4 ms·

Yes. Now look into how you construct a soliton, and try to figure out what monstrous levels of control you'd have to exert over solar-system sized quantities o

by jerf 4y ago

Yes. Now look into how you construct a soliton, and try to figure out what monstrous levels of control you'd have to exert over solar-system sized quantities of degenerate matter to create them, and how much energy it would take. Now compute how much laser light you can generate for, oh, let's say, 6 orders of magnitude less energy. And how tightly you'd expect a civilization that apparently can casually wiggle dozens of solar masses at multiple Hz, in a modulated manner no less (so just a several Hz orbit is not sufficent, we are wiggling these things under power), to be able to collimate such a beam. This is the problem with gravity waves. It isn't some sort of supreme cheat code of the universe for super awesome communication. It's transparently obviously idiotic. Like, not just, "well, it's not necessarily the best way, but even if it's not great someone may have tried it", like, you're burning dozens of orders of magnitude more energy per bit. Plural dozens, of orders of magnitude. Not dozens of times, ten to the power of dozens. This is not sensible no matter how advanced the civilization. We're talking levels of stupid that would greatly exceed spending the entire output of Earth's collective industrial civilization for all of history on a single pack of Skittles. This is not a bright thing to do, and it only gets dumber the smarter you suppose the aliens are.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
To be fair, because we don't know how to construct gravity waves does not mean such a means does not exist. Keep in mind, not too long ago we thought we needed to heat up a fillament surrounded by an inert gas in order to make artificial light, and our understanding of gravity is fairly poor (to the point where it's largely considered an unsolved problem quite how it fits together with other parts of physics).
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  If we make assumptions like that then the sky is the limit for other baseless assumptions, right? We're basically just picking our favourite pseudomagical science and arguing for it?
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Well that is the basic posture of all science, uncertainty. We must assume we don't know until we are convinced otherwise.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      But you don't use that to suggest new unsupported ideas. In that case why can't I postulate for FTL communication by form of anti protons to be the best communication method?
      - marginalia_nu 4y ago
        I've never talked about FTL communication.
        SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        I didn't say you were. I was trying to make the point we're both suggesting science fiction now and it's not terribly helpful when trying to talk about the current science.
        misnome 4y ago
        By your argument, shouldn’t we assume that it’s possible by <literally any means you can imagine> that we just don’t know about?
        marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Not necessarily. We have no reason to assume gravity waves couldn't be produced artificially. This wouldn't really break any existing understandings of physics, it would merely require adding to them. The question is just how. We do have reason to think that information can't travel faster than the speed of light, as this would make it possible to send information to the future and then back to the past via a closed time-like curve, which would have all manner of effects that contradict what we've observed about how the universe works, and in fact are self-contradictory as well. This doesn't go to say this isn't possible, after all the Alcubierre drive seems hypothetically possible (it "only" hinges upon the ability to create negative energy density), it's just much more implausible.
- jerf 4y ago
  I believe it is important to separate flights of fancy from things grounded in real science, no matter how speculative. I can't prove that I can't generate gravity waves by the proper chanting of a spell. I'm serious, not just being silly. The simulation hypothesis certainly admits of such things being built into an otherwise sensible simulation (at the risk of a bit of a spoiler, https://qntm.org/ra https://qntm.org/ra ). If you want to talk about what could be if we bend what we understand this way, by all means, be my guest. I'm a big fan, actually. However, I think we should be clear that we are doing that, and specify the rule changes we're considering. In the real universe, we do "know" how to generate gravity waves. We can't do it at any sensible scale, but we know how. The energy computations are trivial extensions of Einsteinian relativity, suitable for assigning an undergraduate for homework. Besides, the way of making gravity waves has to not just be like three or four times better than wiggling a neutron star, to beat light, it needs to be the aforementioned dozens of orders of magnitude better. Just like lasers, you'd be looking at the thing being a great weapon rather than just a communication mechanism. It's actually a lot of orders of magnitude improvement necessary. A fire on the end of a stick versus the brightest modern stadium lights don't even begin to cover the magnitude range. People keep acting like light is some sort of terrible communication mechanism that we need to somehow level up from. The reality is that the only improvement you could practically ask of it is to go faster. It is otherwise unbelievably good at communication. It is hard to even conceive of what could be better in anything like our real universe.

by jerf 4y ago

marginalia_nu 4y ago

To be fair, because we don't know how to construct gravity waves does not mean such a means does not exist. Keep in mind, not too long ago we thought we needed to heat up a fillament surrounded by an inert gas in order to make artificial light, and our understanding of gravity is fairly poor (to the point where it's largely considered an unsolved problem quite how it fits together with other parts of physics).

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
If we make assumptions like that then the sky is the limit for other baseless assumptions, right? We're basically just picking our favourite pseudomagical science and arguing for it?
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Well that is the basic posture of all science, uncertainty. We must assume we don't know until we are convinced otherwise.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    But you don't use that to suggest new unsupported ideas. In that case why can't I postulate for FTL communication by form of anti protons to be the best communication method?
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      I've never talked about FTL communication.
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        I didn't say you were. I was trying to make the point we're both suggesting science fiction now and it's not terribly helpful when trying to talk about the current science.
      - misnome 4y ago
        By your argument, shouldn’t we assume that it’s possible by <literally any means you can imagine> that we just don’t know about?
        marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Not necessarily. We have no reason to assume gravity waves couldn't be produced artificially. This wouldn't really break any existing understandings of physics, it would merely require adding to them. The question is just how. We do have reason to think that information can't travel faster than the speed of light, as this would make it possible to send information to the future and then back to the past via a closed time-like curve, which would have all manner of effects that contradict what we've observed about how the universe works, and in fact are self-contradictory as well. This doesn't go to say this isn't possible, after all the Alcubierre drive seems hypothetically possible (it "only" hinges upon the ability to create negative energy density), it's just much more implausible.
jerf 4y ago
I believe it is important to separate flights of fancy from things grounded in real science, no matter how speculative. I can't prove that I can't generate gravity waves by the proper chanting of a spell. I'm serious, not just being silly. The simulation hypothesis certainly admits of such things being built into an otherwise sensible simulation (at the risk of a bit of a spoiler, https://qntm.org/ra https://qntm.org/ra ). If you want to talk about what could be if we bend what we understand this way, by all means, be my guest. I'm a big fan, actually. However, I think we should be clear that we are doing that, and specify the rule changes we're considering. In the real universe, we do "know" how to generate gravity waves. We can't do it at any sensible scale, but we know how. The energy computations are trivial extensions of Einsteinian relativity, suitable for assigning an undergraduate for homework. Besides, the way of making gravity waves has to not just be like three or four times better than wiggling a neutron star, to beat light, it needs to be the aforementioned dozens of orders of magnitude better. Just like lasers, you'd be looking at the thing being a great weapon rather than just a communication mechanism. It's actually a lot of orders of magnitude improvement necessary. A fire on the end of a stick versus the brightest modern stadium lights don't even begin to cover the magnitude range. People keep acting like light is some sort of terrible communication mechanism that we need to somehow level up from. The reality is that the only improvement you could practically ask of it is to go faster. It is otherwise unbelievably good at communication. It is hard to even conceive of what could be better in anything like our real universe.