What to do with a frakton of negative mass?

[Kanuckistan]

...Or should that be a negative frakton?

Anyway, take a Hawking Reactor, and replace the pulsed singularity with a standing gravitational curve, then factor in Hawking Radiation output being inversely proportional to the size of the event horizon(has to do with the curvature, iirc), and you have an unlimited supply of almost free energy.

...well, almost free; a recent documentary reminded me of the byproduct, megative mass, which balances the whole conservation of energy thing.

And because I've had these things powering my supercapitalships for the last, oh, 1500+ years, I've amassed a bunch of the stuff, and am producing ever more.


Now, negative mass has some interesting properties, including negative gravity, inertia, and temperature, in addition to the ability to cancel/nullify normal mass. I also figure that, if a nullification doesn't cancel perfectly(ie, inertia/temperature are unbalanced), conservation of energy means you'll get some byproducts, which can be harvested to garner things like negative photons, and make an actual freeze-ray. With a sufficient amount of the stuff, you can make a reactionless drive, as negative mass repels normal mass, but because it has negative inertia, it'll accelerate toward the mass, just as the mass tried to accelerate away(I already have better reactionless drives, but it's still neat, and potentially useful in certain circumstances, like in SC's universe. Maneuvering and stopping would be a bitch, tho).


Now, I've got a few ideas, but I figured I'd ask y'all fer yer own. Export is not out of the question, either, if yer interested.

[Jordaxia]

Did you just say -freeze rays-?

Negative mass would allow you to build some pretty weird physics defying buildings.

[The Mindset]

Your pseudoscience always makes me laugh, because it's always so pseudo.

[Kanuckistan]

Did you just say -freeze rays-?

Negative mass would allow you to build some pretty weird physics defying buildings.

Yes.

If you 'heat' negative mass up to, say, a temp of a few thousand negative kelvin, then null it with some room temperature mass, what happens to the discrepancy? You're probably going to get photons or something carrying the negative energy. If you can trap and direct it, you can create a beam weapon that will null the heat energy out of anything it hits.

Which is particularly interesting given that the heat energy needed to defeat even modern armour is much greater than what it would normally hold, and what happens to matter when it's temperature gets sufficiently close to 0°K.

Your pseudoscience always makes me laugh, because it's always so pseudo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_m ... ative_mass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

Physics is weird.

(just a quick search - not sure how good a source the above is)

[Jordaxia]

Mindset, I do recall you fucking around with exotic matter and negative mass before

Freeze rays has caught my imagination. would be an amusing sci-fi equivalent of a taser, if you gloss over the fact that freezing tends to equal death, not suspended animation. would be cool to give my police force something inbetween an ineffective less-than-lethal and a bloody assault rifle.

[Solar Communes]

Is there anything that dark matter and dark energy could be useful for other than as fancy words for technobabble?

Although by the time Solarians reach it in their own FTL-devoid universe... the Big Freeze might already have happened.

[Kanuckistan]

Mindset, I do recall you fucking around with exotic matter and negative mass before

Freeze rays has caught my imagination. would be an amusing sci-fi equivalent of a taser, if you gloss over the fact that freezing tends to equal death, not suspended animation. would be cool to give my police force something inbetween an ineffective less-than-lethal and a bloody assault rifle.

A freeze-laser would also do so rather unevenly, reducing the target's chest to Bose-Einstein Condensate, while the finite speed of heat transfer mostly insulates the head, back, and limbs.

Tho the look on the officer's face after firing him 'stun beam' would be hilarious.


Tho speaking of BSE, the best way to handle it weapon-wise is probably to reduce it to coherent negative-energy photons and thusly charge a PSG shell, if you'll remember my one-shot suspended laser pulse weapons. It's probably been a thousand years, and you'll probably want a lighter charge than the old anti-tank pistols, so we can miniaturise them somewhat, maybe integrate it with a more lethal weapon; I've been toying with powering things with nuclear isomers, which have great energy density and release their energy as gamma rays - not that I don't have better power sources, but can you say Grazer Rifle?

Or just make PSG freeze-ray rounds for under-slung grenade launchers, if you use them.

Is there anything that dark matter and dark energy could be useful for other than as fancy words for technobabble?

Although by the time Solarians reach it in their own FTL-devoid universe... the Big Freeze might already have happened.

There isn't really enough known about it to predict much of anything, tho I'd bet some oddball properties if some of the stuff I remember is correct(ie, it seems to hang around outside our galaxy - what's keeping it from mixing with the normal matter?).

Tho if you want some(and decide on which theory you'd like, or have invented something out of whole cloth), you could grab it from the NS universe.

[The Mindset]

Mindset, I do recall you fucking around with exotic matter and negative mass before

Freeze rays has caught my imagination. would be an amusing sci-fi equivalent of a taser, if you gloss over the fact that freezing tends to equal death, not suspended animation. would be cool to give my police force something inbetween an ineffective less-than-lethal and a bloody assault rifle.

Yes, I've fucked with negative mass before. However, all of this is one hundred percent technobabble without any actual meaning except perhaps in Kanuckistan's head:

Anyway, take a Hawking Reactor, and replace the pulsed singularity with a standing gravitational curve, then factor in Hawking Radiation output being inversely proportional to the size of the event horizon(has to do with the curvature, iirc), and you have an unlimited supply of almost free energy.

...well, almost free; a recent documentary reminded me of the byproduct, negative mass, which balances the whole conservation of energy thing.

It's not a bad thing, cause we're all guilty of it. It's just that Kanuck says it with such enthusiasm and percentage of large words that it almost makes sense, but when you actually look at it, is total rubbish. It makes me lol

[Kanuckistan]

It's not a bad thing, cause we're all guilty of it. It's just that Kanuck says it with such enthusiasm and percentage of large words that it almost makes sense, but when you actually look at it, is total rubbish. It makes me lol

Hey now, as far as I can tell, if you could actually generate an artificial event horizon, the rest is surprisingly consistent with our modern understanding of physics.


I technobabble alot, sure, but the most enjoyable parts are when you can draw straight from current scientific theory. And Hawking Radiation needs negative mass - it's how black holes evaporate, and fundamental to the theory, AFAIK.

[Otagia]

On the subject of BEC laser-slugs, mind if I market a weapon using the tech? I'll give you credit, and 60% of the profits off any of the things using it I sell.