Biological warfare & synthetic factions

Quoting naselus,

Irrelevant. If you are genetically modifying the organism, you can specialize it to the point where it attacks metal preferentially. We're working on a nano-scale at this point. 'Organic' is just carbon compared to silicon at the scale we're looking at. IF you insist that biologicals must be organic (which they really don't, as it's arguable just how alive some micro-orgnisms are - prions, for example, are basically just lumps of protein), then we already have examples of naturally-occurring, unmanipulated bacteria which eat metals quoted within the thread. There's no reason whatsoever that couldn't be weaponized, accelerated and adapted, even with present-day GE technology. And if we include nanobots into the biological category (as many nano-bots are basically constructed from biological materials), then a very fast-acting, silicon-based, self-replicating grey-goo machine would be able to reduce the population of whole planets to dust in a matter of hours, before the Yor have a chance to quickly refit themselves.

You are missing the point. If a microscopic lifeform eats on metals or minerals then it won't feed on your innards. It'll have absolutely no interest going there, which, I assume, is the topic of this thread, that a weapon designated to target biological life will not target metal. Nanobots are not biological, they are nanite robots. Now I'm not saying that such nanobots couldn't be designed, but doing so under the name "Biological Warfare" would be misleading. I'm just trying to point out that they wouldn't work on both organic and synthetic races equally. The 2 systems are just too different.

Quoting naselus,

reply 22

No, that's how we see it too - it's just that this isn't actually that different to organics. Just as the Yor might adapt to make themselves immune to the latest anti-robotic biological organism, we immunize and vaccinate. I'd assume that the 'biological weapons' in question are in constant development, as are defences against them; the initial tech cost is the basic research needed to create and tailor a wide range of offensive weaponized biological agents more or less at will with next to no cost - the computer to manipulate the genome, rather than the manipulation process itself.

Perhaps I'm not so enthusiastic about this because I got briefed on this during my army time, believe me there's no such thing as immunization against top B or C weapons, this is fantasy. Genetic engineering doesn't help here either because once a genetic sequence has been established it cannot be changed in vivo, blatantly speaking you'll get cancer if you try to do so. So the only people surviving such attack are those that already carried an immunity in them from genetic drift or other mutation, historically this could be observed with the black plaque but it was (and usually will be) only a very small minority of people. And considering how lethal modern weapons are, I have serious doubts anyone will survive that.

Now with a robotic lifeform, I think the advantages here are obvious. And I don't think they will have their silicon circuits, (and a computer core doesn't have to be made from strictly silicon either) laid open to reach for your weapons, it would be naturally behind centimeters of metal. Just like a deepsea robot, and the outer skeleton could be anything. A nanobot that is designed to replicate itself needs the materials for this, now lets say it needs 5 different metals etc then it cannot replicate if these metals aren't present. But a robotic lifeform would have all liberty to choose any material for their "clothe" it could even be plastic, composite fibres, wood. And I simply have some doubts that there are lifeforms that could adapt *in a sentient way* to such different situations in a relatively small time, nothing in either evolution or man-made can do that. Not even with Genetic Engineering because it cannot do away or alter the basic organic materials needed to transfer its own information from one replica to another. A carbon-based lifeform as a bacteria or virus cannot mutate to encode its DNA using silicon, lithium or else. At least, not to my knowledge (enlighten me here if you can, this would be most interesting!)

Quoting naselus,

reply 22

Firewalls aren't impervious, and even heuristic anti-virus software needs to be updated regularly. Once again, as long as the Yor are aware of a particular computer-type attack then they will undoubtedly move to counter it, just as the squishier races presumably feel the need to produce anti-toxins and targeted antibiotics in response to new biological attack vectors. I expect that the Yor do have some means to isolate or shut down whole areas of their network that are infected with APTs; indeed, personality-wise, the Yor response to an aggressive, fast-spreading computerized assault on their primary operating systems is probably just remorselessly isolating and kill all units which have contracted it rather than saving them in some way. That may be entire planetary populations burning their modems and waiting for death.

