iballwp

Proposed Realism Additions

Proposed Realism Additions

First off, I have to say that Sins of a Solar Empire is one of the BEST games available for PC.  The story line and progression of the add ons was all well thought out and provides the game with a masterful backdrop for players to adventure with.

Having played two full games of the Rebellion beta, I've noticed a few elemetns that detract from the feel or emmersion of the game. 

1.  Colonizable asteroids and moons.  Both could really use some sort of indicator that they are inhabited.  Its fantastic that the planets have city lights, etc on the dark side and the elevators.  Moons and asteroids really need something similar. Secondly,  some variety in the aactual appearance of the asteroids and moons would be awesome.  The current moon model looks like a chunk of cheese.  I know its a little thing and at this stage of development there are probably a lot more important things to work on. However, these things to me immediately stood out and made the game appear to be "cheaper" which disappointed me. Hope to see these two issues looking good in the main release or a patch of it.

2.  Titans.  Overall AWESOME. However, two issues here.  When effected by Advent starbases' disorientation field Titans flail about at a speed that seems ridiculous for their size. Slowing this down some would be good.  Second, the TEC mass accelerator Titan (haven't taken the time to read the names yet sorry, love the Advent!) animations make it seem like a giant underpowered nerfgun.  Giving the main railgun's animation a faster, more violent animation with an obvious charging/firing/impact sequence would add to the awe of it as a Titan class weapon.

Love the factional differences and the game. Hope to see these emmersion issues addressed in the release or a patch. Thanks for all the hard work!

14,806 views 53 replies
Reply #26 Top

Um.... I think what was established back in the old days of people like Einstein, in his theory of relativity, was that light travels at the same speed relative to anyone REGARDLESS of how fast they're traveling. I don't think the speed of light varies with its medium

 

The possible contradiction of his theory is there but I'm not exactly sure how.

Then there's his other theory talking about space-time and how gravity can bend light enough to completely absorb it (like in black holes) but idk that stuff >.>

 

As for neutrinos, I think that had to do with the Pauli exclusion principle where two electrons in the same orbital MUST have an opposite spin, one analogy is that they took two electrons and switched the spin of one, the other instantaneously changed even though they were miles apart-the information exchanged between the two must have traveled faster than light? 

Reply #27 Top

"1. Colonizable asteroids and moons. Both could really use some sort of indicator that they are inhabited. Its fantastic that the planets have city lights, etc on the dark side and the elevators. Moons and asteroids really need something similar."

 

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Colonised asteroids need some king of structure on it, just like colonized planets have. Perhaps modify the Pirate Base?

 

I also find the vanilla graphic effects in this game kind of dull,  but I count on Bailknight graphics mod (which is AWESOME) to fix it, so it does not matter to me much.

Why not include effects from the mod in vanilla Sins? 

Reply #28 Top

Quoting Classicvibe, reply 26
Um.... I think what was established back in the old days of people like Einstein, in his theory of relativity, was that light travels at the same speed relative to anyone REGARDLESS of how fast they're traveling. I don't think the speed of light varies with its medium

 

The possible contradiction of his theory is there but I'm not exactly sure how.

Then there's his other theory talking about space-time and how gravity can bend light enough to completely absorb it (like in black holes) but idk that stuff >.>

 

As for neutrinos, I think that had to do with the Pauli exclusion principle where two electrons in the same orbital MUST have an opposite spin, one analogy is that they took two electrons and switched the spin of one, the other instantaneously changed even though they were miles apart-the information exchanged between the two must have traveled faster than light? 

 

It wasn't that electron thing, I will have to try and find it again, at first the had a metal plate that had slits in either side and they had a machine that shot 1 of something at a time, and it had a random chance of going in either the left or right slit, but it was shown to go through both at the same time in half of the readings, which should be impossible as its a single particle, and then they used the same particle which was found to have travelled faster then the light from the laser across a city.

I remember that something related to the theory of why the particle is like that could be shown with a silicone drop on a surface that vibrated crazy fast, and the drop would glide around. As I said im going to have to find this again.

Reply #29 Top

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 7
people and their selective 'realisim' demands... bah!

the game doesnt have gravity (including ship orbits, planet orbits, and star orbits), the scales are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off, there's green stars, there are sound effects, there's colored nebulae in the background, apparently wind in space (referring to the smoke stacks on refineries blowing over a bit), building something involves spitting junk at a holographic projection which makes it slowly fill up to 'real', telekinetic/psychic/force powers, 'phase space' wtf?, space ponies, and you're complaining about turn speed?

btw, on any level of realism, it'd be dumb to be outside on a moon or asteroid if you had an inside. That's where the 'citizens' are on those worlds, imo

 

QUOTE of the DAY - 

NUFF SAID

 

Because SPACE PONIES ARE WHAT SEPARATE THE REAL FROM THE FACK.

 

LOL i LOVE YOU GUYS!

