Author Topic: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication  (Read 4536 times)

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Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
Prior to the destruction of the Renjian, how much did elements of the UEF and either the Terran or Vasudan components of the GTVA know about the other?

I understand that the GTA must have sent recon probes through the Gateway prior to the 14th Battlegroup, so neither side was unaware that the node was stabilized. But even before that, were there data packets transmitted across the light years between Sol and Alpha Centauri? How complete were they? Rudimentary Nagari contact between the Fedayeen and HoL?

Surely there had to be enough contact to prompt the GTA to preemptively invade Sol to prevent the (largely) pacifistic Ubuntu philosophy from spreading. How much of a surprise was Nagari contact with the Vishnans to the GTA?

What did the President know and when did he know it?

 

Offline mr.WHO

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
I read somewhere that normal radio communication signal become so weak that after traveling approx 2 or 3 light years it's become weaker than natural galaxy noise static.

This means that SETI is a waste of money and all the stuff we are transmitting right now won't even make to Alpha Centauri.


Dunno about Freespace universe, but unless they build Arcadia size antenna and reciever on both sides just to send a mail and wait 8 years for response there might not been any communication prior to re-stabilization of the node.

 

Offline procdrone

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
PRIOR to the destruction of the Renjian, I remember lore telling that GTVA was sending unmanned probes (via Jumpgate) to Earth. UEF was receiving their probes with open arms.
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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
I read somewhere that normal radio communication signal become so weak that after traveling approx 2 or 3 light years it's become weaker than natural galaxy noise static.

That is entirely true if are sending an omnidirectional signal. If you focus the beam, it will retain its strength much much further.

 

Offline Rhys

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
I read somewhere that normal radio communication signal become so weak that after traveling approx 2 or 3 light years it's become weaker than natural galaxy noise static.

That is entirely true if are sending an omnidirectional signal. If you focus the beam, it will retain its strength much much further.

Taking planetary orbit into account, it would be nearly impossible to accurately send a tight-beam signal to any facility on Earth or Mars. Stations even more so.

 

Offline rance

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
The way I see it, the GTVA (and presumable the UEF) have FTL communication, but it requires Comm Buoy's (as seen in AoA) presumably to boost the signal. So, if they did send a signal towards Earth it would require these Buoy's to get there in a reasonable time without corruption and distortion. For signals to travel across GTVA space I would assume they use Jumpgates since it would be impossible to set up Buoy's in between systems due to subspace jumping being limited to the gravity well they're currently in. When the Sol Gate collapsed, whatever they use to send signals thought the gate was lost as well, making communication between the two impossible. However, Nagari could circumvent all this but I assume would be primarily between the HoL and people who follow Ubuntu, so the GTVA would still be left in the dark. As for knowledge before the invasion, I think the GTVA would have several plans in place before they returned to Sol, one of these plans being invasion, they decided to invade once the probes discovered the Ubuntu philosophy that would be damaging to the GTVA.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2015, 11:15:52 am by rance »

 
Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
Taking planetary orbit into account, it would be nearly impossible to accurately send a tight-beam signal to any facility on Earth or Mars. Stations even more so.

Even if you just focus your signal down to a single quadrant in xyz space, you've boosted your signal strength 8 times for the same input power, which will increase the detectable distance by 2 sq-rt 2 times. I'm not talking about spot focus here, just a perfectly reasonable directional antenna. As of 1998, Voyager 1 was ~9.5 light hours from Earth, has a 3.4 meter directional antenna, a 23 watt transmitter (about 8x the power of a cell phone), and we are able to detect its signal on Earth with a 34 meter dish. Lightyears are great distances, but if you knew Earth was still there to listen to, you could easily build some pretty sensitive receivers and extremely powerful transmitters in Alpha Centauri. And you could do it for far less than Sol-Delta Serpentis gateway.

 

Offline qwadtep

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
Even if signaled transmission is impossible (for whatever reason) there's the option of STL transit. It's only 4.4 light years from Sol to Alpha Centauri; for the antimatter cost of a Tsunami bomb you could easily send a probe the size of Voyager, containing a data core and omnidirectional beacon, from one system to the other at upwards of 75% light speed. Once decelerated in the target system the beacon could be picked up by the Solar/GTVA ships, providing a heartbeat and news from the other side.

