Shutting down the MWJ

Brigade XO wrote:And, given the way the SLN had set it up- with a DB operating as a false flag ship- they would be already in a State of War before the DB went though to Beowulf. And they had been TOLD by Beowulf that the plan was not secret any longer. Was thigh whole "reenforce through the Beowulf terminus" thing added as a way to cause even more deaths to the SLN and cull more SLN people and ships? Because it sure looks that way. Against the most heavily defended (and very few- we are lead to believe- wormholes had much in the way of active defense but Manticore has been at war with Haven for ? how many years? and this is the most heavily defended and organized wormhole military operation in the Known Human Occupied Space. Did the SLN have no actual information of what was sitting in both active and passive defensive ships and weapons on the transit lanes at the Junction end of the Manticore Junction? Or did they think they could just sail though and reform to parade in-system to help Filerta "mop up"?

Alignment looking to let somebody else kill off another few hundred thousand people and a large fleet to make their ultimate take over easier.

Given the trouble that Beowulf had been causing the Mandarins in the Assembly, I think that it is possible that the plan there was to simply blacken the reputation of Beowulf within the League. It may be that the real intention was to get the Beowulf Defense Force into a shooting match with the SLN; a plan that was foiled by the appearance of the Manticoran fleet on this side of the wormhole.

PS: I do not consider "A Grand Tour" and the Alphanes to be canon in the Honorverse. The story is more significant for being the inspiration for the books about Daniel Leary, Lady Adele Mundy and the Republic of Cinnabar Navy. Those stories have regrettably come to an end with David Drake's health problems.

As an aside and totally for my own need to know. What exactly would happen if a mass transit is attempted at exactly the same time in both directions from Manticore to Beowulf?

Manticore <=> Beowulf

penny wrote:As an aside and totally for my own need to know. What exactly would happen if a mass transit is attempted at exactly the same time in both directions from Manticore to Beowulf?

Manticore <=> Beowulf

Probably the same thing that happens if you try to transit while the wormhole is destabilised.

penny wrote:As an aside and totally for my own need to know. What exactly would happen if a mass transit is attempted at exactly the same time in both directions from Manticore to Beowulf?

Manticore <=> Beowulf

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Probably the same thing that happens if you try to transit while the wormhole is destabilised.

Actually I think this is more interesting than you suggest. The instability has to propagate at the speed of light within the wormhole (which is much faster that the normal space speed of light, but is not infinite); which means that neither end knows the wormhole is destabilized if they enter at the appropriate time. So the question becomes what happens when the two fleets meet at the center, where the wormhole is now doubly destabilized? One possibility is that both fleets are destroyed with unknown implications for the wormhole itself.

tlb wrote:Actually I think this is more interesting than you suggest. The instability has to propagate at the speed of light within the wormhole (which is much faster that the normal space speed of light, but is not infinite); which means that neither end knows the wormhole is destabilized if they enter at the appropriate time. So the question becomes what happens when the two fleets meet at the center, where the wormhole is now doubly destabilized? One possibility is that both fleets are destroyed with unknown implications for the wormhole itself.

But we know the wormhole itself is probably of negligible length. Didn't they say that no one had actually managed to measure the time it took to transit between systems?

tlb wrote:Actually I think this is more interesting than you suggest. The instability has to propagate at the speed of light within the wormhole (which is much faster that the normal space speed of light, but is not infinite); which means that neither end knows the wormhole is destabilized if they enter at the appropriate time. So the question becomes what happens when the two fleets meet at the center, where the wormhole is now doubly destabilized? One possibility is that both fleets are destroyed with unknown implications for the wormhole itself.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But we know the wormhole itself is probably of negligible length. Didn't they say that no one had actually managed to measure the time it took to transit between systems?

But does that really mean of negligible length or that time appears to stop to those inside? As long as there is a finite interval (however small) between the instability starting at one end and reaching the other, then the possibility exists.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:Actually I think this is more interesting than you suggest. The instability has to propagate at the speed of light within the wormhole (which is much faster that the normal space speed of light, but is not infinite); which means that neither end knows the wormhole is destabilized if they enter at the appropriate time. So the question becomes what happens when the two fleets meet at the center, where the wormhole is now doubly destabilized? One possibility is that both fleets are destroyed with unknown implications for the wormhole itself.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But we know the wormhole itself is probably of negligible length. Didn't they say that no one had actually managed to measure the time it took to transit between systems?

But does that really mean of negligible length or that time appears to stop to those inside? As long as there is a finite interval (however small) between the instability starting at one end and reaching the other, then the possibility exists.

I think tlb said it better, but ...

Negligible length as an absolute?

Negligible length to be measured?

Negligible length as far as this application?

Neither is written in stone.

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But we know the wormhole itself is probably of negligible length. Didn't they say that no one had actually managed to measure the time it took to transit between systems?

But does that really mean of negligible length or that time appears to stop to those inside?

Pretty sure RFC meant negligible time (in both internal and external reference frames).

If time just appeared to stop to those inside you'd easily be able to measure the externally apparent duration:
* Sync internal ship clocks with Astro control
* Jump out and back
* Compare clocks and see how far they now differ
Transit time is, presumably, 50% of the unaccounted for clock skew.

tlb wrote:As long as there is a finite interval (however small) between the instability starting at one end and reaching the other, then the possibility exists.

Jonathan_S wrote:Pretty sure RFC meant negligible time (in both internal and external reference frames).

If time just appeared to stop to those inside you'd easily be able to measure the externally apparent duration:
* Sync internal ship clocks with Astro control
* Jump out and back
* Compare clocks and see how far they now differ
Transit time is, presumably, 50% of the unaccounted for clock skew.

Are you happy with them measuring time to almost infinite precision or is it possible that a femtosecond (just for argument's sake) would be considered negligible?

I am not sure that on a mass transit, even the hyper-generator activations can be synchronized to that extent.

tlb wrote:But does that really mean of negligible length or that time appears to stop to those inside? As long as there is a finite interval (however small) between the instability starting at one end and reaching the other, then the possibility exists.

Is there a difference?

We're talking about the propagation of information at the speed of light (whatever the local speed of light is). Space and time are the same thing, just multiplied by or divided by c.

The transit time was immeasurable to the best of the instruments in the Honorverse, meaning it was indistinguishable from zero given all the possible errors that had to be accounted for. Given that ships transit in this virtually zero time, it stands to reason that light would also transit in virtually zero time. From that, we conclude that the length of the wormhole neck is actually virtually zero too. (assuming HV physics don't get even wonkier here, of course)

And given that this year's Nobel Prize in Physics was "for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter" I'd say they have very, very accurate clocks.

In fact, that's implied by their having grasers too: our current atomic clocks are limited in resolution by the fact that we're measuring electronic transitions. Since electronic transitions are the same principle that can produce coherent light in the IR/visible/UV spectrum (lasers), their ability to produce coherent light in the X-ray and Gamma Ray range implies the ability to control something that changes much faster than electronic transitions.