Faster than Light Speeds

Overview

Due to scientific breakthroughs, researchers have managed to create faster than light communication and travel through a variety of means, such as dark energy filaments and the Null Drive. Faster than light travel is achievable due to new understandings of the Hossen Field.

Hossen Field

The Hossen Field is a fundamental field that provides particles with motion. The ground state of the field places particles in "freefall" or motivates the particles to move. In addition, the field generates the motion of space that leads to universal expansion. In most cases the ground state provides for a maximum speed, but in various circumstances, such as Oerten shears, "compress" the field so that a particle is motivated to speed up. Despite this, the field interactions also produce friction which slows particles, generating an emergent top speed of c.

Hoever, the field is polarised so that friction differs in different directions within the field. This is theorised to be due to quantum fluctuations in the early universe producing an asymmetry, though it is not clearly understood why the result is biased towards a specific direction rather than averaged out. The result is that in some directions the maximum speed imparted to particles in compressed space is greater than c, allowing for faster than light movement.

Privileged Frame

The polarity of the Hossen Field removes the potential for paradoxes that might be assumed to occur with faster than light communication or travel. The Hossen Field provides a privileged frame of reference and faster-than-light travel can only occur from the perspective of this priviliged frame. The maximum speed possible within the privileged frame of the Hossen Field is instantaneous travel between two points. This allows an observer to determine their relation to the privileged frame by measuring the maximum speed of particles, but also renders impossible closed timelike loops because no particle can travel backwards within the privileged frame.

Effects

The nature of the Hossen Field allows for faster-than-light communication and travel. Because most stellar and planetary matter is moving in relation to the privileged frame, the instantaneous speed within the privileged frame is observed as travel backwards in time within the reference frame of most observers. A message sent through the NoLoRN will arrive, from the perspective of the sender and the receiver, before it was sent. However, this cannot be used to produce closed timelike loops and create a grandfather paradox, as while an immediate response to the message will seem to be sent after it is received, it will still be received after the initial message.

Taperosi describes this phenomenon as

like looking at the world through a glass dome - the world is full of straight edges and logical architecture, but none of this appears to our eyes, instead appearing curved and irrational. Our perspective of the world is embedded in our physical situatedness, and this drives our intuitions. However, we should not allow our strange vantage point to lead us astray about how the world actually works.