That's true but it's not all psuedo science.
Dilloh wrote:[I don't think it is that easy. If it was, we'd already have a spaceship, consisting of 50 docked spaceshuttles, capable of doing warp 0.5.
Wrong analogy, we don't have warp technology but we do have plasma technology.
So really isn't any more difficult than making smaller and faster computers, it'll take time and money but it can be done.
Dilloh wrote:I'm not looking for an explanation, I'm looking for a way how to tell the engine to damage the ship while using the cloak. Besides that, radiation is nonsense unless the ordinary reactor produces the radiation and stock shield generators provide the extra effort of shielding the cockpit from this menace.
It's an alternative and anything that can cloak a ship can easily be using enough energy to generate EM radiation like X-Rays or Gamma Rays that can be higher than normal levels and coming from the shields themselves would means there was nothing but hull armor protecting the pilot.
Alternatively couldn't you link the cloak to say the ship getting hit by weapon fire? So the engine treats it like the ship is getting hit?
Like maybe phase damage?
Miramor wrote:Sad to say those are exceptions to the rule. I wouldn't know about Popular Mechanics, but I've never seen Popular Science fail to fall for the Moller skycar crap at regular intervals...
Actually it's not that bad, the skycar was just bad marketing.
And most of what they show is actual technology like their product page near the beginning.
And they do show old articles to show what ideas made it and what didn't.
Never mind it doesn't invalidate the technology, only the application.
Like really they can make rocket belts so we could all fly, it just wouldn't be practical or safe.
Like two guys who built their own rocket belts are already building fuel versions that can operate for over 20 minutes versus the about 30 seconds the tradiational rocket belts could fly.
And the Guy who the skycar article was on is actually building them, I don't think they will sell but the technology is there even if unpractical.
chuck_starchaser wrote:What's an "energy field"?
Long story short, All matter and energy are made up of vibrating energy called stringlets and just like magnetic fields the stringlets that make up matter interact with fields that repell or attract each other and this gives us the illusion of solidness.
Though even before string theory we knew this as even atoms don't really physcially interact as they are ruled by polarity and how many electrons they have in orbit, etc.
So even at that scale we can see matter is mostly empty space.
And how is the re-arranging accomplished?
For Star Trek the transporter turns the source material into raw energy and then projects the molecular pattern which it then just basically fills with energy to make it real.
Basically the same way the transporters normally work except the pattern that the object is turned into would be different from the source.
For real world replicators, they basically put the whole factory into a single device. Like using a ink jet printer to fabricate circuit boards or lasers with phase change materials to create 3D objects straight from the computers.
Microwaves are just simple energy transfer causing molecules to vibrate but depending on the materials you use then microwave or laser can alter the physical state of a given material which can then be used to form objects.
The object in turn can then be sent through the normal prototyping process to finallize the final object for manufacturing but the system by which this is done is being simplified enough that you can actually make some devices in a device that can fit inside a normal room.
Basically a factory in a box.
You'd be surprised at what they are working on already. So replicators aren't that far fetch, it's basically just automating the manufacturing process into a single device after all.
They already commerialized such devices for making custom drinks for example. Since all it really has to do is mix liquids and ingredients.
And limited rapid prototyping equipment such as with 3D printers.
Or even a custom scent machine which can make sents by mixing chemicals on the fly whenever needed as is being applied to VR technology to make it more real.
Note: I'm talking about what can really be made so don't get lost in the need to do it Star Trek style. Like the old saying goes there is more than one way to skin a cat. So there is also more than one way to create a replicator.
Just because one version is fiction doesn't invalidate the concept.
Pure speculation. This is the 50 million dollar question in exobiology.
No, just the math of probability, a guy already made the math formula for calculting the probability and when taken with the size of the universe and the numbers of stars came out to quite overwhelming numbers.
We have already discovered on our own planet that life can exist in places we thought life could not exist.
Salt, acid, cianide, boiling temperatures, all we have found life.
The raw materials for life actually come from space so the seeds for life exist everywhere.
And we already confirmed that other stars do have planets and at least one was discovered in an Earth like orbit.
So the probabilities shows it's pretty ovewhelming that we aren't alone in this universe.
Course some people will never be satisfied until they meet said alien life and even then there are people who will still deny it just like there are people who deny we ever landed on the moon.
