Introducing superscience into THS while keeping the feel

[Michael Thayne]

Okay, how's this for an explanation of the Oort-cloud black holes: an extraterrestrial spacecraft equipped with a stargate, Alcubierre drive, or similar, suffered a catastrophic system failure while entering the Sol system to investigate radio signals that had been detected coming from Earth. When the stargate / drive / similar exploded, it briefly re-created conditions of the early universe, resulting in a number of fragments that look nearly indistinguishable from primordial black holes, but aren't.

I'm mostly BSing my way through that one, but is there the slightest chance of it making sense as an explanation?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

It also ought to be cheap source of positrons, but antimatter in THS is already relatively cheap—$1/microgram—so I don't know how big a deal that would be. I guess you don't need solar power or whatever for your antimatter factory now, and can build them anywhere, which is terrifying if the Trojan Mafia gets their hands on that tech.

Not really. Positrons are of course all positively charged. The electrical repulsion trying to blow them apart prevents you from storing any significant mass of them. Hm, a microgram of positrons is 175.8 C, distributed on the surface of a 1 meter radius sphere the repulsion exerts a pressure on the sphere of 225 kilotons per square centimeter....

For a proton decay torch, you'd probably just annihilate them with the original electrons from your hydrogen stream and add the energy to your exhaust jet.

[LordMunchkin]

You could look at Orions Arm for inspiration. I sure do when I'm working on my transhuman (posthuman really) setting which takes place in the far future. In particular, I use Orions Arm idea of toposophic levels to justify varying degrees of superscience. Of course, this requires super-intelligent AI which THS definitely does not allow. Tis a pity, because super-intelligent AI fill the role of kindly, old wizards quite nicely in scifi games...

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

When the stargate / drive / similar exploded, it briefly re-created conditions of the early universe, resulting in a number of fragments that look nearly indistinguishable from primordial black holes, but aren't.

The difficulty with this is that the black hole suspects in the THS Oort are hundreds of AUs apart, and not moving rapidly. If they were originally created close together, why didn't they merge? If they were created widely separated, why wasn't that side of the Oort evaporated in the explosion?

Also, black holes are black holes. Primordial ones would not have properties that let you tell them from ones of similar mass, charge and spin that were created more recently. It's just that small ones would be suspected of not being primordial because those should have evaporated by now.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by LordMunchkin

You could look at Orions Arm for inspiration. I sure do when I'm working on my transhuman (posthuman really) setting which takes place in the far future. In particular, I use Orions Arm idea of toposophic levels to justify varying degrees of superscience. Of course, this requires super-intelligent AI which THS definitely does not allow. Tis a pity, because super-intelligent AI fill the role of kindly, old wizards quite nicely in scifi games...

Oh, I am, I'm just less certain how to introduce similar ideas into the THS 'verse. I'm fine dropping the requirement for superhuman AI to be involved; I'm more concerned about getting the right feeling of gradualism. Orion's Arm doesn't have Terragen (Earth-originated) civilization building wormholes until nearly 2000 years in the future. I don't want quite that gradual, but I still want gradual.

Originally Posted by johndallman

The difficulty with this is that the black hole suspects in the THS Oort are hundreds of AUs apart, and not moving rapidly. If they were originally created close together, why didn't they merge? If they were created widely separated, why wasn't that side of the Oort evaporated in the explosion?

Also, black holes are black holes. Primordial ones would not have properties that let you tell them from ones of similar mass, charge and spin that were created more recently. It's just that small ones would be suspected of not being primordial because those should have evaporated by now.

Ack, right on both counts. Looking at the canonical numbers in Deep Beyond, oh wow, I'd missed the fact that the Oort Cloud is considered to extend more than half way to Alpha Centauri (five of the seven black holes are over 40,000 AU away, or ~2/3 of a light-year).

Given how far apart they are, "wormhole comm" goes back to making sense again. And speaking of Orion's Arm, they setting gives a fair amount of importance to tiny wormholes used only for communication.

Going back to the "naturally occurring phenomenon" hypothesis, what's the reason for doubting the existence of primordial black holes? Not being able to detect their Hawking radiation? Wikipedia claims primordial black holes are a dark matter candidate, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were out of date. Also if primordial black holes were a significant fraction of the galaxy's dark matter, there would have to be a lot more than ~10^13 kilograms worth of them inside the whole Oort Cloud, I think. Unless there could easily be more? I'm not sure how easy primordial black holes should be to detect.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Going back to the "naturally occurring phenomenon" hypothesis, what's the reason for doubting the existence of primordial black holes?

Assuming there's a mix of masses, some should be evaporating right now, and them popping would have a distinctive signature.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Assuming there's a mix of masses, some should be evaporating right now, and them popping would have a distinctive signature.

Right. Okay, so far I think I like "alien wormhole comm network" as an explanation for the Oort cloud black holes. Probably of a civilization that has since been mostly or entirely wiped out (which could have happened in any number of ways).

[Michael Thayne]

Something that just occurred to me: are there canonical 3e stats for tech that could plausibly represent the stuff Hawking Station is researching, particularly the improved fusion tech and black hole computing? It lacks clear 4e analogs, but lots of technology got changed or omitted in the switchover from 3e to 4e. (We have canonical stats for a rudimentary sort of "gravitic fusion" in Deep Beyond, but it's not useful unless you already have other reasons to keep a black hole around.)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Something that just occurred to me: are there canonical 3e stats for tech that could plausibly represent the stuff Hawking Station is researching, particularly the improved fusion tech and black hole computing?

GURPS doesn't generally model immobile installations, which for practical purposes Hawking station is. Neither system is actually likely to have very good performance for its system weight (billions of tons), it's just compact.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

GURPS doesn't generally model immobile installations, which for practical purposes Hawking station is. Neither system is actually likely to have very good performance for its system weight (billions of tons), it's just compact.

It uses found resources too. If it can be used for hydrogen-hydrogen fusion it might even be considered as using something that isn't much of a resource.

However low input costs are the relatively low value of what it produces remains a problem. If you're in the "cheap energy in a remote part of space" business you're always in competition with the Sun.