So, this is intended to be a collaborative Science Fiction project between me and anyone who...
The Shiftverse (Hard Sci-Fi Round Robin)
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We Just Write
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So, this is intended to be a collaborative Science Fiction project between me and anyone who wants to join. You don't need to ask permission in order to post a snippet, though there are some ground rules for the setting listed below.
1: All laws of physics must be obeyed at all times. There is a bit of leeway for warp drives and wormholes based on distorting spacetime (and the possibility for constructing a Closed Timelike Curve that comes with it), as those so far seem at least theoretically possible, but that's it. No magic, no psychic powers, no ignoring thermodynamics.
2: Any time travel that would allow information to reach the past causes a timeline fork; spawning a branch timeline causally disconnected from the future the time traveler is from. This eliminates any chance of temporal paradoxes, and also means that changing the past to alter the present doesn't really work. The spoiler below has a brief explanation of how to go about time travel if you really insist, which as far as I can tell is compliant with General Relativity.
3: Humanoid aliens are an extreme rarity, and crossbreeding is flat-out impossible. The closest thing you could possibly get is a pair of interspecies lovers hiring a genetic engineer to create a synthetic child to spec.
4: For the sake of sanity, this setting will be restricted in scope to the Milky Way Galaxy. Extragalactic missions can be mentioned, but not shown.
5: For the convenience of the readers, all story segments should be timestamped with when they take place in billions of (Earth) years since the universe's origin. Snippets set in the 'present day' (defined as anything within 500,000 years of now) will be at universe age 13.772. Additional information such as the current date on Earth or location would also be appreciated if relevant.
Below is an index in addition to the threadmarks, which will list all story segments by author and sub-narrative. The index will be updated twice a week.
1: All laws of physics must be obeyed at all times. There is a bit of leeway for warp drives and wormholes based on distorting spacetime (and the possibility for constructing a Closed Timelike Curve that comes with it), as those so far seem at least theoretically possible, but that's it. No magic, no psychic powers, no ignoring thermodynamics.
2: Any time travel that would allow information to reach the past causes a timeline fork; spawning a branch timeline causally disconnected from the future the time traveler is from. This eliminates any chance of temporal paradoxes, and also means that changing the past to alter the present doesn't really work. The spoiler below has a brief explanation of how to go about time travel if you really insist, which as far as I can tell is compliant with General Relativity.
Wormholes: By default, every wormhole technically counts as a time machine, as the ends are linked in both time and space. By this, I mean that if you look through a wormhole, events on the other end will seem to be proceeding at the same rate, regardless of how severe a time dilation gradient is actually present. This makes constructing a wormhole time machine very simple; just subject one end of the wormhole to severe time dilation then bring the wormhole ends next to each other.
Congratulations, stepping through the end that was time dilated now results in you going back in time. You've also just connected an extremely long string of parallel realities together across space and time, but that'll probably be glossed over in order to attract more tourists.
Warp Drives: This one's a bit trickier to explain. Basically, when you move towards something normally, what you're actually doing (from a relativistic geometrical perspective) is tilting your time axis a little bit towards them in space. This also tilts your time axes a little bit into your destination's future. At terrestrial scales and velocities, this can largely be ignored, but Warp Drives make this little fact incredibly important.
This is because warp drives don't actually work by moving your ship through spacetime. No, they instead grab a bubble of spacetime around your ship and move that. Thus, if you accelerate your ship to relativistic speeds away from your destination before going to warp (NOTE: This is easier said than done, especially if you want to stop safely when you get there) you can actually arrive at your destination before your departure. You've also just displaced your ship into an alternate timeline. If you thought to bring along a wormhole end leading back to your home line, great! Otherwise you're stuck, and you'd better get to know the locals.
This happens because by accelerating away from your destination before warping, you've tilted your space axes into your destination's past. This method of time travel hard caps at one year into the past per light year traveled.
Congratulations, stepping through the end that was time dilated now results in you going back in time. You've also just connected an extremely long string of parallel realities together across space and time, but that'll probably be glossed over in order to attract more tourists.
Warp Drives: This one's a bit trickier to explain. Basically, when you move towards something normally, what you're actually doing (from a relativistic geometrical perspective) is tilting your time axis a little bit towards them in space. This also tilts your time axes a little bit into your destination's future. At terrestrial scales and velocities, this can largely be ignored, but Warp Drives make this little fact incredibly important.
This is because warp drives don't actually work by moving your ship through spacetime. No, they instead grab a bubble of spacetime around your ship and move that. Thus, if you accelerate your ship to relativistic speeds away from your destination before going to warp (NOTE: This is easier said than done, especially if you want to stop safely when you get there) you can actually arrive at your destination before your departure. You've also just displaced your ship into an alternate timeline. If you thought to bring along a wormhole end leading back to your home line, great! Otherwise you're stuck, and you'd better get to know the locals.
This happens because by accelerating away from your destination before warping, you've tilted your space axes into your destination's past. This method of time travel hard caps at one year into the past per light year traveled.
3: Humanoid aliens are an extreme rarity, and crossbreeding is flat-out impossible. The closest thing you could possibly get is a pair of interspecies lovers hiring a genetic engineer to create a synthetic child to spec.
4: For the sake of sanity, this setting will be restricted in scope to the Milky Way Galaxy. Extragalactic missions can be mentioned, but not shown.
5: For the convenience of the readers, all story segments should be timestamped with when they take place in billions of (Earth) years since the universe's origin. Snippets set in the 'present day' (defined as anything within 500,000 years of now) will be at universe age 13.772. Additional information such as the current date on Earth or location would also be appreciated if relevant.
Below is an index in addition to the threadmarks, which will list all story segments by author and sub-narrative. The index will be updated twice a week.