Not even necessarily so. Evolution is mere adaptation to survive. The adaptations can go up or down in the scale of complexity. Sometimes organisms evolve by simplifying themselves, and shedding like 90% of their genetic material all at once.
That's only in terms of conservation of energy, but so long as resources aren't limited and conditions of the planet are constantly changing over time then life will always evolve to more complex forms.
How else do you think we, or any of the other complex life forms, evolved when life started with little more than primordial ooze.
And there have been plenty of mass extinctions in our planet's history too.
De-evolution only occurs when resources become low and there is nothing to challenge the life.
But mutations occur all the time and adapting is only a part of evolutionary process.
New life is evolving all the time just as some die out. It's just part of how life works.
Even for us, new DNA that effects the brain has turned up in our genetic gene pool at about the same time we developed agriculture and again just a few thousand years ago as we again introduced new ways of thinking.
So even though we are surviving just fine we are still evolving.
For example, take our own DNA, it's not nearly as large as we had thought but that's because it is more complex in its interaction than we had thought possible.
So evolution is not just merely adapting to survive, it's a steady trend to forming ever more complex life forms. After all, life is change and evolution is part of life.
It's really just a matter of time.
We've only got one case study, --our own planet--; and that's not enough to extrapolate. You may be right or you may be wrong; but either way, you're jumping to conclusions.
We got our planet, we got Mars, Venus, Europa, comets, meteors, and we have the spectral analysis of other stars and the makeup of interstallar gases and materials. All of which allows extrapolation.
We even got the fact there were competing branches of homo sapiens before we came out on top to show more than one intelligent species were developing here before we took over.
Also intelligences is matter of a genetic arms race for many species.
So much so that you can take virtually any predator and you will find that it is smarter than its prey virtually every single time.
Again showing it is only a matter of time, as each species tries to become smarter than the other over time this will eventually lead to a sentient species like us.
And really, even counting only Earth like planets and not other forms of life that could evolve from other chemical reactions, still leaves trillions of worlds that life as we know it could evolve on.
Really, there are more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on a typical beach. And in each galaxy there can be millions to billions of stars.
Even if only a tiny fraction of that produces the same conditions as on Earth still makes it far more than just jumping to conclusions.
It's actually harder to believe that there isn't life out there.
Really, when taking the age of Earth into account we evolved in a very short time period.
Let me guess you've read this in Popular Science.
Actually from NASA and from DARPA, they make their own announcements whenever they make breakthroughs.
Never mind the fact NASA is hardly the only ones developing plasma shield technology.
In fact NASA was primarily working on plasma sail technology and only recently got into plasma shield technology to help shield astronauts, such as for the proposed Mars mission.
But this stuff isn't in the theoretical stage anymore, they have already proven the principles with actual prototypes.
The only problem is making the equipment small enough and provide it with enough power to be practical.
Which is no different from present laser weapon research.
Like the presently available mobile lasers capable of knocking out missiles take something the size of a C130 plane to house them.
It doesn't mean laser weapons are magictech, just that we are a long way from miniturizing it to more practical sizes.
But even guns started with cannons and computers were once huge monstrousities that required team of technicians just to program it by rewiring the whole damn thing.
Besides plasma technology has been in development for decades. Can you really be surprised they are actually making progress?
Just radiation; not micrometeorites.
Actually the shield can be used to deflect just about anything.
Radiation would of course be easier and require less power.
It's just a matter of having enough power and plasma concentration, it can even be used to deflect lasers, particle beams, and masers.
One of the biggest breakthroughs to date was using cold plasma versus hot, which eliminates the heat problem and the system is completely scalable.
This is really just a matter of physics, we already know it's possible. We're just in the process of perfecting the technology.
One of the nice things about plasma is it's EM properties, so not only can you use an EM field to shape and contain the plasma but the plasma itself can be used to help extend the EM field, something we discovered in plasma sail R&D, so it doesn't require a lot of power to set up the plasma shield.
It just takes a lot of power to concentrate the field enough to compress the plasma and enough energy into the system to set the plasma at high enough frequencies to deflect more than just radiation.
For more immediate examples, the military is ready to come out with plasma stun grenades by 2009 and are already testing the prototypes.
The device basically consists of a high energy pulse laser that will first generate the plasma and then a shockwave to spread the plasma.
Creating a lot of noise and light to stun anyone within the effected area.
