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A Relatively Relevant Matter


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#1
deusvult

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Hello Batotoans, I am unsure how many of the readers here are concerned or even interested with the nuances of physics in this relatively hard sci-fi series and if that isn't you please save yourself the trouble and read no further. There has been an issue bothering me for some time now and I wanted to know what others thought of it, or if perhaps an explanation was given either within the manga or elsewhere in other media of which I am ignorant. And that is, how did the Large Mass Union Ship travel the 3 light-years to the Lem system is such apparently little time?

 

Now, throughout the comic there have been numerous fantastical physical occurrences and technologies for which "Higgs Tech" has served as a catchall explanation, and the Gauna themselves being biological Higgs engines, really there is no limit to what they can accomplish within this universe scenario. However, even for the Gauna there do seem to be limits to certain aspects and abilities, and many physical laws still must be obeyed (the guardians link to accelerate to a target and, midway, flip to decelerate to match the target's velocity).

My concern here is with the motions of the Large Mass Union Ship. At the tail end of Chapter 35 we are notified that the LMUS has begun to move. 

http://vatoto.com/read/_/158102/sidonia-no-kishi_v7_ch35_by_illuminati-manga/21

Then in the opening pages of Chapter 36 we see the LMUS in the Lem system destroying the moon of Lem VII. There did not seem to be any appreciable amount of time between these events. Certainly insufficient time to warn the colonists who were caught completely unaware. 

The question is then one of Gauna capabilites. The LMUS was under constant observation by Sidonia scanners at a distance of approximately 3 light-years. It was observed to begin its approach in coincidence with the destruction of the Ocarina. It arrived in Lem after very little time. How was this accomplished?

 

If the Sidonia's scanners operate in conventional radio and visible bands, then it is possible that the LMUS began accelerating 3 years ago, very rapidly attained a speed near the speed of light and very rapidly decelerated on approach thereby arriving in the Lem system shortly after the light it shed on it first move. This is unlikely unless the abilities of Gauna are much amplified by large unions. In the case of the very first Gauna we encountered we saw that after a direct hit by the heavy mass driver it still required several days to accelerate in Sidonia's direction. Given the short time between the notice and the arrival the LMUS would have only had several days to reach light- or near-light-speed (approximately 300,000 kM/sec) and an equivalent time to decelerate.

 

So along with the initial question, we face several others regarding what exactly Higgs tech can accomplish. The Sidonia's telemetry (scanners) and communications have been shown throughout the comic during battles and other missions to operate over great distances (hundreds of millions of kilometers) with no delay (1 AU is about 1.5 x 10^8 KM and 8 light-minutes). This suggests that Higgs tech enables faster than light comms and telemetry. If this is true, it would further allow the Sidonia to observe the LMUS in real-time. The fact that the LMUS's movement coincided with the destruction of the Ocarina further reinforces this and also suggests that the Gauna themselves possess a means of FTL communication and observation. 

 

However, in the case of FTL observation, it would mean that the LMUS traversed that distance in a matter of days requiring the LMUS to be capable of FTL travel, a whole step above and beyond comms and telemetry. But most conspicuous here is that none of the characters make any mention of this peculiarity. While Tsumugi's superior acceleration and inertial-dampening abilities elicit numerous compliments and speculations as to their nature and the possibility of their reproduction, nowhere is FTL (which is a major technological barrier) mentioned in any capacity, not even astounded pilots or researchers wondering how the LMUS showed up so suddenly when its existence and distance seems to have been common knowledge among at least the pilots. Regardless of the absence of comment, if the LMUS, perhaps by virtue of so many true-body Higgs engines being concentrated in one structure (Izana did remark that the concentration was much higher than initially believed or previously encountered in other mass unions), is capable of warping space, entering hyperspace, or some form of matter transmission type teleportation (quantum tunneling, etc.) then covering that distance in such time remains very possible.

 

What does everyone think, a sinister sign of some greater, as yet unknown ability of the Gauna or an editorial gaff requiring a minor suspension of disbelief?


Edited by deusvult, 30 August 2014 - 02:30 AM.


#2
secretkeeper

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IMHO the answer is: Neither.
From Nihei's universe, gaunas are certainly capable of FTL travel, but you are putting too much thought into it.
Also note that accepting FTL travel would already deny the current physics model you are trying to tie this universe in.
There are also other fantastic things like biological immortality, time traveling and what not, Nihei is not trying to be ultra realistic.

 

About the remarks on individual pilot, technologies or Tsumugi's abilities, please note that "speed" almost always does not refer to "actual speed".
Speed for the characters in Shidonia no Kishi is mostly about control and not about how fast one may go, in many cases.

 

Finally the physics models are only accurate until a certain point, afterwards you need different physics models to describe phenomena.
If you want to make some sense out of certain inconsistencies in Nihei's universe you could use the limits of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
That said, our science is not feature complete either. Keep it in mind.



#3
Ozen

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Tsutomu: "See this physics I'm holding up? See this? See how I'm fucking it? That's right, and you're gonna like it. Ridiculous alien race destructible only by magical doohickey? Yep. FTL observation? Yeah, right in the ear. More guardians connected together accelerate better for some reason? Yer gonna take that too."

 

I wanna point out that the speed of light is a pretty hard limit. At least, special relativity has some pretty specific things to say about it (haven't taken a general relativity course, but I have an inkling that it says something similar). "More bodies" probably doesn't cut it - you'd have to break some fundamental barrier in physics to make it work. That isn't to say it absolutely can't be done, it's just that our current knowledge of the universe doesn't allow it. I'm no expert, certainly, I just think that with Nihei you have to sit back a bit and enjoy the awesomeness while suspending a lot of disbelief. That said, he does seem to be getting lazier with Knights than he was in the Blame! days. Doing this verbose physics-fucking thing with a straight face is worse than not explaining it at all.


Edited by Desu Ex Machina, 30 October 2014 - 04:35 AM.


#4
deusvult

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Holy crap, I haven't looked at this in a while. Thanks for responding to my topic. And yeah, I guess you're right. I was thinking way too much into it. Last summer I was doing some Larry Niven binge reading along with other similar authors, so I was really digging the whole hard sci-fi, ultra-realistic thing and came to expect an unreasonable level of accuracy from a comic (even a very well done one).

 

As far as the hard limit of c, there are certain feasible work-arounds that have been theorized. But as far as this setting, keep in mind that we here in real world land have accomplished everything thus far by the harnessing of only a single particle, the electron. Looking at the massive and previously unimagined leaps in technology we made upon the invention of electricity, who can say what next leaps await us upon harnessing the inherent properties of other particles?



#5
nadededeshko

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Interesting. The long range scanners would have to work ftl, otherwise they wouldn't be able to track the mass union ship consistently at all. Alternatively it's possible that they couldn't track it in real time when it was far away and that we simply missed a part where the Sidonia approached Lem. In chapter 69, Yamana Eiko's brother states that many years have passed since Nagate's story began, so we don't really know how much time has passed between some chapters.



#6
TaruBoss

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im a little late to this and Batoto is closing down but... times are all fucked up

remember when Tanikaze and Hshijiro where alone in space, with no more higgs particles, and then they were saved by other crew members ? couple pages that felt like a couple hours ?

that was two weeks.

for all we know, between one chapter and another there might be a 10/20/30 years time skip...they all age very slow and some are even immortals...so yeah, all fucked up