Reply #30 Top

Quoting Classicvibe, reply 26
was that light travels at the same speed relative to anyone REGARDLESS of how fast they're traveling.

Light inside a medium (ie matter) travels slower...for example, the speed of light inside glass is about 2/3 the value of c, which is the speed of light in a vacuum...

Special relativity still applies here...

Quoting Valkyness, reply 28
, at first the had a metal plate that had slits in either side and they had a machine that shot 1 of something at a time, and it had a random chance of going in either the left or right slit, but it was shown to go through both at the same time in half of the readings, which should be impossible as its a single particle, and then they used the same particle which was found to have travelled faster then the light from the laser across a city.

Sounds like the double slit experiment done with electrons...

Quoting Valkyness, reply 28
but it was shown to go through both at the same time in half of the readings, which should be impossible as its a single particle

That's quantum mechanics for you..."particles" are not in specific points in space, but rather are described by wave functions, or probability densities...

 

Reply #31 Top

Well, when it comes to the Asteroids/Moons I always assumed the people were located on the one orbital platform that appears.

Reply #32 Top

Oh, k thanks for the correction ^^

And yeah, the electron slit thing works so that you have to assume it goes in both directions until it's observed going through either slit in some way.  That's quantum mechanics though, which is completely different from relativistic physics....

 

the opposite electron spin thing with the exclusion principle was an analogy of sorts, they were testing the same principle but I think they carried it out differently.

 

IMO the only way they could make the game kinda realistic was if they had campaigns, sorta like emulating a universe with special planets, heroes/characters, different factions that have separate ambitions from taking over the galaxy, and politics.  But it seems to me that the devs are taking more of a strictly RTS/strategy approach rather than having any roleplay >.>

Reply #33 Top

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 25
What experiments are you referring to? 

That would be the IceCube experiment I was referring to in Antarctica...   Basically it's a giant neutrino detector far away from the standard EM interference of civilization. Recently, they reported no correlation between Gamma Ray Bursts (1 of the few astronomical objects we see, but don't know what it is) and neutrino emissions, so that's indication that no nuclear processes are involved, or they get immediately absorbed. I think this is a good indicator that they are Black Holes being formed, but I'm not sure about the energy levels involved.

They also were part of a recent series of big Dark Matter results: They found no Dark Matter interacting with the sun (should produce neutrinos). Other experiments found found no apparent extra gravity between our sun and local stars, and recent surveys of our satellite galaxies found no dark matter present.... It's starting to look like there may have been much ado about nothing...

As for the new results... (sorry for the news link, I cant find a published paper) There was also a story that they found a loose wire that may have messed up the timing. ICARUS is basically a second independent source saying they cannot reproduce the results. This is vital for any experiment, and now that the US has shutdown Fermilab, I'm very worried that there will be no way to confirm the results from LHC experiments, which devalues the experiments being done there and might make the whole project worthless if it turns out there's some bug in the machine which makes it look like they found the Higgs or whatever else they find. Or worse, what they don't find.

As for the other stuff:

  • Yeah, the reason light bends when it goes through glass is due to the medium slowing down the speed of light locally. As I said, this is due to the atoms absorbing the light before re-emitting it. There's a delay, which slows it down on it's route. You can think of light going through glass like throwing a stick into a lake: the part that first hits the water immediately gets slowed, and the rest of the stick turns due to momentum. so, when the stick starts sinking, it is on a different trajectory than the one you threw it on. This is not a contradiction of the theory of relativity.
  • You've mixed up the Pauli Exclusion principle with Quantum Entanglement. Pauli Exclusion basically just does not let 2 things be in the same state at the same time (applies to all Fermions, but the best example is in electrons). This is completely different from Entanglement which means one particle affects the state of another over vast distances and no direct connection. There some similarities, but know that Entanglement is destroyed if there's outside interference. Nothing stops Pauli's Exclusion.
  • I think what Valkynas is referring to is the delayed choice experiment. It was recently in the news because I think they did it on an astronomical scale. What happens when you shoot photons (really, any fundamental particle) through a double slit is that it goes through both holes at the same time and it interferes with itself. However, if you place a detector in front of the slits, it suddenly goes through only one hole. In a delayed choice experiment, you essentially can do both. What was done recently was light from a far off galaxy bent around a closer one (think: 1 path bent to the left, the other bent to the right). the 2 paths the light took are the slits. Well, we can aim our telescopes at one or the other, and it looks like 1 thing and theres no interference. But if you combine the imagery, you get interference and can no longer recover either of the original images (unless you have a copy of 1 already). This is often pitched as a kind of time travel, and depending on the setup, it kinda is, but from the above example, once you get what's going on, it doesn't seem so surprising. 
Reply #34 Top

Ah k thanks for clearing that all up =O

Reply #35 Top

I'm not seeing how the research into gamma bursts and dark matter suggests that neutrinos cannot travel faster than light...

While it has yet to be proven conclusively one way or the other, the theory behind why neutrinos could exceed the speed of light has been around for some time...

