The Archangel Syndrome (Page 4 of 11)

You could make this action risky by adding known and unknown likely consequences: energy spilling back and damaging the source vessel or others near it, energy reflecting back into the weapons and the power source behind them, perhaps with energy stored and falling back like a heavy weight that slips loose, or energy venting in unknown ways through the extra dimensions, as a consequence of loss of accuracy at higher power, or of overloading space itself, or of some ensign who won't stop chewing gum.

mattergy? Wouldn't that just be plasma?

Whose hyperspace though? Every writer will give you a slightly different nuance of it.

For example in many dimensional travel tales one is referred to as "returning to one's home dimension" not realizing it might be plural

One definition of hyperspace I read usually involves extra dimensions where the laws of physics are different than in our dimensions, allowing ships to go faster than light. It's a concept invented by an SF author in the early 1900s and used by many others, including Asimov in his Foundation novels.

I'm considering calling mine extraspace, but it probably fits the definition of hyperspace too. Specifically, all objects that exist in spacetime also exist in my version of hyperspace, which is merely a fourth "physical" dimension of those objects. If you hit an enemy ship's fourth dimension with an energy beam fired into hyperspace, that foreign energy is expelled from hyperspace at the point of collision between the energy beam and the ship's fourth dimension.

I don't actually mention hyperspace when it comes to the operation of my stardrives. I simply call it teleportation and leave the "how" to the reader's imagination. But I do refer to hyperspace (or extraspace) for how the hypercannons work. The firing ship doesn't itself enter hyperspace, but the cannons are able to fire into it, resulting in an energy beam that bypasses the target ship's shields (which only exist in the first three dimensions) and strikes the hull of the ship.

Dune had a book dedicated to the period/characters who invented their drive mechanism. They went into some details, but I don't recall how much.

I think you're onto something profound here. I just need some time for that to percolate.
It's kind of like I don't mention teleportation in my main series because I wanted to define it my own specific way

Both this and 4D space are current terms (4th dimension nominally considered time and extra space is what I get when I clean my closet).

Consider "Pentaspace"  (example only -- don't use these ideas lol)

Example: The ship's P-Drive fired up, bringing the ship close to pentaspace translation.
(Reader: "Translation" sounds like this might be hyperspace-like)
(Writer: Similar only. Objects in p-space can be observed from outside)

Example: The ship turned, aiming its pentacannon. St-J had her ships race to keep it broadside. The beam couldn't be stopped by shields or anything in the physical dimension.
(Reader: Ah, so a beam can achieve a sort of hyperspace velocity? So, then they can send a low-power signal home for help?)
(Writer: No. High diffusion rate keeps it within x km)

If you had your own terms, you could fudge the rules around any plot hole. I think that's the problem you're running into. Trying to use hyperspace would lock you in as much as using "tardis" because in both cases it ties your hands to someone else's imagination. UNLESS you simply use hyperspace and redefine it as you need rather than use someone else's definition (A rough count in wikipedia easily finds over a dozen variations)

But the combined ((tech)) fields might overload local space, or the emitters might interfere with each other in a multidimensional phase relationship.

Did you know that a spectrum is a space of infinite dimension, of the sort called a Hilbert space?   Just throw in Hilbert Phase Space and you can tech-abracadabra almost anything.  Multiple powertrons driving a single load must be aligned in their Hilbert phase space.  Perfect alignment is impossible, and the effect of misalignment grows faster than exponentially with increasing power ... .   (Remember that the factorial grows faster than any exponential in the limit toward infinity.  That's why power series converge.  And the continuous equivalent to the factorial is the gamma function, offset by one in its argument.)

Whichever you choose, may I suggest you merely note plot holes and move on rather then go back and try to fix them? That's my current method. VQF had about half a doren (but all the chapter notes were lost in the Great Crash). The one you might recall is where the team moves from Imager's island to the station and Roberta was there but was supposedly left behind. I merely noted at chapter end "continuity oops!" but ploughed forward.

Slight tweak. I've gone back to hyperspace as the name of my story's extra dimension(s). I'm going to be intentionally vague since I don't want to suggest that my extra dimension is in any way related to the 4th spacial dimension of string theory, where the math says the extra dimensions must all be the itsy bitsy curled up ones. If I call mine hyperspace, then it falls into that classic sci-fi category known as "made up crap". The beauty of space opera.

Interestingly, I came across an article where scientists were able to test indirectly for the existence of a fourth spacial dimension, and two different teams using different tests found evidence that suggests it actually exists. It's not conclusive proof, but a cool result nevertheless.

Dirk, do you have a link to that article?  What I've seen recently involves alternate solutions to the General Relativity field equations in which there are two or three timelike dimensions and two or one spacelike dimension, which allows for quantum mechanics' "spooky action at a distance" to emerge within Einstein's framework--and lab work that suggests that these are possible.  I probably posted these before the "blip" but I'll try to find them again if you like.

I don't think that a breakthrough in fundamental physics would interest our journalists half as much as a political scandal or a seahorse romance.  Besides, most of then couldn't pass high school physics, much less get Einstein's 1930s work right.  Heck, they couldn't even get it wrong!  (High school physics: show that the units are consistent in e = mc² .)

I read a mostly excellent popular history of precision.  But in discussing electronics, the author applied something about field effect transistors to bipolar junction transistors, or vice versa.  It shook my confidence in the whole book.  Yes, the topic sounds esoteric, but if you know electronics it's like confusing a steam engine with a diesel engine, or an oil filter with an air filter.