Such civilisations are strongly biased towards defense, because while they can send assets anywhere in their territory nearly instantly, they cannot extend beyond their territory very quickly.
...... WWI in SPAAAAAAAACEtranslated from the Jaian
-REPUBLIC OF JAI INTERNAL MESSAGE: JAI FOREIGN MINISTER TO JAI MINISTER OF THE ECONOMY-
ENCRYPTION CODE: [REDACTED]
DECRYPTION CODE: [REDACTED]
Minister Hogion,
I fully understand your concern about the Kingdom of Agurem's regrettable, to say the least, approach to the acquisition, transport, and storage of resources. However, we cannot risk a major war because a currently-collapsing galactic power is, as you so eloquently put it, "getting in bed with Azarel". [NOTE: Azarel is the personification of entropy and the chief demon of the dominant Jaian religion] If you continue to be concerned, I remind you that we are covertly supplying the revolution currently underway in Aguremian space, and that the Memetic Warfare Bureau is currently attempting to bypass the firewall on the King of Agurem's datafeed and inject a basilisk. The Aguremian government is beyond saving, and as such our alliance is over.
-Minister Rubsco
(edited)z̧
ACTIVATE ANTI-REEEEEE DEVICE
limited production is
Well I suppose it depends on how that limit is enforced. It tends to suck when a 'glitch' happens and suddenly you have a wild swarm of Faro war-bots eating your world.Count Erskyll said nothing for a moment. He was opposed to the use of force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.
-- A Slave is a Slave H. B. Pipercivilians getting access to drives with anything near that potential is extremely regulated by the states that have them
PROVERBS: A SPOTTERS' GUIDE
is one of the most sold of all time in Jaian spaceCommunism (n.): A type of economy and system of government in which sophonts produce what they can and take what they need, managed by a central government, which does its best to eliminate inequality. Although it sounds great in theory, in practice, despots and inefficiency tend to turn the system into the means by which a central dictatorship exerts its will on the populace. For the type of government/social system sometimes produced by post-scarcity civilizations, see "Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism" (Post-Scarcity Socialism).
-The Encyclopædia Galactica (human translation), Wikipedia equivalent on the Galactic Extranet (edited)blue (n., adj.): n. A color of light produced by electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths of 450-495 nanometers (frequencies of 606-668 terahertz) | adj. An object that predominantly reflects light in the wavelength/frequency range described above |
details follow (edited)Earth: Earth (Sol III) is a terrestrial planet in the Sol system, third from its parent star (following Mercury and Venus). Earth has a mass of 1 Earth masses, a radius of 1 Earth radii, an average surface gravity of 1G, an average temperature of 288°K, a sidereal day of 23h 56m 4s, an average solar day of 1 day, and a sea-level atmospheric pressure of 1 atm. Earth's orbital characteristics are as follows: Periapsis: 0.983 AU, Apoapsis: 1.017 AU, Semi-Major Axis: 1 AU, Eccentricity: 0.017, Orbital Period: 1 year, Average Orbital Speed: 29.78 km/s, Mean Anomaly: 358.6°, Inclination: 1.579° to the Sol system's invariable plane, Longitude of the Ascending Node: -11.26°, Argument of Periapsis: 114.2°.
Earth has one natural satellite, Luna, more than 2,500 artificial satellites, and an orbital ring. It is notable for being a Class I Habitable World, the homeworld of the sophont species Terragenæ Homo Sapiens, and the capital of the Earth Republic.
Earth has more than 5 million extant species native to the planet, and it is believed that life originated via abiogenesis (no evidence of panspermia being available) approximately 4.1 billion years before the present date. Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, approximately 9.3 billion years after the Big Bang. Earth's current sophont population is 150 billion sophonts, 15 billion of which are inhabiting biological/mechanical bodies on the planetary surface at any given time.
spacer (n.): Colloquial term for a sophont who spends most of their time on a spacecraft as opposed to a world or megastructure. Spacers can usually be distinguished from grounders (see article on grounders) by their unease in large, open spaces (typically not found on space-efficient starships), distaste for greenery not in a predetermined spot, and instinctive glances to spacesuit HUD status readouts, even when not wearing a spacesuit.
