Derpy's Bubbles · 8:25pm Jun 9th, 2012
There has been some work on Ch15. I will say that Flutters/Trent's dialogue on "why are we doing this exactly" have been difficult to write, but I've managed to bulldoze through that yesterday. In the meantime, I would like to submit this little piece for your review and contemplation. Some of you may have read it before, but there is a discussion afterwards that helps explain a few things in detail.
If you know your physics, I would like to hear your analysis.
* * *
"Okay, here's a question. What can have a volume, but no mass?"
"Arghh," Twilight moaned, "you said that everything has mass, right? Except for things like light or magnetic fields, but they don't have a volume either!"
Derpy looked thoughtful for a moment, twisting her head and licking the grey matted fur around her nose.
"A bubble!" she squealed happily.
"Whaa?" Twilight scowled in disbelief, not sure if she was serious or not.
"Very good. She's quite right actually."
Trent turned to they grey pony, her innocent yellow eyes staring blissfully in several directions.
"I think you deserve another muffin for that."
"Oh yes! Thank you!"
"A bubble? The soap and water would still weigh something, right?"
"That kind of bubble, yes. But if we're want to describe it simply as a spherical boundary in space, then it can exist exactly as I described. Volume, but no mass."
"I see..."
"Now here's another question. Can you fit a larger bubble inside of a smaller one?"
"Oh for the love of Celestia, I give up!"
Derpy looked up from the muffin, still chewing the crumbly sweetbread as she pondered the question. Her ears began to twitch and flap, each to their own rhythm. Some moments later, she broke out into a smile and nodded her head vigorously.
"Mmmmhmmm!" she said, through the mouthful of masticated mush.
"Take your time there..."
She finished the bite of muffin and licked her lips greedily before she spoke.
"It's easy!"
"Not for many," Trent dryly remarked.
"Well, first you put the small bubble inside the big bubble."
Twilight managed to roll her eyes and slap her forehead in one synchronized movement.
"Then from inside the smaller bubble, the big bubble is on the outside!"
"Good so far... Although it wouldn't really work like that. The curvature of the bubble is still wrong"
"Yep! So then, you have to twist everything inside out."
"Inside out?" Twilight exclaimed. "Oh, yeah, that works. Lets just twist the whole universe inside out!"
"Go on..." Trent intoned. "Could it be done?"
"Well, no," she conceded. "It wouldn't be... Um... It wouldn't be... Right? Making sense? Correct?"
"Rational?"
Derpy squeaked as she tapped her hooves happily on the park bench. "Yes! Yes! That's it!"
"So then what happens?"
"Umm..." Derpy stood and trotted around in a tight circle, her wings ruffling with excitement. "It's irrational! Imaginary! Just like those numbers!"
"So this operation is like an imaginary number?"
She nodded her head vigorously.
"And like that, it..."
"Wouldn't make sense!"
"Right."
"So you do it twice!"
"Twice?" remarked Twilight. "How are you going to do it the first time?"
Derpy looked back at the frustrated purple pony, shaking her head and rolling her neck.
"No, no! Not twice in a row. Twice at the same time!"
"Huh?"
Trent's hands were steepled together as he watched the two.
"At the same time, Derpy?"
She nodded again.
"Twice... Like from two different places... or two different..." she stopped to bounce on her forehooves, shaking her head until the words fell into place.
"Or two different times!" she finished.
"So if you try to twist the universe inside out, from two separate points in spacetime, it can work... Either operation would be irrational on it's own, but the two together would work within the realm of physics?"
She paused, considering Trent's summary. A flurry of nodding and wing flapping signaled her response.
"And like imaginary numbers, what happens to something inside that bubble?"
"It goes backwards!" she sang with excitement.
Trent stopped to breathe. His hands shook as he reached into the bag and pulled out another muffin.
"I think you deserve this."
"Oh yes oh yes! Thank you!"
His hands still shook.
"You know, you're the first person I've known that actually figured that out."
"Pony, or person?" Twilight asked.
"Either. There was one other person who solved it, but I never met him."
"Ohh. Was he famous for figuring that out?"
"In a way, yes."
"Hmm. Was that logic puzzle important?"
"Yes."
"Hmmm..." Twilight shrugged. "Did anything useful ever come out of it?"
It was Trent's turn to be silent for an uncomfortably long time.
"Many great, and terrible things."
* * *
(For the record, Derpy's talk about imaginary numbers is her articulation of the concept of "imaginary geometry". Also, I get chills when she says It goes backwaaards!. The big bubble can be the size of a starship, and the little bubble is essentially the size of a Calabi Yau manifold. If you make a sphere large enough, then the surface approaches flatness. And when this sphere approaches flatness, it can exist as two separate entities, aka the origin and the destination. Once something exists within this "large bubble", then it's effectively insulated from the rest of the universe, and exposed to the force that is responsible for creating gravity. The transition of the object through the "small bubble" is effectively space-like which implies that the transition is instantaneous.)
