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.