It has been suggested that at high enough energies, neutrinos could have an oscillating mass with an imaginary component, and thus could exceed the speed of light...certainly we have no proof this has happened, but it doesn't seem like we have experimental proof that it can't happen either....

Reply #36 Top

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 35
I'm not seeing how the research into gamma bursts and dark matter suggests that neutrinos cannot travel faster than light...

Did look at the pdf link I provided? That is the actual paper on the subject. Yes, its like swimming through scientific jargon if you're not used to it, but you can understand what's being said if you try. In it, they say "We studied the implications of the claim of superluminal neutrinos by the OPERA collaboration. The observation generally indicates LIV in the neutrino sector. In such a framework, we find the neutrino production process π+ → µ+νµ becomes kinematically forbidden" "there is no spectral cutoff of the atmospheric neutrinos up to ∼ 400 TeV as measured by IceCube"

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 35
It has been suggested that at high enough energies, neutrinos could have an oscillating mass with an imaginary component, and thus could exceed the speed of light...certainly we have no proof this has happened, but it doesn't seem like we have experimental proof that it can't happen either....

I've never heard of this having supposedly negative mass before... But it's a known fact that neutrinos oscillate between different flavors. The standard model predicts the neutrinos have no mass... Or, I should say, that it does not necessitate them having mass, and has no apparent reason to give them mass. Now, oscillating neutrinos require them to have mass (just occured to me: unless there's some kind of anti-higgs mechanism at work, but this would make the neutrinos massless, not negative mass [I think... I'm no quantum physicist..... yet]), so something is slightly out of wack, and it's part of the recent surge in neutrino research. 

However, if you know of theories where neutrinos have negative mass/travel faster than light, please tell me about them or share the links to the info about them.

Reply #37 Top

I read the link...

High energy neutrinos (in the GeV range) were generated by devices on earth and observed...these neutrinos exceeded the speed of light by about c x 10^-5...

Low energy neutrinos (in the MeV range) emitted by celestial entities were also observed...these neutrinos exceeded the speed of light by about c x 10^-9 (or 10^-12)...

Summary: High energy neutrinos seem to exceed the speed of light more than low energy neutrinos...

I will then draw your attention to this quote:

"...a superluminal neutrino can be easily accommodated in a Lorentz invariance violation (LIV) model..."

There are many models that allow for an LI violation in regards to neutrinos (most of which are viable but at this point highly theoretical)...any search with "neutrino" and "lorentz invariance" will probably get you the results you want...

You will note that equation (4) represents the specific LIV model chosen by the authors...

I will also draw your attention to this quote:

"...Especially for a large ξ of the order O(10^-5), the processes π+ → µ+ +νµ and µ− → e− +νµ + ¯νe are even forbidden so that no high energy neutrinos could be produced..."

Essentially, the means by which neutrinos can be produced inherently applies a limit to the LIV parameter ξ, or the "perturbation" term....in quantum mechanics, perturbation theory is often used to develop models for "complex" systems...in perturbation theory, you start with a "simple" model and then create the "complex" model by adding "perturbations" to the simpler model...

In general, the rest of the paper uses theory and experimental data to determine the maximum size of ξ...recall that this ξ is the LIV parameter or "perturbation" constant/term used in an equation...it is not the energy of the neutrino....

Now let's look at the conclusion:

"...In such a framework, we find the neutrino production process π+ → µ+νµ becomes kinematically forbidden for Eν > 5 GeV if taking δνγ = 2.5 × 10^−5 as shown by OPERA data..."

So, the authors have argued that one specific neutrino production process (pion decay) cannot generate neutrinos with enough energy to exceed the speed of light...

I would like to point out that the OPERA experiment used a different process (π → µνµ)...a third process was also analyzed (µ → νµ + e + ¯νe)...additionally, there are references to other neutrino production processes (like "three body decay" and what not)...

As far as I can tell, this paper in no way argues against the ability of neutrinos to exceed the speed of light...what this paper does do is argue that one particular neutrino process cannot generate superluminal neutrinos...most importantly, this paper analyzes the results from other production processes, and uses them to put an experimentally determined limit on the LIV parameter ξ...

This parameter is utilized by a contending model that describes the superluminal behavior of neutrinos...in essence, this paper takes data from a bunch of experiments and places an upper limit on a "constant" used in some equation that shows how neutrinos can go faster than light...

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 36
I've never heard of this having supposedly negative mass before

First, I never said negative mass...I said imaginary mass, which would lead to a negative squared mass...

Here is one such paper that investigates this possibility, though I'm sure there are others, as the idea has been around for a while...

As you have said, experimental data has essentially proven that neutrinos oscillate between flavors.....quantum electrodynamics shows that an oscillation of this type can only occur for particles with mass...furthermore, it shows that each flavor eigenstate is a superposition of mass eigenstates and vice versa...

In this superposition, one could assign imaginary amplitudes to the mass eigenstates...so, either an imaginary mass or imaginary amplitudes associated with the mass eigenstates could lead to superluminal neutrinos...

