The Symposium
The sound of shattering ceramic caught Shining Armor’s attention. He rapidly turned to identify the source of this new disturbance, and saw the shards of a vase ricocheting his shield.
"That was a gift from the Zebrican Emperor."
Shining Armor frowned. "There isn't a Zebrican Empire."
Celestia smiled. "Not anymore. It was a brutish, unpleasant and short experiment.” She looked at the fragments skidding to a stop on the marmor floor. “That vase was nine hundred years old. It was a unique artifact from that time. I am pretty sure it was the last of its kind."
He stared with horror at the remains of the former priceless object. “I… I am sorry Princess. I should have caught it. I…”
She chuckled. "Oh, well, I hated it anyway."
He looked back at the scene unfolding outside his shield. The banner proudly declaring 'CLIV Symposium on the State of the Equestrian Culture’ was on fire. The Old Avant-Gardists had fortified one of the corners, but were out of projectiles after the Zebrican vase. It seemed that their faction would soon disintegrate under the pressure of infighting. The Dadaist and the Futurist were already arguing. Maybe. Shining Armor wasn’t quite sure; one was doing a strange dance while pouring honey on his head, the other one was sputtering a poem. At least, he dearly hoped it was a poem. The idea of organizing an evacuation if his iron lung was malfunctioning again amidst the shifting chaos of the battle sent shudders along his back.
"Your highness, are you sure this was a good idea?"
"It is an ancient tradition, my dear Captain. The decennial Symposium is the high point of the Equestrian cultural discussion, the most important forum of it’s kind.. It helps me to stay current and it is a wonderful occasion for the exchange of new ideas among our most talented scholars."
A makeshift catapult collapsed, scattering the existentialists camp. High pitched wailing about the absurdity of life echoed briefly, before being overwhelmed again by the sound of battle.
"Princess, I understand the intention underlying this gathering, but maybe it got a bit out of hoof. I mean, the positivists are... Are they about to defenestrate a prisoner? Oh sweet Celestia!"
“Oh my.” She winked to a distraught Shining Armor. “I am flattered, but nor you or I want to unleash the wrath of Cadence, so I must decline.” She snickered. “But fear not, I won’t tell her anything.”
Three mares and a stallion were carrying a younger unicorn to one of the windows. The prisoner was struggling trying to free himself, without much success. "Now we'll see if gravity is a social construct!"
"That is a decontextualized..." the window shattered "...overly simplified straw pony representation of AAAAAAAAAAAH..."
Shining Armor gaped. "They killed him! Princess, we need to stop this madness, we... Why are you smiling?"
"You worry too much. We have unicorns and pegasi on catching duty. This year is shaping up as being particularly peaceful." The princess was practically glowing with pride as she looked at the howling ponies going to get another of the captives.
He looked at the 'Pataphyisicists carrying around a tightly roped life size pony doll to a bonfire they were somehow trying to summon by describing it. "Your highness, I hate to state the obvious, but they tried to kill somepony."
"And they endured an hour more than last time before doing it. To be honest, I suspect that is why Luna didn't participate this year. She pouted a lot when she discovered that I prohibited the use of weapons, and complained that I took all the fun out of it."
"Weapons?"
"It was necessary. Did you know that the crossbow was invented specifically for the Symposium 730 years ago? It should have put to rest a long dispute between arcanists and mechanichists."
Shining Armor thought about his military history lessons. “Did it solve it?”
“No, it escalated the situation. We lost the Rose Hall. I still regret my foalish decision to host it there, it was an architectural wonder.” Celestia stared off into the distance for a few moments before sighing. “At least it helped to resolve the stand-off with the Griffin Warlords. And I learned a valuable lesson about research grant approval.”
A charge from the pragmatists dispersed the last core of solipsists, their attempts to disbelieve their rivals out of existence meeting with bitter failure. It wouldn't last; the victorious ponies were deep in enemy territory.