-Encyclopædia Galactica (edited)ansible (n.): A faster-than-light communication device operating via quantum entanglement. Ansibles are distinguished from tanglebursters by a Precursor ontotechnological mechanism in the device, which allows the entangled particles used for communication to be used for a theoretically unlimited number of transmissions. Although the mechansim by which the Precursor ontotechnological attachment works is as of this writing unknown, it is constructed out of known materials and is thus buildable by standard fabricator, thanks to exhaustive studies into the original artifact's design.
-Encyclopædia Galactica (edited)tangleburster (n.): A faster-than-light communication device operating via quantum entanglement. Tanglebursters are distinct from ansibles due to the lack of ontotechnological attachment, meaning that an entangled particle pair can only transmit one bit before decohering. Tanglebursters are not widely used in the known galaxy anymore, thanks to the discovery of the Precursor reusability artifact.
-Encyclopædia Galacticatendency to check that doors are firmly closed behind them
Nicoll-Dyson beam (n.): A Class II Megastructure, the Nicoll-Dyson beam is essentially a Dyson Swarm in which the orbital elements concentrate the entire energy output of a star into a single, massive phased-array laser. Such a laser is capable of obliterating entire planets in a short period of time, and it is considered one of the most powerful weapons a civilization can build with present-day (as of this writing) technology. The Treaty of Earth following the Human-Aixion Conflict of 3556 was the first treaty between star nations to ban the construction of such weapons, and the later Hyperweapons Ban Treaty of 3728, signed by more than 83% of all extant polities in the known galaxy, expanded the ban to all signatories.
-Encyclopædia GalacticaThe Aixionian government later reneged on its obligation to both treaties and began constructing a Nicoll-Dyson beam in secret in 4325. In the short-lived war that followed (see entry on the 4325 Peacekeeping Action), the combined battlefleets of fifty-two interstellar polities annihilated what had been built of the beam and its construction site.
The Ixfractil system (see entry on the Ixfractil system), where the beam was being built, is considered a travel hazard this day due to unexploded ordinance and memetic weapon broadcasters.
Following the detonation of the fifth planet in the Ixfractil system, the Human government (the Aixions' main rival) launched a probe towards the Ixfractil system, alerting the Aixionian government in advance. After the probe was destroyed, the Human government began preparations for OPERATION ASSKICKING.
(edited)Assuming FTL, would a single species expanding across the universe undergo any sort of meaningful allopatry or homopatry? (I realize that's not a word and there are other three types, but text!)
(Also, no meaningful use of genetic engineering etc. to deviate from the presumed norms)
(Timescale <10 Kiloannums)
Megastructure (n.): Megastructures are truly enormous constructs built in the vacuum of space, usually for the purposes of resource acquisition, energy collection, and/or habitation. Megastructures are divided into three classes: Class I (planetary scale), Class II (stellar scale), and Class III (intermediate between planetary and stellar scale).
-Encyclopædia GalacticaELDRITCH HORROR 531: DESIGNATION: OHSHIT
OHSHIT
doesn't care whether it's eating something with life on itOHSHIT
does have an atmosphereOHSHIT
's surface is on fire at any given pointOHSHIT
's best friend is VenusOHSHIT
has a mouth.OHSHIT
?OHSHIT
OHSHIT
!The Eldritch Quantum Field has an [UNTRANSLATABLE] at each point in spacetime, determining several properties of the Unknowable Horror it is contained in at [UNTRANSLATABLE] locations.
The SO[UNTRANSLATABLE] symmetries use a form of [UNTRANSLATABLE]calculus. In order to solve it just type your formula into your calculator and press [UNTRANSLATABLE]
Eldritch Horrors and Conservation Violations
Currency (n.): A medium of exchange in an economy that eliminates the need for barter and provides a universal method of transaction-making. The standard Galactic currency used for interpolity trade is the Standard, agreed upon in the Galactic Joint Market treaty as equal to the average value of the currencies of all signatories, as defined by their relative exchange values. Currently, the Standard sits at approximately 1.3 Standards per Jaian Credit and approximately 0.8 Standards per Earth Dollar. Currencies come in four forms: fiat, backed, commodity, and crypto.