 

 

 

Reply #38 Top

Sithlord, you make me feel smarter after reading all that. So what would it take to actually go faster than the speed of light, or at least get to one planet to another(say mars) in a time efficient manner.

 

Also another fun read, http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/policy/232900877

This makes me happy, I feel like we're actually going to start DOING something with our planet and really get into space travel.

Reply #39 Top

Quoting MayallCommunion, reply 38
or at least get to one planet to another(say mars) in a time efficient manner.

There is a whole thread dedicated to discussing FTL travel...since we have absolutely no working model for it, the discussion basically hit a wall...

The best that we could do is get upwards to 90+ % the speed of light, which would require a lot of power if you are going to accelerate to that speed in the "short" distance between earth and mars...

The key is finding fuel that contains a lot of energy per mass...at this point, antimatter produced on earth is the best candidate....

Reply #40 Top

Quoting MayallCommunion, reply 38
Sithlord, you make me feel smarter after reading all that.

Good. I always aim to do that. Everyone ignores this stuff because they think it's too hard and not any fun. If you just sit down and take a look at it, it's engrossing and not too hard to understand. As for going to Mars, I heard about a design that could get us there in 30 days.... but uses Nuclear propulsion. I am fairly confident there is no way to build an FTL ship ever. Though, I am always willing to discuss possible designs.

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 37
As far as I can tell, this paper in no way argues against the ability of neutrinos to exceed the speed of light...what this paper does do is argue that one particular neutrino process cannot generate superluminal neutrinos...most importantly, this paper analyzes the results from other production processes, and uses them to put an experimentally determined limit on the LIV parameter ξ... 

Right... it's measuring a different neutrino source in a different way. If they had done it the same way as OPERA, they would have 2 LHCs, and might be making the same measurement mistake. The way I read this, "π+ → µ + νµ becomes kinematically forbidden for Eν > 5 GeV if taking δνγ = 2.5 × 10^−5 as shown by OPERA data.", is: if neutrinos traveled at the rate shown by OPERA, a particular reaction does not occur. IceCube measures such reactions, and therefore "Because there is no spectral cutoff of the atmospheric neutrinos up to ∼ 400 TeV as measured by IceCube [11], the neutrino LIV parameter can be constrained to less than 10^−12". Which is in direct contradiction to "The detection of ∼ 40 GeV and ∼ 200 GeV neutrinos by OPERA and Fermilab can constrain the LIV parameters to 3 × 10^−7 and 2 × 10^−8 respectively."

Let me know if I missed anything, but I'll go through it this weekend and re-interpret based off your analysis.

Next, as far as I am aware, if something travels faster than the speed of light, it would have to have negative mass, unless Lorentz Invariance was off (meaning that it works for a speed different than that of light). I do not think the Invariance can be off because lots of experiments have been done that are consistent with convergence on light speed. So, yes, I made an assumption that should be true of such theories. Tell me how I might be in error here or assuming too much.

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 37
furthermore, it shows that each flavor eigenstate is a superposition of mass eigenstates and vice versa...

In this superposition, one could assign imaginary amplitudes to the mass eigenstates...so, either an imaginary mass or imaginary amplitudes associated with the mass eigenstates could lead to superluminal neutrinos... 

What you are describing is common in wave mechanics... it's how interference patterns emerge, but you're suggesting that the mass itself follows such a wave pattern? I suppose that makes sense due to the flavor change... but just like a particle does not have a negative probability to be found at a location due to probability being the square of such amplitudes, not the amplitudes themselves, I fail to see how such a pattern could result in superluminal speeds, even temporarily.

The only thing I've found that seems to directly violate light speed according to current theory is quantum tunneling, which is why that was my proposed solution to the OPERA results when they were first announced. I figured that maybe neutrinos have a higher interaction rate than we give them credit for, but that they tunnel through matter and artificially reduce the interaction rate. If the tunneling was all in the same direction, and it happened often enough, you could get measurements faster than light speed when the neutrinos travelled through matter (as was the case in the OPERA experiment). I sent in this idea to the i09 'ask a physicist' mailbox and got the answer:

"Quantum tunneling (and we can bundle up a whole bunch of similar quantum uncertainty behaviors under this umbrella), however, is generally a pretty small effect.  That's what distinguishes it from a classical effect. The amount of positional uncertainty, is incredibly small.  