it perhaps had something to do with the arnor/dreadlords imbueing the Spark of Life into the Yor, which, considering how advanced those 2 primeval races are, could also translate to highly sophisticated code. perhaps we are going to witness such a shift in magnitude as well once the first quantum computer cores will be build. The function of these 2 technologies was simply to protect them from global population reduction at the hands of the "plague" megaevent, which was probably ment to work only against organics (although it could affect a custom race using the Yor tree)

Quoting naselus,

reply 22

But galaxy generation simply implies a massively higher level of control over the laws of physics than we presently command. Galaxies generate over time. Therefore, the rules to create galaxies exist in physics. So we just need to know how to accelerate the process. If gravity generation can be achieved, then it can be done on a massive scale (eventually), which means that you can collect the matter rapidly into one place. Then you just ignite a few pockets of hydrogen to make some suns (rather than waiting for them to do so themselves), and the whole process goes by itself from there - though obviously you can continue to adjust by that point, using field manipulation to shunt vast quantities of atoms together and subjecting them to pressure until they form planets etc. None of this is outlandish fantasy stuff.

A turn is 7 days, the speed of gravity has been confirmed with c, therefore it'll take you millions of years to attract enough matter. And from where exactly? Space around galaxies is mostly void, esp. around our local group. If you create a gravitational force that is strong enough to pull, for an example, the very near 2 Magellan clouds fastly to us that force would be so strong it would create a supermassive black hole that would swallow your own galaxy long before creating a new galaxy, along with your gravity-generator-machine with it, goodbuy ))

on a sidenote, from a current scientific standpoint the formation of matter in the observable universe is a somewhat mystery and topic of ot debate because the gravity amanated from it alone cannot be responsible for the structures that are observable.

Quoting naselus,

reply 22

By the end game, you are on the edge of transcending physical reality completely and reaching a higher state of consciousness. You're operating in 11 dimensions. Bending the laws of physics should be fairly trivial at the remove. Moreover, the fundamental particle which we play around with presently are a distant memory; science has moved on and there's been paradigm shift after paradigm shift. The cutting edge of the Standard Model is a quaint artifact of history at that stage, like Pholgiston or Ether; quantum physics and relativity have long since settled their differences and been replaced with the Theory of Everything. 'Doom Ray' is as good a description as any, since frankly we have no idea what the physicists of 2400AD will be talking about - but we can be pretty sure it won't be quarks and M-branes. Half the comedy of the research screen descriptions comes from the fact that these are insanely highly-trained scientists trying to explain what their working on to someone who knows so little science from their point of view that you don't even know the name of the forces that they're manipulating. It would be like trying to discuss the workings of an atom bomb to a medieval peasant.

If the TOE has been found than anything, in any time and any dimension, and also in other multiverses, can be explained mathematically and there is no need to investigate further, or form additional hypothetics - for what? Everything includes just everything otherwise, per definitionem, it's not a complete TOE. Although I cannot prove my position, but I think that the majority of scientists actually state that the law of physics cannot be altered, once a universe has been set in motion they superceed anything and invariably what is happening in that, including any additional dimensions that might be there. If the theory on supergraviation is valid, then we all already operate at 11 dimensions, just that our senses cannot sense that.

What you are essentially talking transcending physical laws is man becoming god, but I'm not going to follow you into a religious discussion. Yes, the game specifically states that as well, but for me, this is also too non-scientific. Especially in such a short time frame as a few years. If the universe doesn't die from a big crunch/bounce or big rip there might be enough time for the occurrence of a sentient quantum brain from random fluctuations in space, not that any of us is going to witness this^^

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Quoting Maiden666,

reply 26

You are missing the point. If a microscopic lifeform eats on metals or minerals then it won't feed on your innards. It'll have absolutely no interest going there, which, I assume, is the topic of this thread, that a weapon designated to target biological life will not target metal. Nanobots are not biological, they are nanite robots. Now I'm not saying that such nanobots couldn't be designed, but doing so under the name "Biological Warfare" would be misleading. I'm just trying to point out that they wouldn't work on both organic and synthetic races equally. The 2 systems are just too different.

