Wormhole

Wormholes in the Celestial Lance Universe are used as a method of interstellar and intergalactic travel.

History

The Deci-Hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (DECIGO) was launched in 2031, four years after its proposed launch date. While not specifically designed to detect wormholes, it detected the five wormholes in the Sol system within its first 15 years in operation. It wasn't until 2116, when first contact was made with the Starkind, that humans learned exactly what the wormholes were.

Appearance

Wormholes are almost invisible to the naked eye, appearing as almost-transparent rippling spheres (in visible light) that release gravitational waves in pulses. They appear to sensors as wrinkled distortions in the gravity fields of gas and ice giants, stars, within the Kuiper belt of star systems, and (very rarely) within the Oort cloud of a star system. The pulse frequency varies from wormhole to wormhole, giving each wormhole in a specific system a "signature" that can be used to detect it. In the 2000 years since they were first detected by humans, these signatures have proven to be stable. Wormholes vary in diameter from about 600m to 4.5km, and they tend to be stable in almost all cases.

Wormholes at planets and stars form within about 30,000km above the magnetic poles. The formation and location of wormholes in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud of a star system is still a mystery, and there has been no detectable pattern in nearly 2000 years of research outside of them usually forming near dwarf planets. There is some speculation that those found in the Kuiper belts and Oort clouds were artificially created.

Most star systems that have wormholes (about 85%) have only two. About 10 percent have only one wormhole, and the remaining five percent have more than two.

Appearance during transit

When a starship transits a wormhole, there is a brief (1-2 seconds) burst of X-rays on the exit end, along with a rainbow shimmering of energy on the hull of the starship. This shimmering looks like a film of iridescent water running across the hull in cascading sheets. After about 20-30 seconds, the energy dissipates. On the entrance side, there is no significant energy release (nothing detectable from farther away than 1-2km).

Types and naming

Except for cases where there is only a single wormhole in a star system, wormholes are always found in pairs located relatively near each other (between about 500-1200 kilometers apart). Wormholes are usually named according to the two ends of the wormhole, with the current star system listed first and the destination listed second. For example, if you are in the Sol system, one of the wormholes is named the "Sol → Barnard's Star wormhole". In cases where there are more than the two wormholes in a star system, the location within the star system is used. Wormholes are located above the magnetic poles of stars, gas and ice giants, Kuiper objects, and Oort cloud objects.

Transit

Starkind can travel through wormholes without the aid of jump engines. All other known races require a ship with jump engines to safely transit. In either case, a connection is made with an anchor on the far side of the wormhole. The jump engine uses the connection to pull, or "slingshot", the ship through the wormhole to the far side. The calculations generally take a minute or two for established wormholes and are based on jump data stored at each wormhole station.

Since the implementation of the Kovel jump drive, travel through the wormhole takes about 1 nanosecond (one billionth of a second, or 0.000000001 second) for each approximate light year traveled (it varies slightly from 0.89 to 1.21 nanoseconds) between the physical locations of the wormholes in real space. This means most jumps are, for all practical purposes, instantaneous. Prior to the Kovel drive, jumps could last several seconds to a little over a minute, which caused enormous stress on those traveling and sometimes killed them (less than 1 percent chance of that).

Newly-discovered wormholes

It can take several days to gather enough data for a safe manned jump through a newly discovered wormholes as probing the wormhole is a slow process. The first few jumps through a newly discovered are almost always made using unmanned probes, which then gather data from the other side and bring it back to aid the manned ships in making the new jumps. In addition to probing area surrounding the far side of a new wormhole, these probes also make a preliminary scan of the star system while traveling at about 0.7 light speed.

Wormhole stations

Most wormholes have a space station located near the wormhole(s). This station handles and schedules traffic through the wormhole. It also stores wormhole jump data that is automatically uploaded to the station from each inbound ship. This data is then collated and uploaded to any outbound ship to allow them to more quickly make the calculations for the jump.

Wormhole lines

Many wormholes are grouped into "lines" similar to train lines, and there are a variety of cargo and passenger ships that provide regular service along these lines. Each "station" consists of (usually) two wormholes separated by at least several hundred kilometers. In the case of terminal (or dead-end) wormholes (wormholes that go to a system with no other wormholes), the "station" consists of only that single wormhole.

Wormhole hub

A star system with three to five wormholes is considered a hub (see here). Hubs are uncommon. Those with six or more are considered superhubs (see here). Superhubs are extremely rare (only a handful are known to exist).

Blocks

The only known case of a wormhole block (up to that point) was the discovery of the Saak 8wb → Hemelein Prime 6wa wormhole on 26 May 3947. It is unknown how or why the wormhole was blocked, or why it suddenly stopped being blocked sometime prior to 17 August 4127. It is speculated that the Renn possessed the technology to perform the blocks.

Questions needing answers

• Come up with some specific cases where wormholes failed, and whether they fail on both ends simultaneously, or if one end fails and the other end (sometimes) creates a new exit/entrance somewhere else.

External links

• Wormhole on Wikipedia
• DECIGO on Wikipedia
• 100,000 Starson Chrome Experiments