Re: The Archangel Syndrome v1/v2
I was wondering if you'd notice. :-) Maybe I should just say it's a type of metal never seen before. Ick. Or it has an iridium outer layer (or pick your favorite element) with unknown inners.
Fantasy, Magic, and Sci-fi → The Archangel Syndrome v1/v2
I was wondering if you'd notice. :-) Maybe I should just say it's a type of metal never seen before. Ick. Or it has an iridium outer layer (or pick your favorite element) with unknown inners.
Alloy never seen before. Almost works for metal never seen before, but alloy is ideal. It says ya we know what's in it, but have no idea how to mix it up. kinda like KFC's secret recipe. Though supposedly that secret's out.
I'm leaning toward iridium-enclosed segments for the rings.
Also, I'm pretty sure I can't say the rings absorb virtually all (99.999%) radiation they receive since the things need a way to emit heat or some other form of energy received, don't they?
The heat could be leaking into the wormhole. You basically needn't enforce the principles of a closed system
The heat could be leaking into the wormhole. You basically needn't enforce the principles of a closed system
That would require a wormhole for every portal, of which there would be billions. And there are no more wormholes, just instantaneous teleportation portals connecting closely space star systems. See below. Tried to keep it simple.
Each star portal is a thirty meter-wide ring of many interconnecting, iridium-enclosed segments, each about a meter on a side and finished with a minimally reflective black coating. This makes rings difficult to detect, especially at long distances. It is believed this is intentional, thereby preventing technologically immature societies from finding the portals before they’re ready for interstellar travel. When inactive, rings turn slowly like a vertical coin spinning on a horizontal surface.
The heat could be leaking into the portal. You basically needn't enforce the principles of a closed system
The portals are connected in pairs. They'd each be leaking out the paired portal in the other star system. I think the paragraph above is sufficiently vague in details for it to work. If I think of a way to bleed all that energy elsewhere, I'll add the bit about portals absorbing virtually all radiation back into the description. One way is to simply say no one knows where all that energy is going, which I may do. The alien tech is sufficiently far advanced that I don't have to explain all of it. After all, 2010 had monoliths that turned Jupiter into a sun.
What I really would like to do is turn each pair of connected portals into a single portal simultaneously located in both star systems. I think that would be cool. I need to think about it some more to decide if it's doable and worth doing. I still have a growing pile of reviews to process first. Mostly small stuff, so act one is nearly done. The biggest changes may hit act three. Plus a potential visit to Catholika in act two, where someone may assassinate the pope.
Thanks for your help.
Dirk
It's funny bc in my main series, they eventually invent a kind of portal technology and run around the universe seeding them (This takes about 3 billion years to complete because you're getting from place to place using mundane travel initially). Then they die off, effectively becoming a mysterious race leaving behind transportation to the next generation
That's very similar to how I wrote the latest version. Professor Hinkley theorized that machines capable of autonomous portal construction replicated exponentially to build the network, travelling from system to system at slowish sublight speeds. No evidence of such machines is found, although humans have only charted 145,000 systems by the year 4017.
What I really would like to do is turn each pair of connected portals into a single portal simultaneously located in both star systems. I think that would be cool. I need to think about it some more to decide if it's doable and worth doing. Dirk
I really like your idea. It basically knits two points in space time together. Just like sewing two parts of a fabric together. Sell it!
Unfortunately, I don't know yet if I can make it work. If ships enter the portal from the front, they would teleport to the other star system. But if ships approach a portal from the rear, where do they go? Do they simply crash into the portal? Or should I make the portal so that ships can enter it from the front or the rear and teleport in both cases? It's kind of screwy to picture that.
Technically, though, I have that problem now too since the portal looks like an upright ring, so it's not possible to tell which is the front and which is the rear. But at least it's clearer. If you enter a portal, you're going to teleport to the other star system. I suppose I should just not worry about trying to picture how it sews together the two star systems. Or perhaps I should add a well-defined front and back to each portal. You can only enter from the front, and you exit the other portal at the back.