No, I do see what you're saying with this - but it's again not really relevant. I doubt that the biological weapons developed from the tech refers to a single nasty bug. It's a whole suite of methods to produce highly lethal organisms, tailored for each specific target race. There's simply no need for the biological weapon you use against the Yor to be the same biological weapon you deploy against the Thalans. In fact, I'd be astonished if it weren't - the same virus that is most effective against insectoid lifeforms is probably not going to be particularly severe in humanoids, and I'm literally about to send 6 billion of my people down onto the planet I just hit. I'll be tailoring the disease to ONLY effect the other guy.

As for nanobots being tiny robots... not so much. Nanomaterials include a wide variety of organic and inorganic materials. Self-assembly (which is largely required of things only a few dozen times the size of an atom) is also a largely organic process, so most nanobots are about as 'alive' as a virus can be said to be.

Perhaps I'm not so enthusiastic about this because I got briefed on this during my army time, believe me there's no such thing as immunization against top B or C weapons, this is fantasy.

I'm sorry, but this is total nonsense. Anthax has vaccines (hell, anthrax can be treated with antibiotics). Smallpox has vaccines. Brucella has a potential vaccine currently in trials. Botulism has anti-toxins. It's an arms race effect. Today's incurable biological weapon is tomorrow's compulsory vaccine for school kids. If you can come up with a weapon, someone, somewhere can come up with a counter for it eventually. And nothing motivates finding a cure like a legion of heavily armed aliens showing up and starting to bomb your planets with a disease.

Genetic engineering doesn't help here either because once a genetic sequence has been established it cannot be changed in vivo, blatantly speaking you'll get cancer if you try to do so. So the only people surviving such attack are those that already carried an immunity in them from genetic drift or other mutation, historically this could be observed with the black plaque but it was (and usually will be) only a very small minority of people. And considering how lethal modern weapons are, I have serious doubts anyone will survive that.

So we change the genome in vitro instead. Genetically tailored babies are already do-able, and we're in the deep and distant past. Besides, once again, just because we can't change in vivo right now doesn't mean it can't be done in 300 years, or done by the other races. And cancer may well be something you drop in to the GP's office to cure by then.

Now with a robotic lifeform, I think the advantages here are obvious. And I don't think they will have their silicon circuits, (and a computer core doesn't have to be made from strictly silicon either) laid open to reach for your weapons, it would be naturally behind centimeters of metal. Just like a deepsea robot, and the outer skeleton could be anything. A nanobot that is designed to replicate itself needs the materials for this, now lets say it needs 5 different metals etc then it cannot replicate if these metals aren't present. But a robotic lifeform would have all liberty to choose any material for their "clothe" it could even be plastic, composite fibres, wood. And I simply have some doubts that there are lifeforms that could adapt *in a sentient way* to such different situations in a relatively small time, nothing in either evolution or man-made can do that. Not even with Genetic Engineering because it cannot do away or alter the basic organic materials needed to transfer its own information from one replica to another. A carbon-based lifeform as a bacteria or virus cannot mutate to encode its DNA using silicon, lithium or else. At least, not to my knowledge (enlighten me here if you can, this would be most interesting!)

So make'em out of whatever, they still use elements from the periodic table and there's still going to be stuff that can act on that. Also, you seem to be allowing the entire planetary population to manufacture a new body and change into it in a matter of minutes, rather than the weeks it will take to fabricate the materials and then transfer all population into them. By the time they've prepared the new bodies, most of the population will be dead... and they're trying to do this in the middle of a planetary invasion.

it perhaps had something to do with the arnor/dreadlords imbueing the Spark of Life into the Yor, which, considering how advanced those 2 primeval races are, could also translate to highly sophisticated code. perhaps we are going to witness such a shift in magnitude as well once the first quantum computer cores will be build. The function of these 2 technologies was simply to protect them from global population reduction at the hands of the "plague" megaevent, which was probably ment to work only against organics (although it could affect a custom race using the Yor tree)

Highly sophisticated code is still code, and an advanced enough attacker can therefore re-create or crack it. Besides, the spark of life is likely not the entire Yor. Each specimen like contains dozens of ancillary, lower-tech parts which, if they all broke down, would incapacitate the robot. There's not much in defence in this aside from magic tbh.

