"I have called together the greatest minds in Equestria to explore this exciting new frontier of science!" Twilight Sparkle said, rearing up and spreading her wings on 'science'.
Sunburst looked around. Other than himself, there were precisely two ponies in the room.
"Granted, most of them couldn't make it," Twilight said on seeing Sunburst's look.
"Your letter did say you wanted to, quote, 'explore the practical uses for alicorn death,'" Starlight Glimmer, the third pony in the room, said, "That may have scared ponies off."
"It's fine, we have enough to start with," Twilight said dismissively, "Sunset Shimmer said she and the other me would drop by to help after school."
"They're still in school?" Sunburst asked.
"Yes, time works a bit differently there," Twilight said.
"Fascinating! Do you think I could..."
"Sunburst, getting off-topic," Starlight said with a hint of exasperation.
"Oh, right, sorry," he said, adjusting his glasses to hide his sheepish look.
"Right, anyway," Twilight continued, "We are here today to boldly go where nopony... except maybe Luna and Celestia... has gone before!"
"I'm assuming this has something to do with the pile of bodies outside your castle?" Sunburst said. THAT had been quite a shock. Thankfully, Pinkie Pie had set up an information/cake stand nearby to keep the populace from panicing. Though her insistence on adding a new frosting tombstone on the cakes for each corpse was probably running counter to that goal.
"Yes! You see, I recently found out Alicorns 'respawn' when we die," Twilight said, "Here, let me show you..."
"Twilight!" Starlight quickly said, grabbing hold of her friend with magic before she could teleport away, "I don't think that's necessary."
"Yes, I believe you!" Sunburst said urgently.
"Oh, right, sorry, it's just so exciting!" Twilight said, "Let's move on."
She walked over to her chalkboard and flipped it over. A white line of chalk divided the board into two. On the left side was written 'practical uses'. On the other 'rules and limitations. Each side had several entries, written one above the other in clear precise writing.
Under practical uses was written: "organ donation, blood donation, consulting dead ponies, medical cadavers, food source?, teleportation, visiting dead friends, interdimensional travel?", and then an erased attempt at writing something very small in the tiny space left.
Under rules and limitations was written: "Have to die first, takes some time?, corpse decays like a normal body, can only talk to one dead pony at a time?, have to know the destination well to respawn there", and again erased markings of further ideas.
"I take it you need a bigger chalkboard," Sunburst observed.
"Always," Twilight said, "But for now... Spike! Bring in the scrolls please!"
Spike walked into the lab, carrying a large pile of scrolls. He handed one to Starlight, one to Sunburst, then looked around.
"Just put the rest behind the chalkboard," Twilight said. She smiled sheepishly. "I was expecting more ponies."
"Any idea how long this will take?" Spike asked as he carefully set down the scrolls, "I'm supposed to help Rarity hunt for gems later."
"Oh, don't let us disrupt your schedule," Twilight said, "We can manage for a few hours on our own. Just make sure you're home in time for dinner."
"Right." Spike paused, looking at the board. "Um, it's not going to be pony meat, is it?"
"Don't be silly, Spike, ponies rarely eat meat," Twilight said, "That's strictly for emergencies or for trade to other species."
"O...kay...." Spike said uncertainly. He glanced to Starlight and Sunburst for support. Sunburst pushed his glassed up with a shrug. Starlight rolled her eyes.
Sunburst looked down at the scroll he'd been handed. It was divided by a line, like the board, but had additional entries as he unrolled it.
Practical uses: "Intimidating villains, pranking friends" (that one was crossed out), "quick escapes, healing injuries."
Rules: "New body in perfect health but hunger, fatigue, etc. remain; Cannot contact living ponies while in afterlife; Celestia doesn't like the term 'respawn'."
Sunburst was uncertain what that last entry was about. Below these was a new category: Unanswered questions.
"Can I respawn in another dimension? (wait until Sunset is told to test this), How much time does it actually take? Can I talk to a group of ponies that are all dead at the same time? (I have not been able to, but is this just unfamiliarity?) What is the afterlife actually like? (I keep forgetting to ask!) Are there dead ponies that can't be contacted? Can contact environment be made something more familiar and comfortable? (Again, I can't seem to do so, but could I with practice?) What happens if I starve to death? (Not sure I want to try it!) What level of injury is actually required to trigger? (I don't think I want to lie in agony for hours!) What happens if there are no available places to respawn? What happens if the universe ends? Can I just stay dead if I want, or do I eventually HAVE to come back? (I'm not suicidal, just curious! Please don't worry!) What happened to any alicorns that predate Luna and Celestia?"
"This is... something," Sunburst said once he had read the whole thing.
"Now you know what I've been dealing with for the past two days," Starlight said in a snarky aside to Sunburst.
"Now, of course I want to get to resolving all those questions," Twilight said, ignoring Starlight's comments, "But first, is there anything I'm missing? I have a sliiight tendency to go overboard and I want to be sure I'm not overlooking something important."
"Slight?" Starlight said.