It's not a wormhole, though. It's just an instantaneous portal to the other system. The portal is about a meter thick and, when inactive, looks like a big ring. But when you approach it with a stardrive engaged, the rings expand outward (in two dimensions) to make room for the ships that are trying to pass through. It's like entering a gate at the mouth of a wormhole, but right after you pass the gate, you're already in the other system.
should just not worry about trying to picture how it sews together the two star systems. Or perhaps I should add a well-defined front and back to each portal.
My characters built (will build? will have built?) nexus points so if you enter one part of a gateway, you can show up in a small (3-5 way) minor nexus or a massive major nexus with gateways to all over the place, complete with the equivalent of a "highway gas station" along with whatever citizens have set up shop within it.
That's pretty cool. Where are nexuses located? At jump points in regular space or in another dimension? I think Bab5's hyperspace was another space that you could travel within (and get lost in?).
hmm that's complicated. It's a non-space (sub-dimension? pocket-dimension?) seeded by the various worlds that join it. iirc B5 the ancient races just made their own gates to wherever they wanted to do and could generally find their way around in there, which is cool.
It's not a wormhole, though. It's just an instantaneous portal to the other system. The portal is about a meter thick and, when inactive, looks like a big ring. But when you approach it with a stardrive engaged, the rings expand outward (in two dimensions) to make room for the ships that are trying to pass through. It's like entering a gate at the mouth of a wormhole, but right after you pass the gate, you're already in the other system.
So create a zone behind where Bad Things Happen if you enter ... and while you know some of what the Bad Things may be, there's no theory to explain which ones. Or maybe you can invoke Extreme Sensitivity to Initial Conditions.
See https://beltoforion.de/en/magnetic_pendulum/ .
Make the boundary a little fuzzy: As the distance increases, the likelyhood of problems goes down a little bit faster than exponentially, so your safe zone is one-in-a-quadrillion or less chance of an Adverse Event, your buffer zone is one-in-a-million chance of Adverse Event, your Danger Zone is one-in-a-thousand chance of AE, ...
Does anyone have any suggestions for what "kind" of substance I could use to power stardrives? It needs to be naturally occurring and rare, with the Imperium running short of it and New Bethlehem having the largest known supply of it, making them an appealing target for conquest. It's tentatively called atradium (after Atreides). There doesn't seem to be any room on the periodic table for any more naturally occurring elements, so perhaps atradium is an alloy, possibly the same one originally used to create the star portals.
Suggestions?
Dirk
You can power your energy needs with the very rare tritium deuterium crystals or Tri-deuterium Crystals (TDC). Actually, you can use tritium and deuterium in fusion. I made up the crystal part. The big downside is that tritium has a half live of about 12.3 years. So, the supply is running out. Space Opera Scientists (SOS) have theorized that New Bethlehem's hydrogen supply was almost entirely comprised of tritium at its creation. It is possible to create TDC in the lab but it is cost prohibited. And since New Bethlehem is capitalistic, mining is the most cost-effective way to do it.
Or perhaps Trit-Deuterium Crystal (again it's TDC).
Or Crystaline Mono Erbium Tri-Holmium (Crystal METH). Wow, that ship looks like it's on Crystal METH!
Why not cold fusion? For more fun, make it supercold fusion. A high-entropy alloy of Osmium and a dozen other metals in a 3.5 dimension metallo-cage quasicrystal is chilled to some absurd temperature and fed a hydrogen fuel stream, then energized with teraHerz radiation from a set of intersecting beams with pseudorandom phase shifts controlled by a de Bruijn sequence generator. The energy release is locked in a quantum state until the particles escape the assembly, whereupon it is released and can be captured in an electromagnetic trap as the 'ordinary' temperature of the stream rises at a rate of billions of Kelvins per second.
That's great njc. Or perhaps hypercold fusion.
Nobody technobabbles like a former engineering student.
Here's a completely different angle: The Imperials fuel shortage is a problem of their own making.
Super-heated Atradium (eg portals in use) dive off Atradizene gas which giant harvester vessels collect. This gas is rendered inert when ships fly through it (eg it burns up the same way a jet engine would set off an oil slick if you tried to land in one).
Meaning: The more you use your portals, the less gas you have.
New Bethlehem has fewer ships, so they have more gas.
Fantasy, Magic, and Sci-fi → The Archangel Syndrome v1/v2