To put things in perspective, reasonable assumptions about neutrinos put the quantum uncertainty at somewhere on the order of a micrometer (a factor of several million smaller than the reported result).  More importantly, the _average_ observed position of neutrinos should be the classical result.  In other words, even if some neutrinos went "faster" than average due to tunneling, an equal number should go slower." -Dave Goldberg

Reply #41 Top

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 40
The way I read this, "π+ → µ + νµ becomes kinematically forbidden for Eν > 5 GeV if taking δνγ = 2.5 × 10^−5 as shown by OPERA data.", is: if neutrinos traveled at the rate shown by OPERA, a particular reaction does not occur. IceCube measures such reactions, and therefore "Because there is no spectral cutoff of the atmospheric neutrinos up to ∼ 400 TeV as measured by IceCube [11], the neutrino LIV parameter can be constrained to less than 10^−12". Which is in direct contradiction to "The detection of ∼ 40 GeV and ∼ 200 GeV neutrinos by OPERA and Fermilab can constrain the LIV parameters to 3 × 10^−7 and 2 × 10^−8 respectively."

As far as I can tell, there is no contradiction at all...

I will summarize the paper as I interpret it, and then go from there...

First, let us clarify the three important variables used:

  1. E = Energy - this is the energy of a nuetrino, which in this paper ranges anywhere from the MeV range to the TeV range
  2. δνγ = "velocity" - this value was specified as (v-c)/c, and so in essence the quantity δνγ x c expresses the amount by which the neutrino exceeded the speed of light
  3. ξ = LIV parameter - this is a constant used in equation (4) which was developed using a perturbation method
OPERA (as well as other experiments) have suggested that δνγ is positive, indicating superluminal speeds for neutrinos with certain energies...equation (4) represents a model that can account for this behavior...the main focus of this paper is to determine (through experimentation) the value of the constant ξ used in equation (4)...
 
By using equation (6), a neutrino energy E can determine the upper limit of ξ...let us now consider this quote:
 
"The detection of ∼ 40 GeV and ∼ 200 GeV neutrinos by OPERA and Fermilab can constrain the LIV parameters to 3 × 10^−7 and 2 × 10^−8 respectively"
 
Equation (6) used these energies to come up with an upper limit on ξ...now let us consider this quote:
 
"Because there is no spectral cutoff of the atmospheric neutrinos up to ∼ 400 TeV as measured by IceCube [11], the neutrino LIV parameter can be constrained to less than 10^−12"
 
Again, equation (6) was used to put a more stringent upper limit on ξ...
 
As can be seen from equation (6), higher energy neutrinos can be used to further constrain ξ...however, due to radiative decay there is an upper limit on the attainable E for a neutrino (or at least a limit on E for neutrinos that can reach earth before decaying)...as such, ξ can only be limited by so much...
 
I see no contradiction with the data, but rather a comparison where the higher energy neutrinos put more stringent (or precise, if you will) constraints on the value of ξ...
 
Now, let us consider this tidbit:
 
Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 40
The way I read this, "π+ → µ + νµ becomes kinematically forbidden for Eν > 5 GeV if taking δνγ = 2.5 × 10^−5 as shown by OPERA data.", is: if neutrinos traveled at the rate shown by OPERA, a particular reaction does not occur.
 
I will admit that I misspoke earlier...I claimed that this paper argued one particular process cannot produce superluminal neutrinos...however, this is not the case...what I should have said is that this paper argues one particular process limits the degree to which a neutrino could exceed the speed of light...
 
Just as ξ was limited, equation (6) and other considerations (mainly the type of production process) were used to limit δνγ...the higher the energy, the more δνγ can be constrained...one could argue that the limiting of δνγ or ξ suggests superluminal neutrinos are not possible...however, I don't find the data completely precludes the possibility, but simply limits δνγ...I agree that the δνγ from the OPERA experiment is likely to be wrong, but the fundamental problem I see is not that OPERA's δνγ is positive, but that it was too big...
 
There is this quote:
 
"Similarly the processes K+ → µ+ +νµ, µ → νµ+e+ ¯νe and τ → ντ + e(µ) + ¯νe(µ) should also be forbidden at high energies."
 
I do think the limitations placed on the pion decay process are justified...however, the authors made the assumption that  ξ was flavor independent, and there is nothing comparable to equation (6) shown for these other processes...whether that assumption is justified or not I cannot say, but if that assumption is false then I do not think the analysis of these other production processes were treated properly...as such, at this point I am only convinced that the energy E of a neutrino can limit δνγ for pion decay...
 
If I were a betting man, I'd bet the authors are probably right about all the processes...however, I feel more confidence in how the LIV model works is needed to truly make blanket statements about all the production process and flavors...
 
 
Reply #42 Top

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 40
but just like a particle does not have a negative probability to be found at a location due to probability being the square of such amplitudes, not the amplitudes themselves, I fail to see how such a pattern could result in superluminal speeds, even temporarily.

It's been awhile since I've looked at it, so I may be mistaking imaginary amplitudes with imaginary matrix elements for an operator in the mass/flavor eigenstates basis....how exactly you could get superluminal neutrinos I am not sure, but I do know at least one faculty member at my university was toying around with it...

Edit:

I thought about it some more...as you may know, QM demands that all observables are completely real, which prevents certain matrix representations of operators from having imaginary elements....

By allowing for imaginary mass, such matrices could have imaginary elements (of course, you would then only be able to measure mass squared and not mass itself)...I believe it was these imaginary matrix elements, and not imaginary amplitudes, that I was thinking of...