"Where does the matter come from?" Sunburst asked before Twilight could react to Starlight's sass. Twilight looked startled.
"Huh, I don't know," she said, "I mean if the corpses dissolved back in to magic we could just say it was recycled, but they don't..."
"And as everypony knows, while you can exchange mass and energy at a rate determined by E equals m-c-squared plus h-k-cubed*, you still can't create mass-energy from nothing," Sunburst added.
Twilight paced back and forth, her wings rustling restlessly.
"What's the problem, then?" Starlight asked, "It's basically free energy."
"Not if it's taking it from somewhere else," Sunburst explained, "She might be depleting some magic reserve, or the logcal magic field. She may only be able to respawn a limited number of times. Have you noticed it getting harder to come back at all?"
Twilight shook her head as she paced in a circle. Sunburst noted the slight depression in the crystalline floor at that location. Clearly this was a regular habit.
"No, not in the slightest," Twilight said, "I've even timed it a few times, and I'm actually getting back faster."
"What about the local magic field?" Sunburst asked, "Do you have a thaumometer?"
"Of course!" Twilight said with a grin, excited to show off her lab equipment. She trotted eagerly over to one wall. "Here! And the data book is next to it."
"Probably organizing daily readings by pen color," Starlight said teasingly.
"Pfff, whaat? Don't be ridiculous," Twilight replied, waving her hoof dismissively, "Aheh... Obviously they're by date."
Sunburst started flipping through the book. He glanced at the thermometer-like device resting in its stand. "No significant drop right now," he said.
"But she hasn't actually come back here," Starlight said, "Maybe it's highly location dependent?"
"Gotcha!" Twilight said with a grin, spreading her wings and teleporting away before Starlight could react.
"Twilight!" Starlight exclaimed, rather belatedly.
"Where is she...?" Sunburst started to ask. Just then he heard a 'thump' outside. Thinking quickly, he started counting.
"One Celestia... two celestia..."
"Um, what are you doing?" Starlight asked. Sunburst held up a hoof an continued counting.
"Oh, I see, you're timing how long it takes her to get back," Starlight said.
"Seven Celestia..." Sunburst continued counting.
"And now I'm distracting you... I'll just... watch the thaumometer," Starlight said.
Sunburst had gotten up to "Fifty-three Celestia" when Twilight reappeared in a teleport-like flash.
"Well?" she immediately asked.
"A tiny drop," Starlight reported, "But no more than a standard teleport."
"Write it down! Write it down!" Twilight urged. Starlight found the pen anchored to the table the book sat on and scribbled down the reading.
"And the date and time!" Twilight said, grabbing the pen in her eagerness and accidentally pushing Starlight aside.
"You took about fifty-three seconds," Sunburst said, "How long did it seem to you?"
Twilight opened her mouth, then slapped her forehead with her hoof. "I forgot to count! Be right back..."
"Wait! Where's a..." Sunburst began. But Twilight was already gone. "...Stopwatch..." he finished.
"You know, sooner or later she'll run out of places where the bodies won't break her fall" Starlight commented.
Thump!
"...But apparently not yet," she added.
Sunburst began counting again as soon as he heard the muffled sound of the impact. This time, he got to "Fifty-four Celestia" when the flash of light came.
"Fifty-four seconds," he said as Starlight started writing down the numbers, "But I started right at impact this time instead of just after."
"I got..." Twilight took a moment to give a number. She had probably started counting before the impact.
"Twenty...nine seconds?" she said after a moment, "That's from when I hit the ground to when I showed back up here."
"Exact same magic drop as before," Starlight commented, "Same as a standard teleport, and not a thaum more."
"A thaum is actually a pretty big unit**," Sunburst said, pushing up his glasses again. He really needed to get a strap or something. He then noticed Starlight's look. "...And you weren't speaking technically. Sorry."
"So I AM losing time," Twilight said, "That's worrying."
"It's probably just the time it takes between when you break your neck and when your heart registers as stopping," Sunburst said, "The odd thing is it takes longer for the brain to die."
"Right, a few minutes," Starlight said with a nod, "Before that you can use magic to restart a pony's heart and they'll be fine. Unless you're distracted and leave them under for too long, giving them brain damage..."
The other two look at Starlight.
"Not speaking from experience!" Starlight protested, "I know I used to be evil, but I was never THAT evil."
"Hmmm, but maybe breaking my neck does something specific?" Twilight said, "So we'd need a way to stop my heart without damaging anything else..."
"Oh that one's easy, you just need some electrodes and a strong current," Starlight said. Again, those looks.
"Also not something I've done personally! I mean it's basic lightning safety, right?"
"There's a more pressing matter," Sunburst said, holding up a hoof, "We've confirmed it's not taking magic energy from the uhh... respawn point... so is the matter created from nothing, or is it taken from somewhere else?"
"Where would it be taken from?" Twilight asked. Sunburst shook his head.
"I don't have any way of knowing. Another dimension maybe?"
Twilight pondered this. She knew about dimensional travel, and there was one dimensions that she knew had very little magic.
"You don't suppose a magic-free dimension could result, do you?" Twilight asked, her voicing now having a hint of worry.