Now, for an explanation of everything that I came up with after writing this:
There is time travel, combined with a semi-hard-scifi interpretation of physics as to how it may actually work.
I call it, "turgid-scifi"
Basically its a variant of "many worlds" where divergences in the state of the universe can take place at the local level. This is combined with a "lazy universe" hypothesis that would state that the extent of these divergences may be limited by the amount of entropy they create, versus the entropy of the medium through which they propagate.
Ie, a fly farting wouldn't necessarily rip a whole new alternate timeline.
Or in other words:
Copenhagen Interpretation: The cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened, at which point the waveform collapses, and the state is synced up with the rest of the universe.
Many Worlds Interpretation: While the box is closed, the cat may experience numerous (or near infinite) events where the atom decays, and the poison is released. Each of these events creates a divergent worldline which affects those outside the box as well - before they even open the box. When they do open the box - the cat is already alive or dead, and they're along for the ride on whichever worldline was formed with that event.
"Lazy Universe Interpretation" (mine) This is a subset of Many Worlds, but also allows for the waveform collapse mechanism of the Copenhagen Interpretation. At first glance, this would imply an simply astounding number of alternate realities springing forth from the everyday activities of random electrons. However, the Lazy Universe would not care about whether the cat is alive or dead, but rather how big the box was. This could be likened to printing off a copy of the Mona Lisa from a set of different printers. Ideally, they would all come out the same, even if the molecules of ink and the texture of the paper were completely random between any two copies. It's still the same image as far as the universe is concerned.
Thus, each potential worldline divergence is limited in scope by the scale at which it affects. The localization allows for divergent events to take place without affecting the rest of the universe. However, if you replaced the cat and the poison apparatus with a big red button for initiating preemptive global thermonuclear warfare, then the actions of tiny perturbations could have a much larger effect, creating a honest-to-star-trek style alternative timeline.
Now, for a practical example.
A spaceship using this "conveniently fast hyperdrive" would pop into existence briefly along a set of points between it's origin and destination. Each time it sets down into normal space, it causes a divergence. However, the speed at which it hops from one point to the next is faster than the speed of information (light) can carry information about this divergence from point A1 to Point A2. A rock skipping over a pond is a perfect visualization of this, as each circular ripple is effectively the light cone from each divergence.
The ship will reach it's destination long before the ripples ever catch up. Therefore, you could have a divergent event at the origin which changes the initial conditions of the spaceship - and both of these spaceships in their respective divergent worldlines might fly off and reach the exact same destination at the exact same time, despite having their differences.
Aka, the Schrodinger's Spaceship.
Now - here's where the fun stuff comes in.
A stable divergence may have a potential energy difference between it's alternate worldlines. This would be responsible for the determination of what is real to the respective worldlines, and that energy potential would what keeps events from World A from crossing over into World B. This energy potential is small enough at the small scale to allow for spooky quantum effects, but considerably larger when you're dealing with Biff winning the lottery and becoming Mayor of Hill Valley. From a technical standpoint, the "Conveniently Fast Hyperdrive" can be used to hop into alternate worldlines - but the factor there is not so much the energy requirements, but navigating the amount of entropy separating the two divergent worldlines. Therefore, jumping from one worldline to the other would require a computer the size of a small moon in order to map out the destination. It's easier to fly out past the light cone from the original divergent event, then fly back (provided that the alternate worldline provides a spaceship that can be pilfered for spacetime navigational coordinates)
-- snipped for spoilers --
Your thoughts?
Oh god, you remind me of my physics professor and the reasons as to why I'm only going for a Bachelor's of Arts in physics and a Bachelor's of Science in math. I enjoyed the snippet of story you put in there but good lord does my head hurt now.
Figure out a way to make your steam of thoughts a live podcast so I can listen to it all the time.
165156
Not sure that's a good idea, because THIS is what happens
http://pastebin.com/38uLdPDr
165162
XD! This is the greatest thing ever.
I'd never be bored again.
Wow.
I am honestly a little stunned. And sad to say that Physics is not a huge part of my Bachealor's degree. I am more in the Biochemistry/-technology department. What I do know is that you are goddamn fucking smart.
I actually got what you were explaining, and this is no small feat.
My respects to you and a thumbs up to whomever finds a logical fallacy in this.
"computer the size of a small moon"
Or a quantum computer the size of a few city blocks.
home/>cd ghost091/
running
...
home/ghost091/>brain
...
brain
...
...
...
A total FU exception has occurred at your location.
All system functionality will be terminated.
