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Winifred Goldman
An archaeologist and discoverer of the “Threshold.” She was born on August 29, 1874. At five she witnessed a well being dug and she became as curious as to what was under the ground as to what was above it. From then until she went away to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford to study history the neighborhood was always wary of the small holes Winifred would dig, and then incompletely back fill looking for treasures. Not monetary treasures but archaeological treasures.
After completing her studies at Oxford, she found that receiving a degree from the university was out of the question for a woman in the late years of the nineteenth century, instead she received a certificate that explained her accomplishments. With this she began a yearlong search for a position on an archaeological team. Even with her certification she often lost opportunities to lesser candidates because women were discouraged from applying for jobs in the rough environment of a dig site.
But her determination paid off when she landed a position with Joseph Petrie, a noted Egyptologist. On site in Egypt it wasn't long until Winifred had put to rest any worries that Sir Joseph might feel about having a woman on the dig. She was naturally more careful than her male colleagues and she quickly became Petrie's choice to handle the stratigraphic digging that he practiced. Winifred developed many new methods to practice this type of archaeology and . . .
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Ems
Emulated brains (also known as Emmies when in personal assistant devices), were the first form of general artificial intelligence created. The first Em dates from the early twenty-second century.
Ems are created by scanning a human brain and loading the data into a computer. At first the scanning of the brain required the person to be deceased. Eventually a way to scan the brain of a live person was developed.
Once the Em is in a computer it can bud (that is recreate or copy itself) as many times as it deems necessary to accomplish the task it has undertaken. Whole families of Ems exist to do certain tasks.
Hiring out as experts, such as maintaining a power plant, a habitat's environment, a lightsail's trim, or powering a personal Emmie, Ems can support themselves and the other members of their family.
The development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI or Aggies) on Earth has caused opportunities for Ems to be somewhat limited. The Ems responded by moving their base of operations out into the Solar System and . . .
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Flores Burgess Chamberlain
An archaeological historian born on Earth on September 2, 2528. Her family moved to the Centauri Colony when she was five.
At the age of twelve Burgess became interested in studying archaeology after discovering that her ancestor, Winifred Goldman, had been one of the earliest of women archaeologists.
Although Burgess had no chance to practice archaeology in the Centauri Two space habitat she could study its history. She eventually obtained a doctorate in the subject. While working towards her doctorate she supplemented her income with detective work. Many thought it a strange profession for a young lady but Burgess said later that archaeologists and detectives shared much in common, especially the search for the known from the unknown.
When Burgess teamed with an Em-based robot, named Dag, they became one of the most sought-after detective teams in the habitat. Their fees were more than enough to allow Burgess to finish her PhD.
She married Elias Mach and together they . . .
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Space Habitats
For the first time in history, space habitats became humankind's primary abode when they settled the Centauri System. Such habitats as the New Hope were huge compared with earlier models. New Hope consisted of two cylinders six miles in diameter and thirty miles long. The cylinders rotated in opposite directions so as to sum the total angular momentum of the system to zero. With a canceled angular momentum, it was easier to maintain the desired orientation with respect to the star Alpha Centauri A which New Hope and other smaller habitats such as Centauri Two orbit. The rotation provides eighty percent Earth normal gravity. One of the cylinders is primarily residential and commercial with a smattering of light industrial. The other is agricultural and heavier industry.
Unlike the older Centauri Two habitat, New Hope is as much “grown” as constructed. Built from carbon nanotubes by beam walking 3D printers the frame is essentially one piece. The light admitting windows are narrower than in most cylindrical habitats. Only a few narrow strips the entire length of the cylinder are necessary. Light is directed to these strips by adjustable mirrors which automatically track Alpha Centauri A. At night the windows change in color and transmissivity mimicking an Earth night but without moon or stars.
New Hope is home to three million people (ten times the number of Centauri Two) and half that number of robots. The cat and dog populations exceed . . .
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Fusion Ships
Fusion spaceships are the primary means of transport in a star system. The latest fourth generation model is capable of a top velocity of two-tenths the speed of light.
For long voyages most fusion ships have a rotating life-support wheel usually located a third of the way from the front of the vessel. The wheel section of a fusion ship provides the artificial gravity which makes the performance of most mundane everyday chores, such as eating, sleeping and cleaning, much easier to accomplish. It also provides for the health and muscle-tone of the crew although medical research has made that benefit redundant with new discoveries.
The wheel sections of most fusion ships consist of the crew quarters or apartments on the second floor. This floor also includes a cafeteria, workout room, theater, and assembly area. The first floor, the outer part of the wheel, is used as an aeroponic's garden (a method of growing plants in which the roots are exposed and misted with water and nutrients) to grow food on long voyages. The third floor is usually where supplies and equipment are kept. Each level typically has over fifty-thousand square feet of floor space. The entire wheel rotates at two revolutions per minute to provide an equivalent of about four-tenths of Earth gravity.
