Portals ◌

History

In 2114, Professor of Physics Oceania Snowmelt, at the University of Aetherial (owned by Aetherial state), noticed that when she split her laser to demonstrate to students the interference pattern of light, she noticed that one beam actually arrived a fraction earlier than the other, when they should arrive at the same time. The immediate thought is that the data is wrong and the instruments are faulty or setup incorrectly. A thought that there could be two speeds of light was unimaginable and must be incorrect (and was). It would suggest that one beam of light was slower, or if the slower beam is the speed of light then the other beam is faster than light. Physics as we know it would breakdown, maths would be without equations which have been proven elsewhere. No one believed the result. No one could replicate the result. Oceania could repeat the result with the same setup, but as she swapped around some components on the laser, the result would disappear. Her initial eliminations showed that:

1. It did not happen with low powered lasers.
2. It worked with some high powered lasers, like the original one.
3. It did work with other slits in the same slot but not with any slits in a different slot.

Eventually she discovered that it was happening because one side of the slit got charged with electrons while the other earthed. It was because her setup was so old that it had become faulty. When she shared her findings with everyone, organisations around the world began replicating the result. It was confirmed, but still a mystery. As the apparatus was dialled in and triple checked, it soon became apparent that the light beam that passed through the charged slit was travelling faster than light (FTL). Astounded, the University of Aetherial, pushed all available funds into studying the phenomena. Also realising that this is a whole new branch of physics, Aetherial State put funds into the university, bolstering funds further and on top of that the HA added federal funding. Unsurprisingly, in 2115 all the physics of replicating the FTLL phenomena had been worked out and Professor Oceania Snowmelt won every single scientific award the human race had ever invented.

It was Aether Chair Brian Flair who in 2115 had championed the extra portal research funding. He was a very a shrewd businessone as he gained direct access to the ongoing research. In his role as a Chair, he also took the mishmash of Aetherial trading control and regulation, and created the Aetherial Stock Exchange. He realised the potential of FTL communication and knew it would make the stock exchange the 'go to' place for trade in the Belt. He could have regulated out the other private exchanges via monopoly law making but chose not to due to his core Belter belief in a free market. In the early years, the stock exchange cost more to run than it earned and its existence was challenged on each of the first three years in a Table vote. He managed to keep it going by winning votes 3 to 2.

By 2118 the HA had let the Aetherial research flourish, while also advancing research in the HA scientific research capital of Bangalore. Jointly, the two teams discovered that the speed of light actually remained unchanged. What was actually happening was a tiny wormhole was created which shortened the distance the light had to travel. These quickly were referred to by the science teams as ‘portals’ for no real reason, but it stuck. On the 2nd October 2118, a date picked in honour of Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, Oceania sent a laser com-signal that was successfully returned by the Bangalore team, through a micro portal, allowing them to engage in a live conversation across the vast distance. Everyone went nuts, at least for a few days in massive global celebrations of humanity’s success. The media went even more nuts, and very soon chose to swap the longer text on screen and less pleasant sounding 'wormhole' with the shorter 'portal' that the science team were using in interviews. The media went on to discuss all the things we could send through portals ad infinitum, as the media is want to do.

In 2119 the Aetherial Stock Exchange became very rich from having instant access to the Earth markets. Resource miners could now happily sell their stock at a profit before shipping it back to where it was required. The Belter economy boomed drawing more people to space. By now every spherical object in the Solar System had a population and the HA installed laser com links on them all. They were free to use by all, but were based in the local police station.

In 2125 the laws of nature on portals had been explained (in maths) and the Aetherial Stock Exchange sent its first cargo delivery, iron, by portal. The energy cost of sending larger objects is expensive so most resources, including iron, are still shipped, but perishable goods command a high price over distance and so go by portal, although their size is restricted to small things. Thousands of strawberry’s were sent once by pushing them through a portal one at a time.

