Forums » Suggestions
But, having a spinning neutron star (pulsar) as an animated object in an intermediate would be neato. The star (or at least it's glow) is a separate object from the background, so could this be done?
Perhaps it's a slow spinner, on the order of 1 "flash" or rotation per 10 seconds. With an appropriate cool sound effect (deep base pulse) with every "flash".
With each "flash", your ship takes damage since the flashes of light are accompanied with X-ray and Gamma-ray bursts.
Then, like Dave said above, link this new system up from Arta to Deneb or something.
Perhaps it's a slow spinner, on the order of 1 "flash" or rotation per 10 seconds. With an appropriate cool sound effect (deep base pulse) with every "flash".
With each "flash", your ship takes damage since the flashes of light are accompanied with X-ray and Gamma-ray bursts.
Then, like Dave said above, link this new system up from Arta to Deneb or something.
...we don't have enough headaches in the game already?
If someone with epilepsy is playing, would that be a problem?
Actually Leber, pulsars don't fire out a relatively harmful amount of GRBs and X-Rays.... when a star collapses and becomes a radiating neutron star (pulsar), that's what causes the insane high-energy burst.
Stellar phenomena like that should become normal if and when the exploration expansion to the VO universe happens... it would make exploring a huge risk...
Imagine jumping through a wormhole and as you do you witness the death of a star, and the resulting supernova blows you to bits. HOORAY!
Or exiting into an area of space with a nearby blackhole, only to be shredded to subatomic particles as soon as you arrive.
Fun stuff :P
Stellar phenomena like that should become normal if and when the exploration expansion to the VO universe happens... it would make exploring a huge risk...
Imagine jumping through a wormhole and as you do you witness the death of a star, and the resulting supernova blows you to bits. HOORAY!
Or exiting into an area of space with a nearby blackhole, only to be shredded to subatomic particles as soon as you arrive.
Fun stuff :P
LOL I been thru a black hole and came away from it unscathed!
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/7/11294
Anyway, I defer to others who may actually know something about high-energy physics, but I'm almost sure Pulsars shoot out high-energy radiation along with all other kinds of light.
But yeah I suppose regular flashes like that might do something with the epileptics amongst us.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/7/11294
Anyway, I defer to others who may actually know something about high-energy physics, but I'm almost sure Pulsars shoot out high-energy radiation along with all other kinds of light.
But yeah I suppose regular flashes like that might do something with the epileptics amongst us.
my understanding is that most of the radiation in pulsars is not in the visible spectrum. However, you may say "harmless," but most pulsars are quite far away from us, and we only see a very small portion of that radiation. What if you were 1 AU from the source? Could you say that the radiation is harmless?
If you're 1 sector away from the sun in Helios, would you say the radiation is harmless? :)
more harmless than the radiation from a pulsar, most likely.
Well I just did a bunch of reading on Pulsars, and here is what I found:
Neutron Stars : Really heavy, you wouldn't want to get near one. The gravity is so great that you'd hit the surface at half the speed of light.
Pulsars : Same as Neutron stars, but they spin quickly and emit electromagnetic radiation. The type of radiation it emits varies between radio, X-Ray and Gamma Ray. So some pulsars CAN be relatively harmless (except for the extreme gravity), and some can be pretty lethal with the X-Rays and Gamma Rays. There's also a handful of Pulsar classifications that I'm not going to get into.
Magnetars (probably the most deadly of them all): Neutron stars that have uber-magnetic fields in the range of 100 Gigateslas (earths field is at 60 Microteslas)... from 1000km away it can tear your tissues by pulling the water out of them (let's not even mention the iron in your blood). Additionally, magnetars have starquakes every so often which blow out enough radiation to make a solar flare look like a barbeque lighter beside a nuclear bomb.
It's good to note that all neutron stars are highly magnetic anyway... typically at about 100 Megateslas, which is enough to erase your credit card stripe from the distance of the moon. Let's also take this moment to note that they're only about 25km in diameter and manage to have the mass of a handful of suns.
So that's the lesson for today. I'd be more afraid of the gravity and magnetic fields than whatever radiation you manage to absorb... at least you can shield against gamma rays and X-Rays, which after thousands of years of space travel, you'd figure they're pretty good at.
Neutron Stars : Really heavy, you wouldn't want to get near one. The gravity is so great that you'd hit the surface at half the speed of light.
Pulsars : Same as Neutron stars, but they spin quickly and emit electromagnetic radiation. The type of radiation it emits varies between radio, X-Ray and Gamma Ray. So some pulsars CAN be relatively harmless (except for the extreme gravity), and some can be pretty lethal with the X-Rays and Gamma Rays. There's also a handful of Pulsar classifications that I'm not going to get into.
Magnetars (probably the most deadly of them all): Neutron stars that have uber-magnetic fields in the range of 100 Gigateslas (earths field is at 60 Microteslas)... from 1000km away it can tear your tissues by pulling the water out of them (let's not even mention the iron in your blood). Additionally, magnetars have starquakes every so often which blow out enough radiation to make a solar flare look like a barbeque lighter beside a nuclear bomb.
It's good to note that all neutron stars are highly magnetic anyway... typically at about 100 Megateslas, which is enough to erase your credit card stripe from the distance of the moon. Let's also take this moment to note that they're only about 25km in diameter and manage to have the mass of a handful of suns.
