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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Mobius on January 20, 2014, 06:56:51 am

Title: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Mobius on January 20, 2014, 06:56:51 am
Generally, we assume the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis was created by the Shivans, who blew a star up during their war with the Ancients. The fact that in FreeSpace 2 a second Knossos, or Knossos 2 (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Knossos#Knossos_2), was found in the nebula, leads me to ask you all a question. Shouldn't supernova shockwaves literally pulverize all kinds of ships and installations present in a system, and even cause a lot of problems to assets eventually present in systems only a few light years away from it?

In the custom made campaign Warzone,

Spoiler:
the GTVA found debris of a Sathanas that was supposedly destroyed by a supernova.

Is it plausible? In the cutscene End part 1, we see the supernova shockwave turning a Deimos and a Moloch into pieces. What are the chances that, despite known to be very resistant (it took three Meson Bombs to destroy Knossos 1 in A Flaming Sword (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/A_Flaming_Sword)), a Knossos could survive that and remain functional for at least eight thousand years?

(Jump to 02:15 if you don't want to watch the entire cutscene.)[/color]

Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: The E on January 20, 2014, 07:14:22 am
Generally, we assume the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis was created by the Shivans, who blew a star up during their war with the Ancients.

Do we? I mean, sure, it's not completely unreasonable to speculate that this is the case, but I cannot remember any strong hints about this in canon.

Quote
The fact that in FreeSpace 2 a second Knossos, or Knossos 2 (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Knossos#Knossos_2), was found in the nebula, leads me to ask you all a question. Shouldn't supernova shockwaves literally pulverize all kinds of ships and installations present in a system, and even cause a lot of problems to assets eventually present in systems only a few light years away from it?

Assuming, of course, that the nebula is a shivan-induced supernova remnant, and that the Knossos was there before the nova went off. I am not sure whether there is any canon information that could answer this question either way.

Quote
In the custom made campaign Warzone,

Spoiler:
the GTVA found debris of a Sathanas that was supposedly destroyed by a supernova.

Is it plausible? In the cutscene End part 1, we see the supernova shockwave turning a Deimos and a Moloch into pieces. What are the chances that, despite known to be very resistant (it took three Meson Bombs to destroy Knossos 1 in A Flaming Sword (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/A_Flaming_Sword)), a Knossos could survive that and remain functional for at least eight thousand years?

It's as plausible as anything. There simply isn't enough canon information to decide this question either way.

EDIT: About youtube embedding: To get it to work correctly, you need to put only the youtube video id in between the yt tags (It's the part after the /watch?v= part of the youtube URL). 
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Deepstar on January 20, 2014, 07:16:19 am
Despite the Ancient-Shivan War Mod, in which the player participate in the destruction of the system behind Gamma Draconis, i do not like the theory that the Knossos survived the supernova.

I think it is much more plausible, that the Ancients reached this system long centuries after a supernova...so to a time it was already a nebula.
Or, to consider the Ancients behavior in ASW, maybe they returned to this system after the supernova was over and constructed this Knossos to open a path to retake their lost territory... i think the ASW ancients would try everything to get Knossos 3 back under their control, because it is a sacrilege to have an own construction, which symbolized the power of the own race, in enemy hands.

Maybe they open up only the path to their own fall...
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Mobius on January 20, 2014, 08:26:40 am
In FS2, the origin of the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis is not explained so we can only speculate. That "generally" at the beginning of the thread goes a bit too ar, as "oftentimes" would be more politically correct.

The Wiki, right here (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Nebula), provides interesting clues that may point to a nebula originated by the Shivans. Obviously we can't be 100% sure of anything, but it's strange that the Wiki doesn't mention Knossos 2's presence in the nebula as proof that the explosion may have occurred well before the system was discovered by the Ancients.


Quote
There is no canon information on the real-world astronomical identity of the Nebula System. However, several fans have offered proposals based on hints provided within the game. The two primary candidates are the Crab Nebula and the Lupus Nebula, with slightly stronger support for the former.

Clues
The main clue upon which most arguments hinge is the briefing for SM1-05, Mystery of the Trinity, which states, "We have entered a nebula, a vast and dense ionized field, and possibly the remnant of a supernova." This clearly foreshadows the ending of the game in which the player personally witnesses a supernova. More importantly, many fans have taken the foreshadowing as sufficient justification to claim that the Shivans caused the Nebula System supernova in addition to the Capella supernova.
Since the Ancients created the Knossos network, the most likely scenario is that the Shivans caused the parent star to go supernova at around the same time they destroyed the Ancients' empire. Calculating from the "about 8,000 years ago" estimate from the perspective of Vasudan scientists in 2335, this places the date at 5,700 B.C., give or take a few hundred years.
Accepting the main clue as a foundation, the next clue is Bosch's third monologue, which states, "The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns." This gives an approximate estimate for the distance and apparent magnitude of the supernova.

