Authors: Wil McCarthy
The Collapsium (50 page)
Neutronium
(n) Matter that has been supercondensed, crushing nuclear protons and orbital electron shells together into a mass of neutrons. Unstable except at very high pressures. Any quantity of neutronium may be considered a single atomic nucleus; however, under most conditions the substance will behave as a fluid.
Piezoelectric
(adj) Describes a substance, often crystalline, that produces a voltage when pressure is applied to it, or which experiences mechanical deformation in response to a voltage.
Perihelion
(n) The point of an orbit that lies closest to the sun.
Petajoule
(n) 10
15
joules or watt-seconds. A measure of energy equivalent to the vaporization of 2.985 million tons of liquid water at boiling point.
Philander
(n) A title granted to formal consorts of the Queen of All Things. Only four Philanders were ever named.
Photopause
(n) The irregular, granulated “surface” of a star.
Photosphere
(n) The hot, opaque, convectively stable plasma layer of a star beginning at the photopause,
responsible for most thermal and visible emissions. Usually less than 1000 kilometers deep, with temperatures of several thousand kelvins and the approximate pressure of Earth’s stratosphere. The photosphere floats atop the deep hydrogen convection zones of the stellar interior.
Picosecond
(n) 10
–12
seconds; a measure of time roughly equivalent to the vacuum travel of light across a gap of 0.3 millimeters.
Pion
(n) An unstable, spin-zero meson possessing
1
⁄
9
the mass and + 1, 0, or –1 times the charge of a proton, and a half-life of 2.6×10
–8
seconds.
Plibble
(n) Fruit of the plibble tree. Origin unknown.
Pseudoatom
(n) The organization of electrons into Schrödinger orbitals and pseudo-orbitals, made possible with great precision in a designer quantum dot. The properties of pseudoatoms do not necessarily mimic those of natural atoms.
Pseudochemistry
(n) Electron shell interactions taking place among pseudoatoms, or between pseudoatoms and natural atomic matter.
Quantum well
(n) A semiconductor designed to trap electrons in a two-dimensional layer thin enough for wave behavior to overwhelm particle behavior. The equivalent one-dimensional structure is a quantum wire. The nanoscopic, zero-dimensional equivalent is a quantum dot, capable of trapping electrons in pseudoatomic orbitals.
Quod erat demonstrandum
Latin: “which was to be proved.”
Random
(adj) Aperiodic and nondeterministic; a condition in which any point, state, or member of a system, group, or set has an equal probability of being sampled. Colloquially, any system, group, or set whose forward characteristics are
difficult to compute. Randomness is a hypothetical construct that does not occur in nature.
Reportant
(n) A person or mechanism gathering information for public distribution.
Restoration, the
(n) Interglobal election that established the Queendom of Sol under Tamra I. The term derives from the presumption that monarchy is the “natural” state of human beings, owing to a genetic predisposition.
Revpic
(n) An acronym for “relativistically vibrating, parainfinite, Charged.” The word “plate” is generally presumed, and indicates a thin, rigid sheet of wellstone that serves as the primary component of a gravity projector.
Ring Collapsiter
(prop. n) The first supraluminal signal shunt, intended to be part of the Iscog. Attributed to Marlon Sykes.
Sol
(prop. n) Formal name for the Earth’s sun, derived from the Latin. The Greek
Helios
was considered archaic for most Queendom uses.
Superabsorber
(n) Any material capable of absorbing 100% of incident light in a given wavelength band. The only known universal superabsorber (i.e., functioning at all wavelengths) is the event horizon of a hypermass. (Approximations of 100% absorption are generally referred to as “black.”)
Supercondensed
(adj) Condensed to the point of proton-electron recombination, i.e., until neutronium is formed. Colloquially, condensed to any point the speaker finds impressive.
Superconductor
(n) Any material capable of passing electron pairs with zero resistance. (Approximations of zero resistance are generally referred to as “conductors.”)
Supercooled
(n) Cooled below the point of an expected phase transition, typically the freezing point of a liquid. Colloquially, cooled to any point the speaker finds impressive.
Superreflector
(n) Any material capable of reflecting 100% of incident light in a given wavelength band. No universal superreflectors are known. (Approximations of 100% reflectance are generally referred to as “mirrors.”)
Supervacuum
(n) A state of vacuum in which some wavelengths of the zero-point field have been suppressed or excluded. Since the speed of light is a function of vacuum energy, supervacuum is useful for the transmission of matter and information at supraluminal velocities.
Supraluminal
(adj) Exceeding the standard vacuum speed of light.
Telegravitic
(adj) Involving gravity projectors.
Telerobotic
(adj) Controlled from afar. Rarely applied except to machines.
Terraform ash
(n) A wellstone substance of shifting composition, intended to provoke pseudochemical reactions in a planetary atmosphere. Also known as “wellstone flake.”
Tonga
(n) Former Polynesian kingdom consisting of the Tongatapu, Ha’apai, and Vava’u archipelagos, and scattered islands occasionally including parts of Fiji. Tonga was the only Polynesian nation never to be conquered or colonized by a foreign power, and was the last human monarchy prior to establishment of the Queendom of Sol.