Fiat currencies do not have any commodity 'backing' them, and their value is relatively stable if the local polity can keep inflation and other market factors under control.
Backed currencies are backed by a commodity, typically an expensive one (see Article: Gold Standard). Most backed currencies in the modern Galaxy are backed by the price of antimatter (an expensive and stably-priced commodity) on the Galactic Market.
Commodity currencies are a commodity, typically coins or something similar made out of the most valuable material in the economy. Energy-based currencies are uncommon but not unheard of, but in societies with fusion reactors and Dyson Swarms, they're not very valuable compared to the Standard.
Cryptocurrencies are completely electronic currencies produced and traded on a blockchain system, and ideally limited to a certain cap on maximum production to avoid hyperinflation due to processor mining on quantum computers. Most cryptocurrencies do have a physical backup for emergencies.
Singular Plural
ERG Ø -žen
ABS da- ye-
GEN -ad -ið
DAT -atl -ixł
sees Lightsail launchers
I love you @KAL_9000.La Usona Imperio:
The Americans were one of the last great empires of the Terran era. In just 400 years they managed to rise from a coalition of rebellious British colonies along the eastern North American coast to a global contender for dominance.
According to their popular mythology the “Founding Fathers” were incensed by Britain’s taxation of the colonies without allowing them representation in the legislature, but the facts of this story are debated hotly by historians. The general consensus is that the likes of George Washington, Ben Franklin, and “Uncle” Sam Adams were likely members of the local aristocracy taking advantage of Britain’s financial problems at the time to seize power themselves.
With aid from Britain’s rival nations the thirteen coastal colonies were able to secede and form a representative democratic-oligarchic federation they named “The United States of America” (USA). The individual colonies, now calling themselves “states”, largely governed themselves by the same exclusionary democratic and/or aristocratic principles while sending popularly elected representatives and state-appointed (later popularly elected) senators to the newly established capital at Washington D.C. To act as chief executive the Founding Fathers established the position of President elected by a complicated process that evolved with the USA over the centuries. Presidents served for terms of four years, with the opportunity for re-election at least once. To check the power of the two legislative houses and future Presidents, the President was able to appoint life-term judges to a Supreme Court that judged whether laws fit with the “Constitution”, a document that the Founding Fathers wrote to ensure the continuance of the power structure they instated, even as it was amended by later generations.
(edited)Almost immediately after seceding from the British Empire the USA began to extend its own fledgling empire westward, conquering and displacing the native nations with whom the British had signed treaties limiting their expansion. New states were founded as the new empire’s territory expanded and their population swelled with immigrants taking advantage of their liberal migration policy, many states allowing citizenship to any free man from an array of European countries and later expanding the criteria to include additional countries and women. Upon crossing the trans-continental Misipi river the USA encroached upon the American territories of other European-descended countries and seized them by a combination of warfare and purchase, reaching the western ocean.
By this point the states had largely consolidated into three power blocks, the urbanized northeastern states, the agricultural fiefdoms of the southeast, and the western frontier. Tensions between the north and south had been growing for decades over the southern states’ use of slaves from Africa, which an increasing number of northerners had come to see as morally repugnant while the southern economy had become dependent on them. When the western territories, many populated partially by escaped slaves, were admitted as non-slaver states the southeast attempted to secede from the empire. They failed, and the south was economically devastated as punishment.
Upon securing their continental holdings the USA cast its gaze overseas. Trade with other nations had gone on from the beginning, but with the industrial revolution in full swing the joint-stock corporations that dominated trade began to purchase resources and factories across borders. In a series of wars in Central and South America the USA demonstrated its’ willingness to use its military to open trade opportunities for its’ corporations. While they rarely conquered these countries outright their military interventions often rendered them into corporate vassals, their industries serving to grow the American economy. The USA also extended its reach across the western ocean, colonizing a number of islands for their strategic value and coming to the shores of Asia.
