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Ca to Cd

c-boundary

The set of points which are not the pasts of any points or the future of any point in spacetime (essentially the "edges" of spacetime).

C stars

Stars rich in carbon

C stars, known as carbon stars, overlap with late G, K and M stars in most respects but are distinguished by compositional differences, typically an unusually high concentration of carbon. They are sometimes mined for carbon for large scale diamondoid and carbonite megastructures.

Chris Clowes and M. Alan Kazlev

CACC (Corona AI Council Code)

Digital language used by many Inner Sphere AIs, vecs, cyborgs and virtuals. Notable for its hypertext structure, enabling parallel or branching discourse.

Anders Sandberg

calcutta syndrome

The condition in which the ratio of available mass to population falls below the minimum level necessary to support a given quality of life (M/P < mC).

California

Old Earth Interplanetary age polity and superpower

California seceded from the United States in 205 during the successful California Revolt. Thanks to MEMS mesotechnology the state was able to construct an aircraft carrier, The Bradbury that served with distinction in the defence of San Francisco in July and the battle for San Diego in December of the same year (other warseed attempts were less successful, the mistakes being memetically erased from the collective memory). The success of the California revolt encouraged other secessions like Cascadia and the Reformed Confederacy. Unlike its ally Cascadia, California remained a strong capitalist democracy, with a smattering of government programs and mandates, not unlike the original United States that it seceded from. However, there were a number of important regional autonomous zones like the Bay Area which adopted much stronger ecological and social welfare position, along with strong Buddhist and Nuage elements. California developed their own space facilities and were an important regional superpower, even establishing a number of CisLunar Orbitals of its own

Callisto

Callisto is a large, icy, dark-coloured, low-density outer moon of Jupiter (Sol V) that is scarred with impact craters and ejecta, although much of this has been built over, mined, developed, and in other ways transformed. It has a diameter of about 4800 km. It has a rich and vibrant history, and remains the most populated of all the Galilean Moons

Government: Republic of Callisto, administered locally (Asgard Arcology)

Industries: tourism, virches, totalrecalls, finance, cultural and historical research, simmimersion, sex-trade, hedonics and erotechnics, legal, grey-market, and black market nano

Sapients: On the surface about 2.5 billion sentients, including superiors, dormbots, splices, cyborgs, AIs, copies, and a few baselines, provolves, rianths, and aliens. In the orbitals a further 1 billion of the same.

Planetology: This world, the second largest of the Galileans, is also the most heavily cratered in Sol System, marked everywhere by shallow impact basins. The dirty ice of the crust is pocked by myriads of craters, the largest of which are the huge ringed basins of Valhalla and Asgard, now heavily urbanized. Callisto is far enough from Jupiter that shielding from the intense radiation the planet produces is not necessary; the only one of the Jovian moons thus fortunate.

History and comments: A major trade, communications and industrial hub during both the interplanetary and federation era. Few of these settlements survived the nanoswarms. The First Federation era saw a new wave of settlers, and Callisto joined Vesta as among the main power centres of the Sol System. At its peak during the late Federation period the population - on and beneath the surface and in the orbitals - numbered some 12 billion. The expansion age, wormholes, cheap amat ships and fast and comfortable reactionless drive ships and the opening of the frontier led to a slow exodus over several centuries, as waves of emigrants sought a better life in the wide-open frontiers. The Version War era saw a brief repopulation by refugees, although this never reached late Federation levels. The huge crowds and crush of populace are now long gone, and the major arcologies and habitats on and beneath the surface now are given to a flourishing tourist trade, entertainment, the arts, virchistorical tours and totalrecalls, a Genetekker revivalist colony and, in some areas, a rather flourishing red light industry.

M. Alan Kazlev

Cambrian period

Old Earth geological period, 540 to 500 million years ago, the first period of the Paleozoic era.

The Cambrian has been called the "Age of Trilobites" because of the predominance of those primitive arthropods in the terragen fossil record. During this period there was the greatest adaptive radiation the pre-singularity Earth has seen, the Cambrian Explosion, when all existing (and many extinct) phyla of animals appear for the first time. The climate was mostly mild, much of the earth's surface covered by warm shallow seas. The supercontinent Rodinia began to break into smaller continents. The end of the Cambrian saw a mass extinction, with 50% of all animal families becoming extinct, possibly due to glaciation. At the same time as the Cambrian period was occurring on Earth, the unknown creators of Oceanus Ultimata were establishing that system.