A turn is 7 days, the speed of gravity has been confirmed with c, therefore it'll take you millions of years to attract enough matter. And from where exactly? Space around galaxies is mostly void, esp. around our local group. If you create a gravitational force that is strong enough to pull, for an example, the very near 2 Magellan clouds fastly to us that force would be so strong it would create a supermassive black hole that would swallow your own galaxy long before creating a new galaxy, along with your gravity-generator-machine with it, goodbuy

))

Yes, that's why the tech said 'don't do this in our own galaxy' Most galaxies seem to form around supermassive black hole clusters, and the creation of one in the process isn't a surprise - it's practically expected. Hell, that might even be what the machine is designed to do.

on a sidenote, from a current scientific standpoint the formation of matter in the observable universe is a somewhat mystery and topic of ot debate because the gravity amanated from it alone cannot be responsible for the structures that are observable.

Oh, now let's not start on Dark Matter.

If the TOE has been found than anything, in any time and any dimension, and also in other multiverses, can be explained mathematically and there is no need to investigate further, or form additional hypothetics - for what? Everything includes just everything otherwise, per definitionem, it's not a complete TOE. Although I cannot prove my position, but I think that the majority of scientists actually state that the law of physics cannot be altered, once a universe has been set in motion they superceed anything and invariably what is happening in that, including any additional dimensions that might be there. If the theory on supergraviation is valid, then we all already operate at 11 dimensions, just that our senses cannot sense that.

What you are essentially talking transcending physical laws is man becoming god, but I'm not going to follow you into a religious discussion. Yes, the game specifically states that as well, but for me, this is also too non-scientific. Especially in such a short time frame as a few years. If the universe doesn't die from a big crunch/bounce or big rip there might be enough time for the occurrence of a sentient quantum brain from random fluctuations in space, not that any of us is going to witness this^^

Of course there's need to investigate further. The ToE gives you the tools to understand things, but does not mean you already understand them. You still need to do the math for each specific case. It's not like discovering the ToE will just make scientists everywhere go 'Right, that's it, we've finished science. It's over. Everyone can go home now'. It'll just shift to applied physics rather than theoretical.

As to whether the laws of physics can be altered, well, yes, they can. That's how Black Holes work. The laws of physics change once you cross the event horizon. It's arguable if you're still in the universe at that point, And with regard to 11 dimensions, we exist in 11 but only perceive 3 (4 if you want to include time, though really we don't have any free action in it).

And finally, yeah, I don't much like the ascent to godhood stuff either. I also hated the spaceship victory in Civ

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Quoting naselus,

reply 27

As to whether the laws of physics can be altered, well, yes, they can. That's how Black Holes work. The laws of physics change once you cross the event horizon. It's arguable if you're still in the universe at that point, And with regard to 11 dimensions, we exist in 11 but only perceive 3 (4 if you want to include time, though really we don't have any free action in it).

Alot of this is debatable.

The implication that a Black Hole forms a gateway to another universe etc and that if someone falls into it disappears from our universe actually violates the physical laws of the standard model (which, granted, is incomplete). In more crude words, if I vanish through it to appear somewhere else then the other mass that basically forms the black hole in the first place would vanish as well, but without mass no black hole would be able to exist or emit gravity, so this is not happening.

We also know that Black Holes slowly diffuse by Hawkins radiation, their internal mass becomes radiation over a very long timeframe.

We also don't really know how Black Holes ultimately work, because, if they form a singularity the parameters of temperature, density etc rise to infinity and then, Einstein general relativety theory is unable to describe this. As such, this theory is incomplete once you approach Plank scale, and because Dark Matter and/or Dark Energy also hasn't been observed either (it's existance is simply taken to correct the mathematical calculation to reflect what we see on a grand galactic scale) this gives even more doubts on the general validity of it.

