Concepts in The Ender's Game Series

Concepts In The Ender's Game Series

"The official name is Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator," explains Colonel Graff in Ender's Game, "but somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere". The ansible essentially functions as a faster-than-light e-mail system. Graff's description of ansible functions in Xenocide involve a fictional subatomic particle, the philote, and contradicts not only standard physical theory but the results of empirical particle accelerator experiments. In the "Enderverse", the two quarks inside a pi meson can be separated by an arbitrary distance while remaining connected by "philotic rays". This is similar in concept to quantum teleportation due to entanglement but would involve Qubits.

The novels' treatment of time dilation is also inconsistent with standard theory. In the novels, the passenger of a starship experiences time compression, resulting in slowed speech when communicating over the ansible. This contradicts the core concept of the theory of relativity by giving the planet a privileged frame of reference. It is no more correct to say that the planet is at rest and the ship moving than to say that the ship is at rest and the planet moving backwards. As such, we find a paradox in which the person at each end of an ansible expects the other person to be time dilated and speaking slowly. In light speed or slower communications, this paradox is avoided due to the expected message delays, as in the Twin paradox. Instantaneous communications, however, does result in a paradox, as each communicator expected the other to be slowed.

Read more about Concepts In The Ender's Game Series:  Anton's Key, Descolada, Fantasy Game, Hierarchy of Foreignness, Molecular Disruption Device, Outside, Philote, Philotic Web, Stark, Park Shift Theory

Famous quotes containing the words concepts, game and/or series:

    Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    Vanessa wanted to be a ballerina. Dad had such hopes for her.... Corin was the academically brilliant one, and a fencer of Olympic standard. Everything was expected of them, and they fulfilled all expectations. But I was the one of whom nothing was expected. I remember a game the three of us played. Vanessa was the President of the United States, Corin was the British Prime Minister—and I was the royal dog.
    Lynn Redgrave (b. 1943)

    The woman’s world ... is shown as a series of limited spaces, with the woman struggling to get free of them. The struggle is what the film is about; what is struggled against is the limited space itself. Consequently, to make its point, the film has to deny itself and suggest it was the struggle that was wrong, not the space.
    Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)