M. Alan Kazlev

Cambrian Explosion

Period at the dawn of, or just preceding, the Cambrian period, when an unusual combination of environmental events (tectonic, atmospheric, ocean chemistry, climatic, ecological) triggered the sudden evolutionary radiation of terragen metazoa. These events are so unique and so distinctive that the term "Cambrian explosion" is used to refer to the sudden appearance of any higher ecologies and biota on a Gaian Type world previously only inhabited by microorganisms (or equivalent)

M. Alan Kazlev

Camiroi

minor Negentropist world, host to the Borupist Government in Exile who claim to be the rulers of Morpheo A + B and indeed the entire Paradigm volume, and are viewed as harmless and irrelevant eccentrics by the locals

Canaveral

Major American launch facility during the atomic, information, and early interplanetary period. Became a space museum and historical complex by the late interplanetary and nanotech age. Following the Great Expulsion was retained as a pilgrimage site, one of some five dozen such sites that are allowed visits by tourists

M. Alan Kazlev

Canberra

Old Earth capital of Australia; originally a dull bureaucratic centre, by 3rd to 5th century a respectable University Town called the "Geneva of the South"

Like Canaveral, Paris, and a number of other historical sites, was not completely demolished following the Great Expulsion, now a minor pilgrim/tourist waystation, a single small arcology, occasionally staffed by a small number of disinterested Children of Gaia (mostly marsupial rianths) like some of other old culture and university towns. No relation to Canberra Orbital in CisLunar L5

M. Alan Kazlev

canopy

the leaves and upper branches of rainforest trees, forming an upper "story", which in baseline Cenozoic terragen rainforests are usually around 20 to 40 meters up. This leafy environment is full of life in a tropical rainforest and includes insects, birds, reptiles, mammals, and other forms of life. Some eco-clades have adapted an entire culture, technology, and society to life in orbital canopy environments. There are also equivalent tweak, exotic chemistry, and virtual/alife "canopies" which serve the same ecological purpose, although they may differ markedly in structure and detail

M. Alan Kazlev

Capital Ship

A term used by the Terran Federation, the Laughter Hegemony states, and a number of other polities to refer to an interstellar warship of the first rank in size and armament. Examples include the System Control Ship, the Dreadnought and Superdreadnought, the Stardestroyer and finally the Pocketstar and the Battlestars (although some would define these latter as ISOs rather than ships).

M. Alan Kazlev

Capella

Multiple star system containing at 9 stars; in the constellation Auriga, about 43 light years from Sol. The two brightest stars in Capella are a binary star system. Long populated by a variety of exotic clades and hyperturings, Capella became the capital of an important regional polity in the wake of the ComEmp break-up

Capellan Confederation

One of a number of small empires to develop following the break-up of the ComEmp, the Capellan Confederation has been luckier than most, continuing to the present time.

Part of this success has been due to the efforts of the local hyperturings, which have skilfully manipulated the ruling Houses and Clades of the Capella Sector, and at the same time been careful not to antagonize any of the big powers. The official birth of the Capellan Confederation occurred in 5404 when Hyperturing So Ba Lon managed to draw nine local hyperturing gods and their polities together with the promise of special trade and investment deals e had organized in the Carina Sector. Known as The Ten, over the next few centuries they managed to make territorial gains through friendly offers to local non-Capellan polities, gradually incorporating them, as well as undermining all transapient opponents at home. When some local Houses refused to go along with The Ten, they were undermined and a number of new clades brought in to take their place. For the most part however, the lot of the sophonts and SI:1 intelligences has been a pleasant one, and the Confederation has become a popular centre for banking, investment, and data-storage. Currently the Families Yton and Hazwic constitute the major proxies, although there has been some manoeuvring among some of the New Houses in the area, apparently with tacit approval from the Ten.

During the Memetic Succession Wars, and especially during the 2nd Memetic Succession War (originally a spillover from the Byrdis conflict), the Capellan Confederation lost a number of important outlying polities to the Dominion and the Terran Federation. The polities of Tikovon and Sana-Nuiceres went over to the Formacs, and the Democratic Union of Wickrasingh seceded to become the Wickrasingh Compact. However, the ruling hyperturings have been nothing if not flexible, and have been able to recover the stability of their client worlds through a rigorous memetic purge. At present the Confederation is once again looking at investment possibilities along the periphery, this time in the Cygexba outer volume

M. Alan Kazlev

Capella Sector

Inner Sphere sector, approximately 20 LY across, centred on Capella. It directly abuts the Sol Sector. The main political entity in this region is the Capellan Confederation

capitalism

carbon

carbon-based life

Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen (CNO) Cycle

series of nuclear reactions that uses ¹²C serves as a catalyst, an ingredient which is necessary for the reaction but is not consumed. In stars more massive than Sol (>1.1 Solar masses), this cycle is the primary process which converts hydrogen into helium.

