Why did Beowulf Never Noticed the Wormhole Terminus?

Joat42 wrote:Plus the fact that the understanding of wormholes and their terminuses wasn't as good at time, relatively speaking. The survey of Sigma Draconis would also be very old at the time and nobody goes out of their way to pay for a new survey unless there are indications that it is needed - especially since everybody have known that "Beowulf doesn't have any wormholes" for a very long time, it's hard to overcome that type of thinking-inertia.

Good point. Wasn't some of the early experimentation work on wormholes conducted in the Sigma Draconis system in the first place? I vaguely remember that, but the wiki says all three of Adrienne Warshawski, Shigematsu Radhakrishnan, and Joe Buckley were of Earth.

Besides, there's some indication that the secondary termini of a junction are much weaker. None of the stories of junctions we've heard so far indicate they were discovered from the secondary side, always the junction itself. Not that we've been told of a lot of such stories, but the two most important ones (Manticore and Felix) were discovered this way.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Besides, there's some indication that the secondary termini of a junction are much weaker. None of the stories of junctions we've heard so far indicate they were discovered from the secondary side, always the junction itself. Not that we've been told of a lot of such stories, but the two most important ones (Manticore and Felix) were discovered this way.

I haven't looked up any textev to verify this, but it also seems like the secondaries are located quite far out.

Joat42 wrote:Plus the fact that the understanding of wormholes and their terminuses wasn't as good at time, relatively speaking. The survey of Sigma Draconis would also be very old at the time and nobody goes out of their way to pay for a new survey unless there are indications that it is needed - especially since everybody have known that "Beowulf doesn't have any wormholes" for a very long time, it's hard to overcome that type of thinking-inertia.

Actually, Sigma Draconis had been colonized by a generation ship, a long time before gravitics and hyper space have been invented.

Joat42 wrote:Plus the fact that the understanding of wormholes and their terminuses wasn't as good at time, relatively speaking. The survey of Sigma Draconis would also be very old at the time and nobody goes out of their way to pay for a new survey unless there are indications that it is needed - especially since everybody have known that "Beowulf doesn't have any wormholes" for a very long time, it's hard to overcome that type of thinking-inertia.

markusschaber wrote:Actually, Sigma Draconis had been colonized by a generation ship, a long time before gravitics and hyper space have been invented.

True, but not relevant. Joat's point is that all the wormhole scanning in the Sigma Draconis system had been done a long time before. It was probably one of the first systems where any scanning was done, if not the first one. Wormholes were theorised in 1391 PD by Dr. Shigematsu Radhakrishnan, who was a citizen of Earth but we don't know where he was doing his theoretical work. And we don't know who first put them into practice.

Either way, the Core Worlds were likely the first ones scanned because that's where the equipment and personnel would first be located. And it turned up nothing, or was inconclusive / insufficient. Joat's point is that no one would pay to thoroughly scan it again.

Though I'm sure scientists and students kept on going over the data because that's what they do. All of whom would re-do it all over again with a fine tooth comb once the first Manticore ship hailed over with "we come in peace! And did you know there's a wormhole in your backyard?"

ThinksMarkedly wrote:True, but not relevant. Joat's point is that all the wormhole scanning in the Sigma Draconis system had been done a long time before. It was probably one of the first systems where any scanning was done, if not the first one. Wormholes were theorised in 1391 PD by Dr. Shigematsu Radhakrishnan, who was a citizen of Earth but we don't know where he was doing his theoretical work. And we don't know who first put them into practice.

Either way, the Core Worlds were likely the first ones scanned because that's where the equipment and personnel would first be located. And it turned up nothing, or was inconclusive / insufficient. Joat's point is that no one would pay to thoroughly scan it again.

Though I'm sure scientists and students kept on going over the data because that's what they do. All of whom would re-do it all over again with a fine tooth comb once the first Manticore ship hailed over with "we come in peace! And did you know there's a wormhole in your backyard?"

And it took a while from then until the first successful transit.
"Although the existence of wormholes had been theorized as early as 1391 PD, the possibility that they might be used as a means of effectively instantaneous faster-than-light (FTL) travel had not been realized until 1429 and the first successful manned transit had not occurred until 1447" [HoS]

So serious surveying seems not have happened until after 1447 - for example we're told in HoS that "The Axelrod Corporation had been one of the very first Solarian transtellers to recognize the true significance of warp bridges after their discovery in 1447 PD, and its Astro Survey Division had gone back and systematically recrunched the numbers on every surveyed star, looking for the gravitic markers no one had previously known to watch for."