Conclusions
Based on these clues, GalacticEmperor originally suggested the Lupus Nebula in a forum post in 2003. [1] The available information on SN 1006 (the Lupus supernova) fits the evidence well, as described in this article. Further research led to the suggestion of SN 1054 (the Crab supernova) as a competing candidate.
SN 1006 was about as bright as five billion suns, while SN 1054 was about as bright as 1.25 billion suns. These figures are within approximately one order of magnitude of Bosch's estimate. Furthermore, taking the speed of light into account, SN 1006 erupted in 6,094 B.C., while SN 1054 erupted in 5,246 B.C. These dates are within only 1,000 years (for SN 1054, 500 years) of the Vasudan estimate. Both estimates are surprisingly accurate.
Perhaps the most intriguing connection was discovered by Arcanum in 2006. [2] According to Wikipedia[3],
Theoretical models of supernova explosions suggest that the star that exploded to produce the Crab Nebula must have had a mass of between 8 and 12 solar masses. Stars with masses lower than 8 solar masses are thought to be too small to produce supernova explosions, and end their lives by producing a planetary nebula instead, while a star heavier than 12 solar masses would have produced a nebula with a different chemical composition to that observed in the Crab.
A significant problem in studies of the Crab Nebula is that the combined mass of the nebula and the pulsar add up to considerably less than the predicted mass of the progenitor star, and the question of where the "missing mass" is remains unresolved.
This suggests that the supernova may have been "artificially triggered" in the same manner as the Capella supernova.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Shivan Hunter on January 20, 2014, 08:39:24 am
Quote
"The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns."

(http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-pseudo.gif)

Anyway. the nebula could possibly be from the Ancient war, if the Ancients lost the system to a Shivan supernova, then tried to retake it by stabilizing the jump nodes (which might have been destabilized by the massive ejection of mass out of the system? idk). This sorta fits the imperialism of Ancient culture, but not the narrative we know of the Ancient war- there's no implication that the Ancients ever 'retook' systems.

Anyway it could easily be a Shivan supernova predating the Ancients from a war with some other species entirely. (and no, the light still wouldn't have reached earth)
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: The E on January 20, 2014, 08:48:51 am
No, the wiki says "Here's what Fans think about this", without going into detail about which fans, when this speculation occured, or defining what is meant by "many".

I also have a few quibbles with the sentence "This clearly foreshadows the ending of the game in which the player personally witnesses a supernova.".
The use of the word "clearly" implies that this is definitive truth (which it very well could be!), something that is not confirmed by canon sources. Personally, I believe the nebula system is a nebula system as a physical manifestation of diving into the unknown; not something meant to foreshadow the ending.

Personally, this whole section of the wiki article should be severely altered and shortened, or at the very least sourced somewhat better.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 20, 2014, 09:10:06 am
Answering the question in the title: Prove it had to survive a supernova shockwave and the nebula wasn't already there.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: BritishShivans on January 20, 2014, 09:20:06 am
My theory is that Knossos 2 spun super fast and did a Death Blossom and smacked the nasty supernova shockwave away.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on January 20, 2014, 10:33:41 am
I think the most parsimonious reading of the game is that the nebula was meant to foreshadow the game's ending, though I'm not sure whether this suggests the Knossos was there before or after the supernova.

It probably doesn't matter. The nebula is vast, likely light-years across, and (unless you want to invoke apparent size and luminosity of the star in the nebula background) we don't really know the Knossos' relative position to the supernova remnant, since it's not clear Knossos have to obey usual node placement rules.

The Knossos' physical construction makes it pretty clear there's some powerful binding force at work.

Put all that together and you have the possibility that the Knossos was several AU away from the supernova and fairly structurally robust. Astronomical objects will happily survive at ranges like that.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Mobius on January 20, 2014, 11:05:20 am
we don't really know the Knossos' relative position to the supernova remnant, since it's not clear Knossos have to obey usual node placement rules.

Aren't Knossos portals located right where a jump node is? And aren't jump nodes always fairly close to their respective stars? If the Knossos 2 was there right when the star went supernova, its shockwave would have hit it.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on January 20, 2014, 11:09:27 am
Knossos are used (apparently) to stabilize jump nodes that normally couldn't be traversed, so it's unclear. Even if you restrict the Knossos to normal jump node range, this still leaves it a lot of wiggle room - it could have been far enough from the star proper to weather the blast. Or it could be orbiting a companion to the star that went supernova, which seems more likely since the nebula contains a fairly luminous star.