So that's the lesson for today. I'd be more afraid of the gravity and magnetic fields than whatever radiation you manage to absorb... at least you can shield against gamma rays and X-Rays, which after thousands of years of space travel, you'd figure they're pretty good at.
Neutron stars, not "heavy" so much as dense. Neutron Degeneracy pressure is the only thing that keeps them from collapsing.
As far as not wanting to get close, that only really holds at VERY close ranges, gravity doesn't mean that everything hits the massive object, you still have orbits, its just that things move very quickly about those orbits.
So the gravity is not something to seriously worry about. The Magnetic fields? more problematic, yes.
As far as not wanting to get close, that only really holds at VERY close ranges, gravity doesn't mean that everything hits the massive object, you still have orbits, its just that things move very quickly about those orbits.
So the gravity is not something to seriously worry about. The Magnetic fields? more problematic, yes.
/me appears with a blackboard and some chalk.
Magnetic Fields, gamma rays, Xrays etc, are exactly the same thing in different guises : they are both described by electromagnetic fields. Gamma rays and Xrays are simply light of very high frequencies, so much so that they look kinda like particles.
Gamma rays, xrays are nasty to you because they are highly energetic "particles" that will damage your body tissue when they hit.
Magnetic fields, on its own, won't do much to the human body since we are not electrically charged. However, they can accelerate particles like heavy ions or protons and make those particles dangerous to you when they hit.
Neutron stars and blackholes have massive gravity fields, and can be dangerous, but not for the reason of a poor spaceship free-falling very fast into it. Because of huge gravity gradients, if you get close to it, tidal forces will tear you apart. (Shape : you are right, but you are thinking of point particles, like all good GR students do :P).
Finally, you can't "fall into a blackhole". Well, you can, but only from YOUR point of view. Someone outside the blackhole watching you fall will see you getting closer and closer to the event horizon but will never see you cross it. Think : light cannot *escape* an event horizon, i.e. light will take an infinite amount of time to leave a blackhole, hence an observer can never see you "cross it" the horizon, since the information will never reach her eyes.
Having said all that, there is no law in physics that prevents one, in principle, of making a wormhole like that of VO. It's just that nobody has found, theoretically, the properties of the material required to make one.
/poofs back into the real world.
Magnetic Fields, gamma rays, Xrays etc, are exactly the same thing in different guises : they are both described by electromagnetic fields. Gamma rays and Xrays are simply light of very high frequencies, so much so that they look kinda like particles.
Gamma rays, xrays are nasty to you because they are highly energetic "particles" that will damage your body tissue when they hit.
Magnetic fields, on its own, won't do much to the human body since we are not electrically charged. However, they can accelerate particles like heavy ions or protons and make those particles dangerous to you when they hit.
Neutron stars and blackholes have massive gravity fields, and can be dangerous, but not for the reason of a poor spaceship free-falling very fast into it. Because of huge gravity gradients, if you get close to it, tidal forces will tear you apart. (Shape : you are right, but you are thinking of point particles, like all good GR students do :P).
Finally, you can't "fall into a blackhole". Well, you can, but only from YOUR point of view. Someone outside the blackhole watching you fall will see you getting closer and closer to the event horizon but will never see you cross it. Think : light cannot *escape* an event horizon, i.e. light will take an infinite amount of time to leave a blackhole, hence an observer can never see you "cross it" the horizon, since the information will never reach her eyes.
Having said all that, there is no law in physics that prevents one, in principle, of making a wormhole like that of VO. It's just that nobody has found, theoretically, the properties of the material required to make one.
/poofs back into the real world.
Cough, Cough, what's that I hear Holden? we're not electrically charged?
You don't think that insane magnetic fields would do insane things to flashing synapses?
You don't think that insane magnetic fields would do insane things to flashing synapses?
I knew if we erroneously spouted off about high energy physics long enough, softy'd would HAVE to chime in... Hehe.
I like tkjode's description of the water being torn from our tissues and the iron being ripped out of our blood/hemoglobin. WHOA. I'd have used that in my RP post...
And a starquake on a magnetar would be kickass to see ingame. Wild astrophysics effects! I want them ingame!
I like tkjode's description of the water being torn from our tissues and the iron being ripped out of our blood/hemoglobin. WHOA. I'd have used that in my RP post...
And a starquake on a magnetar would be kickass to see ingame. Wild astrophysics effects! I want them ingame!
Shape : well, good point. So I did some googling and came up with this :
http://www.mcw.edu/gcrc/cop/static-fields-cancer-FAQ
It's mainly about cancer, but apparently very research have been done to evaluate the effects of high static magnetic fields on the human body. Anyway, it is not a big deal to deal with even very high strength magnetic fields : your ship is a great Faraday cage anyway! Now, the effects of those fields on your ship that's another matter.
Leber : Heh. It's an occupational habit. I just call it physics outreach. Part of the job you know!
http://www.mcw.edu/gcrc/cop/static-fields-cancer-FAQ
It's mainly about cancer, but apparently very research have been done to evaluate the effects of high static magnetic fields on the human body. Anyway, it is not a big deal to deal with even very high strength magnetic fields : your ship is a great Faraday cage anyway! Now, the effects of those fields on your ship that's another matter.
Leber : Heh. It's an occupational habit. I just call it physics outreach. Part of the job you know!
Why not modify the wormholes so that when you enter it you've got a chance of being thrown to some randam sector in some system. Say the odds are 1:1000.
~Cpt. Overkill~
~Cpt. Overkill~