"With all due respect, I don't see any rhyme or reason in... this." Shining Armor waved his hoof at the chaos in the large room, a hysterical note starting to creep in his voice.
"It's the same reason we have two space programs."
"We have a space program?"
"We need to employ in some way all the too brilliant for their own good ponies with a penchant for making things that explode. I have a surprising number of subjects with talent in that field."
"I... see?"
"We have two space programs because two of the most intelligent ponies alive can't stand each other. It is frustrating, and considering their talents, it is excessively dangerous having anything less than our reign between them. You have no idea what two liquid rocket fuel scientists can do with a well-stocked kitchen."
Shining Armor witnessed supporters of historical inevitability gather, form a spearhead and disgregate in warring factions in the space of minutes. Frustration was elbowing hysteria for the place of most prominent feeling. "Please pardon me, but no, I don't understand it."
"The ponies here are among the smartest of their generation. And for some of them, that comes with an ego to match. This..."
A old mare ran past them, directed at grouping of nihilists. They weren't really doing anything, but that didn't seem to discourage the mare from charging, a bit slowly but with admirable determination, screaming, "Things are against us!"
"...is a cathartic experience. In the coming ten years winners will gloat and try to strengthen their position, while losers will rework their arguments, convinced that their defeat stems from weak premises. All this while nopony will stab anypony else, all of them waiting for the next Symposium to let their anger and frustration out."
"But the danger..." Shining Armor fell silent, noticing for the first time the faint aura around the princess's horn. He looked again at the battle, seeing for the first time the subtle adjustments that guided the ebb and flow. Chairs deviated slightly from their trajectory, missing the skulls that were their original target. Ponies didn't fall as hard as one expected from somepony launched across a room. The fire didn't propagate as furiously as it should, strangely content with consuming the remains of the banner and a few curtains instead of turning the academic papers strewn across the floor of the room into a raging inferno.
Princess Celestia smiled. "Yes, we will have an interesting decade."
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Glad to see this up on the site. Be sure to make a post about it in the write-off thread if you haven't already!
Very happy to see this on the Fimfics. It's a tight little fic, this one.
5768618
Glad you liked it.
I missed this in the writeoff, but it was a lot of fun here!
"So." The philosopher stared at the empty flask. "This is space, right?"
"Yup." His compatriot made a mark on the aetherometer.
"What does it mean?"
Oh God, this is hilarious!
Just one question. The most brilliant minds, you say? I don't see Princess Twilight Sparkle anywhere.
Then again, that one tends to create her own freakouts when she needs 'em...
5770367
Princess Twilight is expert in all fields.
What can be said?
"Every hoof against her and her hoof against every pony else!"
No. When she is older and doesn't "know" as much...
5770071
These are different kind of cathartic experiences. Celestia would never host the convention about rocket science near Canterlot, she likes her Capital City standing and not as a smoking crater, thank you very much
(I may write about the space program sooner or later, once I finish reading Ignition!)
5770367
5771299
She currently doesn't have the required ego necessary to participate (Trixie on the other hand...).
The definition once given by a roommate I had, regarding a professor, was "Walking bent under the weight of his own ego". Also, There is the same smoking crater issue as with rocket scientists.
I reviewed this story; you can find my review here.
5771385
5770367
It's true; Twilight is more the mushroom cloud type, and everyone remembers what happened to the Rose Hall.
5771988
Thanks for the (second) review
5772014
You're welcome.
To be fair, there's a big difference in editing something for a writer and reviewing something for the audience.
5771385 What really gave me disconnect was that Shining knew what a space program was, even though he'd never heard of one. It made me laugh, as I tried to picture what he'd imagine from the Symposium, and I came up with ponies questioning the philosophical meanings of why there is space.
There's a lot of comedic potential in cramming bitter rivals into a small lab packed with explosives, though, so I'd support your space program. For even more octane, consider throwing something like Project Orion into the mix.
