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.

Wormhole hub

A star system with five or more wormholes is considered a hub (see here). Those with more than eight are considered superhubs (see here).

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 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.

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 light year traveled (it varies slightly from 0.89 to 1.21 nanoseconds). 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).

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