Actually, stringtheories or quantum loop gravitation theories do away with the 0-dimensional approach to describe particles, and no more singularities are possible. Because of this, these theories are much more suitable to be joined with the GUT to form a TOE.

Therefore I don't believe that the law of physics change in black holes. What makes you think that they don't apply here?

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Stardock should just get rid of anything that does not exist in our current state of technology. We should be trying to colonize the galaxy in spaceshuttles, and we should be waiting hundreds or thousands of game turns to get our ship to the next nearest star system. Then you won't have people claiming that the sci-fi world they created does not fit what they think is reasonable.

Or they can keep the game fun and just keep doing what they are doing. Either way is good for me.

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Quoting Maiden666,

reply 28

Alot of this is debatable.

The implication that a Black Hole forms a gateway to another universe etc and that if someone falls into it disappears from our universe actually violates the physical laws of the standard model (which, granted, is incomplete). In more crude words, if I vanish through it to appear somewhere else then the other mass that basically forms the black hole in the first place would vanish as well, but without mass no black hole would be able to exist or emit gravity, so this is not happening.

Yes, but that's not the implication I'm making. I'm not claiming you can fall 'through' a black hole (like somne cheap 1950s pulp novel ), but rather than as you enter a black hole the laws of physics break down. At the event horizon, the gravitational pull becomes so powerful that it punctures a hole in the fabric of space-time itself - hence why even light cannot escape, despite travelling at the effective speed limit of the universe. As you fall into the black hole, time itself stretches out and finally breaks, meaning that you cease to exist in time at the horizon itself; you effectively cease to exist in time. Once we've gotten rid of time, well then physics is already broken. The ability to completely counter the speed of light also outright contradicts special relativity, and information theory has a whole bunch of issues with black holes too.

You can find a lot of physicists saying that black holes break physics, and probably just as many saying that they don't; it's really a matter of opinion rather than anyone having any really convincing math.

We also know that Black Holes slowly diffuse by Hawkins radiation, their internal mass becomes radiation over a very long timeframe.

Yes, but not through anything actually escaping the event horizon. Particles and anti-particles spontaneously generate in space all the time, but they cancel each other out and cease to exist within femtoseconds. At the very edge of the black hole, however, sometimes the anti-particle gets caught in the event horizon but the positive particle does not. The net effect, from the universes point of view, is that there is 1 less particle in the black hole, and 1 more particle outside of it... but they're not really the same particle. That's the source of Hawking Radiation (and the only plausible source in that doesn't require something breaking c).

We also don't really know how Black Holes ultimately work, because, if they form a singularity the parameters of temperature, density etc rise to infinity and then, Einstein general relativety theory is unable to describe this. As such, this theory is incomplete once you approach Plank scale, and because Dark Matter and/or Dark Energy also hasn't been observed either (it's existance is simply taken to correct the mathematical calculation to reflect what we see on a grand galactic scale) this gives even more doubts on the general validity of it.

Actually, stringtheories or quantum loop gravitation theories do away with the 0-dimensional approach to describe particles, and no more singularities are possible. Because of this, these theories are much more suitable to be joined with the GUT to form a TOE.

Therefore I don't believe that the law of physics change in black holes. What makes you think that they don't apply here?

Anything either of us say on this is blind conjecture. Quantum Gravity, in my opinion, has a tendency to just keep adding dimensions until it's own maths add up, which I regard somewhat as cheating; it's not so much solving the bizarre nature of gravity as blaming it on another dimension and then assuming it can 'leak in'. To my ears, that sounds like '50s pulp sci-fi again really I'd say it's pretty unlikely that whatever eventual theory of everything that does emerge will be based in any of theories we currently understand - and Dark Matter and Dark Energy are really just saying 'this is being effected by a force we don't know anything about yet'.

But this may be considered a tiny bit off-topic

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Larsenex

Join Date 04/2009

+212

All this talk about synthetic life being immune to 'biological' warefare is amusing.