5772039
Explosives? This is a small excerpt from Ignition! (great book, sadly out of print)
Now add ponies, more enthusiasm than commons sense and magic. The story will write itself
5772045 I remember my fascination when learning about flourine in high-school chemistry.
"It burns? On contact with nearly everything? ...COOL!"
I edited my last post, but likely as you wrote yours... Dyson's brainchild is still the best concept for a spacecraft I've seen yet, although I'm really sad NERVA got cut. Apparently the Air Force was actually doing ground tests with it.
5772050
There are a lot of interesting, and some downright insane, ideas for engines. And once you don't have that pesky biosphere you need to preserve you can become really creative.
Edit: I also seem to have a certain talent in derailing discussions along tangent lines.
5772065 Well, if we ever manage to cure cancer, maybe we can get past the pesky 'one untraceable death per launch' thing. That, or a barge in the Arctic... I still think it could be done, and if we ever get serious about Helium-3 as a fission fuel, we may have a compelling reason to put up a moon base. Orion could have done it with one launch. People just seem to be wary about a spaceship packed with nuclear bombs. Weirdos.
Eh, it's your soapbox here. And I'm certainly no paragon of topicality.
5772105
5772065
Meh. I'm good with us losing a random person to cancer with nuclear pulse propulsion. I'd wager the number of people who have died as a result of the space program, between actual space accidents, accidents during construction, accidents during training, people driving around more and getting in car accidents and dying, launch pad accidents, ect. is probably within an order of magnitude of the number of people who have been in space. Only 536 people have been in space. We've had 18 people die directly in space accidents, one die in a rocket plane, 11 people die in training, 213-307 people die in rocket explosions, and 26 people die in accidents directly while constructing or servicing spacecraft. That's 269-363 people who have died as a direct result of various space programs, which isn't that much different from how many people we've actually put into space.
Very happy to see this on Fimfiction. I loved in the Writeoff, and I love it now. Thank you for it, and for the introduction to several interesting schools of thought.
That being said:
This sentence made me cross my eyes. I think the "that" is supposed to be a "the"?
5772188
5772105
If we are really at one death per launch than it is still less lethal than the car industry (considering distance, invested money, workers and various externalities). I admit I'm not really an expert, but I would like to see where that number comes from. If it is from some optimistic paper from the '60 I may prefer if they redo their math, just to be sure.
5772196
Fixed, thanks
5772045 I'd definitely read a ponification of Ignition! On that note, here's a non-pony short story along those lines you might enjoy: http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/07/a-tall-tail
As for "The Symposium," it was very amusing and drew quite a few chuckles from me.
5772292
Ah, cold war insanity, some of the real projects, where a lot of money was invested, were wonderful in a creative and disturbing way. I find it always fascinating that we survived it. And thematically it is fun to play with it (I adore Stross by the Way).
Glad the story amused you.
5772212
I got the number from Jerry Pournelle's "A Step Farther Out", which is excellent reading for anyone who likes speculative science. It's a collection of newspaper columns he wrote about things we have the tech for, but haven't done. It's not fiction, though it is optimistic, and likely written in the sixtys. Still, the guy was a NASA scientist; I bet he checked his facts, and he did say there were studies done on it. Wikipedia links a paper, which is now gone, and gives some estimates on fallout, which I've no idea how to interpret.
I have yet to read all of the book Dyson's son wrote on the program, although it's on my pile. There might be better numbers there, in the bits I haven't skimmed. Ponies keep climbing on top.
5772188
I agree entirely, and it's been suggested that most of the fallout could be mitigated with what we now know. Fusion and peaceful explosives would do a lot, weather tracking and launching from the pole would help as well.
My one reservation is the torchship qualifier, where anything powerful enough to be interesting in spacetravel is also powerful enough to be a weapon. The Orion Project directly crosslinked with the casaba howitzer, (basically plasma cannons, based on the same tech) and Dyson's book says directed energy weapons research would be key in re-starting the project. There's a lot of trust involved in putting a spaceship packed with bombs out of the atmosphere. It's the same quandry facing nuclear power vs. coal; one's ridiculously better in almost every way, but people just won't buy it.