"I don't think so," Sunburst said, stroking his beard with his hoof, "You'd have to die an absurd number of times for that. But maybe it's taking a body from some other universe?"
"What?!" Twilight interrobanged, "Are you saying I'm killing some other Twilight every time?"
The others were appropriately horrified at the idea, but Starlight soon took on a thoughtful look.
"Wait, if that were the case, and there were infinite universes, wouldn't all Twilights but one ultimately die?" she asked, "I mean infinite Twilights killing infinite OTHER Twilights..."
Twilight (this Twilight) shook her head. "Not necessarily. Infinities are tricky. Even if the set of respawning Twilights has the same cardinality of the set of all Twilights, the respawn funciton itself can be injective without being surjective."***
"Fascinating," Sunburst said.
"Forget about that! Did Twilight kill... however many other versions of herself?" Starlight said.
"Forty-one at last count," Twilight said with a grimace.
"I don't think so," Sunburst said, still absentmindedly stroking his beard, "While I can't be sure of course, it's likely that if that were happening the other Twilight's friends would come looking for her, which would eventually lead them here."
"Unless they can't find us, or her friends are different there," Starlight said. She imagined a world where she had never met Twilight and also all of her friends had eyepatches. Eyepatches were a good way of distinguishing versions. That or goatees but those would probably only apply to Stallions.
"They couldn't be THAT different," Sunburst said, "Her body comes back exactly the same, remember? Too much difference in her history would lead to noticeable physical differences."
"This still means I can't kill myself anymore!" Twilight wailed, mourning the loss to science, "Since we can't even assign a probability it would be totally irresponsible!"
"Hold on," Starlight said, frowning. "I seem to remember Sunset saying something about the other you having a way to detect Equestrian magic."
"When were you talking to Sunset?" Twilight asked.
Starlight grinned sheepishly. "We may have exchanged linked books," she said.
"Starlight that's great!" Twilight said, "You're really taking the initiative at making new friends!"
Starlight blushed. "Thanks."
Sunburst looked back and forth between the two mares in confusion.
"You lost me," he said, "But from what I gather, you two know someone who can detect dimensional anomalies?"
"Right!" Twilight said, her enthusiasm renewed, "So we can find it and see if I'm giving off extra-dimensional vibes!"
"We juuust have to wait until school is over," Starlight said. Twilight's mood dropped a peg.
"Oh, right," Twilight said, "Well... I guess we wait."
*In the presence of a strong magical field, the traditional Einstein relationship that prevails on Earth ceases to apply. While the full equation is more complicated, that given here is generally a 'close enough' approximation. The 'h' here is the magical 'weight' of an object (typically given in milli-thaums), while 'k' is a natural constant much like the speed of light. Working out k's units is left as an exercise to the reader.
**Historically, a thaum was defined as the amount of magic which is needed to create a white pigeon or three billiard balls, depending on whether the author used Starswirl the Bearded's standard (former), or Rex the Magnificant's standard (latter). Rex the Magnificant, of course, being the semi-legendary mage of the Centaur kingdom. However as these definitions fail to specify the breed of pigeon or what number is on the billiard balls, it is now considered antiquated. The unit itself remains due to the inertia of tradition, but is now defined based on the constants 'k' and 'c', which are measured directly. For everyday usage, milli-thaums are typically used, despite efforts to redefine magic in terms of the amount of magic in the solarino.
***I'm not completely sure that that's correct. It's been a while since I dealt with trans-finite mathematics in any sort of comprehensive way.
Yo, this is a dope intro. I'll be following this story with interest.
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Thanks! Means a lot coming from OP.
Honestly it would really need a full editing run to be a 'proper' story, but as I'm just tryin' to be silly and teach some scientific method (and maybe a little real-world science) as I go, I'm only doing a spelling/grammar pass.
Hmmm... probably not.
He
Missing quotation mark.
I think there can a said instead of mused. Stroking a bread is neat way to indicate that he is musing.
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Ay, nothing wrong with silly little stories.
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Valid points. I'll make those changes.
I really like the word 'mused', but I suppose it isn't terribly helpful in that particular sentence. Back to my quest to work that word into as many stories as possible!
Hey. If respawning is relatively costless, Twi could open up a restaurant.
Hot fresh in Ponyville; "Twilights' Teriyaki".
Best (and only) alicorn meat on equs.
Do you only real issue is that there isn’t more of it
E = mc2 + hk3
Joules = kg.m2/s2 + mT.??3
kg.m2/s2 == mT.??3
To make sense in terms of dimensions mT would be Kg.s/m so that ?? could be (m/s)3
kg.m2/s2 == (kg.s/m).(m/s)3
At least I think that's how it works. 'k' is therefore a velocity, the speed of magic?
(m/s)3 = m3/s3
m/s2 is acceleration, a change of velocity with time. m/s3 is jerk, a change of acceleration with time. So would that mean that k3 is the change of acceleration of magical energy over a volume?
And Celestia only knows how the unholy concept of 'mass time per distance' translates to magical mass equivalence in millithaums.