Until 2126 all Humanitarian Alliance ships had been Astry ships, with the prefix HAAS (Humanitarian Alliance Astry Ship) but demand for science exploration led the HA to sanction a new breed of federal ship with the HASS prefix, standing for Humanitarian Alliance Science Ship. These ships have none of the authority over shipping that the Astry ships have, and only have enough armament to discourage piracy, if they have any armament at all. By now the science had been worked out to send ships to other stars, but it had been realised that all the stars that are visited have to be stationary relative to Sol (no stellar drift), if the crew wants to return home in good order. With no need to visit other stars, the human race began exploring along the galactic arm. The most famous science ship was the ill-fated HASS Svarga that launched in 2130. In 2141 it was sent out on its last exploration but it hasn’t created a portal and is still heading out the Solar System near the speed of light with the crew relatively frozen in time.

Economy

Following the discovery, in a pre-emptive antitrust move, HATTER successfully petitioned the High Court to rule that portals were considered a sub category of empty space as a special phenomena. It was therefore ruled that no one could own a portal and anyone could use one if opened. HATTER’s stance came from ensuring point 4 of a free market, ‘no barriers to entry or exit’. Critics argued that no one would therefore make a portal, but this was shown to be unfounded. To minimise cost, convoys were formed with an agreement to share costs. Additionally the technique of ‘Punch Running’ was developed which made the process more economical and as a spin off, led to the creation of big races flown by a specialised ship type called Aetherial Racers.

Maintenance

Portals naturally loose 1m off their radius a day, regardless of size. Using the laser technique that opened the portal, it is possible put back in the lost energy relative to the 4th dimensional volume lost, or even add more increasing the radius. As this doesn’t use the light speed relative energy conversion, there is no near light speed discount. What this means is that it takes about 100 times more energy to maintain per volume. In other words, keeping a portal open is prohibitively expensive, so it is rarely done.

Punch Running

It may take a ship a month to near light speed enough to have enough relative kinetic energy to punch a portal open. In that time the ship will be getting far out into interstellar space. It would therefore take the same effort for other ships to get there to use the portal and they would have to leave at the same time. Early convoys did this, but each ship spent nearly as much energy as the one that punched a portal. For a group of ships however, the energy optimum is to have one ship travel out, then turn around and accelerate to near light speed so when the portal is punched, it is near an agreed point (near Jupiter). All other ships therefore need to spend next to no energy crossing the portal into the other solar system. This is known as punch running. The only real inefficiency was that it took twice as long to do; that is until dedicated punch runner companies started keeping ships in interstellar space ready to be booked like a train.

Many small companies can’t afford the expense to be involved in generating the portals, which is why HATTER prevented ownership of portals. However in order to afford their creation, HATTER added Astry shipping regulation to allow some advantage to portal creation, i.e. keep it fair. Use of portals must first go to all ships on the registered convoy that created the portal, then, if additional ships are waiting, any ship belonging to the companies that own ships in the convoy have next priority, in payment size order, then finally any other ship. The convoys are constructed in a standardised contract where each syndicate member pays a slightly different amount, in order to give clear priority. The Astry does make it clear however, that if ships are not actively moving to use the portal then a ‘slot’ is freed up. This stops companies leaving a dummy ship to legally block rival use of a portal by non-syndicate members. There is no incentive to power a portal so they shrink by about a metre a day. Consequentially, syndicate members can have wider ships.

Fi-sics

I spent a week working on this detail as I needed to lay down the rules that allowed you to travel across the galaxy but wouldn’t be the logical choice to traverse a solar system, but you could if you really wanted to. I also feel it would be a bit boring if ships didn't actually travel anywhere. As with all fi-sics, my solution is a bit of a cheat. In tying it down I’ve tried to apply real physical limitations so different ships have different limitations.