We know a meson bomb can take out a Knossos, so the question is basically whether the supernova struck with comparable force at whatever distance the Knossos was.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: mjn.mixael on January 20, 2014, 12:34:16 pm
Which is all still assuming the supernova occurred during the battle with the Ancients.. of which, there isn't any strong evidence.. only circumstantial and hardly that.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: FuzzyDarkMatter on January 20, 2014, 08:03:09 pm
So, I'm going to posit a theory that would support the notion that Knossos 2 was created after the supernova.

Since we know that intrasystem jumps requires the presence of a gravity well, I'm going to theorize that intersystem jump nodes exist at areas of space where multiple gravity waves intersect and cause the proper gravitational anomaly that allows for subspace transit. This would also explain the existence of unstable subspace nodes, and also the decaying of existing nodes, as objects capable of creating sufficient gravity waves move throughout space, thus altering the affects of their gravity wave on that specific point.

If this is true (which can't really be proven, since there are no canon sources to confirm or deny my theory), the supernova resulting in the Knossos 2 nebula would have radically altered the gravitational effects of the surrounding area, and the surviving neutron star would have a significantly different gravitational field compared to the star that it was birthed from. The supernova could have created a new subspace node which was then stabilized with the Knossos 2.

This may also explain why the Shivans destroyed the Capella star, in order to alter the existing subspace nodes that were being created by Capella, shutting down some existing subspace lanes and creating new ones that could lead anywhere.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Mobius on January 21, 2014, 05:25:20 am
I believe that Wiki article should be edited and cite Knossos 2, at the moment it covers only part of the information that we've got about this specific subject.

By the way, according to Wikipedia, a supernova shockwave goes at 30.000km/s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova), roughly one tenth of the speed of light, so the kinetic energy upon impact would definitely wipe out any kind of space craft or installation, Knossos device included. Also note that temperature should be atted to the equation.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: -Norbert- on January 21, 2014, 06:38:40 am
How about a really crazy idea:
The Knossos has some kind of protective mechanism that allowed it to divert the incoming shockwave into subspace. The only reason why the destruction of the Knossos in Gamma Draconis was successful was because the bombs were placed within the portal and thus were too close for the device to "react" in time.

Or another crazy notion:
From the Bastion and Lucifer we know that a collapsing jumpnode stays open a few seconds. Maybe the gate opened a jump-point and instead of hitting the Knossos, the energy in it's surrounding was sucked into subspace. That this destabilized the jumpnode doesn't matter, since the portal could easily re-stabilize it afterwards.

Now let loose the physics specialists to poke holes into those two :p
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: BritishShivans on January 21, 2014, 06:53:09 am
but my theory is better though

****ing knossos shuriken, man

the ancients only lost because of the lucifer
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Mobius on January 21, 2014, 07:28:01 am
How about a really crazy idea:
The Knossos has some kind of protective mechanism that allowed it to divert the incoming shockwave into subspace.

I had a crazy idea too but considered it too crazy to be proposed. Basically, the Knossos may have entered subspace on its own (or following a coded Ancient transmission), where the shockwave would have had no effect, and returned back after centuries.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Megawolf492 on January 21, 2014, 07:46:20 am
I think a big key here is the briefing text from Mystery of the Trinity:

Quote
We have travelled (sic) farther than any Terrans in the history of subspace travel.

Of course, we know the Trinity made it first, but it still stands; Lt. Samsa had a reason for saying that. Was it they knew the exact location of the nebula from the stars (somehow) or other navigational equipment, like subspace tracking? Did it take a much longer time than a normal jump? I say the latter, but it doesn't really matter. I don't think it was a case of Sam Gamgee saying "If I take one more step, I'll be further away from home than I've ever been." They were much further away from home then they've every been. I believe that the Knossos can create a subspace tunnel that couldn't form naturally. Now, is it to the other side of the galaxy, no.

So it is obvious that the Ancients specifically chose that system to set their Knossos to (and build another one in it). Now, if it was already a nebula when they found it, the only reason I can see is they found it to be a good hiding spot from the Shivans or their lesser enemies. Sure, they could have used it for gas mining, but the Knossos "chain" that goes through there suggests a trade route or military highway.

If the system wasn't a nebula initially, it could have been a colony or manufacturing facility. When the Shivans (presumably) made the star go nova, the Knossos could have survived. It could have been built like a Mass Relay, but then someone would have to "catch" it. More likely is it was destroyed and the Ancients simply rebuilt it.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: The E on January 21, 2014, 08:07:05 am
So it is obvious that the Ancients specifically chose that system to set their Knossos to (and build another one in it). Now, if it was already a nebula when they found it, the only reason I can see is they found it to be a good hiding spot from the Shivans or their lesser enemies. Sure, they could have used it for gas mining, but the Knossos "chain" that goes through there suggests a trade route or military highway.