(Come on, you make a comment like that, you know someone on this site is going to be a big enough nerdlinger to take a stab at it.)
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Now I'm thinking of a super villian behind sabotaging the MMMM, sitting in a chair pettling a white loaf while Pinkie Pie is strapped to a kitchen table, surrounded by stacks of cake and other treats she can't reach.
"So Bread Finger Roll, you expect me to talk?"
"No Miss Pie, I expect you to diet!"
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Just in this sentence it kinda feels redundant that you write mused and after that, he is stroking his beard. Kinda like you have both telling and showing. On the other hand is entirely possible I'm just looking at it too much.
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I THINK I'll get to that in the next part... of course I thought I'd get to it in the next part and realized the experiments wouldn't logically yield the outcome to get to taht without more data, so we'll see.
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I'll be coming back to this once I've gotten a more serious one-shot out of the way. This and the Flim-Flam one are sort of my palate-cleansers: Silly things I can just have fun with.
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As it's only one occurance it's not THAT bad, but it doesn't really add anything so I took it out.
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You can't assume mTh (T is Tesla so I use Th for Thaum) has units of kg*s/m, so you have to leave it as-is. Thus we have:
(J/mTh)^(1/3) = ? You can expand out the Joules if you like but whether that makes sense depends on context.
Strictly speaking it's possible the thaumic mass and inertial mass are related in some way other than this equation, but I haven't thought it out that far. I'm currently operating on the principle that magic is a fifth field-force. However when writing this I thought "You know, that's not quite exotic enough... what if it coupled to energy differently than inertial mass?" So basically the idea here is that there is both kinetic mass and energy and magic mass and energy, but the two energies behave more or less the same with respect to the principle of relativity. However, the masses don't.
Now, I don't think the math on that could BOTH produce a recognizeable universe AND account for the strength of the magic field in Equestria (I haven't worked that out), but it certainly looks neat.
Bruh now we have more content for Straighttothepoint.
For energy suggestion, see post in prior story.
As for Magic itself, one suggestion, if neutrinos are dark matter, then magic is Dark energy, and is the Octonion Eulerian vector in 5 space, using the fact that Fourier maths utelises complex values to represent scalars in time due to relative phase variations.
Also, its very useful that very recently a spacial planetary object has been observed with a projected density thats 100 times greater than that of water. If Dark energy has collected in the gravity well, enough to counteract it through the planets atmosphere, but not much greater radius, it depends on how far the dark matter equivalent imaginary gravity field extends, if the same inverse square, then the field is the sdame, the core just doesnt collapse as expected.. if its a faster fall off, then orbital parameters can be under far higher gravitational effects?
Still trying to work out if the maths works, but QM=GR(GR) seems to mathematically give the effect of renormalisation, that is, planck mass is self causing gravitational energy object, has no rest mass as we understand it.
An infinite energy singularity physically cannot exist,e ven in approximation, as it would be infinite energy and gravitational field, which would be a black hole of infinite radius, and the current event horizon of the universe is approximately the mass event horizon?
At least Twilight hasnt tried going into Gamer, Horror levels of alicorn sub fatal regeneration, such as the one that Everyone avoids because its a totally OP get out clause, that of Mitosis.
Hey, your story took the original's place in the cleanbox. Congrats on the feature, dude!
“Write that down. Write the down!”
Oh the memes.
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Saw the response in other thread, wish you'd have reproduced it here. Hmmm, that's a valid point. Hadn't consider solar conversion rate or accretion rate. Let's do the math here A little math shows that neglecting the thaumic mass you'd get 4.27 x 10^9 kg, whereas your average pony is closer to 10^2 kg. That said, the energy would have to be yoinked from a distance, as at Earth you only get the equivalent of 2 g of mass per second, and with a respawn time of approximately 50 s, you'd thus only have 100 g. Just not enough, and anyway that's spread over the whole Earth. It also draws the question of whether this requires all Alicorns to have a link to the sun, and whether their sun is even a star as we know it, but that's a whole thing.
The accretion rate is around 1.4 x 10^6 kg/year for Earth, so let's assume the same here. That rate comes to 2.6 kg/minute. Too low to match the measured rate (a pony is 40-ish kg), so we are still at a loss. This does neatly solve the problem of the mass accumulation, which I hadn't actually gotten to yet, since so long as Twilight doesn't respawn above once every 20 minutes on average, she is not adding significant mass to the system compared to other mass accretion. Either way, we still have the problem of where the mass-energy is ultimately coming from. Even yoinking the energy at a distance, the body still has to be put into an ordered configuration somehow. Actually that gives me an idea for that but I'll get around to it in a later chapter.
Alright,the rest of this is a bit outside of my usual field but I'll do some research here and see if I can figure out what you're suggesting. ...Assuming it is a serious suggestion, it gets hard to tell at some point.