We will get affordable space-travel eventually. My current bet is on launch-loops or lightcraft, but we could have it now.
5772362
Oh, well, another book to add to may way too high "To read" list. If I ever get into retirement and they stop producing new stuff I may manage to read through the whole pile.
5771385
So when will we meet this descendant of the infamous Prophesor Quarterhorse and his rival?
I am strongly reminded of this Monty Python sketch:
Also, Celestia's perspective on the whole thing did a lot to keep it somewhat grounded.
5772793
No promises on release dates here, I am a veeeeery slow writer.
5772918
Guilty of never have seen that before. Thanks!
5772362
Frankly, we don't really know if that's true; we haven't seen any aliens floating around, after all. The engineering challenges are quite large. I think that a space elevator is more likely than a launch loop; lightcraft are also a clever possibility, though I have my doubts about them as well.
5772212
It isn't about one death per launch, but about one death per astronaut. There have been 305 manned launches, so the number is pretty close to one per manned launch. We've put up tons of satellites and other things, so the overall ratio is considerably better on a per-launch basis if you include those.
Note also this means, given that we've had four instances of people dying in spacecraft that were going to/coming back from space, you probably have about a 1% chance of dying on any particular launch.
As for the source: I collected those numbers myself from Wikipedia's page about space-program related incidents from all space programs.
5773470
The problem with the Alcubierre Drive is that it requires exotic matter which creates negative energy density, which, as far as we know, doesn't exist.
Well, also that it would allow you to create closed timelike curves, which is problematic.
5773813
I was not contesting your numbers, I was dubious about the use of NERDA or ORION engines in the atmosphere and the environmental impact they could have.
5773878
Oh.
Well, one of the criticisms of the impact study is that the so-called Linear No-Threshold model is controversial; basically, no one really knows if there is a threshold for radiation causing damage, or if it being so spread out would really have the expected effects.
The Chernobyl disaster in particular kind of messed with our expectations; we were supposed to see a ton of people die of cancer from that, but in the end we... really aren't sure how many people have actually died from the disaster other than in the immediate aftermath, and we probably never will, because we can't really figure out how many people actually got cancer from the disaster, and how many cancer cases are merely being detected because survivors are being medically examined much more frequently than normal.
5773813 Oh, I'm not talking superluminal. Personally, I doubt it can be done; Alcubierre's paper is cute, but things like negative energy masses larger than the observable universe make applying it... tricky. Causality is a bit more of a wall than the sound barrier ever was. Still, I think the economic benefits will push us into the local solar system eventually. Even the solar power seems worth going for, and we haven't even begun exploring the manufacturing possibilities.
I'm guessing that electronics or pharmaceuticals will push us there first, if fusion research doesn't. it's already been demonstrated that zero-g has interesting effects on things like crystallization. Actually, one of these private space companies needs to head out to the 'ring and drag back an asteroid. If we had steel in space, we could build a decent-sized space station already, and that would be interesting.
Space-elevator's are a nice concept, but the math for launch loops suggests we could actually build one, as opposed to waiting on a materials engineering breakthrough that may or may not happen anytime soon. In the meantime, I'd settle for SHARP space guns.
5773878 NERVA releases no radioactive elements, without catastrophe.
The basic design simply uses a reactor to superheat liquid hydrogen. This gives it a theoretical efficiency three times that of chemical propellent, (H2 vs. H20) since lighter reaction mass is more efficient. They tested it working at twice current engines. I don't know what sort of 'nuclear' they experimented with, but the track records for things like radioisotope thermoelectric generators in space has been exemplary, as far as safety goes.
Really sad the funding on that one got cut.
5773928
Actually, at this point they can theoretically build a drive using only about 700 kg of exotic matter - still 700 kg more than is known to exist, but that's hardly unreasonable. The main problem is that the matter in question probably doesn't exist at all.