 

Reply #43 Top

So basically there is no real way we will leave the Solar system D;?

Reply #44 Top

Quoting MayallCommunion, reply 43
So basically there is no real way we will leave the Solar system D;?

Not in my opinion. If this gets your spirits down, go ask Sinperium. He seems to think it's foolish to think it won't happen.

Seleucia, I'm looking into your comments and have decided to take a closer look at not just the article I linked, but a few more. I read one of these papers months ago, and it's possible I may have mixed up some ideas. It looks pretty clear to me from the linked article, but since I'm going to go through these others, I figured I should provide my additional sources now:

published 9/29/2011 [edit:] lol, it's probably this one that I read, "Thus we refute the superluminal interpretation of the OPERA result"

published 11/3/2011 [edit:] Funny, it mentions 'phase space' in the preamble... just funny that I'm on the Sins forum about this

published 12/12/2011 <---paper linked earlier

published 1/27/2012 <--- follow up to the above paper

[edit:] Random comments:

  • First paper says pair production would occur on superluminal neutrinos, which would reduce the number detected... sounds like what I remember
  • Furthermore, they use the results of the experiments to set an upper limit on the speed of neutrinos which is far less than the OPERA results. 
  • btw, this paper was out not long after the OPERA announcement, and is probably what I read, though I might have read more, on to next one....
  • "nearly all honest neutrinos." funny...
  • btw, SN1987A, was a supernova that went off... in 1987. Neutrino detectors measured it before you could see the supernova. So, when OPERA's results came in, everyone brought that up again and some funny Fermilab data
  • the results of SN1987A are reconciled with the fact that it takes time for light to escape the supernova, whereas neutrinos do not have such limitations. In our sun, I believe it takes thousands of years for the light to escape the surface...
  • SN1987A, in this paper seems to be heralded as one of the best constraints on neutrino speed.
  • Fermilab... sigh. I live not too far from it. would see if they need their computers fixed, but everyone there is a super genius :p
  • Interesting approach here, he's categorizing the different ways you can make a theory about superluminal neutrinos given that SN1987A is explained and measures one thing, and OPERA is not explained and measures something else
  • Lepton numbers are different, so "To exploit this distinction a model would involve a very bizarre CP violation"
  • "One may attempt to reconcile these observations by allowing only muon neutrinos to be superluminal."... but it's difficult.
  • "OPERA neutrinos are about 1000 times more energetic than SN1987A neutrinos. Therefore, perhaps only high energy neutrinos are superluminal?"... I think this is what you were getting at Seleucia...
  • For the OPERA experiment "They cannot determine the energies of many of their neutrinos, as they decay outside of the detector." this seems like it could be troublematic for such theories...
  • "MINOS and OPERA neutrinos traveled almost entirely through solid rock, while SN1987A neutrinos traveled almost entirely through the interstellar medium. Therefore, perhaps neutrinos are only superluminal while traveling through dense media?" This was my observation, however, I suggested an already known mechanism for such a discrepancy: Quantum Tunneling
  • can't read this dark energy part easily... will save for later..
  • interesting, this is actually referring to the last paper "Cohen-Glashow bremsstrahlung" (=pair production)
  • says that OPERA is not in conflict with the pair production argument, "However it is in conflict with the results of the ICARUS experiment, which in this case would have seen the nucleated electron positron pairs and did not"
  • Interesting... "With this assumption there will no longer be neutrino bremsstrahlung, but electrons may now be superluminal"
  • "If the neutrinos are only superluminal inside of dense matter, then electrons would also only be superluminal inside of a dense medium."
  • seems like this guy is planning a line of attack to rule out or confirm the OPERA results and any superluminal models with it...
  • Brings up the IceCube experiment and how the neutrinos are generated.... sounds like what I remember reading about...
  • IceCube captures neutrinos up to 400 TeV, and says there is no evidence for superluminosity at this energy...
  • based off the theory as to how atmospheric neutrinos are generated, postulates that maximum neutrino energy to be about 100 TeV
  • "OPERA’s conclusion is particularly suspicious because the superluminality is energy independent."
  • To verify results, "Thus it seems as though in perhaps a few months, probably within a few years" we'll know.
  • Next paper, previously mentioned one.... Argh, running out of time... I have to go somewhere...
  • Still don't see see how I'm mistaken here... The quote we tossed back and forth basically says: for energies greater than 5 GeV and with superluminal speeds, the pion to muon neutrino production process cannot occur. IceCube measures neutrinos with far more energy, therefore, the process should not have occurred, and they shouldn't have detected anything if neutrinos travelled at superluminal speeds.
  • The only way out of this is if they were superluminal in a particular energy band, but note that IceCube measures neutrinos from 100 GeV to 400 TeV
  • Trying to rap this up for the night, 4th paper mentions that Super-Kamiokande measures neutrinos from 1 GeV to 1 TeV...
  • Okay, I have to go... I'll look more at these last 2 papers again tomorrow... these seem like the bread and butter. Hey, do you have any that are relevant? I'll take a look...
Reply #45 Top

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 44
First paper says pair production would occur on superluminal neutrinos, which would reduce the number detected... sounds like what I remember

This is what I have read before (ICARUS I think tested this?), and what I think is probably the strongest current argument for why neutrinos do not exceed the speed of light...