Press any key to power cycle the system.
If system does not restart; scream at top of lungs and pound on keypad.
If you need to talk to a programmer press any other key
Press any key to continue.
)
(
Derpy is a genius.
You've lost me.
165774
I might be able to help.
I kinda get this... its complicated to wrap my head around... but I absolutely love how you made Derpy understand it all!! It makes her that much cuter (in a weird, scientific-y point of view)!
I'll chime in, only because there's a very expensive piece of paper on my wall that says I'm qualified to pretend I know about this stuff.
I thoroughly enjoyed everything in this blog post, but allow me to make a few corrections...
"A spaceship using this 'conveniently fast hyperdrive' would pop into existence briefly along an infinite set of points between it's origin and destination."
You may want to think about the implications of that for a second or two...
"the Lazy Universe would not care about whether the cat is alive or dead, but rather how big the box was."
Essentially true, except according to the Special Theory of Relativity, the "box" in this case would be the "light cone" effected by the event in question. The "box" would begin as a point and expand in space infinitely or until which time it reached the edge of the universe (which would bring about a whole new set of problems, starting with the light cone folding in on itself).
"Therefore, jumping from one worldline to the other would require a computer the size of the universe in order to map out the destination."
In your theory, each event in space-time, regardless of entropy, would effect infinite "worlds." No computer could calculate this, because your destination would be all of them.
Also, physics is phun!
165917
the curvature of a large enough sphere can be perceived as a straight line, and therefore geometrically (?) have finite coordinates
I think he was trying to say that the surface of a sufficiently large sphere can be approximated by a plane. Both a sphere's surface and a plane have an infinite number of points, but a plane has infinitely more points than a sphere's surface (one surface is closed, the other isn't).
I wonder how the relativity of simultaneity would come into effect.
That's kind of the underlying theme in Special Relativity. The passage of time is defined by the observer. What is simultaneous to one might not be simultaneous to another in a different inertial reference frame.
I read that and my mouth fell open.
You sir deserve an award.
165156 I second this motion.
Shalrath, my brain is all splodey now. You sire are a brilliant man, but god why must it all assault my neurons
Seriously, it's like you're Trent using the translation spell on me sometimes.
As to dimensional theory, I postulate a semi-variant in between the many worlds and the lazy world theory, which is that while all possible interpretations exist at once, until sufficiently divergent, they are indistinguishable shades of the same spectrum, and when observed from above, would be seen as a single world/waveform unless you looked closely enough. The events would then have to be massively divergent to move away from the prime metaphoric color, and a series of such diversions would move to an entirely new color. And since each color is easily distinguishable by a prime central color (a pure blue, for instance), one could relegate each color to a sector.
When dimension hopping, you would jump between sectors, most likely to the prime color, as they have the least amount of entropic decay. This part of the theory comes from the way that atoms in molecular structure avoid each other when bonded. The simplest form to assume is the one that allows maximum distance between elements. I would assume that this would apply on a larger scale as well, and that you would be forced between points of equal maximum entropy. What makes this particularly interesting is that the observer defines the wavelength. Each divergent universe would jump to an equal level of the scale, and would see their specific home universe as prime.
That may have been loose more loose sci-fi than integrated temporal/quantum theory, but you did ask for my thoughts on the subject
this blog post pretty much sums up why I love this story
165902
In your theory, each event in space-time, regardless of entropy, would effect infinite "worlds." No computer could calculate this, because your destination would be all of them.
Yes. Or at least the part about "your destination being all of them"
However, even though i'm still undecided as to whether this set is unbounded, or just "stupidly huge", there's a way to quickly whittle it down.
This is somewhat similar to the "Travelling Mail-Mare Problem" in CH8. Derpy essentially took an NP-hard problem, and managed to narrow down a reasonably optimal route by adding cost metrics to routes in order to help group them by relative cost. I'm sure this falls into a category of heuristic algorithms - which I tried reading up on after figuring out Derpy's solution - but I'm not sure exactly which one it is.
Now on with the handwaving...
The "mapping" of space essentially measures a snapshot of the entropy within a particular region. Now, this would normally bring up issues with uncertainty, due to the scale and scope of what's being measured. However, when this "big bubble" is created (and this is where you need some sort of high tech device to make out the actual 3D shape of what's being sent - perhaps some sort of electrostatic surface effect) its contents immediately transition through a virtual event horizon.
The event horizon is the inside of the large bubble.
Information is conserved as it passes through.
Information comes out the other side in the same fashion, as the interior of the other bubble is effectively a white hole region.
This takes place instantaneously.
Both "big" bubbles share the same exterior surface. Although this is only possible at the point where their curvature approaches flatness. Same applies to their event-horizion-like properties.
