Am

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Ultratech/clarketech hegemonizing swarm, Perseus Arm, late 7th millennium to present.

The Amalgamation is an aggressive empire composed of individual intelligences connected through femtotech symbiotes enabling a global group mentality. When infected, individuals become part of the Amalgamation, although subjectively they experience the reverse, that their identity has expanded to incorporate the the Amalgamation, which is now part of them. Whilst the modus operandi of the symbiont and the individual psychological effects is now well understood, the nature of the resulting group mind is less so, and the origin and true nature of the Amalgamation remains problematic, although it appears to be more likely the result of a perverted ascend / transcend relic rather then (as some have originally suggested) alien nano.

Anders Sandberg and M. Alan Kazlev

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matter that is composed of the counterparts of ordinary matter.

Antiparticles have the same mass as their counterpart, but the opposite charge. For example, the antimatter counterpart of an electron is a positron, which has a positive charge instead of a negative charge. The existence of antimatter, and even the production of it in tiny quantities, has been known since the late industrial age Old Earth. It was first manufactured on a large scale during the later Interplanetary period, when it was used to power space craft. Antimatter is produced naturally in tiny quantities in some radioactive decays, but the most effective way to create it is via gigantic amat farms.

Antimatter on its own is stable, but an anti-particle and a particle will annihilate when they meet, with almost total conversion of matter to energy, making this an extremely effective (if dangerous) power source. Beginning in the later interplanetary period, and for much of the interstellar period, interstellar space craft (and even many interplanetary ones) used pion-antipion as their primary energy source. The disadvantage of an amat-drive (amat powered ship) is that it produces a vast plume of highly charged particles (called a "torch"). For this reason amat-powered vessels are only allowed to engage their drive when at a safe distance from any habitats.

M. Alan Kazlev

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Amat Containment

There have been many different systems used to contain antimatter throughout the ages. The most common has always been the magnetic bottle, capable of maintaining any charged amat as long as it remains powered. Other varieties include laser-pressure containment, utilizing 6 split beams of laserlight striking the amat, keeping it pinned in the target zone, or (single or double layer) buckminsterfullerine sequestered amat.

The latter has become one of the standard methods of packaging amat for warheads and other explosive effects. Buckminsterfullerine has a repulsive effect in its core called a 'electron repulsion zone' which keeps atoms (whose outermost layers are, of course, electrons) centred within the cavity. With sufficient force, the buckminsterfullerine can either crack or inertially loose containment of the amat, leading to a matter/antimatter reaction that can easily be chained through other buckminsterfullerines.

With a double layer of buckminsterfullerines (one encaspulating the other, which in turn encapsulates the antimatter), the shock absorptivity without unplanned detonation is exponentially higher than with a single layer of buckminsterfullerine encapsulating the
antimatter. However, this drops the effective antimatter percentage of the payload from 1/240th to (depending on configuration) as low as 1/100,000,000th of the payload mass. 

 John B

If you want a lot of transport power, mixed with a Bussard scoop (not a Bussard ramjet!) and little tankage, think about an amat-excited exaust. That is, sweep in dust at a low-enough pressure that it doesn't start to fuse (like Bussard Ramjets do, with all the nasty high-energy particulate problems) and inject a proportionate amount of antimatter - say, 1 antiparticle per thousand particles or so as a WAG. With a good mag-field "mixer", you can assume a high degree of amat-destruction, and the rest acts as your exhaust. With good shielding and clever engineering, you can even use it as a primary power plant to create your scoop fields while under way.

John B

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Vast banks of helio-proximate solar powered lasers that generate vast showers of particles; the matter and antimatter particles are collected and held in magnetic bottles. In some instances femtotech enables direct matter-antimatter conversion, which is useful for hider clades and others who do not have access to abundant sunlight. Where large stars are available however, femtotech amat is rarely economically competitive. Transmuting anti-hydrogen into anti-lithium for safer storage is however very common.

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Anti-matter micro-flechettes: Used in space combat.

