Speed of materiel vs. speed of information?
I love hard sci-fi. I really do, and I think I'm able to ignore the small details that don't quite add up once you think too hard about it because it's necessary for the story to be told as intended.
I'm also an ameteur physicist.
As far as the Culture universe is concerned, my major gripe is with signals/information travelling orders of magnitude faster than matter (ships), such as directed ship-to-ship signalling in four dimensions.
I've read all the books, many of them several times, but I'm not quite able to fit this feature into my "mind-verse", as it were.
Have I just misunderstood something, am I over-analyzing things, or is there an explanation hidden away in one of the novels I just haven't internalized yet?
To expand: >!A ship has to use its engines to gain traction with the energy grids in order to substantially exceed lightspeed. Even if a mere signal was able to do the same, I'm sure I've read some passages that would only be possible if signals/information travelled faster than the 233.000 kilolight record set by the Sleeper Service in Excession using several cubic kilometers of engine to achieve such a velocity.!<