This is only true if Knossos devices can manipulate the endpoint of a jump (i.e. actively influence the location a jump node leads to). There is no evidence that this is the case.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Killer Whale on January 21, 2014, 08:33:58 am
I theorise that in response to the shivans' dashingly good looks, Knossos 2: The empire strikes back, exploded. This explosion pushed the supernova away so that the Knossos was protected from damage and lived on to die another day.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Col.Hornet on January 21, 2014, 09:52:27 am
Quote
"The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns."

(http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-pseudo.gif)

Anyway. the nebula could possibly be from the Ancient war, if the Ancients lost the system to a Shivan supernova, then tried to retake it by stabilizing the jump nodes (which might have been destabilized by the massive ejection of mass out of the system? idk). This sorta fits the imperialism of Ancient culture, but not the narrative we know of the Ancient war- there's no implication that the Ancients ever 'retook' systems.

Anyway it could easily be a Shivan supernova predating the Ancients from a war with some other species entirely. (and no, the light still wouldn't have reached earth)
I highly doubt that the nebula beyond the Gamma Draconis is as old as the Ancient- Shivan war. It is much, much older. Why? Bosh noticed that people could have seen the effects of star's explosion 8000 years ago. Time if right, fine, but we must take the distance into consideration. Even if the star was destroyed by the Shivans 8000 years ago, we wouldn't be able to notice that from Earth even now(visually of course). Light has it'd own speed (very high, but limited). Knossoss 2 must have been built long time after the star's explosion.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Mobius on January 21, 2014, 09:58:58 am
I think a big key here is the briefing text from Mystery of the Trinity:

Quote
We have travelled (sic) farther than any Terrans in the history of subspace travel.

Of course, we know the Trinity made it first, but it still stands; Lt. Samsa had a reason for saying that. Was it they knew the exact location of the nebula from the stars (somehow) or other navigational equipment, like subspace tracking? Did it take a much longer time than a normal jump?

In one of Bosch's monologues it is implied that the exact location of the nebula is unknown. Bosch even wonders if our ancestors ever got the chance to see the supernova that nebula derived from. This lack of information suggests - but I'd be very cautious here - that jumping from one system to another using a Knossos may alter speed and time of travel in a way that makes the coordinates of newly reached systems hard to calculate. Even though the nebula certainly was in known space, the GTVA never said where it was.

Oh, and the GTVA probably didn't even know where the binary system was. It's strange that they actually managed to plan and execute a secret SOC operation in a limited time window as seen in Into the Lion's Den. What if the binary system was one month of subspace travel away?
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on January 21, 2014, 10:37:36 am
I believe that Wiki article should be edited and cite Knossos 2, at the moment it covers only part of the information that we've got about this specific subject.

By the way, according to Wikipedia, a supernova shockwave goes at 30.000km/s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova), roughly one tenth of the speed of light, so the kinetic energy upon impact would definitely wipe out any kind of space craft or installation, Knossos device included. Also note that temperature should be atted to the equation.

Not definitely at all - it's going to be bad news but since FreeSpace materials science is basically magic we really have no idea.

Oh, and the GTVA probably didn't even know where the binary system was. It's strange that they actually managed to plan and execute a secret SOC operation in a limited time window as seen in Into the Lion's Den. What if the binary system was one month of subspace travel away?[/color]

There's no evidence that node travel times are particularly related to the distance crossed, or that they even have particularly high variance.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Mobius on January 21, 2014, 12:38:48 pm
There's no evidence that node travel times are particularly related to the distance crossed, or that they even have particularly high variance.

Intrasystem jumps are istantaneous, intersystem jumps aren't. If that's not linked to the distances involved, well...
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on January 21, 2014, 12:43:58 pm
Correct, we have no reason to think it's linked to the distances involved. The time function for subspace travel may not involve anything about realspace - it could be a traversal function on some completely separate array of connections.

Loathe as I am to invoke real-world analogies, the closest real physical analog - a wormhole metric - provides no connection between travel time and the realspace distance between the origin and destination.

My personal read is that intrasystem jumps are short but non-instantaneous and that node jumps are relatively long, but that the differences in travel times within each category aren't sorted by realspace distance covered. (The node transits in King's Gambit and Apocalypse are incredibly fast, as fast as any intrasystem jump, which is one major canonical data point - one I think is kinda of dumb, but it's there. Conversely the node transit in Good Luck takes ****ing forever, which supports the idea that transit time maps to some unknown variable rather than realspace distance.)

Of course, if you think it fits better to have realspace distance ~ travel time for your campaign, you're completely justified in that choice as well. As with so many things, it's completely up to what fits best.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Megawolf492 on January 21, 2014, 01:00:31 pm
I highly doubt that the nebula beyond the Gamma Draconis is as old as the Ancient- Shivan war. It is much, much older. Why? Bosh noticed that people could have seen the effects of star's explosion 8000 years ago. Time if right, fine, but we must take the distance into consideration. Even if the star was destroyed by the Shivans 8000 years ago, we wouldn't be able to notice that from Earth even now(visually of course). Light has it'd own speed (very high, but limited). Knossoss 2 must have been built long time after the star's explosion.

