Shutting down the MWJ

ThinksMarkedly wrote: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)

Okay, I will concede. But that raises a question in my mind about how a mass transit would ever work.

Consider the case of two ships of any size trying to go through a wormhole together; it does not matter if they are going the same or opposite directions. If their hyper-generators are not exactly in sync, then one will enter first and the other have to wait the minimum ten seconds; because I believe that you are telling me that is NO lag time with respect to the stability of the transit. The more ships trying to transit together the worse the problem will become, unless all ships can exactly match the hyper-generator activation with not even an attosecond amount of difference.

My suspicion is that it you observed multiple highly reliable stellar sources like rotating black holes and neutron stars you could put together a pretty good idea about time taken. You also take a very sensitive clock on a trip out and back through a WH and compare it to the duplicate that didn’t leave.

kzt wrote:My suspicion is that it you observed multiple highly reliable stellar sources like rotating black holes and neutron stars you could put together a pretty good idea about time taken. You also take a very sensitive clock on a trip out and back through a WH and compare it to the duplicate that didn’t leave.

Yes, that is the point Jonathan_S made and then ThinksMarkedly insisted that supremely accurate clocks were available without any doubt.

So I have moved on and wonder how quickly the instability follows hyper-generator activation.

tlb wrote:Okay, I will concede. But that raises a question in my mind about how a mass transit would ever work.

Consider the case of two ships of any size trying to go through a wormhole together; it does not matter if they are going the same or opposite directions. If their hyper-generators are not exactly in sync, then one will enter first and the other have to wait the minimum ten seconds; because I believe that you are telling me that is NO lag time with respect to the stability of the transit. The more ships trying to transit together the worse the problem will become, unless all ships can exactly match the hyper-generator activation with not even an attosecond amount of difference.

That's a good question. Since perfect synchrony is impossible, it stands to reason that multiple hypergenerators activating in roughly the same time does allow transit before the effects of having transited affect the next one. So if someone tried to transit in the other direction at the same rough time, then they'd either transit as in the mass transit, or not transit as in just after a transit.

It's also possible that they don't need to achieve perfect synchrony to transit. The hypergenerators do run for a non-trivial amount of time before the transit actually happens, so it's possible that the simple fact that multiple generators are in the state just before transit is sufficient to make them all transit once one of them causes the transit. You just need to ensure that the energy levels or whatever they're doing has reached the necessary condition.

tlb wrote:Consider the case of two ships of any size trying to go through a wormhole together; it does not matter if they are going the same or opposite directions. If their hyper-generators are not exactly in sync, then one will enter first and the other have to wait the minimum ten seconds; because I believe that you are telling me that is NO lag time with respect to the stability of the transit. The more ships trying to transit together the worse the problem will become, unless all ships can exactly match the hyper-generator activation with not even an attosecond amount of difference.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's a good question. Since perfect synchrony is impossible, it stands to reason that multiple hypergenerators activating in roughly the same time does allow transit before the effects of having transited affect the next one. So if someone tried to transit in the other direction at the same rough time, then they'd either transit as in the mass transit, or not transit as in just after a transit.

It's also possible that they don't need to achieve perfect synchrony to transit. The hypergenerators do run for a non-trivial amount of time before the transit actually happens, so it's possible that the simple fact that multiple generators are in the state just before transit is sufficient to make them all transit once one of them causes the transit. You just need to ensure that the energy levels or whatever they're doing has reached the necessary condition.

Then we are back to the point of asking what happens when two fleets try to do a mass transit in opposite directions through a wormhole. We have rejected the idea that there is a lag due to wormhole length, but now we have the possibility of this being attempted because there is a lag before the wormhole is destabilized.

tlb wrote:Then we are back to the point of asking what happens when two fleets try to do a mass transit in opposite directions through a wormhole. We have rejected the idea that there is a lag due to wormhole length, but now we have the possibility of this being attempted because there is a lag before the wormhole is destabilized.

It doesn't look like the junction is locked down in both directions.

