GalCiv2 Forums
Okay, here's what you do for this game: You have to "ban" the person who posted above you for an outrageous, silly, or funny reason. Got it?
Banned for stoning.
Here's the issue. It deals with the conservation of energy applied to a number of disparate phenomena, all of which are what we would consider "teleportation": this could be wormholes, freakishly reliable quantum tunneling, or any other way of traveling from one place to another without physically going there.
It's kind of hard to explain, so I'll just provide an incredibly basic example, using for simplicity's sake a pair of idealized "portals" that could stand in for any of the above effects- anything that enters one side of one portal comes out the other side of the other. Basically, the portals from Portal.
Let's say that there are two portals, one on the ceiling and one directly under it on the floor, with a large amount of space in between, enough so that a reasonable object could achieve terminal velocity and then some. There is a mass of water in between the two, so that it constantly falls through the bottom one and emerges from the top- basically, an infinite waterfall. This presents a problem, or more accurately a miracle- if I were to move a waterwheel underneath the waterfall (assuming no water splashed out) and plug it into my laptop, I would have a perpetual motion machine! (Which is, of course, a blatant violation of the laws of thermodynamics)
In more general terms, the problem is this: science tells us that there exist phenomena which can translocate matter from one position to another with a constant expenditure of energy (a wormhole crossing over the same distance will require the same mass to create regardless of which direction it is pointed). However, depending on the position, that object can have either greater or lesser potential energy than at its previous position, which can then be released back into the universe- thus, energy could be created (or destroyed) by the process of translocation.
banned for making my brain hurt
Not from visualizing but from trying to see if it works or not.
Banned for sharing my pain at what the smart kid typed.
My TV-brain guesses that the flaw in the scenario is that the portals have a cost that is completely separate from any effort to apply real-world thermodynamics to the waterfall stuff. But that might drift back to a hypothetical political economy that could make fixed investments in a surreal infrastructure that once completed could support this translocation stuff without requiring any further energy input.
banned for short responses in the face of such mass.
First, that example is the same as previous. Dunno why you bothered to post it all again.
Second, to teleport something, the energy expenditure would be massive and, even worse, the amount of energy produced in teleporting the material would be dangerous. Assuming the device transporting the water were to compensate for energy lost (and thus mass lost) in the teleportation, it would still be either turning the material to energy for transmission (don't stand in front of the dish) or it would be turning the water into energy and transmitting the composition to another site where it would be assembled from energy into matter. And although the second option means that there's a source of energy to help make it more economic, there would still be a lot of free energy that would irradiate the area. Of course, either means it's likely that the device will get fried. Then the water spills on the ground and you have to mop it up. I'll get a bucket, cause I don't think I can help here.
banned for working while at work.
banned for playing while at play.
Banned because I finally got the internet working here in Terra Heute, Indiana.
banned for you got it going just in time for the maintenance shutdown
banned for wanting to give a brain a little satisfaction, that might lead ego boosting.
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