Actually, he didn't say people 8000 years ago could have seen it. All he said was:

Quote
The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns. Even in their divinity no pharaoh could have imagined this.

So lets take the Crab Nebula as an example since that's the favorite theory (as is mine). Chinese astronomers noticed a supernova in 1054 AD which modern scientists attribute to the Crab supernova. By the current best calculations, the Crab Nebula is 6523 light years away. Thus, it must have gone nova around 5468 BC. 8000 years from 2367 (the year of FS2) is 5633 BC. The difference is 165 years. Given that Bosch gave 8000 years as a rough round estimate and the star that formed the Crab Nebula might have been further away than we think, the dates start to merge. So that is why the Ancients could have been involved in or at least witness to the supernova that created the Nebula.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on January 21, 2014, 01:07:54 pm
The Crab's a good and parsimonious candidate, but recall that the FS1 Ancients monologues establish (with FS1's typical slightly eccentric attitude towards scale and chronology) that the Ancient empire spanned galaxies, so there's a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot of turf to cover out there.

In fact the Ancients seem to have filled up the Milky Way by subluminal slowboat before they even discovered subspace, which means their civilization was probably weird as hell compared to the Terran/Vasudan model.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: headdie on January 21, 2014, 03:54:25 pm
The Crab's a good and parsimonious candidate, but recall that the FS1 Ancients monologues establish (with FS1's typical slightly eccentric attitude towards scale and chronology) that the Ancient empire spanned galaxies, so there's a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot of turf to cover out there.

In fact the Ancients seem to have filled up the Milky Way by subluminal slowboat before they even discovered subspace, which means their civilization was probably weird as hell compared to the Terran/Vasudan model.

it wouldnt even need to be that weird a civilization, take a speices with a several hundred year lifespan and on the ability to self stasis or even hibernate in some way and then slow boating to near by systems from the start point starts to look more plausable
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on January 21, 2014, 03:58:45 pm
It's definitely plausible (von Neumann seedships are another method) but the lightspeed barrier would prevent homogeneity - so you'd get a lot more cultural and biological divergence between individual colonies.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: headdie on January 21, 2014, 04:08:47 pm
very true
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Mongoose on January 21, 2014, 06:50:25 pm
I believe that Wiki article should be edited and cite Knossos 2, at the moment it covers only part of the information that we've got about this specific subject.

By the way, according to Wikipedia, a supernova shockwave goes at 30.000km/s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova), roughly one tenth of the speed of light, so the kinetic energy upon impact would definitely wipe out any kind of space craft or installation, Knossos device included. Also note that temperature should be atted to the equation.

Not definitely at all - it's going to be bad news but since FreeSpace materials science is basically magic we really have no idea.
Plus there's the fact that the radiation and shockwave force from a point source like a supernova propagates via an inverse-square law.  If the Knossos was a long way out from the exploding star, the force acting on it may have been insufficient to blow it apart.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on January 21, 2014, 06:57:18 pm
Yeah, stellar bodies at the right distance can sometimes survive supernova detonations. Whether the comparatively teensy Knossos could survive is probably dependent on its distance from the supernova, the exact mechanics of the blast, the binding force holding the Knossos together, and the exact properties of magical FreeSpace hull materials.

I like the idea that it's orbiting a companion to the star that detonates. It could even have been shielded from the detonation by the companion star. I'm fond of this theory because the Crab pulsar has a companion star, and the Crab supernova has a missing mass problem - providing a nice hook for the Shivans' artificial induction of a supernova.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 21, 2014, 07:19:51 pm
In fact the Ancients seem to have filled up the Milky Way by subluminal slowboat before they even discovered subspace, which means their civilization was probably weird as hell compared to the Terran/Vasudan model.

Could they not have started out in some isolated, tiny dwarf galaxy which happened to have subspace links to the Milky Way?
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on January 21, 2014, 07:21:58 pm
In fact the Ancients seem to have filled up the Milky Way by subluminal slowboat before they even discovered subspace, which means their civilization was probably weird as hell compared to the Terran/Vasudan model.

Could they not have started out in some isolated, tiny dwarf galaxy which happened to have subspace links to the Milky Way?