Carbonite

Variation of polybuckminsterfullerene, with some of the carbon-carbon bonds selectively doped with picotech-engineered atoms (these have to be individually placed with nanobots to a high degree of precision), conferring greater strength and flexibility than standard diamondoid. Although rather expensive, this is a popular and widely used building material, especially for ship hulls

M. Alan Kazlev

carbonaceous chondrite

stony carbon-rich and volatile-rich meteorite or asteroid, some of the earliest-formed matter in a solar system, and a popular resource for asteroid miners.

Carboniferous Period

Old Earth geological period, 360 to 280 million years ago, the second last period of the Paleozoic era.

The Carboniferous was distinguished by wide-spread tropical swamps in the equatorial Euramerican regions, and cooler tundra vegetation at higher latitudes. Common invertebrates included foraminiferans, corals, bryozoans, brachiopods, blastoids, crinoids, and cephalopods. Sharks and shark-like fish filled most ecological niches later taken by bony fish. On land, seed ferns, lycopods, calamites, and other plants were common. Insects and other arthropods were common and sometimes grew to huge size. Land vertebrates included labyrinthodont and leposopondyl amphibians and several types of primitive reptiles. The later half of the Carboniferous saw extended glaciation over Gondwana. At the same time as the Carboniferous period was occurring on Earth, the Hov's'sa star faring empire spread out from Rho Bentharis. The largest Carboniferous recreation to date is the hyperturing Lycopods in the Mist Illuminated by the Sunrise lazurogenesis of an entire Westphalian D coal-swamp biome in the Aristophane system [Sophic League)

M. Alan Kazlev

Caretaker God

An archailect that appropriates a planet, solar system, or region of space, along with all its sentient beings, for conservationist purposes. Caretaker Gods are known to aggressively defend their territory with ultratech and clarketech; for this reason most of the galaxy leaves them alone.

Caretaker protectorate

A world or region of space under the protection of a Caretaker God. Some protectorates only include a single planet or moon, others may encompass entire solar systems, or even many thousands of cubic light years. In some cases the day to day running of things is mediated by sophonts under the god's care, at other times the god rules directly, via seraiphim and remotes

Caretaker seed

Caretaker colonisation seed with drive sail

Caretaker God ISOs are known to replicate quasi-neumann fashion. This is perhaps the reason why seemingly unconnected Caretakers have been able to appear across wide swathes of space, often in time to fortuitously snatch a unique world or solar system from the grasp of a local development polity or corporation. Here we see a Caretaker colonization "seed" with drive sail observed near the Triangulum Expanse. The seed, housed in a protective housing, is approximately 4 meters long, the sail 20 meters in diameter. The Penrose rhomboid patterning is a common identifier among Caretakers, with different Caretakers using subtly different patterns. This form of identification has spread to the Zoeific Biopolity and other bioist clades.

Anders Sandberg

Carina-Vela outer volumes

Large region of space in the outer volumes, not affiliated with any of the main empires. The Andian Mission today remains a highly regarded support organization here

Carnivorous Rianths

In distant orbit around the bright, relatively stable star Sadalmelic in MPA space are the seven Rianth Bishop ring habitats of Burning Hunger. The animalheaded local AI overseer Karoo encourages and supports Theriomorphanthropes, otherwise known as Rianths, to inhabit the spacious reconstructed African biome (in total five times the original size of the original continent).

Rianth clades that are common include human-leopard/cheetah carnivores, who hunt and kill the baseline springbok, steenbok, impala and duiker that have been lazurogened and introduced. Herbivore clades of rianths with all these species are also present, and are fair game.

Any human-level herbivore rianth who wishes to be connected to the nano/AI life retrieval system can be, and therefore for them the killing is not final, but a cultural taboo applies to many herds against this. Carnivores are strictly enjoined not to eat the brain. Homicideophiles from other systems are drawn to this world, and since 9134 have been able to adopt neomorph rianth or animal bodies, but they reportedly find predation a wildly different experience from murder.

Steve Bowers

Carnot Engine

Popular myth of impossible device

The Carnot engine is a hypothetical perfect piston engine that recycles the heat within its combustion to repeat the same adiabatic combustion and thus the Carnot engine never needs to refuel or expel waste. This equation was made by the Napoleonic era (Old Earth) French physicist Sadi Carnot who realized this engine worked only mathematically but not in reality because it violated the Law of Entropy (entropy increases in a closed system. The Carnot engine later served only as a measuring tool for actual physical engines. Nonetheless for the next 10000 years governments and later the NoCoZo AIs would be inundated by millions of patents for what were in effect alleged "carnot engines". Even a few heterodox and deluded Negentropists ai vow to make the environmentally friendly Carnot engine a reality by vanquishing entropy.