My biggest problem with the papers at the 1st and 3rd links is that they basically say "We can't say neutrinos never exceed the speed of light, we just think they can't go as fast as OPERA"...while the research is important, refuting OPERA doesn't answer the bigger question: can neutrinos be superluminal?

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 44
"OPERA neutrinos are about 1000 times more energetic than SN1987A neutrinos. Therefore, perhaps only high energy neutrinos are superluminal?"... I think this is what you were getting at Seleucia...

It is my understanding that if superluminal neutrinos exist, they necessarily must be of high energy (perhaps in the GeV range?)...this is one reason why the often cited SN1987A is thought of as inadequate for experimental purposes (IIRC the neutrinos it emits are in the MeV range)...

 

Reply #46 Top

well, you know that science never states anything as certain. The best you will ever get is something along the lines of "δ<1.7x10^-5 for neutrinos of E> 5 GeV" or something its all about a series of constraints...

Meanwhile, a little tidbit for those that just browse over a lot of this stuff: If you happen to be in a conversation and someone, attempting to be acknowledged as the 'smartest person in the room' brings up this faster-than-light neutrino subject, ask them "What model do you think best avoids the Cohen-Glashow constraints?" You'll either get to listen to something rather interesting or shut them up :)

Reply #47 Top

I always find it amusing how people seem to think that slapping "sci-fi" on something means that in addition to making up currently nonexistent technologies, you also get to ignore everything we already do know about how things work.  And that any attempt to consolidate the two makes all possibly resultant stories or games "unfun".  If there were any more incorrect nonsense uttered by a living being, it would've had to come from a politician.

It's ok to "black box" something like a FTL drive.  That doesn't change anything else about the reality surrounding that technology.  It's ok to "black box" something like artificial / anti gravity.  That doesn't change anything else about the reality surrounding that technology either.  The same is true for all the other "black box" technologies that are currently hypothetically possible in one way or another, but as yet unproven.  What they do change is what all tools and devices have always changed...the options available to those that use such tools within the boundaries of the same rules that have always been true whether we knew about them or not.

Now frankly...most of the ships in Sins are alright in my opinion.  They could actually maneuver in space with fair degrees of efficiency and control.  Not great, but workable.  Unlike in EVE where all the ships are utterly incapable of space-flight, period.  But Sins could stand to kick up the realism notch a bit.  I am and always will be a firm believer that play of any kind should always be educational.  Not necessarily directly so, preferably indirectly, actually.  But the majority of the purpose of play is for learning, and our reward centers are set up to reflect that fact.  Which is why games are fun and school (in its current forms) is boring.  And why games make us selfish idiots and school makes us useless zombies.

 

Now having said all that, the problem in any such game is not realism.  The problem is internal consistency.  For instance, going back to EVE...if it were said that the ships have inertial nullifiers that cause them to not spin out of control from the thrust of their off-axis and inconsistently-sized engines, then it would automatically follow that they should be able to turn at perfect right angles while traveling at any velocity.  Obviously they can't do that in the game, and obviously they don't have inertial nullifiers because there are other techs in the game that increase turn speed and such.

Hmm...well maybe they have sophisticated computers that can control the thrust from those goofy configurations so that they can maneuver normally?  And by all rights, in that time period, humans and AI should've long since merged, so odds are the computers are in their brains.  Honestly, EVE is excessively primitive in terms of the technology they should be utilizing for their level of development.

But anyway, I digress...no matter how great that computer was, a ship that was designed to fly without the need for that goofy system would always outshine any and every ship that was dependent on it.  Processing power wasted on just making one of those goofy bastards fly would, in another "normal" ship, be devoted to processing more effective attack / evasion vectors, or better power management, or any number of processes the other ship's computer doesn't have the time to handle because it's too busy making sure the ship doesn't turn cookies for eternity at relativistic speeds.

 

Heck...just stop and think for a moment that with the energies required to travel near or beyond the speed of light, the instant we develop such a drive capable of it means we'll have developed all the potential needed to destroy whole worlds utterly with a single weapon.  No matter which method is used, the power required to do it is pretty close to the absolute output of the average star, if not more (depending on vessel size).  Even if one used inter-dimensional travel, it would still require that much power to side-step your way into the other dimensions from this one.  Probably why there are only two races in the game (the advent are still an off-shoot of humanity, there is only one "alien" race, the vasari).  The others all obliterated each other after they developed that much power.

