Some thoughts regarding Gateways

pataphor

2013-10-08 14:15:22 UTC

Post by Christer Jacobsson
A thought hit me the other day about the working of Gateways, namely
this: How does a Gateway deal with the problem of handling angular
momenta when one steps through a Gateway?

It seems angular momentum is not carried over to the other side, but
things like pressure exchanges do happen, although not in a quite as
forceful way as one would expect. I'd expect a gateway to either suck or
blow air very violently if it connects to a place a few hundreds of
miles away, especially when there is difference in height.

Post by Christer Jacobsson
Larry Niven took up this problem in his piece on teleportation in his
book "All the myriad ways". An example would be if you enter a
teleportation booth located at the equator and dial a destination that
lies in northern Scandinavia. If no means exist of handling the
difference in angular momentum between the sending and receiving booth,
you would find yourself in a fatal situation when you arrive at your
destination. You would go tearing out of the receiver booth with a
relative speed difference between you and the ground of say 500+ m/sec
which would mean nearly instant death to you as you (1) land on the
ground with that speed or (2) smashes into some obstacle at that speed.
Either way you would be toasted :-( But this problem can be solved and
Niven describes methods for dealing with this sort of situations that
would appear if you must teleport over great distances.

There seems to be this game portal where one flies out with the same
speed as one enters, but that doesn't account for rotating reference frames.

Post by Christer Jacobsson
But do Gateways have some sort of mechanism built into them that will
take care of the different angular momenta when you open a GW in Ebou
Dar to Fal Dara and steps through it? I think that a GW have ways of
taking care of this sort of problems as we have seen in KoD when Nyn
opens a GW at a sourthern location that allow her and Lan to step out in
the Borderlands far up in the north and arrive at their destination at a
standstill - just like if they have stepped over an ordinary door
threshold.

Obviously it has to do something with the way GW are tied off, because
if that is done incorrectly there are violent explosions.

Post by Christer Jacobsson
Have this been up for discussion before?

I had some exchange, with Chucky I think, about whether the power is a
connection to some machine or entity (or to several different entities)
that is left over from the previous high level civilization, that is
stronger or weaker corresponding to some genetic marker. So if that
entity would interpret brain patterns of suitable bodies, those with the
right DNA and the knowledge to use their faculties, it could have some
security and corrective routines installed that would prevent people
from blowing things up or killing themselves, unless they willingly try
to bypass them.

How far into matrix territory that would bring us isn't clear, but if we
consider alternative possible realities and dream traveling and bale
fire it becomes increasingly more difficult to find explanations that do
not involve some virtual reality.

On the other hand, if we assume some kind of nanotech and the ability to
execute rotations and translations in a 4D continuum cleanly (I mean
just changing coordinates and velocities of objects without any
side-effects or emission of EM-radiation or creation of magnetic fields)
it would go a long way towards explaining some mythical machine's or
quantum entity's superpowers.

IIRC Chucky did not at all react enthusiastically to me trying to find
intermediaries in order to explain the workings of power, but that would
leave him with a lot of unconscious magic processes in the brains of the
power using people, kind of like AE van Vogt style extra brains.

P.