How to calculate a portal and the things you need to know:
1. Portal size. Portals are 1 sided 2 dimensional circles in space, with a cylinder of 4th dimensional (physical, not time) space that appears flat in 3 dimensions. It looks like a window in space. You therefore need to know how large of a portal you need to get your ship through, and the larger it is the more of an energy penalty you take when it gets multiplied by the distance. HAAS Shakespeare requires a portal with a radius of 42.4m as each Merlin Engine is 15m by 15m and Shakespeare has four rows of four at its widest point. As it is 30m out from the centre, trigonometry, using
   a² + b² = c² we can work out that Shakespeare needs a portal with a minimum radius of 42.4m
2. Distance you want to portal. The distance to the next solar system is approximately 50:5m, or if you prefer
   50,000,000,000,000,000m
   The area of circle is: πr²
   And to find the volume of a cylinder you just multiply by the height, or in this case, the distance.
3. Energy: As we have volume, we need to convert this to something that we can universally relate to. Having calculated this whole process through, I came up with a constant modifier I’m calling
   The Prime Frequency: 0.134366834
   I’ve also entirely misappropriated the symbol of the dotted circle for maths where it is the prime frequency: ◌ (Unicode 9676). Anywhere else it just means portal (an 'o' might be confusing). See at the top in the header for a larger version.
   If you multiply the volume by the Prime Frequency then you get the energy required to throw a 4th dimensional tubular corridor known as a portal.
4. Light speed modifier. This pseudo modifier I invented to cheapen the energy cost, and in theory will allow you to traverse any distance, although it will be costly the more ridiculous the distance. Picking two fixed points in space, the faster your velocity between them the less energy you require to build a portal. If you reach 99% the speed of light then you can multiply your energy requirement by 1-99%, i.e. multiply it by 1%. In theory then, if you’re at the speed of light you can portal anywhere for free. Unfortunately you wouldn’t have any relative time to do that and instantly reach the heat death of the universe if you are not somehow rescued. As it doesn’t relate to our humanity, I would probably find such a story very boring, but please feel free to prove me wrong.
5. Protoportal. So travelling at 99% the speed of light you only have a little energy to find to throw a portal. Equally you could be relatively stationary and just throw a lot of energy into a portal but that would take 100 times the power. Protoportals are electrons synchronised by lasers that spread out into massive disks (massive by area, tiny by mass). Consequentially they can only be made away from clear space if they are no larger than a pin hole. Almost anything can disrupt the disk, especially anything charged including solar eradiated charged particles. Small doses of charged particles will only shrink the disk. Fusion power plants can power the lasers to charge the disk. Note that the energy put in the disk is directly related to the energy or the volume. An undercharged disk can go the same distance with a smaller portal opening. Equally, if the disk is overcharged, the correct distance can be achieved simply by making the portal a tiny bit wider. As a slight variant, you could also have a ‘traveling’ portal, where energy is put into moving it through space, as after all the ‘two fixed points’ are relative. Most people don’t like traveling portals though, as it freaks them out.
6. Throwing a portal. The charging lasers can be used to collapse the disk into a portal where immediately a hole appears in space. Portals are two way but one sided at each end, as the other side goes into the 4th dimension. If you circle a portal you will see a hole in space but as you go around its back, it appears to shrink to nothing. Traveling ‘over’ a portal from the other side with pull apart your ship and so the technique can be used to punch holes through things.

Here is a worked example:
1. HAAS Shakespeare requires a portal with a radius of 42.4m as each Merlin Engine is 15m by 15m and Shakespeare has four rows of four at its widest point. As it is 30m out from the centre, trigonometry, using
   a² + b² = c² we can work out that Shakespeare needs a portal with a minimum radius of 42.4m.
2. Portal Area. The area of circle is: πr² so with a radius of 42.4m, the area is 5,655m²
3. Distance and Volume. The target distance is 50:5m so multiplying that by the area gives a volume of
   282,743,338,823,081,000,000m³
4. Portal Energy. Using ◌, the Prime Frequency of 0.134366834, we can find that the energy we need for a portal by multiplying the volume by it to create a smaller number
   37,991,327,272,246,700,000J
5. Light Speed Modifier. Shakespeare, having travelled at full thrust of 3.26g or 32m/s/s has spent 17 days, 10 hours, 21 minutes and 54 seconds reaching 296,794,533 m/s. While experiencing 7 to 1 time dilation, they are traveling at 99% of the speed of light, which is 299,792,458m/s/s. At this point, they need only 1% of the portal energy, which is:
   9,373,213,317,294,260J
6. Protoportal charging. As they are already at the desired speed, all the engines energy can be directed to laser charging. With a total of 16Gw, which is
   16,000,000,000 J per second
   It takes them just under another 7 days to throw a portal. As they chose to convert most of their velocity, they come out the other end at a low speed. Incidentally, if Shakespeare just charged up and threw a portal it would take them just under 75 years and 4 months.