 
Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
Surely with all their physics defying technology they can get a better signal.

 

Offline mr.WHO

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
Even if signaled transmission is impossible (for whatever reason) there's the option of STL transit. It's only 4.4 light years from Sol to Alpha Centauri; for the antimatter cost of a Tsunami bomb you could easily send a probe the size of Voyager, containing a data core and omnidirectional beacon, from one system to the other at upwards of 75% light speed. Once decelerated in the target system the beacon could be picked up by the Solar/GTVA ships, providing a heartbeat and news from the other side.

Assuming that you won't hit anything while crossing the void. Even the grain of sand could be deadly for anything anti-matter powered if you hit it at 0.75c.
I think you would need something the size of Orion destroyer and you would have to accelerate to and from 0.75c. This might not be resonable "messanger probe".


Surely with all their physics defying technology they can get a better signal.

Radio is not physics defying technology. it's just no matter how good it is it won't be suitable for galactic range comunication.

What I wonder is why they don't use quantum entanglement for FTL communication. At FS1 era this should be already viable (albeit epensive) method of communication.
Maybe till Lucifer node-explosion everybody just thought it's more easy, cheap and reliable to use Jump-node buoys communication (I wonder what was the message lag between furthers GTA outpost to Earth - I guess anything from a few hours to a few days is acceptable and do not push the need for real-time quantum communication). Especially that till FS1 no one realy considered collapsing the jump nodes.

 

Offline Gee1337

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
Please note that as I write this, my understanding of some of the concepts below are somewhat limited. Whilst I believe that the fundamentals in this post are correct, I am humble enough to hold my hands up and stand corrected, so please do so if I am wrong!

Whereas quantum entanglement forms of communication might be theoretically possible, I wouldn't want to speculate too much on this until CERN gives us more information about dark matter. I believe that even with quantum entanglement, there is still the problem of a time lag as I don't believe that micro-atomic particles would be able to transmit a signal in a reasonable time span... although albeit, I could be wrong as I am no physicist.

The only way I can think of a quantum entanglement theory working is if we would be able to manipulate quantum particles similar to that of how Nikola Tesla came up with the idea of alternating current for electricity.

I think a more viable option would be in the form of a tachyon based communication system. With tachyons being able to travel faster than the speed of light, the time delay would be considerably decreased. Now, as far as I know, tachyons are only theorised... so the question would be if the UEF and GTVA have harnassed their potential applications.
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Offline The E

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
Whereas quantum entanglement forms of communication might be theoretically possible, I wouldn't want to speculate too much on this until CERN gives us more information about dark matter. I believe that even with quantum entanglement, there is still the problem of a time lag as I don't believe that micro-atomic particles would be able to transmit a signal in a reasonable time span... although albeit, I could be wrong as I am no physicist.

The only way I can think of a quantum entanglement theory working is if we would be able to manipulate quantum particles similar to that of how Nikola Tesla came up with the idea of alternating current for electricity.

Quantum entanglement is a neat concept, but utterly useless as a communications channel. There's a lot of math behind this, which you can see on the wiki.
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Offline rance

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
In laymen terms, if quantum entanglement worked, we would have FTL communication, and that would violate causality. A Reply to a message could arrive before the message is sent.

 
Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
BP:AoA canon tells us that the GTVA has FTL communication between star systems without relay buoys. See communications between Bei and the Temeraire in Journey of a Thousand Miles as he chases after the GTC Duke through Delta Serpentis, Ross 128, Laramis, and N362.

Since we've established that it was definitely possible for communication to occur (one way or another). I'm really more curious in what information was exchanged between the GTVA and UEF (or other groups) prior to the arrival of the 14th Battlegroup.

 

Offline Gee1337

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
@ The_E

Thanks, I didn't read the article completely... but what you say resonates what I thought (whether right or wrong) that quantum entanglement would not be a suitable channel.

@ rance

Again... reinforcing the point.