Possibly, but you'd have to discard information from the FS Reference Bible that describes the Ancient homeworld as being close to Vasuda Prime.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Goober5000 on January 22, 2014, 09:51:02 am
We know a meson bomb can take out a Knossos

Actually, we know that three meson bombs can take out a Knossos.  One meson bomb can't, at least not when it's placed in the center. :p

Do we know the characteristics of supernova entropy?  One important thing to consider is how long a supernova remains impassable (whether due to temperature, radiation, kinetic energy, or other factors) after erupting.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on January 22, 2014, 10:06:41 am
Depends on the type of supernova, though in this case we're dealing with some kind of artificially induced core collapse. The Crab has some weird **** going on - that legendary blue glow you'll see in pictures is synchroton radiation as electrons are torqued around by the pulsar's magnetic field, and the pulsar itself is a pretty extreme environment - but I really don't have a sense for how hostile it'd be to FreeSpace-grade closed environments and how rapidly that hostility would fall off.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 22, 2014, 10:21:56 am
Given some of the things the ships themselves are resistant to, the expanding gas shell is probably passable very quickly; a few centuries or less.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: qwadtep on February 01, 2014, 01:01:18 am
I don't see why it can't be both. Advanced life seems fairly common in the Freespace universe; our Terrans and Vasudans, the Ancients who came before them, and the myriad species the Ancients destroyed. Bosch monolgues on how another species might have stumbled across Terran and Vasudan ruins in another ten thousand years had the Shivans won the Great War, and if the Ancients had ever discovered the ruins of those who came before, and how far back the cycle of emergence and destruction by the Shivans might go. It's perfectly possible that the Shivans blew up some other enigmatic civilization and the Ancients just stumbled across the nebula the same way the GTVA did.

-snip-
Bosch dates the extinction of the Ancients at 8,000 years ago in aforementioned monologue.

e: Bear in mind that we know next to nothing about the Ancient-Shivan war except that the Ancients had an empire of insane scale. For all we know the conflict raged for millennia, numerous stars were destroyed, and Knossos portals were destroyed and rebuilt as often as an army engineer might erect a bridge for tanks to cross. Unless there's something directly, logically inconsistent, I think we have to consider narrative intent for these things.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Megawolf492 on February 03, 2014, 07:00:56 pm
e: Bear in mind that we know next to nothing about the Ancient-Shivan war except that the Ancients had an empire of insane scale. For all we know the conflict raged for millennia, numerous stars were destroyed, and Knossos portals were destroyed and rebuilt as often as an army engineer might erect a bridge for tanks to cross. Unless there's something directly, logically inconsistent, I think we have to consider narrative intent for these things.

I am led to believe that the A/S War was much quicker than 1000's of years, but still longer than the Great War (maybe a few years). Sure, their empire was much larger than T/V space. But it seems like their technology at the end of their war was actually WORSE than the GTA/PVN tech at the end of the Great War (except for subspace). Remember, the Ancients' enemies were very weak compared to the Shivans. In contrast, the Terrans and Vasudans were pretty much equal through both wars. The Ancients had very little reason to develop new technology whereas the GTA & PVN did. This is the very reason Alpha 1 gives to why we "defeated" the Shivans.

Furthermore, there are two statements from the Ancient Monologues that intrigue me:
Quote
Only these were not like the others. They did not die.

Quote
We did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed.

From these statements it seems to me that the Ancients never figured out how to get around the Shivans' shields, at least not until it was too late. Now I'm not talking about the Lucifer's shields; rather, they couldn't figure out the fighter shields. If the only thing they couldn't destroy was the Lucifer, those statements don't make sense. To destroy everything else but the Lucifer seems kinda unlikely. And if the Shivan fleet was much bigger than the Great War fleet, then the "no shields in subspace" information helps you little. However, if you can't kill even the fighters or bombers, then it seems like they just can't die. Sure you could destroy the unshielded capital ships, but not when you have fighters you cant kill firing up your butt all the time.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Sololop on February 05, 2014, 10:12:09 pm
Quote
We did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed.

I believe this states here that the fleet that was used to kill the Ancients was much, much more vast. Shivans bombarded Vasuda, but in the cutscene showing the destruction, there is no massive fleet "darkening" the skies. I believe the Shivans likely had to dispatch a much larger fleet to kill a much larger enemy, causing this. Also, as stated above, if fighters never were killed, the numbers would become severely one sided very quickly.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Deepstar on February 06, 2014, 01:19:48 am
If the Ancients would not be able to kill even fighters, this war could never take very long... and you forget, that all ships bigger than fighters/bombers do not have any shields. So they were at least able to destroy transports.

Quote
Only these were not like the others. They did not die.

You can also refer this to the vast unnumberable numbers of shivans. "Every shivan you kill is replaced by three others." has the same meaning in my opinion. Because it seems that the shivans are infinite -> so they did not die.

Also all the races the Ancients encountered before "died", because they were extinguished. But this was also not possible this time and so the shivans were not like the others and did not die in this meaning, too. :).
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Megawolf492 on February 06, 2014, 04:54:31 pm
Quote
We did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed.

