earlier (or a day or a week later) than 15 January. It's a one-to-one correspondence.

Long and short of it, the worlds of the Earthican Empire are trapped in their own dollops of amber, even though they're connected by wormhole tramways. You can travel from one dollop to another, but you can't beat causality. I'm afraid Zap Zephyre is fucked as far as stopping the wedding is concerned.

[ThomasP]

I always have to use quick and dirty Minkowski diagrams to try and visualize this stuff or I get a headache.

The math is beyond me, but the way I visualize a causal wormhole network is by having it "stick to the edges" of the light-cone, so that as Degan said you get a continuous reference frame of Now where the wormholes connect. Zoomed out enough, to the scale of the galaxy say, you see that the periphery will always be in the homeworld's relative future, with the time difference proportional to how far away those stars are from the center. To anyone within the network, it will all appear synced up even though traveling from here to there might be hundreds or thousands of years in "absolute" galactic time.

Hyperdrive can throw that out the window since it's not bounded by the light cone, at least in principle. How the hyperdrive works to prevent causality violations, I have no idea. I have no idea how multiples of light-speed (measured in the millions at that) would interact the wormhole network's light-cone, either. Without further clarification it would seem that the hyperdrive could skate around to arbitrary points, but given in-universe operation that doesn't seem too likely. Saxton has briefly touched on this on his hyperdrive page, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of information around besides the usual FTL tutorials online.

I'm sure that with the relevant maths you could make at least a reasonable guess, or even make a crude Minkowski drawing if you were so inclined.

[Stark]

Hyperdrives necessarily have some temporal technology to avoid causality violations (or crew aging, depending on your point of view). However, this means you can go where you need to and adjust the temporal coordinates later (by waiting, if necessary).

[fgalkin]

How did the ancient Earthican Empire deal with time travelers routinely popping out in its home system and trying to take it over with technology 15000 years more advanced?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Chaotic Neutral]

I'm guessing they line the wormholes with absurd amounts of nukes/whatever they use and hope it kills anything without authorization.

[fgalkin]

...along with the wormhole, yes. Brilliant plan there.

A more interesting idea to consider is that the Earthican Empire actually basically exists in a 15k-year time loop, with it originally being conquered by a future time traveler who introduced advanced futuretech, which was then used as a basis for a massive technological leap forward, which in turn, advanced the level of technology, which allowed another time traveler to conquer it, starting another loop, and so on, until they hit a wall, or reached Nerd Rapture.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Stark]

How did the ancient Earthican Empire deal with time travelers routinely popping out in its home system and trying to take it over with technology 15000 years more advanced?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

15,000 years is clearly long enough to evolve into salamanders with no spacefaring capability. Sorting the message pods at each end containing lottery numbers would be a bigger threat, I think.

[Uncluttered]

Hyperdrives necessarily have some temporal technology to avoid causality violations (or crew aging, depending on your point of view). However, this means you can go where you need to and adjust the temporal coordinates later (by waiting, if necessary).

What absolutely tamperproof mechanism prevents "me" from hacking my hyperdrive, and going back in time to become king of Trantor?

Sounds more like a feature than a bug.
"Quantum MkII Hyperdrive: Because you deserve all the gold, blow, and whores a Galactic Emperor can buy!"

More likely some sort of intrinsic chronological protection has to be taking place.
If not, then every FTL science fiction story line would be completely unfollowable.

It would be worse than giving Shroom Q powers.

"Spock...I...did it...I...had sex...with..every woman....in..the..universe...!"
"Yes Johnny, that is why Babylon 5 is owned by Koala Bears!"
"Luke! I am your father.....and.....your identical twin.....it's complicated Luke......I'll have to explain the tentacles later.....!"

[Uncluttered]

There are actually some interesting questions to consider here.

For a start, it's not necessary to posit "dark energy" having retarded the development of hyperspace travel. The fact that it's pretty much ruled out in principle is enough to restrict it as an alternative. That leaves you with the wormholes, which aren't quite ruled out in principle but have a mountain-range of physical and engineering problems of their own which also make them unlikely.

However, let's assume that these have somehow been bypassed, and the Earthican civilisation spent a half-million years establishing the wormhole tramway network between star systems. You now face a new and interesting set of restrictions on travel.

For a start, I think you'd want the termini of any given wormhole to reside a comfortable distance outside the periphereal boundaries of the two star systems which are connected. You really don't want to perturb the orbits of your planets or any of the debris in the system's Kuiper Belts, so for safety's sake, you want the gates to be located maybe one lightyear away. These would, of course, have to be set in orbits around the galactic core proximate to the star system in question. It also means, over time, that the distances between the gates and the systems will increase, but you may have quite a few centuries before this would become an insurmountable problem. Mainly, it means that it will take time for any starship crawling at STL velocities to reach the wormhole gate from any civilised world, so you've got relativity penalties piling up on that end of any trip. And more relativity penalties will pile up when you exit and start your STL transit toward the destination system.

First Off. I like your post.

I take issue of placing the Wormholes a light year out.
Any civilization with the ability to construct wormholes, should also be able to clear the orbits of debris.

Depending on how you build your wormholes, this problem gets fixed.

If your 5 meter wormhole has to be the mass of Jupiter, the only place to get the mass to make it is.....Jupiter...or Lift hydrogen from the sun. If you can do either of those, you aren't concerned with a few stray comets.
If you manage to use an entire gas giants mass for a wormhole, the best place to build it, is the former gas giants orbit.

If you have small wormhole facilities, you can put them anywhere, making travel to and from a non-issue.

TL/DR: Any civilization with the ability to construct massive wormholes, should also be able to clear the orbits of debris.

Lastly: If I declare that our intrepid generic space hero can also do microjumps with his hyperdrive, would this help?

[Uncluttered]

How did the ancient Earthican Empire deal with time travelers routinely popping out in its home system and trying to take it over with technology 15000 years more advanced?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

They deal with this by holding a Time Traveler convention. There is punch, cookies, and booth babes. The best part about this is, they only ever have to have one convention. Though it gets bigger every probable year.
----------
In all seriousness, you have it ass backwords.

Everywhere, within the network is in the same "Time Zone" as far as the Earthicans are concerned. Information that travels along the wormhole network puts everyone into the "present".
As one year Passes on Earth, one year passes on SpamelotIX. Within the Empire, time flows at a rate of 1 second per second.

Your time traveling invader is in for a surprise. When he takes off from the edge of the Earthican Empire, towards Earth. He will arrive 15000 years later!

All the hotel rooms will be booked.
(Probably by salamanders.)
The traveler should have registered for the biomed convention instead.

[sirocco]

Hum? I thought that if he used hacked hyperdrive he will just arrive in present Earth or somewhere 15000 years and a few days earlier?

[Bottlestein]

@ Uncluttered: It's "Kip Thorne" - I'd appreciate you spelling my GR professor's name correctly

I vote for hyperdrive - it's slightly harder than Uncluttered's understanding of "lightcones"

[Uncluttered]

Hum? I thought that if he used hacked hyperdrive he will just arrive in present Earth or somewhere 15000 years and a few days earlier?

In this case I imagine the past as a valley.

The wormholes are a cog railroad up the side of the valley. They bring you up AND over.

Hyperdrive is a cable car across the valley. It will bring you over, but won't lower you down.

You want to get to the bottom of the valley, not just a set of coordinates.

----------------
I suppose in this instance an elevator is a time machine.