We know what we would build a space elevator out of, the trick is making a thousand kilometers of the stuff. Honestly, both have unsolved problems; we can't make the material long enough for the space elevator yet, and the launch loop has some unsolved engineering problems relating to friction on the ends, as well as some other theoretical problems.
Really, whoever builds a cheap way into space first is going to make a ton of money; that being said, I'm far from convinced that there's actually that much money to be made in space. The problem is that even at $300/kg, the cost is extremely prohibitive; you need to be bringing down something which is pretty valuable for that to be a worthwhile endeavor. Iron asteroids and space manufacturing are the two things which seem remotely plausible - iron meteorites for their large cargo of precious metals, and space manufacturing for 0g manufacturing. However, in the former case you need to spend quite a bit of money to get the asteroid here, and making the metals in question vastly less scarce would severely impact their price, which might make it very hard for the project to actually ever pay off its capital costs. In the case of space manufacturing, I've not seen anything which convinces me that the enormous expense of building the stuff in space and then manufacturing the stuff and bringing it back down to Earth will actually be worthwhile.
That's not to say it can't be, just that it isn't proven that it IS actually valuable. Satellites and similar things are obviously extremely valuable, but that's more about the putting up than pulling down.
Of course, it is all moot unless we get launch costs down; at the present costs, you'd probably lose money even if there were chunks of solid gold or platinum floating around that you could just grab.
Meanwhile, the surrealists are cantilever the cantaloupe zuchinni cardigan. At a corner, some ponies wait for the natural übergläschen to rise.
Very unique tale, funny and well written. Well done.
5774022 From my sparse reading, the difference seems to be engineering vs. research AND engineering. I simply back the one which has problems I think we can work on now, as opposed to the one we may not see the end of for years.
As are most people. This is why I suggest micro manufacture as the likely pusher. Drugs and circuits are extremely valuable, extremely small, and backed by a huge industry. If someone decided space = cure for cancer, or even 300% more battery life in the next Iphone, you know we'd be there next year. Having a bigger space station would mean more research, would mean this push comes sooner.
The big reason I'd like to see asteroid mining now, is because a huge amount of value in it comes from current lift costs. Having steel for building IN SPACE is valuable just for it's position. At 300$ per kg, the balance becomes cost of movement and refining from the belt vs. cost of movement and refining from Earth, and that's pretty steep. I'd be interested in seeing projections of the numbers, but I'd bet there's some value there.
And, if we had nuclear spacecraft, things get even more interesting; getting one to Earth is expensive because of fuel, but orbit is halfway to anywhere, and a properly-designed rocket can use just about anything for reaction mass. Hook a NERVA up to one of them, and start shoveling chunks of slag in until you get to where you need to be. Park it in the L3 point, or land it on the moon, and build space-stations from there. If Elon Musk started offering steel in space at 150$ per kg, with rides subsidized for a large enough purchase, I'd bet someone would send a few workers up to start the first space hotel.
Of course, this is all pixie-dust and daydreams. As you said, we just don't know yet. I'd love to find out in my lifetime, but I'm not betting on it.
As I suspected from TD's review, I didn't really have the breadth of knowledge to fully appreciate this, but that doesn't mean it wasn't pretty entertaining anyway. Poor Shining.
The comments were pretty fascinating too.
5774507
The comments are great. Make me want to go read some speculative fiction.
5773813
Matryoshka brains about inhabited systems, Von Neumann probes to expand and telecasting (or starwisps). It is possible that we are drowning in information we can't really detect or understand at the moment (I know that this is one of the more optimistic solutions to the Fermi Paradox.)
5773899
I know, this is the kind of research where almost all the most useful experiments get you in a dark alley where the ethic commission beats you up with a sack full of doorknobs. Like what would happen with the more interesting social experiments.
Oh, and I would probably assist with the beating.
