Post-Great War contacts with Sol

Introduction

See also: Earth, Delta Serpentis, Destruction of the SD Lucifer, FS1's final cutscene

Several fans brought up to the community's attention very interesting thoughts regarding eventual contacts between Sol and the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance after the destruction of the Lucifer at the end of the Great War.

Systems that belong to the GTVA are, in fact, close enough to Sol to make communications possible. Among those systems, Alpha Centauri is without any doubt the most obvious candidate because it's only 4 light years away from Sol.

Contacts

Subspace Communications

See also: Subspace

Subspace communications are a standard among the GTVA and they might have been used by the Galactic Terran Alliance at the time of the Great War. Subspace communications are usually supposed to be the fastest and most effective ones.

It is theorized that subspace communications wouldn't be enough to communicate with Sol because they'd probably require a considerable gravitational force to travel. Sending those transmissions via the collapsed node has canonically proved to be useless, mainly because the node has collapsed following the destruction of the Lucifer.

Conventional Communications

See also: Alpha Centauri

This kind of communications are the only ones that would work without any subspace field or strong gravitational field. As stated before, Alpha Centauri is only 4 light years away so it could have been theoretically possible to communicate with Sol.

The apparent lack of any info of this kind in FreeSpace 2 is often considered a plothole in the FreeSpace continuity. It's important to consider the fact that eventual communications between GTVA space and Sol could have been mentioned in FreeSpace 3.

Conspiracy Theory

See also: Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance, Reconstruction, Neo-Terran Front, Adhara Coalition, Luyten New Alliance, Regulus Syndicate, Antares Federation

According to this theory, the GTVA recorded transmissions coming from Sol but keep them secret for political reasons. After all, the GTVA was relatively young even during the Main FreeSpace 2 Campaign so certain info could have delegitimized the new authority.

The Neo-Terran Front is all but a valid proof of the fact that there were many groups of invidividuals who could have easily defected to an alternate faction.

Inferno

See also: Ricochet Effect, Secession

In the new Inferno continuity, communicating to and from Sol is impossible because of the RE, or Ricochet Effect. The destruction of the Delta Serpentis jump node somewhat created a gravitational shockwave that compromised the structure of subspace and created a gigantic (but invisible) "sphere" in continuous expansion. The field created by this sphere prevents transmissions from passing through. Shortly after the destruction of the Lucifer, the sphere was small enough to scramble all transmissions in the system. As the sphere grew, intrasystem transmissions became possible, once again.

The growth factor of the sphere is connected to its intensity. As the sphere grows, its anti-transmissions capabilities reduce accordingly. It is estimated that several decades after the collapse of the node, interferences on communications wouldn't be noticeable.