Most fusion rockets are of the direct drive type which . . .
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The Star Way
Each settlement along the Star Way has to be somewhat self-sufficient because of the distances involved. Whatever comets or asteroids they can capture and mine are an important part of keeping the settlement supplied.
Even simple communications across the Star Way are difficult and slow at best. For instance, at the relatively close distance from Earth of the first habitat, the “Open Space” settlement, a radio message takes over two and a half days. But if communications are daunting, actually sending or receiving material from the frontier settlements along the Star Way is an almost impossible task. At the halfway point it would take a fusion ship over twenty-two years to deliver a shipment from Earth! Lightsails are faster but can be difficult to maneuver if sail lanes became crowded.
So each settlement must be self-sufficient as far as energy, water and foodstuffs are concerned but there is still much material that is required to outfit and keep a settlement running that has to be acquired from others. And when the settlement needs something, it can't make for itself the need is filled by a nearby settlement that has become specialized in the manufacturing of that product.
Goods can be shipped across four habitats in three weeks. And by trading with the four habitats on either side, meeting almost any need is practically guaranteed. Settlements have established quite a trading economy among themselves . . .
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The Star Way
The Star Way is first and foremost a transportation system. From the Solar System to the Centauri System huge lightsails kilometers across are driven by lasers to speeds fast enough to make the trip in a little over six years. The light from the Sun or Alpha Centauri A is fed to giant solar arrays which power the tremendous energy needs of the lasers. The laser light is refocused every one-hundred astronomical units by giant lenses at beam relay stations and sent forward or redirected to power the lightsails. The entire system is the largest engineering project ever undertaken by humans.
The Star Way is not only a transport system, it is also an abode for human life. Almost every fifth beam relay station along the Star Way has an accompanying habitat like the “Open Space.” These cylindrical habitats slowly rotate to provide an artificial gravity for the inhabitants.
At a distance of thirty-seven billion miles, ten times the distance from the Sun to Pluto, the settlements are truly isolated from each other. Even a fusion ship takes over five days to travel from one settlement to another. And while still small compared to the Earth the total population of the Star Way amounts to almost two-hundred million people and is still growing . . .
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Lightsails
The huge lightsails are made of lithium-beryllium nanotubes woven together like an old straw hat. On one side the nanotubes are coated in graphene to dissipate the heat of the beam impinging the other side. As big as it is, forty kilometers across in most cases, the sail still weighs less than two-hundred tonnes.
Lightsails are driven by the beam's photons striking one side. Each photon is weightless but carries energy and momentum. Upon striking the lightsail material some of this momentum is transferred from the photon to the sail. The sail is pushed forward gaining a small amount of energy and speed, the photon itself reflects, losing a bit of energy which increases its wavelength.
To maintain and unfurl the sail, sail-bots scurry across the material like spiders, unrolling it until the pressure of the beam bows the sail into its final conical shape. Once fully deployed a sail is set rotating very slowly. Under rotation the heavier rim elements act to pull the sail taut and keep it in shape.
A fusion ship is usually tethered one kilometer behind the sail. The ship uses its attitude control rockets to hold the sail in position as it is deployed. The ship is part of the sail's active stability system providing a way to steer the whole structure, like the rudder on a boat. Also providing stability are rows and rows of pivoting nanotubes, opening and closing like flaps on a plane to vector the light pressure and keep the sail in trim.
The stability system is controlled by a dozen Ems making split-second decisions as to the pivots and fusion ship's attitude rockets. When leaving Earth a lightsail accelerates in sunlight until it catches the laser light and that powerful beam quickly brings the sail's acceleration up to one Earth gravity . . .
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The Mach Effect
The Mach Effect can be understood if one considers a single object in an otherwise empty universe. How is its velocity measured? With no other object available there is no reference by which to measure its coordinate change, therefore there can be no velocity. If there can be no velocity then there can be no resistance to a change in velocity, therefore no inertia. A subtle but logical argument.
When applied to the wormhole generator the Mach Effect says that if a material's electrons could be shielded from the universal mass, then inertia would disappear and the large and negative “bare mass” of the electron would become apparent. This argument follows from the fact that negatively charged electrons are surrounded by a sea of positively charged virtual particles and these virtual particles have a large positive mass. The electron's measured mass is very small; therefore, the electron's intrinsic mass must be large and negative.
This “exotic” mass would display repulsive gravity and this along with the huge bare mass would be just the thing to create and keep open the mouth of a wormhole . . .
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Quantum Teleportation
Ignoring the complex math and non-intuitive quantum effects, in its simplest form quantum teleportation has been used for hundreds of years as a way to recreate atoms and later recreate complete objects by information exchange and not material exchange.