In 170 BX the first World War began, the USA managed to stay out of the conflict until the last year, but they were able to demonstrate that they were a match for the other global powers in the conflict and seized credit for the victory of the Allied powers over the Axis. After the bloodiest war in human history to that point the empire retreated to its home territories, causing the economy to crash a decade later. When World War II commenced circa 150 BX America was again reluctant to join in, only entering when the Axis bombarded their oceanic state.
During WWII the USA developed nuclear fission technology and employed fission explosives to force the last of the Axis nations to surrender after burning two of their cities. The other major nations of the Allies obtained the same technology soon after, including the Russian empire. Russia had been considered an ally-of-convenience by the other Allied powers until the Axis was destroyed on account of their embracing the economic philosophy of Communism, as opposed to the Capitalism of the other Allies. The expansive territory of Russia’s empire combined with their oppositional philosophy worried the USA, but with both empires possessing weapons capable of rendering the other uninhabitable they couldn’t risk an open war. Therefore they spent the next century expanding their influence among the less-powerful nations.
As the international game went on America’s political parties oscillated between favoring and opposing the use of military force to support useful factions in the disputed nations. Twenty years in the two empires made a brief foray into space, with the USA landing the first human on Terra’s moon in 120 BX. After this prestigious landing, however, the Terran empires restricted their activities to near-Terra orbit for seventy years, focusing on radio relay satellites.
As the final pre-Exodus century crept on it became clear that Terra’s resources were running out, and a few corporations picked up where the empires hosting them had left off. In 50 BX the first parahumans were produced by a corporation primarily staffed and owned by Americans for the purpose of colonizing Sol’s Asteroid Belt.
The Great Explosion tripled the brightness of the Milky Way Galaxy for an extended period of time and was visible across most worlds in civilized space, at various points in time due to light lag. From Earth, the event epicenter shone brighter than the full Moon during maximum brightness.
For a time, people were panicking about unstable Precursor technology or a new covert superweapon developed by some rogue polity, until someone realized that Eta Carinae was located at the exact spot of the explosion epicenter and had mysteriously vanished.
That‘s the definition of Random in Combat Drunkwalking. And sure, the space is limited. So say your target dodges by 100 km. If you just address 1 degree increments, which requires 360 pulse lasers obviously, you‘re addressing edge sets of 200*pi = 628.319 km / 360 = 1.74km which we really must understand as a circle of that diameter occupied by a 100 meter diameter hit area. So, area(d=1.74km) = 2.38 km², area(d=100m) = 7854 m², fractional 7.854e^-3 km² / 2.38 km² = 0.003292 = 0.3292 %. Into that volume you are stabbing with a single focused beam laser with a surface area of, presuming this is a focused strike, area(d=10m) = 78.5 m², or 78.5 m² / 2.38 km² = 3.298*10^5 fractional. Also, even if you connect - 359 other pulse lasers didn't. Your raw chances to hit at this chance are utterly abmysal, and a lot of your resources get lost in bracketing fire.
life (n.): Broadly speaking, life is a characteristic of certain objects (things, if you will) that distinguishes them from non-living matter. Definitions vary, but the four traits exhibited by and defining life in the most common definitions are the following:
1) Ability to exploit an energy gradient to do useful work
2) Ability to maintain a stable internal environment
3) Ability to reproduce itself
4) Ability to change and evolve via natural selection
The most common forms of life in the known Galaxy are protein-in-water biological life, machine organisms, and diglife.
-Encyclopædia Galacticalong future, future moment, certain future
vague future, instantaneous, vague past
recent past, past moment, long past
It'd be like a rich mogul today showing up with a Kirov-class cruiser
those sort of people are rare in AT.