I think you're either confusing two different theories here or trying to combine them and not explaining it well. Octonion standard model alterations can describe dark matter using a quaternion deconstruction into gravity and electromagnetism, while Kaluza-Klein theory describes the same phenomena using 5 dimensions. In principle they should be combineable but I'm not familiar enough with them to see the implications of that right off. Possibly because of that I'm not clear how a Fourier anlysis relates, though I can see that it might. Got a paper or something to link me to on this?
Also dark matter consists of more than your usual neutrinos. Sterile or Majorana neutrinos may contribute more, but you should specify those when referring to them: they aren't what most people think of when they hear the word neutrino.
And anyway, magic doesn't have the correct properties to be dark energy as we know it. It could enter as the scalar field of the Kaluza-Klein theory I suppose. I'm inclined to think the dark energy angle is a dead end, but I'll respond to the rest.
Check your sources on that density. Unless there's an object found within the last 6 months you're referring too, revised data show the densest planet as a 'mere' 26 times the density of water. It's dense, but not so dense as to require new physics.
Again, dark energy or dark matter? I'm a bit unclear. Dark energy, assuming it enters as a cosmological constant, is not per se affected by gravity the way matter is, and so far as it known it doesn't 'clump'. If it did the relative expansion rates of space over distance would vary based on the averaged density viewed along that vector. Space being relatively homogenous, on large scales this would disappear, but I think it would still cause a variation outside the margin of error. Though on the other hand, that margin is pretty large, so I suppose it could be possible within a 5-sigma limit. Still, I'm hesitant to build a theory around this: without such observations there's not that many papers outlining this theory so I'm not sure I can follow it to the degree required.
The imaginary gravity field proposal for dark energy is I THINK what you mean here. If you're using an Octonion the term 'imaginary' stops having its usual meaning, but I suspect that's besides the point. We'd have to assume EITHER dark energy clumps OR that dark matter creates imaginary gravity disproportionately compared to regular matter. Either way we have the same issue mentioned above for a fleshed-out theory, but as a quick-and-dirty approximation your statement is correct. I just don't see what it has to do with the question at hand.
Ok here I'm lost and I think it might be a language barrier. What's this about the Plank Mass? The rest is a model that exists but I don't see the relation to the rest of the discussion.
The first part is true (it can't physically exist), the second part is not, and the third might be true but the data is insufficient to say. In any case I'm again not seeing the relevance. FFor the second part, a Schwarzchild black hole only has a true singularity at a point. This does not result in infinite energy and field outside of that point, and if you integrate over space as a whole using the complex time formulation you can then treat any singularities like a pole and more-or-less preserve the math.
I do have to say, I'm not sure if the above is an honest effort from a non-native English speaker or an elaborate prank. Kudos for the effort regardless.
Ah so splitting off a separate Twilight? Well respawning rather than regenerating neatly avoids that problem.
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I would be honored.
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...Wow. Think that's my first featured. Feels weird that it's for a silly random piece, but at least it's a Science! one. :P
This made me laugh out loud. It sounds like a footnote in a bona fide scholarly work, and I would totally try to derive it myself, but I don't know how thaums relate to any other SI unit.
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See other comment: They don't, you have to leave it as Thaums.
That bit was inspired by Terry Pratchett (the definition of a Thaum is from Discworld).
It looks like a scholarly footnote because I'm a teacher and scientist in my day job, so I'm pretty familiar with that style. Especially obtuse textbooks that say things like "it follows naturally" when the result does not follow in any obvious way. That sort of thing has slowed down so many lesson plans and research projects...
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Hey man 75% of my featured stories are silly one shots. The other is also a one shot. That's how it be here.
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...Well this wound up spiraling into a multi-part but I take your meaning. Ironically half the time I struggle to hit 1000 words with one-shots.
n \rightarrow 2n
seems to fit(for positive whole numbers, obviously)
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Oh yes, this is so scratching my itch to see more of this and all the implications that would spiral out of it. I liked how you touched on the "quantum immortality" as a potential mechanism too.
Please continue to science the magic horse words.
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When I first wrote that line and accompanying note, before I uploaded it, it looked different. That was actually the example I looked up. But on the infinite sets, n->2n is actually an ordered bijection. It's part of Hilbert's Paradox of the Grand Hotel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_paradox_of_the_Grand_Hotel). After getting stuck reading up on ordered bijections and set cardinalities I eventually gave up and wrote it like that.
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Actually my immediate example was "The Vat of Acid Episode" from Rick and Morty. I do know about the quantum immortality hypothesis, though.
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I wondered if that had a Rick and Morty influence to it, the vibe definitely came through with the whole "killing your other selfs bit".
10317394
It doesn't have inverse for odd numbers
Those footnotes give me a scientific-ish vibe.
As a silly pony with no training in thaumaturgy, what if the matter at the respawn point is converted to the matter making up the body? As in, the exact mass of Twilight's body of air is converted. Since air is less dense than fleshy bits, this would cause a dip in air pressure around where she respawns. That's because, to reach the same density air as her body would require a larger volume of air than the volume of her body.
This is what I've always assumed teleportation in the series does. It either disperses air at the destination and leaves a vacuum at the origin, or it swaps the matter between the two locations. That way, if you teleport into a rock or something, you won't get your molecules torn apart. You'd just get stuck in a pony shaped hole.