It is not a way to instantly transport an object because to pass the information needed by the teleportation requires a classical communication link between the two locations which is limited by the speed of light. Just as the telegraph hundreds of years before had required wires to transmit information, so quantum teleportation requires an ordinary classical communication channel, be it radio, light or other. And because the classical channel is required the size of the object “teleported” is limited by the amount of information and speed of the communications channel.
And the amount of information grows exponentially as the objects become more complex . . .
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The Star Way
Life on the Star Way is primitive compared to Earth but at the same time it is technologically advanced. The space habitats are built with the latest in materials and ideas. The technology is as advanced as that on Earth or more so but in a more practical way when compared to the Earth's virtual and augmented realities. Residents say that out on the Star Way the real world is exciting enough without augmentation of the senses, that life out there is defined by a kind of natural self-reliance. The truth is that the Star Way habitats face a far more unforgiving reality than the Earth's inhabitants.
The habitats have only one choice for the energy they need, the shed heat from the beam relay station and its big lenses. Since the excess heat from the small amount of energy absorbed by the lenses has to be disposed of in some way, most is shunted off to the power plant built close by. Although the absorbed heat is only about one part in a million the resulting power generated is large because of the huge power output of the Sun and Alpha Centauri A laser complexes, the output of the settlement power stations is in the gigawatt range. The resultant electricity is enough for a habitat of up to three-hundred thousand people and their industrial support base . . .
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Wormholes
It soon became apparent that the key to stabilizing a wormhole, like a bridge, was in the supporting structure . . .
As the wormhole formed the negative mass-energy would spiral rapidly along the walls of the wormhole providing support. The usual attractive force of gravity is reversed between negative mass-energy and ordinary mass-energy, and this repulsive force helps keep the wormhole from collapsing . . .
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Quantum Entanglement & Spacetime
Spacetime is an emergent property of quantum entanglement, that “spooky” action at a distance effect that links two (or more) particles together in a quantum state. Whereby if we measure a property of one of the particles, such as spin angular momentum, then that property is known for the other particle no matter how far away it is from the first particle.
Thus, entanglement knits together spacetime through particles sharing a common quantum state. But if enough of these entanglements are “broken” then spacetime starts to “unravel.” And the unraveling spreads at the speed of light. Fortunately, the effects of this unraveling dissipate over distance.
Common ways to cause this unraveling is to repeatedly create wormhole pairs without a reservoir of entangled particles. If this is done often enough spacetime will begin to “atomize” or breakup. A more spectacular way to cause this phenomenon is to concentrate too much energy in too small a space as with a wormhole drive.
Spacetime may breakdown at differing scales. On the smallest scale even, the human body can be affected. Symptoms of spacetime breakdown felt by humans are severe headache, nausea, muscle aches . . .
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Quantum Entanglement & Spacetime
The entanglement required for transport through a wormhole is “borrowed” from spacetime. When enough particles are transported/teleported the entanglement of spacetime can be weakened to the point that spacetime itself “atomizes” or breaks down. If we imagine the atomizing of spacetime to be similar to water turning into steam we see that a phase change has occurred.
To turn steam into water you allow it to cool. To allow spacetime to self-heal you restore particle entanglement.
To prevent the phase change with water you could use a condenser with a sufficient cold reservoir. Similarly, to prevent a teleported/transported object from “heating” up spacetime a “reservoir” of entangled particles can be provided with the object. A quantum computer becomes the “condenser” and generates this reservoir of entanglement sufficient to offset the mass of the transported object.
If the quantum computer is carried along with the object it also shortcuts the quantum requirement that the information for the entangled states be carried by a classical channel between the wormhole mouths, such as a radio channel. The information is in effect carried with the teleported/transported object . . .
Several books were useful in the writing of this story.
Making Starships and Stargates by James F. Woodward gave me the idea for the wormhole generator. I can't say I understood the science of absurdly benign wormholes completely but the book does represent an interesting first attempt at proving the Mach effect.
Time Travel and Warp Drives by Allen Everett and Thomas Roman was a strong antidote to Woodward's book as the authors pointed out the difficulties involved in wormhole creation. However they gave me the idea for the spiral-like support structure when they suggested that a cosmic string-like negative energy configuration might keep a wormhole stable while being traversed.
The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne was useful in that its many figures were very helpful in visualizing some of the effects of wormholes especially the visualization of the mouths.
Colonies in Space by T. A. Heppenheimer, a book first published in 1977, had a large amount of technical information about large space habitats. It’s amazing how much of the engineering and the motivations for these huge structures was worked out back then. Detailed step by step plans and the rationale for populating nearby space was given. It was expected that a habitat large enough for a few thousand could be finished by the first decade of the twenty-first century. But as we know now things didn't work out as they had hoped.
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