I believe this states here that the fleet that was used to kill the Ancients was much, much more vast. Shivans bombarded Vasuda, but in the cutscene showing the destruction, there is no massive fleet "darkening" the skies. I believe the Shivans likely had to dispatch a much larger fleet to kill a much larger enemy, causing this. Also, as stated above, if fighters never were killed, the numbers would become severely one sided very quickly.

If there was a massive fleet attacking the Ancients, then the "no shields in subspace" information would do them little good and wouldn't have valued it as they did, trying to pass it on to future civilizations.  Sure, they knew how to destroy the Lucifer(s), but what about the rest of the fleet? However, if you can't even kill the fighters, then find a way to kill them, that is information that you would hold dear and try to preserve, even if you die.

If the Ancients would not be able to kill even fighters, this war could never take very long... and you forget, that all ships bigger than fighters/bombers do not have any shields. So they were at least able to destroy transports.

I do believe that the war was over pretty quickly, only lasting longer than the Great War because of the size of the Ancients' empire. And I did not forget that non-fighters/bombers don't have shields:

Sure you could destroy the unshielded capital ships, but not when you have fighters you cant kill firing up your butt all the time.

All in all, it seems like the main reason why the Ancients were defeated was they learned too late how to bypass SOME type of shield. If it was only the Lucifer(s) shields, then the Ancients would have defeated the rest of the fleet and you would have only the Lucifer(s) going from system to system. Even though the Shivans could have destroyed all the Ancients' worlds, you probably could outrun a few destroyers and hide somewhere. If it was all shields, then you still have a full fleet that you can't outrun for long.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on February 07, 2014, 02:56:09 pm
From a story perspective, I think there's different ways to approach it:

#1 The nebula foreshadows Capella. However one thing to bear in mind is that at Capella the Sathanas fleet made a special jump somewhere else. So if the Shivans likewise destroyed the nebula star, why are they still around? Would they not have jumped somewhere else?

#2 The fact the Knossos was difficult to destroy suggests that it could survive a supernova.

#3 Another possibility is that the ancients were not the first race. And that the supernova is not from the Ancient shivan war but from a shivan-someone else war before that.



But for my money, I would say that the Ancients turned off the Gamma-Draconis node to stop the Shivan advance. The shivans destroyed the nebula's star, the knossos survived because it's been shown to be resilient, but some remnant of the Shivan fleet containing the lucifer was still on this side of the node and finished off the ancients. Then being too far from home it went and lurked in space until Terran Vasudans caught their attention years later.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: qwadtep on February 10, 2014, 10:25:42 pm
So if the Shivans likewise destroyed the nebula star, why are they still around? Would they not have jumped somewhere else?
By waiting in adjacent systems until the nebula was safe to travel again. Knossos 2 leads to a small communications hub, remember, and there's no telling what else might have been left undiscovered when the GTVA was forced to withdraw.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Goober5000 on March 03, 2014, 02:28:13 pm
I collected a bunch of links on ambient supernova temperature, but I haven't found time in the last few weeks to go through them and formulate a case.  So I'm dumping them here in case anyone else feels like trawling through them:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112891395/supernova-remnant-lower-temperatures-070513/
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/temperatures-10000-times-hotter-suns-surface-still-imprinted-supernova-remnant
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/supernova_remnants.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_remnant
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/multimedia/photos/2004/photos04-115.html
http://www.cmso.info/tychosup
http://freestarcharts.com/index.php/messier-catalogue/20-guides/messier/96-messier-1-m1-crab-nebula-supernova-remnant
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/supernovae/remnants.html
http://www.astro.uu.se/~hoefner/astro/teach/apd_files/apd_SNR_dyn.pdf
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~ryden/ast825/ch5-6.pdf
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/574485/supernova-remnant

A sketch of the idea is that supernovas cooling is a function of expansion as well as time.  Temperature and pressure can vary substantially according to distance, especially in young supernovas (< 10,000 years).  This fits well with different areas of the nebula being at different activity levels, like we saw in the FS2 campaign.

"10 or 20 light-years in diameter" fits with an age on the order of 8,000 years.  More practically, based on these links it appears possible for the supernova to cool down enough in 8,000 years that ships of the GTVA could fly around in it, especially at distances of several parsecs.

Unfortunately, unless the Knossos is made of unobtainum, it could not have been around in the same system pre-supernova.  Just have a look at this what-if (http://what-if.xkcd.com/73/) from XKCD, where one could get a fatal dose of neutrinos at a distance of 2.3 AU -- one would think that more typical forces of a supernova are sure to obliterate anything there.  So while I like the theory that the Knossos is the sole remnant of an Ancient outpost in the Nebula System, I don't think the physics supports it.