For how the air is converted to body mass, just blame magic.
Personally if I were Starlight I’d probably be wondering if Twi is getting an endorphin rush or something given the degree of joy she seems to be getting from the act itself.
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In The Vat of Acid Episode, I kinda wondered why nobody mentioned that acid could dissolve everything, but always left the bones intact. Shouldn't it dissolve bones as well?
Reminds me of that Star Trek theory about transportation. The transporter kills you, then makes an exact clone of you somewhere else that just happens to have all your memories.
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We will not talk of how Fimfic stared into that abyss.
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I apologise for the problems, I didnt realise how seriously you were wanting to dig into the required maths etc and what level you were used to working at. In the UK, the education levels are not only different in named level today, they are a lot different today than when I went through them several decades ago. I am a totally native English speaker, just managed, after a lot of years fight, to confuse an expert psych and get certified.
You are also the first pewrson Ive seen who has mentioned Kaluza Kliens 5D equivalence representation between EM and Gravity, before I have. which is one of the things that puzzles me, as its been over a centuary, its the Only thing that even attempts to show a link, and yet it keeps getting lost.
Something that seems to keep being confused, is the difference and relations between physical and mathematical dimentionality. That is, a given physical dimentional region can have far more mathematical dimentions to the numbers describing it, but those mathematical dimentions are just that, descriptions, not physically existant. I first saw this on the Open University, dealing with the navigations matrices for the Voyager spacecraft. They took the rotation matrices in 3 space, and the translation matrices, in 3 space, and showed they were incompatible. But then they added an extra scalar 4th mathematical dimention to the matrices, and showed how the two 3D matrices could be combined in a single mathematical 4D matrix. But it still only described a 3D space. This is what I assumed the KK model did. It took two Quaternion spaces and then combined them in a 5 matrix, that still then only described a 4 Space.
The problem with 4 space is that over the decades, more and more experimental and modeling results have turned up which demand a solution in 4 physical dimentions. The simplest of this is the packing of a crumpled shirt fallen on the floor. The last one I know of, is Hawkings last paper, which although the bituary mentioned the article but not the details, I have to assume used the idea of the Flat Torus. Given it collapses to a toroidal singularity.
The trouble with singularities of objects, is the field energy. The classic one is the energy stored in the electric field of a spherical capacitor, where you keep the charge constant, and let the sphere shrink. Because the field strength increases, the energy of the field increases. Eventually, by the time you reach the classical radius of the electron, the energy of the electric field is equal to the mass energy observed of the electron. If this understanding was correct, then electrons have no mass, only charge energy. If you take the same with a neutral charge object that only has mass, and allow to shrink, its gravitational field energy continues to rise, until by the classical planck radius the mass energy of the gravitational field is enough to create the gravitational field of that mass equivalent. Of course, this is only Newtonion calculus, classical maths and so I Know my models and understanding can be widly and totally wrong. But the models do have to simplyfy to Newton eventually. I dislike myself doing mistakes as divide by zero.
One of the simple mistakes I make, at least compared to everything I currently read, is asking a certain question.
Is the reason nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, the same, or similar to the reason nothing can travel faster than the speed of sound?
As for the Hilbert Hotel and infinities, my favourite takeaway from that is that Hilbert not only used it to describe or demonstrate peculiarities in the understanding between real and mathematical objects, but then could easily demonstrate that the infinite cardinal dimention hotel can be carpeted by a cardinal one single carpet, just by the addition of enough stairs?
Something thats bothered me about teh various definitions of teleportation over the decades, is everyone always aims for absolutel perfection in every single quantum particle in each end. Noones ever gone for, hey, we use data compression in computers, and even used to use procedural generation, lets try working out just how Little data we actually need to copy accross for this to work? That, and even in the time Ive been using computers with hard drives, weve gone from 120 Meg to 12 Terrabyte. Im sure I have a 40 Meg somewhere, MFM thing on a hard card for the Amstrad 1640. So thats a million fold. No, the main thing I find intresting is just how Telepods. Using a shell that has a Bose Einstein Condensate layer. So youre only trying to copy a single quantum particle. Something Im really hoping helps with this, are various articles on the measured temperature of dense plasmas at atmosperic pressure, with drive frequency, several of which include a commercial electron beam welder which uses a magnetically confined argon plasma window to seperate the vaccuum of the electron beam generator and the surrounding atmospheric work space, and a medical wound clearer which uses a cold plasma for sterilisation. It also helps that in atmosphere plasma structures are th basis for a whole range of scifi effects such as forcefields. Both physical and energy affecting versions.
For unicorn horns, this to me looks like a good place to start, especially given the Princess Leia and Teapot tactile holograms at CES a few years ago. Are unicorn horns piezoelectric ELF transcievers?
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I would say very different. Especially since there is no known physics to allow for faster than light travel, but sound has never been considered an absolute speed limiter. As I understand it, the speed of light isn't really about light (or photons generally); it is the speed of causality, and then the maths works out that all massless particles travel at the speed of causality.
