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My physics version of GIGO has been, once you allow one impossible thing to happen ... Just as violating conservation of charge can violate conservation of mas
by at_a_remove 6y ago
My physics version of GIGO has been, once you allow one impossible thing to happen ...
Just as violating conservation of charge can violate conservation of mass-energy, I think a similar principle applies. And if we have "exotic matter," we can create warp drives.
- cletus 6y agoAnother common physics-breaking trope is inertial dampening. You've right about the prevalence of "exotic matter" too. I get the psychological desire for this: that space isn't the massive tyranny of distance it appears to be. But all the evidence we have thus far is that there is a universal speed limit, as depressing as that might be. Which, as an aside, is what gives me the most confidence we don't have aliens in UFOs on Earth.
- at_a_remove 6y agoI whole heartedly agree. As a sci-fi nut who has consumed vast reams of the stuff from the 1940s onward, reality pales. Firefly, I thought, rather neatly sidestepped the FTL issue by putting everything in one vast solar system wherein even the moons had been terraformed (although that itself is a technology that is equally ... unlikely, although for different reasons). I've read not too many series wherein the absence of FTL was acknowledged. Sometimes reality just doesn't live up to the hype.
- cletus 6y agoYou may also like Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series.
- at_a_remove 6y agoI have been all over that, read all of them, even the short stories.
- jasperry 6y agoYour translation of GIGO to physics gave me an "Aha" moment. It made me think of logic, where if you have an inconsistent set of axioms you can prove anything. I guess that's the formal equivalent of GIGO.