Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Shielding Fails!

Continued discussion of subspace physics.

Subspace is an odd set of the laws in our dimension, specifically it is missing the electromagnetic force, or half the electroweak interaction. This means that things that rely on that interaction in our dimension fail spectacularly in subspace.

Shielding against this affect is the most important part of a functioning subspace disc after the transitions into and out of subspace. The disc is a carefully arranged array of projectors that are encased in a titanium-doped mono-ceramic, capable of withstanding rough use. Only voltage difference need be applied over the arrays, meaning that only two wires enter and deliver the current to the array. Of course the shield produced by the disc isn't generally referred to specifically, as shield generally refers to electromagnetic deflector arrays mounted on some ships.

When shielding fails, the matter inside the previously shielded space loses all electromagnetic attraction. It completely ionizes every atom, stripping every single electron to travel tangentially from its current orbit. Depending on the entrance velocity and the distance traveled, small scale experiments, of course over very large distances, showed that electrons sometimes collided with nuclei and stuck due to the strong interaction but more often did not, preserving the shape over shorter timescale tests. When exiting subspace at the limit it was determined that there were two different reactions from electron-connected and non-connected nuclei.

The electron connected nucleus shot away at high velocities relative to the distribution of the protons and overall mass. The second more common reaction was stripping any intercepted matter of electrons, often very few in the vacuum of space causing the remaining ionized atoms to disperse in a cloud, and releasing large amounts of energetic electromagnetic radiation as electrons fell into orbits, bumping into other nuclei and bumping them further. This causes a majestic and most-likely deadly "space aurora."

This can actually be used to advantage, currently large facilities have been replacing their aging fusion reactors with Inverse Subspace Generators (ISGs). Careful shaping of the subspace arrays can produce a bubble of subspace.

Two atoms are shot into the bubble at a single point so that the nuclei collide and stick together. The resulting nucleus exits the bubble and tries to grab electrons from a carefully maintained cloud of gas, as well as possibly shedding a neutron. The resulting cascade results in a bright flash that is captured by the electro-photonic (different than photo-voltaic hence the name difference) material on the chamber walls.

The theory as to why this works in producing energy is that it is actually stealing energy from subspace. This is not yet confirmed, and the consequences haven't been mapped out, however, most people think this resource is inexhaustible at the rate any foreseeable future holds. And this might be balanced out by the amount of photons that "disappear" into subspace as ships produce photons in large quantities.

The reason this hasn't been implemented on ships yet is because of the gravitronics involved. For the atoms to enter and exit the bubble in the same room the process requires an extremely flat gravity gradient, meaning that the system has to measure and adjust to any gravimetric anomalies as often as atoms are sent into the bubble, sometimes exceeding several GHz. Maintaining this system can sometimes take up a significant portion of the produced power.

Another reason ships can't use this, as long as there aren't any break-throughs, if they go into subspace themselves the two arrays tend to cancel each other out, causing lopsided and ineffective shielding on experiments.

Some large experimental ships have added an ISG that is turned off before entering subspace and then turned on again after exiting. This is more of a supplemental generator as the main power needs are met by a fusion reactor that is not limited by the same constraints.

Lastly, I would quite enjoy a discussion on these fictitious ideas.

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