5773986
My own engineering knowledge is somewhat limited, which is one of the reasons why I don't work on that stuff. Still, it's a fascinating argument and I need to read up again on it.
5774022
And this is the reason (700kg of exotic matter, or seeing if it is possible to do it at all) is why we need a solar powered particle accelerator on Mercury, or why we should dismantle mercury and build it in space (one can dream). Stupid Mercury, useless piece of rock
5774154
zang-tumb-tumb-zang-zang-tuuumb tatatatatatatata picpacpampacpacpicpampampac uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
5775208
I love this current comment thread, it makes my inner (and outer, there's a lot of me) nerd squirm in delight
5776000
The Higgs Field isn't the only thing that gives objects mass, and it probably can't be neutralized anyway.
I think it is a very good bet that FTL is one of those things which cannot be done, primarily due to the causality violations. As was once said, "Without causality, we're buggered," and there's no sign of time travelers from the future in the present.
Possible to do, sure, but what's the point? Why bother doing it in the first place?
5775974
Dyson spheres would be detectable because they would alter the light profile of stars significantly; we haven't detected any Dyson spheres, nor found any sign of star disassembly by advanced civilizations. These would actually be the most obvious signals, far more visible than petty radio waves. There probably aren't any tier 3 civilizations (as those would be visible across a good fraction of the universe, and we haven't seen any sign of them) and right now tier 2 isn't looking too likely either.
5776000
I am not so sure we absolutely need to go superluminal. It would be neat, who's not to love interstellar starships, but we can probably find ways around it. It is possible that we may never ship whole adult bodies around, that will be too expensive, but if we manage to restructure us in some more manageable format we can probably spread around anyway.
Then, without FTL, maintaining a coherent civilization that reaches past a single solar system will be very tricky, and maybe impossible.
5776021
Supposing you are using the original definition of Dyson sphere (as in a swarm, not a solid shell) would it really alter so heavily the profile that we can detect it from here (honest question, not a rhetoric one)? If the swarm is sparse it would still give the civilization a lot of real estate, if it is dense enough and all the outgoing energy is used in some focused communication to other stars (like a network of high powered lasers) it would be invisible for us. This obviously requires that there aren't a lot of civilizations around, otherwise we would detect something missing.
5776057
Dyson spheres are highly visible; they will diminish the amount of visible light around the star, but they would increase the amount of infrared light around the star. So you would see a very weird-looking spectrum. Even a cloud-type sphere (which is the most plausible type) would still alter the star's profile in the EM spectrum, increasing the amount of IR at the cost of visible light, though not as severely as a solid sphere would. We can see dust clouds around stars, after all.
5776070
Outgoing infrared is wasted energy that you can, if you are capable of building a Dyson sphere or swarm, probably reroute with a decent efficiency to power outgoing communications, in which case the energy "simply" (as you need superconductors at least) goes where you want instead of being radiated all around.
Anyway, it is all highly speculative, probably completely wrong and in a few decades will be subjected to ridicule like phlogiston, but it is fun to throw a few guesses around.
5776000
Eh, the solar system is really pretty big. I mean, if we terraform Mars and Venus, that gives us plenty of room to expand, even discounting space habitats. Just because the rest of the universe is bigger doesn't mean we're entitled to a convenient means of getting there. If we eventually expand, it will be because it's cost-effective to do so, and although wishing the costs lower makes for wonderful stories, we can't base anything on that. I'm with TD on this one; causality is pretty solid. Sure, we may find a way around it, but I don't think it will be anytime soon. And by that time, any predictions I might make would be so dated as to be laughable. So for me, it's more a thing of 'my guesses are useless here', than 'I know this can't be done.' I argue local space travel because it's cool, but I don't found my projections on things like RF resonant cavity thrusters, because I like to think my ideas are founded on principles I really know. Once we find the value, then things will move. I'm mostly frustrated by the fact that things which could have helped us find that value have been bypassed.
