t-neptunian

[t-neptunian]

So You Wanna Know How It Works #31: The Adjacency Manipulation Drive

Thanks everyone for tuning in today and forgive me for posting so late. I always intend to prioritize accuracy over punctuality and frankly I struggle to warp my head around this (ha, just a little space-time pun to get us started). The latest wave of videssay research publications on AMD testing[1] was the big burst of content needed to make headline news. and Unsurprisingly, an introduction into the field of Adjacency was not included in the publications, which were intended for an experienced audience. However, its likely that even a 50-hour course on the subject would not have been enough to undo the generations of science fanfiction and its explorations of alternative space-time travel, nor would it be enough to resist the tendency of intelligence to pave over the details it can't figure out how to fit into its understanding. Because of this, you will doubtless have seen news anchors making inaccurate comparisons, politicians fearmongering things that it cannot be used for, and family members theorizing implausible conspiracies. All the more reason to delay posting take the time needed for the promotion of understanding. But enough rambling! It's time to talk about what an AMD is not.

First up, AMDs are not Warp Drives from Star Trek! This method of alternative space-time travel uses a Warp Drive to generate a distortion in space-time, called a Warp Field. Similar to the old theoretical Alcubierre bubble[2] (not drive! Alcubierre put forth a shape of space-time consistent with general relativity! The only thing he said about the machine that would generate it would need to incorporate negative mass/energy!) ugh, anyway, like Alcubierre's bubble, the space-time distortion is composed of a front shell where space contracts, a back shell where space expands, and a space between where space-time remains for the most part undisturbed. This facilitates faster than light travel through both pulling a starship closer to its destination and pushing it away from its place of departure, in addition to more conventional methods of generating thrust. I think the main problem with this model is that it involves taking the same path from A to B that light would normally take, only faster. This conflicts with near-universal[3] (and fully-universal in regards to practical situations, imo) observation that the speed of light is constant, and even from the perspective of something traveling 90% of the speed of light, space-time will contort in a way that maintains the lightspeed gap in velocity between the object and light. But as always, I am not an expert and I am only doing my best to promote being an informed citizen.

Next, AMDs are not Hyperdrives! AMDs do not access some alternate dimension characterized by more compact geometry or some other quality that makes travel through it more efficient (this isn't minecraft). I don't really have a lot to say about this one, but I think this method includes conventional acceleration to ludicrous speeds in order to access hyperspace. Idk its hard to find stuff on this, but as much as I love hard, in-depth sci-fi and settings with space-feudalism, I love early Star Wars' whimsy and magical realism approach (and I am NOT including episodes 12 and 13, don't even think about saying otherwise to me).

Wormholes! AMDs are not Wormholes! How did this even get started? Who out there is still thinking it's wormholes? Honestly I am baffled that wormhole theory lasted as long as it did without deeper criticism. Okay let me walk it back for a second. Yes, I suppose its understandable that old people could hear vocabulary used to discuss Adjacency Manipulation Drives and be reminded of wormholes, but lets put it to rest. What even is the life cycle of a Wormhole? They require so many moments of connections between discrete points in space! You can't just say its all continuous because the singularity removes the discrete gaps from the plane of movement! So what the energy is distorting space-time! it's not distorting space-time in the direction of anything else! If anything, the distorted spacetime is only farther away from literally everywhere! HOW ARE YOU GONNA CONNECT IT TO ANOTHER POINT IN SPACE-TIME?! Wormheads try to rationalize their dumb alternative space-time travel method without mentioning '''white holes''' with ''''''reverse entropy'''''' challenge (IMPOSSIBLE).

Great! now that we've covered everything that AMDs are not, the only thing left to cover is what they are. As the name suggests, Adjacency Manipulation Drives make one group of points in space-time adjacent to another distinct group of points. This is not the same as connecting two distinct groups of points (do not even get me STARTED on the difference (I don't know)). AMDs achieve this by rigging together a series of complex mass[4] detonations, which release waves of space-time distorting bursts of complex energy, and in turn this applies a sequence of transformations to the group of points' pseudolocation, which moves through the higher dimensional complex plane. The transformations, if executed properly, should each alter the trajectory of the pseudolocation by the same amount and vary only in magnitude. What pilots of AMDs have to keep in mind is making sure the end result of the pseudolocation is in one of the sometimes periodic, but more often chaotic returns to our three-dimensional plane. These intersections vary greatly in the amount of points that are being made adjacent to another distinct amount, the shape of said amount of points, and the frequency of which these intersections appear. All of these characteristics make choosing a path to project the pseudolocation through a complicated task. Scientists in the still-adolescent study of Adjacency don't really know what works best, so they are just doing what works coolest. I think that's rad. Some of the paths that scientists are choosing may look like they have fractal-shaped trajectories from some angles, but the path itself makes the the first group of points adjacent to the second group of points- which are distinct- so really it's a straight line. I don't know. It's good enough for God[5].

I hope you guys enjoyed this episode of SYWKHIW, if you are still confused or have proof that I did not, in fact, cover everything an AMD is not, then feel free to ask whatever question you believe will help you become a more informed citizen. Want a topic covered? Request it! Should you wish to support my project and/or promote being an informed citizen, just send this to your mom the next time she so much as utters the word wormhole. See you next time!

[1] A) "WE MOVED (MEANINGFULLY DISTINCT FROM 'SENT') A MICROPROBE TO THE FARTHEST KNOWN STAR!! HERE'S HOW" B) "Top 10 Biggest Supernovae (RHO CASSIOPEIA DOESN'T EVEN MAKE THE LIST (USING UPDATED TOOLS AND NEWLY DEVELOPED METHODOLOGY))" C) "Ramifications and Use Cases of Complex Matter and its Stress-Energy-Tensor: Which Physicists Remain Relevant in this Meta? (Euclid on Suicide Watch)"

[2] M. Alcubierre, 1994

[3] See R. Petroskvi et al. 2082 (Please do not skip the abstract, causality violation is not as interesting as you might think)

[4] I don't have a source for this. no its not the complex mass you're thinking about.

[5] As in the force, personified or otherwise, that is responsible for all things. See SYWKHIW #4: God