Now, I can overlook the stupidity of lasers vs beams in Sins, it's all about the graphics in that regard.  The same is true of the layout of the ships.  What I can't abide is silliness like the spinning ships.  Even with artificial gravity, even with inertial compensation, that rate of spin would generate way too many g's.  Even neutron-heavy carbon materials would rip apart from the stress.  Inertia and momentum still apply even in microgravity.  And before anyone mentions it, the reason stars made of the same material don't rip apart is because they're already too heavy to fly apart.  The ships aren't so lucky.  And no amount of inertial damping short of nullification would help ships of those sizes.  Perhaps smaller ships might survive, but larger ships would be victims of their own size.

 

As for titans having gravity by virtue of mass, it's hard to judge because the scale of the game is so wonky.  Any given titan seems to be the size of north america when compared against planets, but barely musters better than two aircraft carriers when compared to the other ships in the game.  So, that's an entirely different issue altogether.

 

Finally, I'm not actually nitpicking.  I don't think any of this should be changed.  The game is fine as-is, and while I think games should be educational, I accept that people are too stupid to play educational games.  And I don't really care if people complain about when I do nitpick either, because I pity those who accept what they're handed without question because they lack the capacity to discern the difference between something worthwhile, and crap.  And the worst of it is...about half the other nitpickers fall into that category because they don't even know what they're trying to nitpick.

So, how about we all just quit nitpicking this particular game, enjoy it for what it is, and I'll quietly do what I can to try and save the human race from its inevitable downfall through willful ignorance?

Reply #48 Top

I stopped nitpicking the game awhile ago... I've moved on to the far more interesting subject of physics. :)

Reply #49 Top

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 45
It is my understanding that if superluminal neutrinos exist, they necessarily must be of high energy (perhaps in the GeV range?)...this is one reason why the often cited SN1987A is thought of as inadequate for experimental purposes (IIRC the neutrinos it emits are in the MeV range)... 

Ok, so let's take this one step at a time... (not necessarily going to say this all is your opinion, but what you are arguing may be the case), since I think we're on different pages for some reason... I apologize for some of the wording, I'm just trying to cut to the point and say what I mean.

  • You think that if neutrinos are superluminal, they must be of a high energy?
  • What energy range?
  • Do you dispute the claim that IceCube has captured neutrinos in the 100 GeV to 400 TeV energy range?
  • Do you dispute the claim the Super-Kamiokande has captured neutrinos in the 1 GeV to 1 TeV range?
  • Do you dispute the claim that pions in the upper atmosphere generate muon neutrinos such that ground-up neutrino detectors would/can capture them?
  • Do you dispute the claim that the reaction that turns pions to muon neutrinos can not occur if neutrinos are superluminal and of energy > 5 GeV?
  • Do you come to a different conclusion than "Given the last 2 statements; If the listed detectors have data, neutrinos cannot be superluminal. If they have no data, neutrinos could be superluminal"?

random other things:

News about OPERA now saying they now think they were wrong.

Here's the ICARUS results, published 3/29/12.

Reply #50 Top

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 49
You think that if neutrinos are superluminal, they must be of a high energy?  What energy range?

The experiments (OPERA, MINOS, Fermilab) that allegedly have had superluminal neutrinos are all in the GeV range...it seems that neutrinos in the MeV range do not ever result in this "anomaly"...

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 49
Do you dispute the claim that IceCube has captured neutrinos in the 100 GeV to 400 TeV energy range?

I do not...

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 49
Do you dispute the claim the Super-Kamiokande has captured neutrinos in the 1 GeV to 1 TeV range?

I'm not familiar with this facility, but I have no immediate reason to disagree with their reportings...

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 49
Do you dispute the claim that pions in the upper atmosphere generate muon neutrinos such that ground-up neutrino detectors would/can capture them?

I'll make a more general statement and say that I have faith in the models used to describe neutrino production...I don't have enough experience in particle physics to critique such models...

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 49
Do you dispute the claim that the reaction that turns pions to muon neutrinos can not occur if neutrinos are superluminal and of energy > 5 GeV?

This statement I do disagree with...I will quote the original paper:

"In such a framework, we find the neutrino production process π+ → µ+νµ becomes kinematically forbidden for Eν > 5 GeV if taking δνγ = 2.5 × 10^−5 as shown by OPERA data."

The focus of the paper is to provide constraints on a neutrino's velocity given its energy...due to how neutrinos are formed and propagate, neutrinos of energy X cannot exceed speed V...in this case, the max speed for energies of ~5 GeV is less than δνγ = 2.5 × 10^−5 (though it is still greater than δνγ=0, or c)...

So, this paper does argue that OPERA's measurements are wrong, but it does not argue that superluminal neutrinos are impossible...that being said, since higher energies lend to greater constraints on speed, the analysis/results of this paper are rather foreboding for any future searches of superluminal neutrinos...

If I were a betting man, I would bet that neutrinos are not superluminal under any conditions...while I'm no expert, the inability to find the so called "pair production" that should be associated with superluminal neutrinos seems to be the "final word" on this matter...