Needle size projectiles rapidly fired magnetically from a launcher at rates up to machine gun levels. Each contains a gram of antimatter (equivalent to 20 tons of rocket fuel in energy). The flechette is fired at extreme velocity sufficient to drive it into the target for a short distance on impact. In addition a small portion of the AM payload is configured to combine with the front portion of the flechette thereby converting it to a shaped high energy plasma sufficient to vaporize a small quantity of the target and clear a path for the bulk of the incoming AM. On impact the antimatter payload in the flechette combines with the normal matter of the target it is by now embedded into and produces a damaging explosion and radiation flash.

Todd Drashner

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the rarest and most power and resource hungry of the astragens, this lifeform (of which there are only 3 known surviving genomes of a historical max of seven) was seeded in close orbit to many 'green' stars.

AmatFruit generated small amounts of antihelium, which were contained in paramagnetic suspension in organic superconductor 'fruit'. Their use was greatly reduced when lare numbers of specific pathogens were found affecting the crop of AmatFruit in sevral core systems. They may still be occasionally found in fringe worlds, usually carefully guarded with layers of blue goo to prevent amat dissipation.

John B

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Conventional means of producing amat via amat farm are fairly cheap (once the infrastructure has been established) but efficient, giving a return of only around 1 % of energy put in with nanotech amat farms, more with picotech amat farms, and close to 100% with femtotech production ideally. But difficulties maintaining and using femtomachines, and the fact that these devices are rarely given out to lower toposophics, means that even today most amat production is via vast amat farms

M. Alan Kazlev

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Femtotech process. Manipulation of the quark structure of matter to allow the mass conversion of matter into amat without the use of massive particle accelerators and energy levels. A mass of femtomachines enter the matter, replicate at nuclear reaction speed to the number required and than convert the remaining matter to amat. Since some femtomachines can apparently operate autonomously in a regular environment one may be able to convert any handy matter into amat at will. In practice however there are certain conditions of replication and shielding that make it cheaper to create amat through amat farms. However femtotech amat production is still preferred by high grade archailects

Todd Drashner

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Use of amat pellets to ignite fusion, resulting in a fusion pulse drive that does not require laser or electron ignition.

This is an extremely simple, robust, relatively low tech but very inefficient rocket propulsion system system that does not require advanced AI piloting or picotech or advanced nanotech, and hence is widely used by a number of (generally isolated) luddist, anthropist, and human supremacist clades and polities throughiout the galaxy. While grossly inefficent and expensive as a star drive (relativistic velocities are virtually impossible, due to the huge amount of reaction mass that would be required), they serve very well as a standard interplanetary vessel. Isp is in the order of 20-40,000, and acceleration usually between only 0.01and 0.1 G.
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on the Conver Limis border, originally a Conver Ambi outpost world, became an important center for tourism, totalrecalls, and arts and culture, annexed by the Solar Dominion during the Second Empires War, captured by Metasoft relativist fleets during the Version War, returned to the Dominion after the War as part of the treaty exchange plan

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A number of worlds in the Perseus Rift, centred around Khan that once were part of Ambi Limis and try to reclaim their former glory. Politically they are too far away and too economically weak to be interesting, and instead acts as a kind of buffer state between the Dominion and Metasoft.

Anders Sandberg

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Popular among many contemplative polities and clades for thousands of years, this is a gentle, melodic, inspirational musical form involving the biont voice, Tibetan bells, harp, flute, tweaked protein phones, etc. It is also often used as an aid in meditation, healing, and general relaxation.

M.Alan Kazlev

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also known as the Wagner Heresy; An extreme form of Incarnationalism

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Industrial/Atomic/Information/early Interplanetary age polity and superpower, also known as "USA".

A powerful nation state with a mighty military and highly developed capitalist economy, America gave the world a number of lasting institutions, including 2D television, the 8-lane highway, televangelism, MacDonalds, Coca Cola, MTV, the Internet, rap culture, the microsoft operating system, and silicon valley. They were the first Old Earth polity to develop nuclear weapons, the first to use them, the first to land a man on the moon (but not the first to put a man in space), the first to develop a "star wars" shield (which never lived up to expectations), and the first to build a viable interplanetary capital ship (the Randolph). During the information age they weathered several serious acts of terrorism from both overseas and local extremists, but the downfall of this great polity was the result of factional succession and a depressed economy during the late information and early interplanetary period. By the middle interplanetary period, extravagant and last-gasp acts of political supremacy like the construction of the Randolph bankrupted the polity. However, some of its ex-member states, like California and Cascadia, continued to flourish right up until the nanoswarm disaster.