I know we are talking 'pure robotic' species but the New Battlestar Galactica did a great job on the two different species within the Cylons. The 'higher evolved' Cylons were also subject to biological problems. They were so close to humans you could not tell them apart even when medically examined. The Centurion caste which is analogous to the Yor were kept 'brain dead' as the higher variants feared giving them independence.

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Quoting naselus,

reply 30

Yes, but that's not the implication I'm making. I'm not claiming you can fall 'through' a black hole (like somne cheap 1950s pulp novel ), but rather than as you enter a black hole the laws of physics break down.

What laws exactly? That photons are pulled back? The curvature of spacetime allows for greater values than c, this is not a contradiction of Einstein's theories. This also explains the immense inflationairy expansion of space right after the BigBang, space itself isn't limited to c.

Information might also not be lost within. If it's true that they slowly perish from Hawkin's Radiation, then everything that is bound within should come outside sooner or later. Quantum laws state that informational loss cannot happen, but if it indeed does, I'd like to know where did it go to?

The thing I don't understand with that Hawkins radiation is why only anti-particles fall within? Obviously these particles/antiparticles carry opposite spin, and swing to an diametral direction, but if they are randomly created in, also, a randon direction then the likelihood of a normal particle crossing the Schwarzschild radius should also be at 50%. Which would mean any blackhole should always acquire in as much mass as it would loose to the same mechanism.

This radiation is also somewhat a proof that physical laws do still apply normaly within blackholes (although I clearly don't get what you mean with it in the first place). Because, these antiparticles actually are able to find another partner and thus, cancel themselves out (=blackhole looses mass). Now with changed physical laws inside of a black hole you wouldn't have a guarantee that this could happen, perhaps matter/energy would look entirely different there... Or if time ceases to flow there, then that particle couldn't actually travel, and also wouldn't find anybody. Both scenarios would mean that the inside couldn't radiate to the outside...

Personally I find the implication of time being a fourth dimension to be misleading. If I fall into a blackhole I don't vanish from time, because I will still be there. You just cannot reach me. Although you could observe me somewhat eternally because at the moment I cross the event horizon the light emitted from my body will cancel out its speed versus the gravity and stay in place. I might appear frozen in time, but this is an illusion because it's only the light, the mass of my body is already somewhere else. As such, one has to realize that light is only the carrier of information.

Quoting naselus,

reply 30

Quantum Gravity, in my opinion, has a tendency to just keep adding dimensions until it's own maths add up, which I regard somewhat as cheating;

yes, but the math has to add up, this is the sole reason of why new theories are formed in the first place because the old ones cannot corroborate what is sometimes being observed

Quoting Larsenex,

reply 31

I know we are talking 'pure robotic' species but the New Battlestar Galactica did a great job on the two different species within the Cylons. The 'higher evolved' Cylons were also subject to biological problems. They were so close to humans you could not tell them apart even when medically examined. The Centurion caste which is analogous to the Yor were kept 'brain dead' as the higher variants feared giving them independence.

Actually Boomer was red-positive but Baltar lied about it for whatever reason, and Leoben was severely affected by the radiation from the reclusive spacestation in the miniseries. I wonder why they just didn't recreate that on a smaller scale.

But you're right, actually even the Centurions and the Raiders were biological at their core, and thus, could have been affected by a biological whatever. (I'm not so sure on the old Centurion models shown in the ending Daybreak and also in the prequel Caprica). But, as seen in Caprica, Cylon sentience stems from virtualizing an organic mind, thus there is an underlying incentive to come back to their organic origin (although Cabal would disagree )

But in the case of Yor - they downright hate all organics and want to see them all wiped out....

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[quote who="Maiden666" reply="32" id="3567717"]

What laws exactly? That photons are pulled back? The curvature of spacetime allows for greater values than c, this is not a contradiction of Einstein's theories. This also explains the immense inflationairy expansion of space right after the BigBang, space itself isn't limited to c.

