The Science of Radiance

[sim_james]

   Radiance is a far-future science fiction setting that I used for a linked tabletop scenario and freeform at Sydcon last year, and will revisit in RADIANCE: RELICS at Eye-Con over Easter.

For the most part, Radiance is Plausibly Hard SF, with futuristic science and technology that includes "things that may or may not be possible, but can

Comments

Warpgates and Wormholes

[sim_james]

   For a brief explanation of how wormholes allow for time travel, look over this section from the Wikipedia article Wormholes: Time Travel:

A wormhole could allow time travel. This could be accomplished by accelerating one end of the wormhole to a high velocity relative to the other, and then sometime later bringing it back; relativistic time dilation would result in the accelerated wormhole mouth aging less than the stationary one as seen by an external observer, similar to what is seen in the twin paradox. However, time connects differently through the wormhole than outside it, so that synchronized clocks at each mouth will remain synchronized to someone traveling through the wormhole itself, no matter how the mouths move around. This means that anything which entered the accelerated wormhole mouth would exit the stationary one at a point in time prior to its entry. For example, if clocks at both mouths both showed the date as 2000 before one mouth was accelerated, and after being taken on a trip at relativistic velocities the

Warpgates and Wormholes

[sim_james]

Wormholes and Warpgates in Radiance

Every inhabited star system in Radiance has a warpgate. Warpgates temporarily open and stabilise a wormhole between two that star system and another, up to ten parsecs away. Evidence suggests that the warpgates were created by one of the ancient human civilisations, first in one of the central systems (Ancius, Austron, Ixion, Oreus, or Savitar), and then moving ever outwards through the galaxy at relativistic speeds. Travelling from a central star system such as Ancius to a more distant system like Njetker is not only a journey of nearly six parsecs in distance, but hundreds of years into the "future" - however long it took the ancients to transport the original apparatus form the central systems to Khnum in the first place. Travelling from Njetker to Ancius is likewise a journey backwards in time. This does not create a closed timelike curve; a traveller from Njetker to Ancius could send a message back to Njetker, but travelling at the speed of light it would still arrive years after he left.

reactionless drives

[cute_n_fluffy]

James,

the only other comment would be that reaction-less drives don't require fuel. You need energy to turn them on, but they for instance don't use up petrol and need to be refilled after a period of time.

Essentially, they allow for unlimited acceleration unlike modern spaceships which fire engines for a little bit, and then rely on Newton's lst law to keep travelling in the same direction at the same speed until they need to stop/change.

In short it means faster travel times as you can keep accelerating/deccelerating throughout the journey with no thought about burning up delta-V.

Re: reactionless drives

[sim_james]

That's right! And it's the primary reason for including them.

For reasons of the plausibility of Radiance's cultures, I've placed most warpgates in fairly remote orbits of their star systems. The fictional history requires a lengthy time in which interstellar travel did not occur, which seems unlikely if warpgates are located within 5 AU or so of their primary