A lot of the cultures are communal by ancestral nessecity or ancestral culture, and there it's the community or a speaker/avatar of the community that shows off.Whatever and wherever they are, they can be certain that their forkbrethren and sisters-in-clan, and maybe also somesoph else - remember and expect them home until the end of time.
fuck you, fuck the ground you're standing all the way down to the core, and fuck that one guy on the other side of the planet"
fuck this galaxy volume and anybody who happens to stand behind it
Zeta Virginis
~17 times solar luminoscity
what has that poor soph done to you? @Jade NekotenshiSPLITSHANK RIPPER
The exhibit transformed the surface to show the effect of centrifugal force. The inverse-fourth-power attraction of gravity was stronger than inverse-cube repulsion near the center, so even when the reference frame began to spin, the well remained a well. But further away, centrifugal force took over and turned the downward slope of the approach into an ascent. And where the ascent reversed and the surface plunged, in place of the first well's circular trench there was a circular ridge. Compared to the three-dimensional universe, the entire potential energy surface was upside-down.
... Star systems, galaxies, clusters and superclusters, all stabilized by orbital motion, were impossible here. But the fractal distribution of the primordial inhomogeneities meant that the end products of the collapse process had a wide spectrum of masses. Ninety percent of matter ended up in giant black holes, but countless smaller bodies were predicted to form, sufficiently isolated to survive for long periods, including hundreds of trillions with a stability and energy output comparable to stars.
... Orlando glanced back at the model, which included something like a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, plotting the evolving distribution of stellar temperatures and luminosities. "I wouldn't have thought many stars would be cool enough. Except for brown dwarves, and they'd freeze completely in no time at all."
"You can't really compare temperatures. We're used to nuclear reactions being orders of magnitude hotter than chemical ones, making them inimical to biology. But in the macrosphere they both involve similar amounts of energy."
"Why?" Orlando's gestalt still betrayed a sense of unease, but he was clearly hooked now. Paolo gestured at an exhibit further along, beneath a rotating banner reading PARTICLE PHYSICS.
The macrosphere's four dimensional standard fiber yielded a much smaller set of fundamental particles than the ordinary universe's six-dimensional one. In place of six flavors of quarks and six flavors of leptons there was just one of each, plus their antiparticles. There were gluons, gravitons, and photons, but no W or Z bosons, since they mediated the process of quarks changing flavor. Three quarks or three antiquarks together formed a charged "nucleon" or "antinucleon," similar to an ordinary proton or antiproton, and the sole lepton and its antiparticle were much like an electron and positron, but there was no combination of quarks analogous to a neutron.
Orlando scrutinized the table of particles. "The lepton is still much lighter than the nucleon, the photon still ha szero rest mass, and the gluons still act like gluons ... so what shifts the chemical energy closer to the nuclear?"
"You saw what happened with the gravity wells."
"What's that got to do with it? Ah. Same thing happens in an atom? Electrostatic attractions also goes from inverse-square to inverse-fourth, so there are no stable orbits?"
"That's right."
"Hang on." Orlando screwed his eyes shut, no doubt dredging ancient memories of his flesher education.
"Doesn't the uncertainty principle keep electrons from crashing into the nucleus? Even if there's no angular momentum, the attraction of the nucleus can't squeeze the electron's wave too tightly, because confining its position just increases its momentum."
"Yes. But increase it how much? Confining a wave spatially has an inverse effect on the spread of its momentum. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of momentum, making that inverse-square. So the effective 'force,' which is the rate of change of-
-kinetic energy with distance, is inverse-cube."
Orlando's face lit up for a moment with the sheer pleasure of understanding. "So in three dimensions, a proton can't ever make an electron crash, because the uncertainty principle is just as good as centrifugal force. But in five dimensions, that's not good enough." He nodded slowly, as if coming to terms with the inevitability of it. "So the lepton's wave shrinks down to the size of the nucleon. Then what?"