The curvature of spacetime doesn't really work right when you have this level of gravitation - that's why the 'rubber sheet' diagrams of spacetime usually show black holes as infinitely deep troughs. Depending on the model you use, matter is either be destroyed at the end (firewall paradox), or must lose it's information (both of which are effectively breaking the laws of physics as we understand them). Finally, you achieve infinite density, and space-time itself becomes infinitely curved at the heart of the singularity. This is a complete breakdown of physics as we understand it.

Information might also not be lost within. If it's true that they slowly perish from Hawkin's Radiation, then everything that is bound within should come outside sooner or later. Quantum laws state that informational loss cannot happen, but if it indeed does, I'd like to know where did it go to?

That's the Black Hole Information Paradox. The model of Hawking radiation doesn't allow anything to escape from the event horizon - rather, it allows the hole to accumulate negative mass generated through quantum fluctuations near the edge - but has serious trouble explaining why this doesn't amount to the loss of information. After all, the new particle, having been generated by energy fluctuation from the uncertainty principle, ought to have random information which is unconnected to anything within the Hole.

I believe the best potential answer given (which is again kind of hand-wavey) is that the information destroyed by the anti-particle is instantly replicated in the equivalent positive particle (that has escaped) due to quantum entanglement. The negative particle mirrors the particle it's destroying during annihilation, and the external entangled positive particle receives this information and re-creates the destroyed particle in space. Thus information theory isn't violated. This is, however, pretty controversial (and, as I say, barely a step above saying 'because it's magic'); there's plenty of top-level physicists who argue that Black Holes DO destroy information and thus, once again, break the laws of physics.

The thing I don't understand with that Hawkins radiation is why only anti-particles fall within? Obviously these particles/antiparticles carry opposite spin, and swing to an diametral direction, but if they are randomly created in, also, a randon direction then the likelihood of a normal particle crossing the Schwarzschild radius should also be at 50%. Which would mean any blackhole should always acquire in as much mass as it would loose to the same mechanism.

The one that falls into the black hole has to be negative in order to honour the preservation of total energy (though since the no-hair conjecture states that it's impossible to tell whether any given black hole is made up of matter or antimatter, it's equally possible for there to be other, anti-matter black holes where the emitted particle must always be negative - you'd get the same effect, but the Hawking Radiation would consist of negative particles). Any other result would be a violation of thermodynamics, and so simply doesn't happen. Yes, that's not a very convincing argument, but it is the the actual reasoning offered for this.

This radiation is also somewhat a proof that physical laws do still apply normaly within blackholes (although I clearly don't get what you mean with it in the first place). Because, these antiparticles actually are able to find another partner and thus, cancel themselves out (=blackhole looses mass). Now with changed physical laws inside of a black hole you wouldn't have a guarantee that this could happen, perhaps matter/energy would look entirely different there... Or if time ceases to flow there, then that particle couldn't actually travel, and also wouldn't find anybody. Both scenarios would mean that the inside couldn't radiate to the outside...

And yet the radiation also leads to the Firewall paradox, and may cause the Black Hole Information Paradox, thus breaking physical laws within the Black Hole... Every time physicists do find a way round one of the ways that BHs break physics, they generally have to introduce two more inexplicable physics-breaking ideas.

And the inside does not radiate outside. The radiation isn't like thermal radiation; it's not emitted from the black hole, but rather a result of quantum effects on the edge of the horizon. Anything within the event horizon does not escape while the black hole remains massive enough to have an event horizon. Information is trapped within (which is again breaking info theory, since trapped is the same as destroyed in this context). There was a paper last year which postulated that the information is conserved within the black hole until such a time as the mass reduces enough to lose the horizon, where upon it can be recovered through analysis of the correlation of the remaining matter... but this is hard to believe in the case of supermassives which have dissapated over time, where the remaining matter must be an extraordinarily tiny proportion of the original whole.

Anyway, the fact that time isn't experienced within a black hole doesn't mean that the anti-particle cannot reach it's destination - as time ceases to be experienced, distance reduces to become lower than the Planck length (in another breach of conventional physics) and so there is no space for the particle to travel through.

