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Old 06-05-2019, 07:57 PM   #21
CraigR
 
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Default Re: What could a scientist in an advanced civilization with FTL be working on?

Researching a hyperspatial energetic phenomenon that applies a second absolute speed limit in hyperspace in much the same way that c applies to normal space?
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Old 06-06-2019, 06:47 AM   #22
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Default Re: What could a scientist in an advanced civilization with FTL be working on?

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Researching a hyperspatial energetic phenomenon that applies a second absolute speed limit in hyperspace in much the same way that c applies to normal space?
Or how to bypass that? In Niven's Known Space stories, hyperdrive ships can cross one lightyear per three days - it's the only speed available with a hyperdrive shunt. Except the puppeteers developed the Quantum II hyperdrive, which crosses one lightyear every 1.25 minutes (meaning someone has to be constantly on watch to avoid crashing into stars and the like). The first Quantum II hyperdrive was test-flown by a human (no puppeteer, not even a crazy one, is going to entrust its life to an experimental FTL system!), but its existence highly classified afterward, and its plans kept secret by the puppeteers. (The plans were part of the prize awarded to Louis Wu and Speaker-To-Animals for their participation in the first expedition to the Ringworld, and were promptly confiscated by their respective governments when they got home.)

In the Star Trek universe, when they rejiggered the warp scale in TNG and later series in order to give some sense of internal consistency to it, Warp 10 was established as the new top speed, with the energies needed to accelerate increasing asymptotically as Warp 10 is approached, similar to approaching lightspeed in Einsteinian space.. (Even the writers tended later to ignore the VOY episode "Threshold", which among other stupid things posited that Warp 10 was "infinite speed" at which the ship would appear simultaneously in all places at once, something more than a little reminiscent of the Infinite Improbability Drive from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That wasn't even the dumbest thing in the episode; suffice it to say that a community willing to accept the TOS episode "Spock's Brain" and the TNG episode "Angel One" is still more than happy to pretend "Threshold" never happened.)
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Old 06-06-2019, 07:36 AM   #23
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Default Re: What could a scientist in an advanced civilization with FTL be working on?

What does a scientist in a interstellar civilization study? Stuff that would sound like complete nonsense to us.

Compare what the cutting edge of science is in 1819 and 2019. Would the most brilliant physicist of 1819 understand frame-dragging or quantum tunneling? Just a couple of centuries is enough to move the limits of science into what the earlier generations would consider "magic" or "nonsense".

Make stuff up. Throw some random words together until it feels good. You have no limits.
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Old 06-15-2019, 08:38 PM   #24
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Default Re: What could a scientist in an advanced civilization with FTL be working on?

I bet that scientist would research what other technologies might exist to be studied that they haven’t realized exist yet.

Or travel back in time to ask on a game rpg forum what future technologies they think? Perhaps like an anthropology study?

I’d be curious to see what that project generated...
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Old 06-15-2019, 10:50 PM   #25
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Default Re: What could a scientist in an advanced civilization with FTL be working on?

An FFTL. Faster then Faster then Light. The Wright Brothers getting a powered plane to fly didn't mark the end of research into better and faster planes.

A privacy solution to that civilization's version of Facebook.

A perfume to attract the other 4 sexes.

A solution to the two legged primitives recently discovered in a nearby spiral galaxy.

A quicker way to fill out a TPS report or pass it off to the being in hexical Ad34Z.
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Old 06-19-2019, 10:20 PM   #26
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Default Re: What could a scientist in an advanced civilization with FTL be working on?

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Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2 View Post
What does a scientist in a interstellar civilization study? Stuff that would sound like complete nonsense to us.

Compare what the cutting edge of science is in 1819 and 2019. Would the most brilliant physicist of 1819 understand frame-dragging or quantum tunneling? Just a couple of centuries is enough to move the limits of science into what the earlier generations would consider "magic" or "nonsense".

Make stuff up. Throw some random words together until it feels good. You have no limits.
I TOTALLY agree. What would you have in mind? Everything I come up with has been taken already.
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Old 06-20-2019, 09:11 AM   #27
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Default Re: What could a scientist in an advanced civilization with FTL be working on?

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What does a scientist in a interstellar civilization study? Stuff that would sound like complete nonsense to us.

Compare what the cutting edge of science is in 1819 and 2019. Would the most brilliant physicist of 1819 understand frame-dragging or quantum tunneling? .
No, but anyone would understand "looking for cancer cures". That physics has long since ventured into areas where no non-physicists can imagine what the practical applications are, if any, for their work doesn't mean there are no areas where the results of what they are doing is quite so incomprehensible.

The real problem is that saying "They have FTL" doesn't say what they don't have. The scientist could be working on sapient AI, pan-immunity, cloaking devices, a method of creating hyperspace barriers, finding the location of Lost Earth by tracking genetic diffusion, zero point energy, psi powers, a fundamental model of cognition, an end to aging, a proteus machine. Lots of stuff.
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Old 06-20-2019, 03:25 PM   #28
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Default Re: What could a scientist in an advanced civilization with FTL be working on?

It's 11,019, and they're still debating what caused the Big Bang and what came before it, as new evidence including particles discovered - some quite by accident - in the intervening millennia that cannot be explained by the Standard Model has rendered every proposed model incomplete.

It seems the only way to truly be sure is to construct a temporal viewer, but the key technology needed to make one has been banned by every nation because of its destructive potential. Especially since you'd have to set the viewpoint to outside the universe proper....
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Old 06-21-2019, 05:20 PM   #29
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Default Re: What could a scientist in an advanced civilization with FTL be working on?

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Originally Posted by LokRobster View Post
I bet that scientist would research what other technologies might exist to be studied that they haven’t realized exist yet.

Or travel back in time to ask on a game rpg forum what future technologies they think? Perhaps like an anthropology study?


I’d be curious to see what that project generated...
Lol. Yeah I really abused this forum. I’m trying to quit.
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