Cosmic Strings

(Note: See definitions for the Spin-Two Drive and Nonlocal Links if necessary).

We know that the universe started from a hotter state and cooled. But different regions of the universe cooled at different rates. Bubbles of these cooler regions formed and spread across space. They intersected with other bubbles and where they intersected topological anomalies formed. Eventually, all of the regions of the universe had cooled and the process stopped.

If you've ever seen a frozen lake you've noticed the cracks in the ice. Those cracks form in a similar manner to what we call cosmic strings. The ice has gone through a phase transition from fluid to solid.

As an analogy, imagine water molecules moving freely as a fluid and then somewhere a crystal of ice forms. Other crystals of ice form, often as hexagons, and begin tiling the lake. Across the lake a similar crystalization into ice has started and is tiling outward. Chances that these tiles line up when they meet are almost zero.

So there are phase imperfections in the universe. But what happens at these meeting points where the tiles, to use the lake analogy, don't match? The energy inbetween has essentially never cooled down because it can't phase transition in such a way as to satisfy disparate boundary conditions.

Now this cosmic energy is tremendous. And it is great enough to bend the nonlocal links a spin-two drive (the follow-on to the wormhole drive) uses. But normally there is not a lot of interaction between this cosmic energy and the nonlocal links the spin-two drive uses unless a link is used so often that it starts a phase transition of the spacetime regions it connects.

The transition of the nonlocal link is slow and is slow to spread along its length but eventually it does and if it meets cosmic energy a kind of instant phase change occurs, like water going from solid form to steam directly without passing through the liquid phase.

So this flash phase is energetic enough to realign the tiling of spacetime and in the process “bend” nonlocal links so that their endpoints no longer correspond and are either shifted or in some cases disconnected and reconnected to other endpoints in space.

While the energy is tremendous the time it takes for readjustment is very small. The resultant power release for each link is not large. If the links realign one by one then the process can go on undetected for some time.