Personally I find the implication of time being a fourth dimension to be misleading. If I fall into a blackhole I don't vanish from time, because I will still be there. You just cannot reach me. Although you could observe me somewhat eternally because at the moment I cross the event horizon the light emitted from my body will cancel out its speed versus the gravity and stay in place. I might appear frozen in time, but this is an illusion because it's only the light, the mass of my body is already somewhere else. As such, one has to realize that light is only the carrier of information.

Light has special properties which mean that it's not really just the carrier of information - relativity shows that light operates differently from everything else, and that the speed of light is directly connected to time - this is why photons don't experience time (and also experience all distance as less than the planck length). Under the intense gravitational pull beyond the event horizon, you achieve such acceleration that time stops from your perspective.

yes, but the math has to add up, this is the sole reason of why new theories are formed in the first place because the old ones cannot corroborate what is sometimes being observed

It's still totally cheating though The extra dimensions are only 'observed' in that they're needed for the maths to add up, so it borders on circular reasoning. And the other forces are presumed not to exist in those higher dimensions - they're only used for gravity. Basically, quantum physics can't explain gravity, and so quantum gravity just does whatever the hell is necessary to let quantum physics explain it - even if the explanation itself raises way more questions than it answers. This is maths added to more maths to describe the behaviour of undiscovered particles, which makes the whole thing pretty self-indulgent at this point imo. String theory is generally better supported, but that's not really a surprise given that it's rather older.

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DARCA1213

Join Date 01/2014

+106

Looky looky. People think there they are theoretical physicist now and can but that unto the game! (Only maiden666 is right anyway )

How about every idea stop Being a debate and we say yes to the dress/tech inclusion. Having a 50 50 split over a singular tech in a game because debating the realism of having it, is just weird and a waste of time and effort if every new idea has to be perfectly logical and the creator has to pass a IQ test for majority public approval!

Just let-it-go as it would be fun and cool to have in the game and that's all that matters. It won't kill you.

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Quoting DARCA1213,

reply 34

Just let-it-go as it would be fun and cool to have in the game and that's all that matters. It won't kill you.

I see, the arguments put forward in favour were all 'it's unrealistic for Yor to be effected by X', and then when we furnished real life examples of stuff which would do so it becomes' let's not worry about the realism'. Fair enough. I also don't think it would be fun and cool to buff what's already arguably the most overpowered faction, either. I could see having immunity to special invasion tactics as a trait... but the Yor would have to sacrifice one of their existing ones.

+1

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Quoting naselus,

reply 35

I could see having immunity to special invasion tactics as a trait... but the Yor would have to sacrifice one of their existing ones.

Or be made sufficiently more vulnerable to another (set of) invasion tactic(s) to compensate. E.g. "synthetic factions are immune to biological warfare but cannot become completely immune to information warfare and information warfare is three times more effective against synthetic factions than normal." And if they ever break populations down by species, it's something which is potentially not unreasonable to allow since presumably the immunity would only apply to the portion of the population which was synthetic.

That said, I'm a bit leery of handing out invasion-type immunities. I'd much rather see any such traits reduce the effectiveness of the invasion tactic rather than shut the tactic down completely (the same goes for the invasion immunity techs; I'd greatly prefer the techs to halve the effectiveness or something like that than the current model where the invasion tactic is rendered completely useless). The current model is just pushing everyone towards burning down the planet to take it, regardless of whether the invading empire should be inclined to minimize collateral damage or maximize their chances of successfully invading with minimal losses.

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DARCA1213

Join Date 01/2014

+106

There are already immunities for those invasions already. Though I am 100% confident I could mod in the immunity, and the effects of information warfare in less than 10 minutes. It's only one section of code for the immunity to biological warfare added to the synthetic ability. (And changing the text file.)

It's also simple to add the vulnerability to information warfare, same principle.

Point is once again, for myself at least; even if it's not officially adopted into the game, it makes no sense for someone to say it's good enough as is, or not needed, or since you can imagine it, when it cost nothing and makes little difference to any party if it's in or not, it would just be fun and immersive to people. But somehow it's controversial.

/rant.

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