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But where light speed is the speed of causality for light, the speed of sound is the speed of causality for mass, and thers a lot of laboratory experiements that rely on the close relationship in behaviour between sound and light. I would like to think this also extends to high speed motion, but you have to look Very closely at high speed masses. Thats why I say nothing material travels faster than the speed of sound. Heat.
Asking the real questions, and answering them with solid science and maths. You, my dear doctor, have just earned a new student.
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But mass travels faster than sound all the time; it isn't hard. Electrons bounce around in an electric current at near c. Nutrinos go more than 0.99c pretty much all the time. A whip cracking is a mini sonic boom. Many firearms shoot faster than sound. And as the speed of sound approaches zero in higher and higher atmosphere, it becomes easier and easier to propel rockets into even ground level supersonic speeds through that medium.
In contrast, time itself behaves counter-intuitively near light speed. Objects at different relativistic speeds perceive time differently to each other. There is no analogous behaviour for the speed of sound.
And while we use sound metaphors to describe many of the wave-like behaviours of light, that is not the same as sound and light being similar. Light slows down in denser mediums while sound speeds up, which also means they refract in opposite directions when moving between the same mediums of different density (such as air to glass).
Light also has particle-like behaviours that are very different to sound waves.
This makes me think of Star Scribe's Message in a Bottle story where (spoilered as is a twist later in story)
Equestria turned out to be a ring world with a digital afterlife
In such a world, I could see there being a room with a ridiculously large amount of System Admin(Alicorn) clones, and each gets teleported in every death when Twilight wants to respawn. hence the thaum usage being identical
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That isn't n->2n then I don't think... Again been awhile. Now I do know that the odd integers do not have an ordered bijection with the integers, but I think they do have a bijection that isn't ordered. A quick search shows that there is: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2107729/bijection-from-the-set-of-odd-natural-numbers-to-integers
The ordered property is irrelevant for the problem considered here.
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That is a perfect experiment, but it's likely not one the ponies would think of since they teleport all the time. Hence, bringing in Sci Twi in the next chapter.
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Also something that must be tested! And probably: If fatigue and hunger transfer, the hormonal state likely does as well, and when the body is injured it releases endorphins. This is to allow action while experiencing the pain signals. Usually the pain means this doesn't feel good (unless your biology is more sensitive to endorphins than pain signals, hence masochists), but if the pain is gone...
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Depends on the acid. Some acids would dissolve bones more slowly, as the calcium matrix present in bone isn't present elsewhere in the body. It isn't a problem in the second vat, since the onlookers wouldn't know, but the first they should have. And indeed in the episode they start to question why the bones weren't dissolving (though not in those words). It really wasn't a very good plan.
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It would make sense, but that's not the direction I'm planning on going with it. Of course, it's gotten away from me once already.
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Pi Man: I'll respond to you at the end so scroll down for that.
You read the story, right? :P Over-analyzing is kinda my jam.
Oops, sorry. My third guess was 'outsider who doesn't know the usual jargon'. My friend PsiStarPsi was the same: took a bit to figure out what he was actually saying. My blog links to his theory on the necessity of 2-dimensional time in "The Cutie Re-mark". Actually it's more convenient to describe it as a 2-D embedding in 3-Space, and it's even possible to make it a 1-D embedding in 3-space, but that's another story.
Also I'm in the US so there are even more variations in what different educational levels are called.
My primary field is EM cascades and resulting effects: Thus far generation of anti-matter and gamma-rays in one project, and DNA damage in another. However I dabble in GR (both undergrad and graduate school advisors were GR people, at least partially), and so have come across the Kaluza-Klein theory before. I was unaware of the apparent symmetry between that and the EM-Gravity octonion break-down until I was researching your comment, and while I'd have to check, it certainly LOOKS like there's something there.
Kaluza-Klein wasn't completely lost. It served as a precursor to string theory. IMO the popular 'M-theory' model strays a bit from Kaluza-Klein's elegance, but that's a judgement call.
It's an extension of the Euler method of representing rotation matrixes by Quaternions. You run into a problem above 5-space because it is provably impossible to compose an algebra using objects past octonions. I don't understand the proof myself, but I'll trust the mathematicians.
The KK model used that as a starting point, but actually had to add a 5th spatial dimension to make it work. It's still a 'physical' dimension in the mathematical sense, not a coordinate one, but as usually presented it leaves ambiguous whether that dimension has any reality. It can be made a mathematical nicety.
I need to find this paper, but not right now as I have lunch cooking. I'll have to get back to you on this one.
Ooooooh, now I see what you're saying. Well that model of the electron is somewhat controversial as it's not clear how to distinguish it from alternatives. On the graviational end, the difficulty there is that all particles in the standard model at least interact weakly, which complicates things. Then you get into spinors and it becomes a whole thing. To isolate gravity, the model you're describing deals with a theoretical 'sterile neutrino', which is one candidate for dark matter. If they exist, we would expect their mass to be precisely what you describe. The problem is they are really hard to detect.