And for defending against RPG's and bullets the same technology will be later applied to an early plasma shield system that will generate lots of such pulses as the stun grenade produces that will cause shockwave after shockwave of plasma pulses to radiate out for over a hundred feet and cause anything incoming to go off course and crash before reaching the intended target.
In fact the Russians are developing a similar system using lasers to create plasma in the atmosphere that can knock aircrafts and missiles out of the air.
But eventually we will develope a powerful enough plasma shield system to act like what we imagine an energy shield would be capable of.
Another interesting application is developing plasma shield vortex to seperate liquids from air, etc.
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP05/Event/34938
So using a plasma shield to trap air for an invisible air lock is feasable as well.
What kind of power? What kind of weapons?
For one thing plasma is basically an ionized gase and is the 4th state of matter.
So has both the physical aspect of having a fast moving field of ionized particles and the EM effect going for it.
And we're talking power, as in how much energy we can pump into the system from a given power source.
We actually use lasers and such methods to create plasma with these devices. There's nothing magical about it.
And continuously firing lasers require a continuous power source. So use your imagination. Like say a high voltage power generating system!
Really, you ask "power" like it would require something exotic?
They just need to produce high enough frequencies to create a plasma shield powerful enough to deflect even light.
When finally perfected the plasma shield can even be used to cloak an object.
There are at least 5 teams of pear reviewed scientist around the world working on just the cloak aspect of bending light around an object.
Though as stated with the plasma grenade example they are going to use simplier methods for the time being to actually shield objects against physical attacks.
There's no such thing as "energy fields". That's a term borrowed from would-be sci-fi writers who don't have the first clue in the sciences.
It may have started that way but it's really just a generic term descibing the use of energy, that is not being conducted through wires or other physical methods, over a given area. And I was using it to describe what they were doing.
Such as the energy fields around power lines, etc. You know EM fields!
EM is energy, ergo energy fields!
Never mind all matter is also energy, so there are other types of energy fields.
You really only have to read up on string theory and quantum mechanics to realize there are energy fields all around us and that we ourselves are also made up of such fields.
Really, anything that applies energy over a given area can be considered an energy field or flowing patterns of energy if you prefer.
And the field only has to effect a medium for it to effect light and unless you haven't figured it out plasma is a MEDIUM.
Adjusting it's frequency effects how it interacts with EM and even light.
Got a link?
Here's one, other papers also reported on it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ate106.xml
I don't even understand this statement.
What's to understand? They got machines that can create physical objects from whatever you design on the computer.
Such as this example,
http://www.redeyerpm.com/RapidPrototypi ... GgodwF9PMA
And they are already working on more advance types that can do even more.
If you're talking about printers that print in 3D, that's not rocket science; just a matter of getting some powder to stick together and stuff. It lends no credibility whatsoever to remote chemical synthesis.
I was using it as an example that we are already developing replicators.
We don't have the technology to manipulate matter on the molecular scale yet but we are developing it.
Such as with nanites, etc. We can already do this to a limited scale with lasers.
We may never get matter to energy conversions but we can move around atoms and eventually we'll be able to do it under large enough scale to have our own replicators.
Which all goes to whether we can consider replicators magic tech or just something that will be in the future.
Completely untrue.
No, it's true, for something to be science fiction it has to hold at least a resemblance to science. Otherwise it's just fantasy and can't even be called sci-fi.
It doesn't mean they can't mix in fantasy, just that they use elements from science.
Like all the weapons are based on technology we are already developing.
Like lasers, plasma, gauss, railguns.
And of course we already have missiles and computers.
Of course most writers don't go out of there way to be completely accurate but that's to be expected since they aren't all scientists.
But that doesn't mean it's a total fantasy.
They are just taking known things and putting them into a fantasy environment, which is why it is called fiction. Ergo Science Fiction!
Also let's not confuse the limitation of the game system with the WC universe. Since with every game release they did try to make things more realistic over time.
Remember they didn't have physics engine cards or SLI graphics when Privateer was made.
Even the latest games still don't fully follow real world physics but they get closer every generation of technology that comes out.
So a lot of what they put into the game was determined by what was practical to put into the game at the time.
The VG port of the game is similar because it uses the original game as the model.
But VG itself supports more realistic environments.
Everything is not magitech; just what is.
For what isn't magictech we have Lasers, thrusters, rockets, missiles, computers, plasma, gauss and railguns, list goes on and on.
What is magictech is the gate system, steltek, etc.
Helps to know what is possible before you just label it all magictech.