...although I do think we're more likely to go trans-human and translate ourselves into computers before we try sleeper ships. Wasn't cryogenics was invented before the internet? But hey, just my fancy.
Also, heat is views/time, or something like that. This wasn't featured because it didn't get enough views fast enough, most likely. My current guess for the bottom of the box is something like 150/day, but I'm basing that on mostly just clicking random view graphs.
If anyone here wants to read some excellent far-future hard sci-fi, I highly recommend John C. Wright's "Golden Age" trilogy. Some of the best characterization of A.I. I've ever read, coupled with much deeper predictions than most writers, and all founded firmly on what we know. They built an accelerator around the sun, in that one.
5776080 Causality doesn't stop things from going faster than light; it's about things going faster than light being useful. If I had a tv remote that used FTL, it would be possible to find a frame of reference where my TV turned on before I sent the signal. This causes severe problems with all of everything we know, forever.
At least as far as we currently understand 'everything'.
I think some quantum effects are instantaneous. I believe it's been shown, however, that we can't transfer information faster than light using them.
This is why some thoughts on wormholes allow their use for FTL. If they're coming out somewhere that we can never reach, they're not actually breaking causality. (I think. I'm getting into stuff I've never studied, at this point.)
5776181 Even in the gedankenexperiment you posit, I don't think you would observe faster than light movement anywhere in the system. The lighthouse would simply start to lead the spot, the same way the sound from a fast-moving plane seems to come from behind it, rather than from the plane itself, due to the speed of sound.
For the same sort of reasons, you couldn't transmit information using an extraordinarily long rod. While we like to think of some things as instantaneous, the simple fact is that in order to move such an object, the force needs to move from atom-to-atom, and that propagation can't happen faster than light, since force is transmitted by the bonds in the rod.
Be careful what you increase to infinity.
If I understand quantum entanglement correctly, it does transmit states instantaneously. However, since you can't measure quantum states exactly without destroying some information, if you want to know what was transmitted, you need to measure both particles, making this useless for breaking causality. The state is transmitted, the information is destroyed. Like, if I encode information in a binary system and send it to you, but reading the ones removes the zeroes. Nothing useful comes through, because you already knew it was 'some combination of ones and zeroes', and any information is destroyed with the pattern.
The analogy limps slightly, but I hope the idea is clear.
5776264 Even if the angle of rotation seems to suggest the projected image should move faster than light, you wouldn't actually see this, because light isn't instantaneously fast. Instead, the path of the beam would curve, as the reflected image moves at light-speed from any vantage point. Picture waving a garden hose; when the nozzle moves faster than the water can propagate, the stream bends. Even if the speed of the light is 3X10^8 m/s, the situation is the same.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your proposition.
I may well be wrong about quantum states. I'll be the first to admit I'm no genius at modern physics. However, the important point of what I was saying hangs on one idea; it's impossible to use just a measurement on an entangled state to determine if the other measurement has been taken, and measuring the state destroys the coherence. I can't 'set' a message without knowing what the state is, and knowing what the state is means I can't change what you measure.
Say we share a set of boxes that may or may not contain cats. If I open my boxes, I can tell whether mine contain cats, and know yours will be the opposite. If you open your boxes, you'll find the same. Adding/removing cats from open boxes won't affect the others results. and opening your boxes won't tell you if I've opened mine. Even if I can 'flip' the 'cat-ness' of two boxes before sending one to you, I can't tell whether or not a box contains a cat before opening it, so there's no way to send a pattern of cats. If I open the boxes beforehand, encoding a message would be trivial, but that would collapse the states.
When you open your boxes, you won't know the order I opened mine. Just that you've suddenly got a lot of cats.
Like with the ones and zeroes, to complete the message, we'd need to use classical channels.
Anyways, there's likely an error in that somewhere, if it's even comprehensible. This metaphor may be more DOA than limping. I need to go to bed.
Humm so this is what an internet comment board would look like in real life?