Regardless I also don't think there are physical singularities. I only meant you can avoid some of the mathematical nastiness they cause if you're careful. It's a stop-gap at best.
I assume you're referring to Aether Theory. I'll come back to this to address the replies on this specific point.
Not sure why that's a question, but yes that is kind of amusing.
Because we don't actually know what makes a person themselves. The 'death and clone' problem can theoretically be avoided (see other post that I'm making after this one) by this method, while with compression our current knowledge is inadequate to tell us if that is happening.
That's the trick. You can't actually copy a quantum state precisely: It's Bell's "No Quantum Xerox" theorem. Again I'll address this more in another comment. Already gone on long here and lunch is almost ready.
I'm not sure what the following welder bit is getting at. Is that just for transmitting particle streams without interference?
I think you linked the wrong article there. That's one's about using VLF for self-driving cars due to the reduction in risk of interference.
From my limited understanding of tactile holograms, though, while they could be such transcievers, that can't be all they are as many magic effects are beyond standard physics. They'd have to also act as magic channelers of some sort.
PiMan: Booster Spice is not explaining himself well here. I think he's referring to luminiferous Aether theory. Of course the classical form has largely fallen out of style. However, certain forms of it are still around. Here light 'waves' the aether, and classically it is the properties of the aether that determine the speed. The fact that it moves at light speed is somewhat coincidental: Different aether properties could make it move slower. The additional assumptions that are therefore required are the main reason it has fallen into disfavor.
It wouldn't affect the other weird things about light speed, but for instance:
The moniker 'light speed' is a historical relic. Any massless particle (or wave!) transmits at that speed, including gravity waves. It's just that of those objects, light is the easiest to measure the speed of.
There is, however, a modern theory called quantum loop gravity whereby there is a quantum 'foam' that acts much like a lumineferous aether. The properties of this foam determine certain things about spatial curvature, and thus about things like time dilation. Thus they link both those effects and the speed of light to the same thing, removing one objection to the aether theory. I think this is what Booster Spice was referring to. Mind you, there's currently no data supporting this model, but with the detection of gravity waves there is some how that there may be a way to do so in the next 20 years or so.
And lunch is done so I'll respond to the teleportation issue later.
It's not very often that an otherwise silly and hilarious story promotes intellectual comments that would make even Twilight "Egghead" Sparkle proud, and give Rainbow Dash headaches.
Well done!
The many oofs of purple princess pone
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Now this is an interesting discussion. Many discussions of teleportation involve reassembling the same configuration of molecules. This of course overlooks Bell's No Quantum Xerox theory, which shows that it is impossible to precisely copy a quantum stage (under certain assumptions which are pretty reasonable). Now if consciousness has no quantum component at all, this is hardly a limitation, but then we have that the 'received' object is effectively a copy and not the original.
However, Pensrose and Hammerhoff's model of Orchestrated Objective Reduction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction) would provide an out, if true. It's highly controversial, and may well not be true, but it's still plausible. It was taken up by the Alicization arc of "Sword Art Online", though they didn't get it quite right.
Won't go into the whole thing here, but the upshot of the hypothesis is that consciousness would have a quantum component. It wouldn't be the whole of it, but it doesn't need to be. The quantum component of consciousness would thus be unreplicateable. However, while Bell's theorem demonstrates that you can't replicate a quantum state, you CAN, in principle, transfer it from one particle to another. I'm not actually sure if that's possible in practice but in theory it could be (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation). This means that your 'received' person is not a copy but is the exact same as the original.
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Would you really take that risk, though?
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Not with the current state of knowledge. We'd have to both know that consciousness is quantumly encoded and that we could move the complex state from point A to point B without errors. And maybe human testing on the terminally ill whom the transporter could fix. Last part is ethically iffy but that's a whole debate on access to experimental procedures for the terminally ill.
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Fair enough, although I would probably just take the train.
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Trouble is with the demand of unique conciousness, are, neural firing rates, physical complexity, sleep, and vegetative states.
The problem with the idea of continous conciousness is the 1 kHz firing rate of neurons, cameras that have normal frame rates over 100 times faster, and the demonstration of being able to PEEK at the Quantum Kitten without killing it. Effectively freezing it in time, or to me a possible theoretical description of a stasis field.
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Any injection is a bijection between it's domain and it's image.
n \rightarrow 2n
map chops countable\mathbb{N}
into countable set of disjoint oriented chains (each odd numberk
starts it's own chain containing numbersk 2^{i}
), i.e. does exactly what is required.10318222
Ah. Yeah that checks out. Told you it's been too long since I had that class.
Sunburst in the story was right, then.
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None of those affect the uniqueness, only the continuity, and I deliberately avoided that because I have no resolution for that issue with the knowledge I have. It is an issue, just not one I have a resolution to either way.
Average neural firing rate I think is like 10 Hz... I guess the kHz is the max rate?
Sharp observers may note I have altered the tags. And changed the rating to teen to match "Many Deaths", but it's the tags that'll give you a bit of a hint as to the next chapter.