05-05-2017, 08:11 PM
The theory is that you can violate ANEC to a limited extent, allowing certain types of highly restricted metric construct. The somewhat strict restrictions we place on these constructs leads to further complications in the setting - and to me that makes them seem more realistic.
It would, of course, be possible to have a similar scenario to OA without wormholes and void bubbles- but history and communication in such a scenario would occur at a much slower pace. In the real universe I would expect that any sort of metric technology would be even more restrictive than we imagine in OA - maybe some very tiny comm-holes, at best - but even tiny comm-holes would radically change the nature of interstellar colonisation.
It would, of course, be possible to have a similar scenario to OA without wormholes and void bubbles- but history and communication in such a scenario would occur at a much slower pace. In the real universe I would expect that any sort of metric technology would be even more restrictive than we imagine in OA - maybe some very tiny comm-holes, at best - but even tiny comm-holes would radically change the nature of interstellar colonisation.