Measuring the distance to Eve gate

Some capsuleers claim that Eve gate is anchored somewhere in the New Eden system, just outside the roughly 500 AU reach of combat scan probes in the maximally zoomed out view of the stellar map.

This claim is one that I can verify experimentally. Not by flying out there, but by using parallax measurements. Parallax is the fancy name for a familiar phenomenon: as you move around, objects nearby will shift their position relative to the faraway background. The larger the shift, the closer the object is to you.

Parallax measurements are a standard technique in astronomy. In fact, the distance unit of 1 parsec (3.26 light years) is defined through a parallax angle of 1 arcsecond (1/3600^th of a degree). 

These measurements fall in the broad category of triangulation. You do not actually need a fixed background of stars, any triangle will suffice. So, I pick the Promised Land gate, and the Farthest Shore station as two corners of my triangle. The side of the triangle connecting them is 11.8 AU long, a respectable base line. The third corner of the triangle is Eve gate. To find the distance to it, one needs to measure the angles that the two reachable corners make with Eve gate and use a bit of standard trigonometry.

The tactical overlay superposes a polar coordinate grid on the screen and makes it possible to measure the angles to an accuracy of about 0.1 degree (one should be careful, since the triangle does not lie in the equatorial plane, declination must be taken into account). The accuracy of 0.1 degree is a pretty low resolution for an astronomer, but it is useful to a capsuleer: it still allows to locate an object within 6760 AU of the star. This is a massive range, one that far surpasses what you can do with combat probes.

I first tested the technique on a known point (a bookmark I placed where I met the Goner), to confirm that it works. It passed the test.

Then I used it on the gate, and found a parallax angle of 0.06, so within the error bar of 0.1 degree. This means that what we see as the gate is not caused by a structure within 6760 AU of the star. Most likely, this places the gate outside of the New Eder star system. The claim by some, that the gate lies at 500-1000 AU, is thus refuted.

Flying with Goner Arielle

Today, I scanned down and followed Goner Arielle as he travelled to the gate.

 

I have been in contact again with Goner Sarachem, and he pointed out to me the communications channels they use when present. He is relieved often by other Goners. Sarachem speaks Amarrian, albeit with a noticeable accent of his own ancient tongue. I also learned that they see their travel as a sort of penance they perform for all of us sinners in the cluster, including for their own sins. That is why they do not accept help, nor will they rush their flight to the Gate. 

The combat probes worked admirably, and I was able to journey for several hours with Goner Arielle. From this I learned that they do not journey on a line from the sun to the gate, but rather from the Promised Land gate to Eve gate. As such, they may miss Toth's expedition wrecks which I was told warped to the star and then proceeded to Eve gate. 

 

Goner Arielle appeared in deep meditation, and remained taciturn. After a few hours, he rejected my invitation to chat. I enjoyed our joint path, and meditated myself as well.

More on the stellar bounce

After some more experimentation, I can report some additional information on navigating inside stars. I made a sketch to illustrate what I learnt.

Warping to a star will bring you to a point, north of the star, on the "distance 0" sphere. Everything inside this sphere reports as zero effective distance to the star. You cannot place effective bookmarks in there, you'll be brought back to the zero sphere. But you can travel with your ship inwards, up till the point you reach the "bounce zone". For New Eden's star I think it lies about 800 km inward. Once you reach the bounce radius, your ship is flung away from the star.

Though you cannot warp to a bookmark inside the star, you can warp to deployable structures inside it, for example you can drop a mobile depot, and then warp back to it from any location. From there, you would have a shorter travel time to the bounce zone, and hence a shorter time before you get ejected. If you warp to a mobile depot that is inside the bounce zone, you get insta-warped radially outwards.

 

So how to get a mobile depot inside the bounce zone? You have to build a "ladder". You start with placing a mobile depot outside the bounce zone. Then you travel to the opposite side of the star, and warp to within 100 km from the mobile depot. This brings to deeper into the star, and you can build the next rung.  

 

Oh, apparently there are such bounce objects also in Jita's sun!

The Stellar Bounce manoeuver

 I flew back to New Eden to learn from Sarachem, but I became a student of professor Moriarty.

