Singularity Engine

 

General Index: Science and Technology

General entry: Travel technologies

Local heading: Singularity Engine

The Singularity Engine is one of the greatest innovations of this era and although today it is used in almost all space states, it was initially only developed by the Earth Union and the League of Free States on Boros.

On Terra it was developed as a result of the need to move small fleets more quickly in the war against the Draedar.

The Jump Drive required a great deal of energy, very precise calculations and took time to travel between two points, time that depended on both the distance and the mass of the two bodies.

The Singularity Engine requires the same large amounts of energy and very complex calculations. Problems to which terrestrial and Borosian engineers (the former from Kyoto University, the latter from Vorthak University on Boros) were able to solve using the extremely powerful Drozanian quantum computers (or Busharak, in the case of the Kolangon on Boros) and super-heavy materials extracted in systems irradiated by Neutron stars.

These materials, bombarded with antimatter, give rise to small singularities that provide, in the short time of their existence before evaporating, enough energy to move between two points in space.

In essence, althought inaccurately,  we can say it creates a small black hole that stops time and makes space flow.

To those in the ship the journey may seem longer or shorter (depending on the mass of the singularity created in the engine), but to outside observers the vessel disappears at one point and reappears at another virtually instantly.

Although it may seem very nice to move without moving, there are some problems that the engineers who created this machine could not avoid, but only circumvent.

The biggest problem is that of space-time causality. The crew is protected from incurring accidents called ‘Paradoxes of the Bizarre’ by a device called the ‘Consistency Undulator’.

Sometimes accidents can happen, even very serious ones.

Some, though fatal, are trivial.

The singularity created by the engine is not well regulated and swallows the whole ship before evaporating, or the energy generated by the engine causes parts of the vessel to explode.

Others are more exotic, some of which have become true space legends (see). Here we will only mention the case of the ghost flotilla. A flotilla of ships that was supposed to leave Alpha Centauri for the draedar front in 164CA, but never arrived at its destination, and is sometimes detected by the radar and radio antennas of the Centauri system as it announces its intention to leave the system for the front.

Virtual Encyclopaedia - Ministry of Cultures and Education - Confederation of Allied Stars.