M. Alan Kazlev

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cultural/phyletic/memetic complex that developed from the old USA and ex-USA polities and nation states and their cis-lunar and interplanetary colonies.

Americanism was characterized by a high-tech innovative attitude, a rugged individualism and mostly pro-capitalist attitude, a love of fads, pop-culture, and social exhibitionism (as characterized by the so-called "daytime" 2Ds and 3Ds in which guests would abuse each other and bear all in front of an international audience), a strong corporate culture and use of English language (the prototype of Anglic). Even after the decline and fall of the original USA polity they retained great pride in their way of life. Americanism was influential in a the establishment and development of a number of important early interstellar colonies, including Nova Terra (Tau Ceti II), Atlantis (Zeta Reticuli), and at least a dozen colonies and polities called New America, New California, New Cascadia, etc. Although Americanism was perhaps the single most important cultural complex of the interplanetary age, it was gradually supplanted by the superbright orbital and Jovian league cultures. Americanism remained entrenched in a number of Belt, Lunar, and Martian colonies - including those that survived the nanoswarms - right up until the early Federation period.

M. Alan Kazlev

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Any of a class of 20 molecules that are combined to form proteins in living things. The sequence of amino acids in a protein and hence protein function are determined by the genetic code. Amino acids contain a basic amino (NH₂) group, an acidic carboxyl (COOH) group and a side chain (R - of a number of different kinds) attached to an alpha carbon atom.

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A colourless, pungent, corrosive gas, NH₃, extensively used to in the manufacture of crude organobiota and a wide variety of nitrogen-containing organic and inorganic products and chemicals. In is an important component in the atmosphere of some Jovian planets.

Since normal minor inner-system bodies (the main source of raw materials for habitats) are often low on nitrogen compounds ammonia mining and transport is often profitable in newly colonized systems. Beside skimming gas giant atmosphere mining of Kuiper objects is the most common source.

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a type of formerly extinct marine terragen cephalopod mollusk, distinguished by an elaborately coiled and chambered shell.

The chambers of ammonite shells display intricately shaped septa and sutures. There were tens of thousands of known and estimated species, which were widely distributed during the middle and late Paleozoic and the Mesozoic eras. At least two thousand real and fake species have been lazurogened since the start of the first Federation. Ammonites are classified in the phylum Mollusca, class Cephalopoda, subclass Ammonoidea. With the notable exception of a number of bioborged and biochipped pet clades of the Psyke Genesis Superbrights of the Rho Ophiuchi Complex, ammonites have not been provolved; their brains are less developed than those of coleoid molluscs, and many of resident faulty genome templates (stemming from poor lazurogenics by a number of amateur mesozoic enthusiasts) making them somewhat difficult to work with.

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projectiles used for kinetic weapons, may be dumb (unguided), smart, or even sentient; inert, explosive, reactive, adaptive, or fractal; armour-piecing or for use against soft targets; microscopic or mesoscopic; for use on a hand-held weapon like an automatic or tandem rifle or a gauss gun, or on an AFV, an aircraft, an exoatmospheric fighter, a ship or a space fortress

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terragen vertebrate animals that spend the early part of their life cycle in water breathing through gills, but usually live on land as air-breathing adults. They include frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, labyrinthodonts, and a number of other forms.

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a vehicle that can function equally well on or under the water and on land.

See also Triphibious. Such vehicles are very popular on Pacifica and Oro Mistral, and other water worlds

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human or other species that, although originally only adapted to live in a single environment, has been gen- and/or biomodded to exist in another environment as well; e.g. merpeople.

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A person who opposes death, and who lives their life in such a way to continue their physical (or virtual) existence indefinitely. Many of the early cyborgs and transhumanists were amortalists.

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