Ships don't collide and crash, they bounce off each other. It is a consequence of our warp drive bubble. The bounce is ruled by the laws of physics, and vessels experience a larger change when they collide with larger ships. The bounce effect is even stronger with celestial objects, in particular stars.

My tiny exploration frigate, when bouncing off the New Eden star, was thrown out a distance of 470000 km instantly. However, a regular warp to the star leaves one much too far away from the star's core to perform this manoeuver. This can be helped by dropping mobile depots close to the star's core, best within the range where ships experience the bounce. Warping to them will bring you right inside the bounce radius and fling your ship away.

Professor Moriarty positioned many such depots inside the New Eden star (however, they will decay in a month or two). They can be easily found using combat probes. Warping to these will bounce a ship immediately outwards - my magnate crossed a distance of 332000 km in a fraction of a second, in the direction radially outwards from the sun. Some depots are just outside the bounce radius, as you have to build your way inside. Warping to those, I found myself navigating inside the star's plasma. The screen apart from the windows went blank from radiation. I guess this would be an ideal hideout.

Mass times intertia of ship determines the strength of the effect and the distance crossed. My propulsion mod increased the bounce effect. A freighter or a dreadnought can cross vast distances like this.

I can see how this could have military applications. The larger the star, the stronger the effect. Shellashock Askiras, a specialist in stellar bouncing and peaceful scholar who was present to assist professor Moriarty, told me of tests with dreadnaughts performed in M-YCD4 that have allowed to bounce these ships over 11 AU in an instant. Some military strategists now siege capital fleets inside suns, apparently. And a fortizar was also built inside the sun's photosphere.

 

Alas, New Eden star by our experiments is not massive enough to warp closer to Eve Gate than twice the distance the Goners reached, and professor Moriarty has already reached much farther than that.

Dear reader, please do not reveal the knowledge that I divulged here, for much more is to be learned from professor Moriarty, and he might shun me for sharing this with others.

Doubt dismissed

Pondering last night's incident, I remembered the wise words of my Abbot. He had noticed that I was often doubting everything and myself, often to my detriment. He told me:

"Your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why exactly something is bad, demand proofs from it, test it. You will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. Don’t give in. Insist on arguments, remain attentive and persistent, and the day will come when, instead of a destroyer, your doubt will become your best worker of all the ones building your life."

So, today I interrogated my doubt. I asked it why someone as powerful as Aspenstar would go through such elaborate schemes and put so much thought in dispatching someone so irrelevant and unimportant as myself. And my doubt could not answer. I asked it why I would have been given so much help and shown so much kindness, if foul intentions were involved. Again, it remained silent, embarrassed even. It had to concede that a coincidence, or maybe even a navigational error, could not be excluded.

And so, I sent my moping doubt back to that dark recess of my mind from whence it came.

I have been given trust and allowed to dock in this hidden station. I will repay trust with trust, in kind.

 

((ooc credit: the wise words of the Abbot are from Rainer Rilke's "Letters to a young poet"))

Renewed doubt

Goner Sarachem was in the New Eden system today, and I set out to locate him with so-called combat probes. I warped to the location shown to me by Lunarisse Aspenstar, hoping that this would bring me closer to him. I thought it would already indicate a direction in which to look, extrapolating the location in a line away from the star. As I arrived, I almost immediately received the following message on local:

"This is a distress call to anyone listening in the vicinity! We are a Guristas research and trading facility that's under heavy attack! Please come to our aid before lives are lost!"

Almost instantly after that message, I received again a message, directly on-screen this time:

"Stay out, capsuleers! This is a private matter and your interference is not welcome. If you engage our forces, interfere with our task, or do anything else except leave immediately, we will have no choice but to attack you."

Though I did not engage, I was scrambled and subsequently attacked, and my humble frigate was destroyed. I barely managed to warp my capsule back to Farthest Shore. I weep and pray for the lost lives of the crew.

I met shortly after with professor Moriarty. We had a wonderful discussion on quantum physics and on the ways to warp without having to set an end point to the warp. I always thought I could only warp to a destination that is in the overview, but apparently, warp velocity can be reached by other means, and in the direction of one's own choice without any anchoring point at the end. I will exercise his technique when I get a new ship.