"Once the lepton's inside the nucleon, it's pulled inward by the portion of the charge that's closer to the center than it is itself, which is roughly proportional to the fifth power of the distance from the center. That means the electrostatic force stops being inverse-fourth-power, and becomes linear. So the energy well isn't bottomless; outside the nucleon it's too steep for the lepton to brace itself against the sides, the way an electron does in three dimensions, but inside the nucleon the sides curve together and meet in a paraboloid."
PARTICLE PHYSICS
They moved on to the first chemistry exhibit, which showed the paraboloid bowl at the bottom of the well, with a translucent electric-blue bell-shape superimposed over it: the lepton wave in its lowest-energy state, ground state. Orlando reached in and touched it; it flickered into an excited state, breaking apart and deserting the center to form two distinct lobes, one of them color-coded red to indicate an inverted phase. After a few tau the whole wave flashed green, spontaneously emitting a photon, and fell back to its llowest energy level.
"So this is the macrosphere's equivalent of a hydrogen atom?"
Paolo prodded the wave himself, trying to get it to the next highest level. "More like a cross between a hydrogen atom and a neutron. There are no neutrons in the macrosphere, but a positive nucleon witha negative lepton buried in it to cancel its charge makes a rough imitation of one. Blanca called it a 'hydron.' If you try to join two of them togethoer to make a 'hydron molecule' you end up with somethingmore like deuterium." The exhibit, overhearing him, obligingly povided an animated demonstration.
Orlando exhaled heavily. "I don't know how you can take this so calmly. Do you really trust anyone in C-Z to build an entire working polis according to these rules?"
"Maybe not, but if they get it wrong we won't even know about it. I can't see us shipwrecked in the macrosphere with the hardware disintegrating slowly beneath us. It'll be all or nothing; a working polis, or a cloud of random molecules."
"You hope.. How are they even going to make molecules, if every chemical bond triggers nuclear fusion?"
Not every bond does. If you throw enough hydrous together, the leptons fill up all the energy levels where they're confined tightly within the nucleus, so the outermost ones end up protruding sufficiently to be able to bind two atoms together with a respectable separation between the nuclei. You have to fill up the first twolevels completely, which takes twelve leptons-so every stable molecule needs to contain a few judiciously placed atoms of number 13 or higher. Atom 27 can form fifteen covalent bonds; it's the closest thing in the macrosphere to carbon." The exhibit showed them a three-dimensional shadow of a five-dimensional, sixteen atom molecule; sixteen-atom molecule; one atom of 27, joined to fifteen hydrons. Paolo said, "Think of this as a souped-up version of methane. If you knock off any of these hydrons and substitute a side branch-
, you can build all kinds of elaborate structures."...
The universe and macrosphere are both ten-dimensional... but one has six small dimensions and four large, the other has six large and four small. So they're inside-out versions of each other." He shrugged.
haaaaax
I want one…
consume
hoursAutism is a disability in this present because almost everything is a bureaucratic network-ocracy. You want to help autistic kids? Change things so we don’t need to play office politics to survive.
Social Norming is far too embedded in making a livingconsume
Landis has proposed aerostat habitats followed by floating cities, based on the concept that breathable air (21:79 oxygen/nitrogen mixture) is a lifting gas in the dense carbon dioxide atmosphere, with over 60% of the lifting power that helium has on Earth.[10] In effect, a balloon full of human-breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight (such as a colony) in midair. At an altitude of 50 kilometres (31 mi) above the Venerian surface, the environment is the most Earth-like in the Solar System – a pressure of approximately 1 atm or 1000 hPa and temperatures in the 0 to 50 °C (273 to 323 K; 32 to 122 °F) range. Protection against cosmic radiation would be provided by the atmosphere above, with shielding mass equivalent to Earth's.[11]
A somewhat new fashion, this device consists of a U-bot hive and sufficient U-bots to suffuse the area desired, be it a house, a field, a ship, or a temple. When called upon the U-bots may move objects, clean or repair, or project images. After installation the Anima requires only power and periodic supplements of elements (mostly aluminum) it can't scavenge from the environment. The Field is usually operated by an AI, sometimes multiple AIs for larger Fields, and some Houses have been known to load their founder's sim-personas into the Anima Field. It is also possible for a BCI to operate an Anima Field directly, though the subconscious access option is not recommended for troubled minds.
consume
the universe in Stellaris nowYou have to go through a considerable length of paper there before you discover that Macrist disks used didn't contain any harder materials than silicon carbide. Macrist does sell diamond disks, it should be noted.
