bits of science behind the fiction


The Void in philosophy encompasses the ideas of nothingness and emptiness, a notion that has been interpreted and debated across various schools of metaphysics. In ancient Greek philosophy, the Void was discussed by thinkers like Democritus, who saw it as a necessary space for atoms to move, thereby enabling the existence of matter. In Eastern philosophical traditions, the Void takes on significant spiritual and metaphysical meanings. In Buddhism, Śūnyatā refers to the emptiness inherent in all things, a fundamental concept in understanding the nature of reality. In Taoism, the Void is represented by Wuji, the undifferentiated state from which all existence emerges, embodying both the potential for creation and the absence of form. Wikipedia


Quantum Slipstream - also known as Warp drive, or a drive enabling space warp, is one of several ways of travelling through space found in science fiction. It has been often discussed as being conceptually similar to hyperspace.  A warp drive is a device that distorts the shape of the space-time continuum. A spacecraft equipped with a warp drive may travel at speeds greater than that of light by many orders of magnitude. In contrast to some other fictitious faster-than-light technologies such as a jump drive, the warp drive does not permit instantaneous travel and transfers between two points, but rather involves a measurable passage of time which is pertinent to the concept. In contrast to hyperspace, spacecraft at warp velocity would continue to interact with objects in "normal space". Wikipedia


Protocol Zeta - Zeta-TCP[1] refers to a set of proprietary Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) algorithms aiming at improving the end-to-end performance of TCP, regardless of whether the peer is Zeta-TCP or any other TCP protocol stack, in other words, to be compatible with the existing TCP algorithms. It was designed and implemented by AppEx Networks Corporation. Wikipedia


State Vector Collapse - The linearity of quantum mechanics leads, under the assumption that the wave function offers a complete description of reality, to grotesque situations famously known as Schroedinger's cat. Ways out are either adding elements of reality or replacing the linear evolution by a nonlinear one. Models of spontaneous wave function collapses took the latter path. The way such models are constructed leaves the question, whether such models are in some sense unique, i.e. whether the nonlinear equations replacing Schroedinger's equation, are uniquely determined as collapse equations. Various people worked on identifying the class of nonlinear modifications of the Schroedinger equation, compatible with general physical requirements. Here we identify the most general class of continuous wavefunction evolutions under the assumption of no-faster-than-light signalling. A. Bassi, D. Duerr, G. Hinrichs


Null Field Theory, in physics, refers to the study of electromagnetic fields where the electromagnetic field tensor is zero (or null). This concept is relevant in both classical and quantum field theories, particularly in the context of null surfaces (like null planes or light-like directions) and their implications for particle behavior and scattering. googleAI