However, there was a more worrisome discussion point. Professor Moriarty told me that I was most likely lured into a so-called “combat site”. Whomever warped me there fully intended me to die. But, the thing is, I warped to the exact location shown to me by Lunarisse Aspenstar on our previous meeting in New Eden.

 

I came to trust Aspenstar quite completely. Who would not, after all the help and kindness she showed me? The docking rights at Farthest Shore? And the other archeologists she buried, were they not heretics? Was she not righteous to take law in her own hands? 

 

But then, why would she bring me to the stage of my own death? As she showed me the place, she fatefully mentioned "This is the place where we bury capsuleers." I made nothing of it at the time. 

 

I was wrong.

Signal Cartel

No sign of the Goner today, but I did meet an interesting capsuleer by the name of Qifara Raholan. She is member of the so-called “Signal Cartel”. 

 

They map out wormholes and rescue those trapped in the labyrinthine and ever changing network of wormhole connections. She hadn’t seen Amarr relics, nor had she noted wrecked cryoships or wrecks that would belong to Toth. Qifara admitted that she did not pay close attention to what was in the systems that she explores, her busy duty roster does not allow for leisurely observation. 

 

However, I do not expect to find the wrecks in wormhole space: Toth’s expedition predates the sudden appearance of many wormholes in the cluster.

Project Discovery

As I had spent almost all my ISK on skill books, I fell short to buy a vessel with combat probes and decent propulsion modules.  There were no Theology Council agents nearby who could offer jobs, and I do not trust the foreign agents, even the Caldari ones.

But I found a decent source of income: classifying cell maps of the "Discovery Project". For a citizen science project, the payout is really high. Then again, I do not thing most citizens are allowed to participate, they focus on capsuleers. It is a rather boring but honest job. And, after a couple of hours it pays enough to buy the equipment I need.

During the quieter hours, I flew back to the tranquility of New Eden. Also on this trip, I was not attacked.

Jita the harlot

As I traveled closer to Jita, the systems that I passed got more and more crowded. From barely a few capsuleers and some roaming gangs in lowsec, to some dozen in the highsec provinces at the fringe, I soon reached systems with many dozens and then hundreds of capsuleers. In Jita, over two thousand were present! Never have I seen such a gathering of capsuleers, even the busiest spaceport in beloved Amarr pales in comparison. It seems all the capsuleers in the galaxy gather here in search of profit. All the swindlers are here too: local comms are spouting a relentless stream of scams, too fast to read.

Around Jita IV, moon 4 there is a vast sprawling complex of stations, dominated by a one station the size of a small continent. Immense towers and spires of corporations adorn the main trading station, each by itself the size of regular station. Below the flashing light of mountain-sized billboards, one feels the constant thudding of warp engines that activate in a never-ending, massive and frenzied fleet operation. Concord is working overtime stopping brawls, collisions and even outright attacks. And do not discount the satellite stations! Indeed, one of them connects a magnificent space elevator to the colony on the IV-4 moon.  

I did not venture far into the station, wary that I might get overwhelmed. And indeed, short trips were enough to get a sense of the place. Jita 4-4 is a celestial harlot that lures the greedy into temptation and traps them. Thus, unclean spirits from the entire cluster dwell in her, and she lets them suckle her teet, giving them richness while taking their soul.

I intended to provide factual descriptions without judgment for this log, but I sense I may have failed somewhat today.

Sarachem's assignment

My prayers were answered: I established a line of communication with brother Sarachem. 

 

He must have looked at the logs of our conversations in local yesterday, I think he is now convinced of my honest interest in the Goner faith and history. Also, I think that to be allowed docking rights in Farthest Shore is something of a badge of honor, or at least a well-trusted credential among capsuleers here.

 

Sarachem is a charismatic man. He speaks with the compassionate wisdom of someone who does not define his own meaning by relying on the judgment of others. We exchanged mails, and he explained that this day, the start of the new year, held a special meaning for the people of his Mother Earth.

 

We prayed together for peace in the cluster, both facing Eve gate. He prays from his deep-space location, and I prayed from the chapel in Farthest Shore. He prays to Mother Earth, I prayed to God, but there is unity and harmony in our supplications.

 

In order to divulge more on the Goner faith and their history and knowledge of ancient artifacts, he gave me an assignment. Seeing that I am inexperienced as a capsuleer, he tasked me to equip a craft that could locate him, and to join him for a while in his journey.