Tongatapu
(n) The largest and most populous island of Tonga; home to its traditional capital at Nuku’alofa.
True Vacuum
(n) A hypothetical state of vacuum in which
all
zpf wavelenths are excluded or suppressed.
Turbulent
(adj) The mathematical state between laminar and hypothetical “random” activity. Any condition in which the motion of a point varies rapidly.
Upsystem
(adv) Away from the sun.
Vacougel
(n) Any fibrous or spongy substance consisting mostly of empty space.
Vacuum
(n, adj) The default state of spacetime in the absence of charge. On stochastic average, half the available photon states of a standard vacuum are filled.
Wellstone
(n) A substance consisting of fine, semiconductive fibers alternating with quantum dots, capable of emulating a broad range of natural, artificial, and hypothetical materials. See
Appendix A
: Wellstone,
this page
.
Wellwood
(n) An emulation of lignous cellulose (wood), often employed as the default state of wellstone devices.
Zero-point field (zpf)
(n) Technical name for the isotropic, Lorentz-invariant energy field of the vacuum’s half-filled photon states. When interacting with point charges, the zero-point field gives rise to fourth-dimensional spacetime curvature which creates the illusion of mass, gravity, and inertia in the three-dimensional universe.
Zitterbewegung
(n) The “trembling motion” of charged particles interacting with the zero-point field.
Zitterbewegung
creates the secondary fields or spacetime curvatures associated with gravity and inertia.
technical notes
Many readers will be unfamiliar with the physical/cosmological theories on which this story is based, and may find the apparent contradictions jarring. Research into zero-point fields and forces has produced a growing and quite impressive body of literature that, as of this writing, has received little attention outside the astrophysics community. The situation vis-à-vis “quantum-dot” technology is somewhat better, though the implications may still sound a bit magical to some.
The gravitational theories that gave birth to this book are some of the most fascinating and cutting-edge science being performed today. As far as I know, “collapsium” is my own invention, although I’ve since encountered the word in different context in a couple of places. For helping deduce and refine the mechanism by which collapsium could actually work, I’m deeply indebted to Drs. Richard M. Powers, the Right Reverend Gary E. Snyder, Bjorn Ostman, Boris Gudiken, Arthur C. Clarke, and especially Bernhard Haisch of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto.
For those wanting to learn more about this body of work, three of Haisch’s papers on the subject, coauthored with Drs. A. Rueda and H. E. Puthoff, include “Physics of the Zero-Point Field: Implications for Inertia, Gravitation and Mass”
(
Speculations in Science and Technology
, 1996), “Inertia as a Zero-Point Lorentz Force” (
Phys. Review A
, Feb 1994), and the wonderfully for-dummies “Beyond E=mc
2
” (The
Sciences
, Nov/Dec 1994), which is available on-line at
http://www.jse.com/haisch/sciences.html
).
In discussions of charge-derived gravitation, the most common question is usually, “Why do neutrons have mass?” The answer is simply that neutrons are composed of quarks whose charges cancel out. The quarks themselves
are
charged, and therefore exhibit the
zitterbewegung
motions that give rise to gravity and inertia. The neutron’s “mass” is therefore a derived, rather than fundamental, property.
A more difficult question to answer is, “Why does gravity affect photons and neutrinos?” Current theory has a hard time explaining this, but I believe the short answer is probably “because charge warps spacetime.” For a detailed explanation of this concept, I’ll refer you to Steven C. Bell of Lockheed Martin Astronautics, whose “On Quantized Electronic Schwarzchild and Kerr Relativistic Models for the Spherical Orbitals of Hydrogen” can be found online at
http://www.mindspring.com/~sb635/pap4.htm
.
A formal unification of these theories has yet to be completed; while Bell makes a compelling case for charge as a general-relativistic influence on spacetime curvature, no one has yet approached it as the
only
such influence. Still, I think at least one road is clearly leading in that direction.
As for collapsium itself, the “Haisch effect” of
Appendix A
has never been tested in the laboratory. I doubt the necessary technology will exist for at least the next several decades. Nonetheless, assuming the effect is real, it should be possible to collapse a proton into a black hole by increasing its apparent mass. Collapse occurs when the Schwarzchild radius of the increased mass equals or exceeds the proton’s radius:
R
s
1.5E-15 m
R
s
= 2µ/C
2
= (2) (6.672E-11) (M) / (3.0E + 08)
2
M = 8.768E11 kg
Hence the mass of one billion metric tons for the “neubles” that feed the process.
Gravitational effects of such a tiny hypermass are indicated by the following equations:
Gravity at 6 cm Range:
g
R
=
µ
/R
2
= (66.72) (0.06)
2
= 18533.3 m/sec
2
(approximately 1900 times Earth surface gravity, g
e
)
Gravity Gradient:
δg
R
/δR = -2µ/R
3
= (-2) (66.72)/(0.06)
3
= –6.18E + 05 sec
-2
or, δg
R
/δR = –6.3E + 04 g
e
/m
(changes by 630 Earth gravities in first centimeter)