clusters

From Slipdrive Operation and Theory: A History

… Though there is some variability correlating to the mass of the star, the placement of Slipknots is remarkably consistent across the cluster, and this remains unexplained. They are positioned roughly 2500 light seconds perpendicular from the system’s ecliptic, and always paired, like the poles on a magnet. (Models suggest that the slipknot at a location without a central mass would occupy a single point and would entangle; see Armster 5324-WEM.) If they are naturally occurring phenomena, then the physics by which they are generated remains unexplained. If they were designed, then it was with a technology for which there has been no archaeological attestation (see also Slipknot Worship and Slipknots, Destabilization of).

The physics in each system in the cluster are identical. This is the best evidence that the systems are all part of the same universe, though Carradine and Zhang-Sho argue that even this is uncertain (3318-JFM). To date, it has proved impossible to match the stars visible from any system with those in another, and therefore the most conservative speculation is that each system is at least outside the observable universe of all others. Ochek therefore believed that the slipknots were designed to enable specifically intergalactic transport (4007-HRW). Efforts in the Fourth Millennium to expand the cluster by the Maltus Foundation were successful in adding Gawlinski Prime but documentation from that period is fragmentary and no similar expedition has achieved results.

Scientists are unable to disprove the existence of other clusters. …

Here’s a nice little piece of fiction from Toph Marshall for Diaspora Anabasis. This was never explicit in Diaspora but was always in my head: this is the “out”, the “hard” in our science fiction. It’s how faster-than-light travel works without violating other fundamental (or at least intuitive) rules.

It’s a common canard that you can have causality or faster-than-light travel but not both. But if the end points are not observable then they are functionally in different universes and there’s no causality to violate. There’s no causal interaction between the two points except the travel itself.

This little piece of fiction does more than just that though, as all the best micro-fic does. Aside from the obvious (there are slipknots, there are in this location) it also establishes that much of science in this setting is actually archaeology: no matter what the locals discover it’s probably been discovered before and (functionally) nearby. Half of high energy physics here is decoding ancient texts on high energy physics. All fields have the same sort of reverance of artifacts, dependence on linguistics, and possibly a religious component because the last civilization’s texts are the fastest route to recovering that technology. It’s as though Atlantis really did, certainly, exist. And it had starships.

I really dig that mood, the injection of the humanities into the sciences in a concrete way. A new archaeological dig is instantly of interest to biologists and chemists and physicists and mathematicians. No one can afford to be ignorant of ancient cultures.

And it must also become something of a crutch, stagnating original research. How much of your life would you spend on developing a new theory for high energy physics when it could be invalidated (or validated) by one new discovery on a remote moon of the local gas giant.