 

I briefly considered asking Lunarisse Aspenstar or Professor Moriarty for help, but I decided against it. Goner Sarachem does not look like a man of shortcuts, and I think he would not approve of such a shortcut.

 

I have installed a jump clone in Farthest Shore, and will now travel back to more populated areas to buy a craft and equipment to fulfill Sarachem’s assignment. The Minmatar trader who gave me the advice about traveling to lawless space also told me the best spot in the universe to buy stuff is a station called Jita 4-4, in Caldari space.

Eve Gate

I flew out in a shuttle to New Eden, my heart racing as I had to make a long trek trough lawless regions of space.

The shuttle was small and fast to achieve warp, so I could hope to avoid pirates at the gates. Yet, it was far from careless travel. I followed the advice given to me not too long ago by a Minmatar trader who scoured the lowsec and nullsec regions for relics and remnants of data sites. He told me never to jump directly from one gate to the other, in systems with only two gates (so called "pipe" systems). Rather, make a detour via a celestial body, so when you next jump to your destination gate, you arrive from an unexpected direction. The man was clearly drunk when he told me this. On top of that, he was Minmatar. When drunk, the Minmatar will make outrageous claims with the greatest of certainty and then punch you in the face if you show even the slightest sign of doubt. Anyway, this time I did see some tactical merit in this idea and I even could leave without a bruised face.

Whether it was just a quiet day or whether the tactic helped, I do not know, but I reached New Eden safely. Ah, one is immediately greeted by the most wondrous sight the galaxy offers: Eve Gate! Its dancing whisps of plasma are mesmerizing like the flames in the hearth. The vastness of the phenomenon humbles the onlooker, and testifies to the presence of God in our universe.

 

Luck was indeed with me, as Goner Sarachem was still in the system. However, he did not grant me an audience, nor reply to my calls in local. He must be medating... I sent him a missive, not wanting to disturb him while he prays, and hope he will answer me.

I met a most remarkable scientist, professor Moriarty. He is investigating the system, but he did not tell much about that, as his "investigation is sensitive". However, as often the case with scientists, their pride in their achievements overcomes their discretion. He showed off some of his very fast craft - he must be an expert in speeding up vessels. His punisher, the "Paragate" reaches 13000 m/s, and he proudly whooshed it past the Farthest Shore station. He has developed another craft, a modified F-1A Pacifier, the "Blink", that can cross a good fraction of a light year in less than a second. Indeed, he warped out of d-scan range almost immediately. 

Lunarisse Aspenstar also happend to be at the Farthest Shore station, for upwell core maintenance. She must have jump cloned there. She confirmed that my eyes were not deceiving me when witnessing Moriarty's record-breaking spacecrafts. And she kindly showed me a location in deep space, a good way along the path that the Goners have followed.

 

Now I must be patient and gain the Goner's trust.

The search for Sarachem

I have tracked down one of the remaining Goners. His name is Goner Sarachem, and he was held in the greatest esteem by the Goners. 

 

He is a prophet to them, as he has authored their scriptures. These writings are certainly not part of our official and canonized scripture, and they are hard to read. They are written in an ancient language, and I have had a hard time translating it. Between all the bombastic declarations it reads like a sort of apocalypse where the Goners are the saved and exalted ones, and the other peoples of New Eden are cast into darkness because of their grievous bloodlust.

He was seen two weeks ago, in the New Eden system. I got this from the insurance records, publicly available at the Amarr Civil Service: he lost a ship in the New Eden system on December 16th. Now, browsing again over the insurance records, I see that he is there again today. 

 

Given his status in the Goner organization, and given the fact that he may go back into hiding at any time, I must make great haste. I cannot wait until I have mastered the art of cloaking, or until I can afford such fancy devices. I will not risk the Indagatrix and in stead fly over in a fast shuttle. 

I will take with me some Amarr wheat as a gift, as Aspenstar told me the Goners hand out water as a gift and I want something to reciprocate. I will propose to fly a while alongside with him towards the gate, perhaps that will entice him to a conversation. Oh, I must remember to take a translator device with me, although I think he must also understand common Amarrian, I'm not sure he has recently used it.

 

Lord, grant me success in my search.