I'm curious to hear what astronomical bodies Battuta claims could survive a supernova though, and where they might be located.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: General Battuta on March 03, 2014, 02:39:19 pm
Everything in FreeSpace is made of unobtainium. Companion stars can survive supernova detonations.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Aardwolf on March 03, 2014, 02:47:30 pm
So maybe the Knossos was in the shadow of the companion star?
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Solaxis-Hunter on March 03, 2014, 02:48:53 pm
How about this as a theory, Knossos 2 is located in a system which still contains a sun, the Supernova which is said to have occured, happened a number of light years away, the nebula formed out of this remnant, and residual solar winds pushed the nebula to expand outwards till it enveloped the system with the Knossos 2.  In some nebula missions, a bright sun can be seen sometimes, which would account for the reason that we can see anything in the nebula.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Luis Dias on March 03, 2014, 03:06:09 pm
So maybe the Knossos was in the shadow of the companion star?

that's unlikely to be a good answer. There's no "shadowing" a supernovae like that.

How about this as a theory, Knossos 2 is located in a system which still contains a sun, the Supernova which is said to have occured, happened a number of light years away, the nebula formed out of this remnant, and residual solar winds pushed the nebula to expand outwards till it enveloped the system with the Knossos 2.  In some nebula missions, a bright sun can be seen sometimes, which would account for the reason that we can see anything in the nebula.

I think something like this could work. Given we do see a star in these levels, it's either a companion star or a star far away. Mind you, even a companion star could work, if it was something like a thousand (more?) AUs away.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: karajorma on March 04, 2014, 12:55:11 am
Bear in mind that the data we have is for real supernovae. The Shivans have shown that they can make stars supernova which shouldn't be able to. Which makes all the data we have moot.

Sure we can take an educated guess what that sort of supernova would result from a non-suitable star going supernova, but it's a fair bet it could be much less powerful than a standard one.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Solaxis-Hunter on March 11, 2014, 05:42:18 pm
Or one other theory could say that the Knossos gates were not made by the Ancients, but by a precursor race, the Ancients found them and replicated the technology, so Knossos 2 could be an original pre-Ancient gate, and the reason that it survived was that it could have been submerged into subspace (into the point between normal space and the subspace tunnel) when a supernova was detected as a defence mechanism, and then the Shivans found it, pulled it out of Subspace to begin using it.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Phantom Hoover on March 11, 2014, 06:55:09 pm
Runs afoul of narrative Occam's law I'm afraid.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Scotty on March 11, 2014, 10:36:50 pm
Since when has anything in fiction been bound by Occam's Razor?
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Goober5000 on March 11, 2014, 11:25:46 pm
When you create a story, you want it to be believable, so it's in your interest to minimize the suspensions of disbelief, and the deviations from established canon.

A non-Ancients precursor race that created a new, identical Knossos with a heretofore unknown defense mechanism that's only useful for an extremely rare situation is a veritable potpourri of deviations.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Luis Dias on March 12, 2014, 09:27:44 am
Since when has anything in fiction been bound by Occam's Razor?

Since everything and always. It is said of fiction that it must make sense of itself, unlike reality which usually doesn't. The usual manner to do so is to be simple, efficient, consistent, cohesive, small.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: karajorma on March 12, 2014, 10:42:36 am
But why would you need a precursor race for that anyway? It could simply be a defence system the ancients made, never believing it would be used against them.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: Megawolf492 on March 12, 2014, 02:06:18 pm
But why would you need a precursor race for that anyway? It could simply be a defence system the ancients made, never believing it would be used against them.

If we take for a fact that the Shivans are the only ones that know how to blow up stars and the Nebula System star was the first/only star the Shivans blew up vs. the Ancients, then the Ancients had no reason to make a defensive system like that. Besides, having a massive object like that (or any object really) being stuck in between subspace and realspace is a bit silly IMO and has no basis at all in canon. The closest thing to it was what the Bastion did near the end of FS2, but something like that isn't really a defensive mechanism.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: NGTM-1R on March 12, 2014, 07:33:16 pm
And it all still assumes the Knossos had to survive a supernova, which is questionable in itself. When you have to invent reasons to justify your assumptions to justify the reasons for the other assumptions you made, you have a problem.
Title: Re: How did Knossos 2 survive the supernova shockwave?
Post by: karajorma on March 13, 2014, 05:06:22 am
If we take for a fact that the Shivans are the only ones that know how to blow up stars and the Nebula System star was the first/only star the Shivans blew up vs. the Ancients, then the Ancients had no reason to make a defensive system like that.

It could be a general defence system to prevent the knossos being wiped out by asteroids or taking a planet to the face.

Quote
Besides, having a massive object like that (or any object really) being stuck in between subspace and realspace is a bit silly IMO and has no basis at all in canon. The closest thing to it was what the Bastion did near the end of FS2, but something like that isn't really a defensive mechanism.

I don't think it's a particularly good argument. I was simply commenting on the lack of necessity to add another race in order to make it work.