But even if it did, then my guess is that one of the two would transit and not the other, based on which one did it first. There's no way to synchronise that perfectly across a wormhole. If you did try, then most likely what would happen is the same as if you tried to transit with twice your mass on one side, which is probably that nothing happens and no one goes anywhere.

tlb wrote:Then we are back to the point of asking what happens when two fleets try to do a mass transit in opposite directions through a wormhole. We have rejected the idea that there is a lag due to wormhole length, but now we have the possibility of this being attempted because there is a lag before the wormhole is destabilized.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It doesn't look like the junction is locked down in both directions.

But even if it did, then my guess is that one of the two would transit and not the other, based on which one did it first. There's no way to synchronise that perfectly across a wormhole. If you did try, then most likely what would happen is the same as if you tried to transit with twice your mass on one side, which is probably that nothing happens and no one goes anywhere.

The wormhole has to be closed in both directions; you have shown that is has no extent, so why would it care about direction?

But you have already agreed that synchronicity is not possible for everyone when they are on the same side, so there has to be a lag time for destabilization. That puts us back to the possibility of transits from both sides occurring close enough in time and together exceeding the maximum. So we do not know the effect.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:Okay, I will concede. But that raises a question in my mind about how a mass transit would ever work.

Consider the case of two ships of any size trying to go through a wormhole together; it does not matter if they are going the same or opposite directions. If their hyper-generators are not exactly in sync, then one will enter first and the other have to wait the minimum ten seconds; because I believe that you are telling me that is NO lag time with respect to the stability of the transit. The more ships trying to transit together the worse the problem will become, unless all ships can exactly match the hyper-generator activation with not even an attosecond amount of difference.

That's a good question. Since perfect synchrony is impossible, it stands to reason that multiple hypergenerators activating in roughly the same time does allow transit before the effects of having transited affect the next one. So if someone tried to transit in the other direction at the same rough time, then they'd either transit as in the mass transit, or not transit as in just after a transit.

It's also possible that they don't need to achieve perfect synchrony to transit. The hypergenerators do run for a non-trivial amount of time before the transit actually happens, so it's possible that the simple fact that multiple generators are in the state just before transit is sufficient to make them all transit once one of them causes the transit. You just need to ensure that the energy levels or whatever they're doing has reached the necessary condition.

Or it's possible that having multiple ships close enough for their hyper generator fields to overlap will cause the generators to lock 'into phase' with each other; amd that's the mechanism for them all actually transiting simultaneously.

Or at least as potential authorial handwavium goes that doesn't seem all that difficult to digest. [G]

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It doesn't look like the junction is locked down in both directions.

But even if it did, then my guess is that one of the two would transit and not the other, based on which one did it first. There's no way to synchronise that perfectly across a wormhole. If you did try, then most likely what would happen is the same as if you tried to transit with twice your mass on one side, which is probably that nothing happens and no one goes anywhere.

At All Costs is pretty clear that the lockdown is bidirectional.

At All Costs - Ch: 64 wrote:"Actually, Ma'am," Smithson continued in a low-pitched voice, "I've just had a rather nasty thought. What if this isn't their only fleet? What if they've got another one waiting to hit Trevor's Star as soon as we pull out for Manticore?"
"The same thought occurred to me," Kuzak replied, equally quietly. "Unfortunately, there's not a lot we can do about it, if they do. We've got to hold the home system. If they punch out Hephaestus and Vulcan, take out the dispersed yards, it'll be a thousand times worse than what happened at Grendelsbane. I hate to say it, but if it's a choice between San Martin and Sphinx or Manticore, San Martin loses."
"At least the system defenses are better than they were when the shooting started," Smithson said.
"They are. But that's another reason we can't afford to lock down the Junction with a mass transit. If they do have something like that in mind, we've got to be able to get back as quickly as we left."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It's also possible that they don't need to achieve perfect synchrony to transit. The hypergenerators do run for a non-trivial amount of time before the transit actually happens, so it's possible that the simple fact that multiple generators are in the state just before transit is sufficient to make them all transit once one of them causes the transit. You just need to ensure that the energy levels or whatever they're doing has reached the necessary condition.

Jonathan_S wrote:Or it's possible that having multiple ships close enough for their hyper generator fields to overlap will cause the generators to lock 'into phase' with each other; amd that's the mechanism for them all actually transiting simultaneously.

Or at least as potential authorial handwavium goes that doesn't seem all that difficult to digest.

That sounds good, but doesn't this locking occur because of FTL communication; which would make the phase locking extremely close, without necessarily being perfect?