I would take 'uncuttable' as a bit of hyperbole until further testing is available.
Weasels rip at my flesh!
consumption
of all mattersuperior
large bases actually workableavian brain nodules
, perhaps?show anyway
designer carbon allotropes
40K fans really are the most tiresome people on the internet.
-marvelous stan
In the 25th century PX Centauran astronomers observed a notable dimming in the light from the long-abandoned Sol. When an expedition was dispatched to investigate they confirmed the Federation's worst fears, that the Destroyers were constructing a Dyson Sphere in the ruins of their destroyed home. The expedition was quickly discovered and intercepted by the machines, but they managed to fire off a weapon they'd brought directly from the Star Forge's most hidden labs, a singularity bomb. The artificial microsingularities the device unleashed into Sol triggered a coronal mass ejection sufficient to fry the remnants of the planetary system, reducing the unfinished Sphere to its' constituent atoms.
Unfortunately, the blast front did not stop at the heliosphere. As soon as the QComm warning reached Alpha Centauri the Federation began planning to evacuate the Core Worlds. The next four years saw a mad dash through the star gates for the far reaches of the empire, first the elites attempting to secure their own corners of the wreckage, then the greater population once the news leaked. Small wars broke out in the center of galactic civilization between those attempting to escape the radiation by burrowing deep within planetoids, and those who sought to dismantle them for ship materials.
When the wavefront came within one AU of the central gate nexus on the edge of the Alpha Centauri system ships were still streaming through, but the Federal Guard had their orders and weren't going to wait. The wormholes that had enabled Alpha Centauri to spread its imperium to the stars could just as easily carry solar ejections as ships, so to save parahumanity the Federation broke its own backbone. Every wormhole-connected system saw a planet-cracking flash in their skies, but the great distance between gates and stars mandated by the Federation spared the bulk of their populations.
The once unrivaled imperium of the Federation of Parahuman Species is no more. Where once there was a united empire there are now a dozen pretenders reaching desperately through the fragmented remnants of the gate network, and hundreds more stars that feel no fealty to anyone.
But all is not gloom and despair. In the centuries since the Federation's fall cultures and peoples they once stifled have flourished. Quarantined Outworlds build crude chemical rockets to claim their ancestral birthright. Posthumans in their hidden lairs contemplate mysteries unfathomable to mere mortals. And a grainy compressed video allegedly from the Solar expedition gives hope not thought possible for millennia.
Destroyer vessels exploding, several minutes before the radiation wavefront reached them.
but they managed to fire off a weapon they'd brought directly from the Star Forge's most hidden labs, a singularity bomb. The artificial microsingularities the device unleashed into Sol triggered a coronal mass ejection sufficient to fry the remnants of the planetary system, reducing the unfinished Sphere to its' constituent atoms.
(WARNING: DYSPEPTIC FLARE HELLFIRE has intrinsic and unknown black-level-plus existential threat potential, since the energetic conversion event may (p > δ) spread undecayed strangelets at relativistic speeds sufficient to prolong their lifespan, enabling them to reach other star systems, where they may in turn trigger conversion events; as a worst-case scenario this could lead to self-replicant galactic annihilation.
>earthlike
>wedding-band type, earth-sized
>wedding-band type, mars-sized
>snowball earth
>marslike
>super-earth
>hothouse earth
>venuslike
>waterworld earth
>hydrated-super earth
AAAAAAA
it's hard to say exactly. A lot of things play into it, but i think I'd say the argument for "yes" boils down to:
ok, *preventing* this also requires widespread competence and coordination. We're explicitly assuming this is not a major factor by virtue of the "baseline humans" part of the argument
light engine
needs to split the same coherent beam to both sample and reference?