@ Rheavatarin

I thought that communication was reliant on subspace communications, hence how this is possible in AoA. But we could not effectively communicate with Sol because the channel was essentially cut off when the Lucifer explosion collapsed the node.

Something more in depth as to what was actually said/transmitted between the two factions would actually be very interesting!
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Offline mr.WHO

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
In laymen terms, if quantum entanglement worked, we would have FTL communication, and that would violate causality. A Reply to a message could arrive before the message is sent.

How in the world insant communication between any two points in the universe breaks causality? There is no way you could receive message before you send it. Yes it would arrive much faster (immediately) than traveling in via radio at classic speed of light making a false impression of "Faster than light" speed, but it doesn't mean that this will magically make time goes backward to the time before sending the message.

I assume that all quantum scale stuff if so small and specific, that all reactions there simply ignore space or/and time dimension - with that assumption it's quite logical that a particle could have multiple states in the same time, or beign in multiple places in the same time or react with eachother at any distance.

Still I don't understand how they think that they can effectively use this in cryptology (to send encryptions keys between two points) but in the same time they claim they won't be able to use it for FTL communication. To me it's a contradiction.

 

Offline mr.WHO

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
BP:AoA canon tells us that the GTVA has FTL communication between star systems without relay buoys. See communications between Bei and the Temeraire in Journey of a Thousand Miles as he chases after the GTC Duke through Delta Serpentis, Ross 128, Laramis, and N362.

Since we've established that it was definitely possible for communication to occur (one way or another). I'm really more curious in what information was exchanged between the GTVA and UEF (or other groups) prior to the arrival of the 14th Battlegroup.

It depents on the reqirements for FTL technology. Does the base for it appeared before end of FS1 or after. Does it require emmiter/ & receive on both sides or not.
Depending on answers the FTL communication between GTVA and UEF could be possible or the FTL communication is new and specific tech that has the proper infrastruture only in GTVA space.

 

Offline rance

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
In laymen terms, if quantum entanglement worked, we would have FTL communication, and that would violate causality. A Reply to a message could arrive before the message is sent.

How in the world insant communication between any two points in the universe breaks causality? There is no way you could receive message before you send it. Yes it would arrive much faster (immediately) than traveling in via radio at classic speed of light making a false impression of "Faster than light" speed, but it doesn't mean that this will magically make time goes backward to the time before sending the message.

I assume that all quantum scale stuff if so small and specific, that all reactions there simply ignore space or/and time dimension - with that assumption it's quite logical that a particle could have multiple states in the same time, or beign in multiple places in the same time or react with eachother at any distance.

Still I don't understand how they think that they can effectively use this in cryptology (to send encryptions keys between two points) but in the same time they claim they won't be able to use it for FTL communication. To me it's a contradiction.

Look at the answer to the question posted here: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/52249/how-does-faster-than-light-travel-violate-causality. (starting with the line "There's a couple of these questions kicking around")
It does a better job than I could explaining it.

 
Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
It depents on the reqirements for FTL technology. Does the base for it appeared before end of FS1 or after. Does it require emmiter/ & receive on both sides or not.
Depending on answers the FTL communication between GTVA and UEF could be possible or the FTL communication is new and specific tech that has the proper infrastruture only in GTVA space.

But we've also established that ordinary radio communication is possible. If the two polities can build destroyers, intrasystem gates, and space platforms of the size and power seen, it would not be difficult to build multi-gigawatt radio transmitters and installation scale antenna. Also note that rudimentary Nagari communication is possible between very specific factions. I'm far less concerned with how information traveled, as with what information traveled. I find it far too difficult a pill to swallow that there was zero communication between Sol and the GTVA over the decades between FS1 and BP:AoA.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Pre-war UEF/GTVA Communication
Still I don't understand how they think that they can effectively use this in cryptology (to send encryptions keys between two points) but in the same time they claim they won't be able to use it for FTL communication. To me it's a contradiction.
It can't be used for sending encryption keys; what it can be used for is generating the same encryption key in two different places simultaneously. This is where the analogy with the two people listening to radio signals comes in; two distant locations are receiving information simultaneously, but they're not sending it back and forth.
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