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An ansible is a category of fictional devices or technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. As a name for such a device, the word "ansible" first appeared in a 1966 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since that time, the term has been broadly used in the works of numerous science fiction authors, across a variety of settings and continuities. A related term is ultrawave.
Faster-than-light travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light. The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero rest mass may travel at the speed of light, and that nothing may travel faster.
The fictional technology in Star Trek has borrowed many ideas from the scientific world. Episodes often contain technologies named after or inspired by real-world scientific concepts, such as tachyon beams, baryon sweeps, quantum slipstream drives, and photon torpedoes. Some of the technologies created for the Star Trek universe were done so out of financial necessity. For instance, the transporter was created because the limited budget of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) in the 1960s did not allow expensive shots of spaceships landing on planets.
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A tachyon or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light. Physicists believe that faster-than-light particles cannot exist because they are inconsistent with the known laws of physics. If such particles did exist they could be used to send signals faster than light. According to the theory of relativity this would violate causality, leading to logical paradoxes such as the grandfather paradox. Tachyons would exhibit the unusual property of increasing in speed as their energy decreases, and would require infinite energy to slow to the speed of light. No verifiable experimental evidence for the existence of such particles has been found.
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References
- ↑ Perkowitz, Sidney (2011). Slow Light: Invisibility, Teleportation and Other Mysteries of Light. World Scientific. p. 108. ISBN 978-1-84816-753-7. Extract of page 108.
- 1 2 Tipler, Paul A.; Llewellyn, Ralph A. (2008). Modern Physics (5th ed.). New York: W.H. Freeman & Co. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-7167-7550-8.
... so existence of particles v > c ... Called tachyons ... would present relativity with serious ... problems of infinite creation energies and causality paradoxes.
- ↑ Lisa Randall, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions, p.286: "People initially thought of tachyons as particles travelling faster than the speed of light...But we now know that a tachyon indicates an instability in a theory that contains it. Regrettably for science fiction fans, tachyons are not real physical particles that appear in nature."
- ↑ Eberhard, Phillippe H.; Ross, Ronald R. (1989), "Quantum field theory cannot provide faster than light communication", Foundations of Physics Letters, 2 (2): 127–149, Bibcode:1989FoPhL...2..127E, doi:10.1007/BF00696109, S2CID 123217211
- ↑ Peacock, K.A.; Hepburn, B. (1999). "Begging the Signaling Question: Quantum Signaling and the Dynamics of Multiparticle Systems". Proceedings of the Meeting of the Society of Exact Philosophy. arXiv: quant-ph/9906036 . Bibcode:1999quant.ph..6036P.
- ↑ Morris, Brandon Q. (16 March 2021). "Tiny Wormholes May Be Usable for Interstellar Communication". The Debrief. Retrieved 6 January 2023.
- ↑ "Skinny wormholes could send messages through time | New Scientist".
- ↑ Moon, Elizabeth (September 2004). Trading in Danger (mass ppb. ed.). Del Rey. p. 111. ISBN 0-345-44761-1.
Attack on instersystem ansibles is just...just unthinkable
- ↑ Benjamin, Garfield (2016). The Cyborg Subject: Reality, Consciousness, Parallax. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 28. ISBN 978-1-137-58448-9.
- ↑ James Cameron's Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide, p. 156–157.
- ↑ Hines, Terence. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. pp. 117–145. ISBN 1-57392-979-4
- ↑ Diaconis, Persi. (1978). Statistical Problems in ESP Research. Science New Series, Vol. 201, No. 4351. pp. 131–136.
- ↑ Herbert, Frank (April 1970) [1970]. The Whipping Star. Worlds of If magazine.
- ↑ Pullman, Philip (2 October 2001) [2000]. The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, 3. mass pbk. ed.). New York: Del Rey. p. 156. ISBN 0-345-41337-7.
Well, in our world there is a way of taking a common lodestone and entangling all its particles, and then splitting it in two so that both parts resonate together.
- ↑ Keyes, J. Gregory (4 March 2009). The Shadows of God. Random House LLC. ISBN 9780307559609.
My aetherschreiber was lost when the Coweta captured us.
- ↑ Star King's Future History - Amazing Stories
- ↑ Smith, Cordwainer. "On the Storm Planet" (February 1965), Chap. XII, pp. 148–149 in: Dozois, Gardner, ed. (28 October 2014). Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 94–163. ISBN 9781466884472.
The communicator was the kind they mount in planoforming ships right beside the pilot. The rental on one of them was enough to make any planetary government reconsider its annual budget. ... She pressed a button. "Instant message." ... Casher, knowing the prices of this kind of communication, almost felt that he could see the arterial spurt of money go out of Henriada's budget as the machines reached across the galaxy, found Mizzer and came back with the answer.