Additional handwaving territory:
The expansion of space has been measured to around 73.8 km/s/MPc. That is to say, the distance between any two points separated by 1 million parsecs (1 parsec = approx 3.2 light years) will expand at a rate of 73.8 kilometers per second. So, while any two galaxies may not be moving with respect to each other, the space between them is expanding at 73.8 km/s. If we imagine a sphere with a radius of around 4060 - 4200 MegaParsecs, then the expansion along that radius will exceed the speed of light. Therefore, this sphere with a diameter of 4200 MPc, can be thought of as an inside-out black hole - since light from us will never reach that boundary, and light from beyond it will never reach us.
Also, the shape of the surface of a sphere that size would be effectively "approaching flat".
At the very center of this inside out black hole, would be a 6 (or 7 maybe?) dimension Calabi-Yau manifold. There would be only one of them, but it would be everywhere and every-when within the universe. (IE, instead of having a neat grid of these tiny little manifolds spread throughout space at the Dirac Sea scale, there's just one of them, and it exists in all potential places.) The shape of the manifold is determined by the "mapping" of information in a particular point/time in space, and the entropy of that information is measured as deformations within the manifold itself (implying a relative measurement, or non-return-to-zero relationship if you're a communications major).
Back to the Travelling Mail-Mare... Derpy narrows things down by grouping iterative sets routes by order of incrementally increasing costs. As such, every configuration of the manifold could represent a unique point in space/time. Manipulating the manifold at a coarse level rapidly narrows down the possible combinations of where that position/time could be. As such, the manipulation forces the rest of the manifold to bend by force of lowest-energy state (with respect to relative energy states of adjoining regions of the manifold). Or as an analogy, the ruts carved by a wagon wheel would tend to force all subsequent wagon wheels into the same track. This would effectively guide the state of matter from one tick of the cosmic clock to the next, rather than just having the universe explode into TV static.
Thus, a relatively coarse mapping could be handled by a computer of modest means, and the mapping itself would rapidly conform/narrow down to the state of the manifold at your target destination. This coarse mapping is used to initiate the second "big" bubble at the destination while the first "big" bubble is initiated simultaneously. Once that's completed, then it's a simple matter of creating a new "big" bubble around your spaceship, and sending it through the target mapping.
Of course, while your destination can be anywhere/when - getting those initial coarse mappings has to be performed by actually going there - or employing some big honking computer to derive what it could be. (YMMV with that) But on the plus side, if you're recording every hop along the way, then you can play through those backwards to effectively travel backwards in time along your original path. Much to the surprise of yourself, that is.
Anyways, how's that sound? I stayed up all night writing, so I'm feeling like a bit of a zombie today. Pardon the crackpot-ed-ness.
169670
There are a few points in there where red flags wave at me, but I've got too much crap going on lately to sit and think about it properly and with a clear mind.
For the time being, I'm just going to allow my inability to think undistractedly to enhance my suspension of disbelief.
169704
It does get a bit messy when going from the theoretical to the applied version, doesn't it?
Truth be told though, I can no longer reconcile a billiard ball model of the universe.
169721
But then you'd still have the "imaginary particle" problem.
I personally never subscribed to the "billiard ball" model anyway. It doesn't jive with current quantum theory enough for my liking. I suppose if you turned the billiard ball inside-out and twisted it into a torus, it might work...
Bah! I'm going to stop applying quantum physics to fanfiction and just enjoy the damn stuff.
How many and which thick textbooks do I have to read to make sense of all you're saying?
And is there possibly a detailed mathematical primer on quantum physics written in pony fanfiction format?
"Pony, or person"
Ponies are people, too!
Okay, I'll try to wrap my head around this then I'll post a real comment
In the meantime, you seem the right person to ask...
I ran across a paper way back when by H. David Froning about hyperspace travel, in a somewhat unique sense.
He postulated that if you could use an EM field coupled with the forces underlying gravity and inertia, that you could polarize the virtual particles in a vacuum and change the local speed of light, and most importantly, locally change the vacuum resistance, as well. I'm probably not quoting it quiet right, and the summary by itself isn't very strong. Some of those points are expounded on here; http://www.utahspace.org/special/froning.html , though I regret to say the original paper has long disappeared from the free internet, though it does appear to be available to those with access to scholarly sources...
595133
I'm probably not the most qualified person to speak about quantum physics. Interesting link though. Ill have to dig through it though, since i'm a bit rusty in some areas. OTOH, Silicas and T6J2E5 know their stuff pretty well.
I will say though that it does make a very interesting set of rules for the story. No grandfather paradox, no stupid infinite alternate realities, and event propagation is affected by large distances.
Can't change the past. Only create a new future. Here there be nightmare fuel.
I understood enough to be intrigued. And I like savant Derpy.