✨ Nora Tindall  🪐

nerdsnipe for the evening: they've discovered a Universal Scalar - a single variable whose value is consistent throughout the universe at a given time - and built a machine that can modify and detect its value. how do you turn this into a usable communications system?

How many bits? Are the bits represented in a parallel or serial fashion? Given that bits necessarily occupy physical space, parallel bits require hyperspatial dimensions in order to be available “throughout the universe” in three dimensions.

But then it could be argued that “throughout the universe” could be defined to include these extra dimensions, so more dimensions would be required, and so on. If the bits are serial, then it’s actually just a single Boolean variable (or rather a single highly uncertain float)

In either case, reading or changing the value takes either time, or traversal through space, thereby negating the stationary-ness of the scalar’s inertial reference frame as a unified construct, and decomposing it into an ordinary stream of information traveling at regular speed

Well, under GR. The point of the hypothetical is that it breaks GR. Otherwise it's just radio or a gravitational wave transmitter or whatever.