Still, that left over a century where Beowulf could, in theory, have found their terminus before the first transit from Manticore to Beowulf in 1585.

Though we are also told that early theory thought multi-terminus junctions would be extremely rare. And reading between the lines a little it seems like after the Visigoth junction (with it's 2 remote termini) was discovered in 1454 that only wormhole bridges (2 total termini) were found until the MWJ over a century later. So it's possible that whatever readings were detected during a survey of Beowulf could have been at odds with the predictions of expected terminus emissions from the then current theories on wormholes. Something which could have led to it being dismissed as a possible wormhole terminus.

Discovery of the MWJ would have refuted parts of that theory, and caused a group rethink. But until the data from it was available to be incorporated into an updated theory; everybody would have been working from apparently flawed predictions. That could have interfered with attempts to identify areas worth closer surveys.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though we are also told that early theory thought multi-terminus junctions would be extremely rare. And reading between the lines a little it seems like after the Visigoth junction (with it's 2 remote termini) was discovered in 1454 that only wormhole bridges (2 total termini) were found until the MWJ over a century later. So it's possible that whatever readings were detected during a survey of Beowulf could have been at odds with the predictions of expected terminus emissions from the then current theories on wormholes. Something which could have led to it being dismissed as a possible wormhole terminus.

Discovery of the MWJ would have refuted parts of that theory, and caused a group rethink. But until the data from it was available to be incorporated into an updated theory; everybody would have been working from apparently flawed predictions. That could have interfered with attempts to identify areas worth closer surveys.

We also know from ACTI and before that there are several other phenomena that have similar signatures to wormholes, so until they had enough data to separate signal from noise, they wouldn't have known what they were looking for. Axelrod probably had some proprietary number-crunching algorithms that they hadn't shared with the rest of the Galaxy, and even they failed to see the terminus in Sigma Draconis.

We also don't know if termini can be found from outside the central one. They may be like Starfire's "closed warp points."

We also know that some effects can be noticed on through the wormhole, like the Congo System terminus leading to The Twins, where there were readings that couldn't be explained. So it's possible the readings in Sigma Draconis would have been dismissed because it was the MWHJ and thus connecting to a binary star system.

BTW, the survey by Harvest Joy in the Congo System (Torch) informs us that the detection in play warp bridges is possible in both directions, because it's highly unlikely that the MAlign would have started from there and got to Felix, rather than the other way around. It's not conclusive though because it is a connection to The Twins and Harvest Joy knew where to look.

You are all overlooking the shear scale of the survey. The MWJ is 1 LS across 6.86 LH from Manticore A. It would be like searching for a grain of rice in fifty football fields. They were using survey equipment that by modern standards primitive as hell. E.g. Cell phones, the first cell phone weighed 2.5 lbs and you could make 3-5, five minute calls before the battery died. Now your cell phone lasts several hours making calls and weighs a few ounces. Anyone want to do the math on howe big a volume of space you would have to search before finding the terminus.

saber964 wrote:You are all overlooking the shear scale of the survey. The MWJ is 1 LS across 6.86 LH from Manticore A. It would be like searching for a grain of rice in fifty football fields. They were using survey equipment that by modern standards primitive as hell. E.g. Cell phones, the first cell phone weighed 2.5 lbs and you could make 3-5, five minute calls before the battery died. Now your cell phone lasts several hours making calls and weighs a few ounces. Anyone want to do the math on howe big a volume of space you would have to search before finding the terminus.

And yet it was found.

So something must point to it, narrowing down the search volume to the point it could be found. I agree with you that there was a massive improvement on equipment, but there must have also been improvements in theory that narrowed the haystack.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
And yet it was found.

So something must point to it, narrowing down the search volume to the point it could be found. I agree with you that there was a massive improvement on equipment, but there must have also been improvements in theory that narrowed the haystack.

Didn't they find it when some popped through it and told them about it?

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
And yet it was found.

So something must point to it, narrowing down the search volume to the point it could be found. I agree with you that there was a massive improvement on equipment, but there must have also been improvements in theory that narrowed the haystack.

Didn't they find it when some popped through it and told them about it?

Pretty sure the "it" in ThinksMarkedly's post was the "MWJ" from saber964 . So, no, they didn't find "it" when someone popped through it (But, yes, Beowoulf's terminus was only found when Pathfinder popped through it from Manticore in l 1585 PD)


There was something in the previously collected data that led Axlerod to be quite confident there was a wormhole at Manticore. (Or at least confident enough to spend what had to be a lot of money on a fleet to try to seize the system before they would be able to come in and verify the wormhole's existence)