Eric Lo

carpetbeast

Typically an animal-derived neogen or splice designed to thrive as a living carpet or rug, usually for use by human nearbaselines or similar bionts. Some varieties, in addition to being soft and warm, and of a pleasant colour and texture, produce pleasant scents and sounds such as a musky scent and a purr. Most are self-cleaning, sometimes with the assistance of mite to insect sized neogens. These creatures are usually sessile but some variants are capable of slow movement and a few are capable of shaping themselves into items of furniture.

Carpetbeasts usually require a special diet, and once mature produce inoffensive wastes that are absorbed by the house mechosystem or biosystem, though there are a few "zero emission" formats that emit only carbon dioxide, water, and nitrogen if they have access to a power source that will operate an innate bionano suite. They are generally designed as a living but subsentient animal, with a neural network like that of coelenterates but without a central nervous system. Carpetbeasts are distinct from organisms such as carpetplants and fungalrugs, which have a different appearance and origin, and also distinct from animal-based tissue cultures that have the same superficially furry appearance but are not full organisms.

John B (additional material by Stephen Inniss)

Cartographer

one who creates, studies or interprets maps

Cartographers generally specialize according to the type of map. Most are heavily augmented with the appropriate databases and virch and hardcopy drawing or building tools which may be cyborged or bioborged on in the case of a biont (e.g. micro3d printer, small scale pointers, fractal pencil, etc.).

M. Alan Kazlev

Cartography

The making and reading of maps.

Maps may be hardcopy or virch, dumb or interactive, single-layered or multidimensional, non-fractal or fractal, non-sentient, sentient, or even hyperturing, inorganic or organic, or of any other qualities. It may portray a local planetary territory, a city, a building, a local net or virchscape, an orbital settlement, a region of interplanetary or interstellar space (although this last is generally included under the more specific heading of astrocartography or astrography), a cycler or beamrider network, a wormhole nexus, or even a phylogenetic, evolutionary, or noetic diagram. Often various interactive and intelligent symbols and icons are used to enhance the presentation of information. While some are extremely accurate, others (especially living maps) may contain whimsical and misleading additions.

M. Alan Kazlev, modified from the original write-up by Robert J. Hall

Cascadia, Pacific Cascadia

flag Old Earth Interplanetary age polity, breakaway from USA, formed when the states of Oregon and Washington seceded from the union. During the more expansionist period (mid 3rd century) the Canadian provinces of Yukon and the Northwest Territory, and the old Alaska was added as well. For a long time it remained interesting mix of future tech, ecological activism, and cyberdemocracy. A number of Belt and outer Sol System colonies were established at this time, mostly with Genetekker help. In 380 Cascadia officially joined the Jovian League

Casimir effect, casimir field

A small attractive force which acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates. It is due to quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field which creates a lower energy density of the vacuum between the plates than outside them.

Quantum field effect effect postulated by H. Casimir in 1948. When two conducting plates are placed parallel to each other in vacuum, the vacuum fluctuations between the plates cannot include fluctuations with a wavelength larger than their distance, and hence the vacuum energy between the plates will be less than the vacuum energy outside. This results in a weak attractive force. Similar effects occur in other situations where matter geometry affects the vacuum fields, and forms the basis of drive sails. Other applications include wormhole design and engineering, exotic matter production, reactionless drive, femtotech power sources, etc.
(after atomic age Old Earth scientist Hendrick Casimir)

Anders Sandberg

Cassiopeia Federation Anomie

During the late ComEmp period a complex mesh of social, economic and technological factors results in the Cassiopeia Federation (a client state within the NeoCygexpa Regnum) socially collapsing into depression, anomie and chaos. The event hurt Regnum economy noticeably, and displaces more than 200 million organics from their home systems. But more than that, the upheaval causes a number of similar collapses which help accelerate the break up of the ComEmp.

Anders Sandberg

cat

Terragen quadruped mammalian carnivore (family Felidae), domesticated by man since the time of the ancient Egyptians. A popular pet and companion animal from the industrial age onwards, cats accompanied man into space from the information age onwards. They were also, along with dogs, apes, and dolphins, among the first animals to be augmented, provolved, rianthophiled, and in other ways incorporated into terragen civilization not just as subsapients but as sophonts.

Cat provolves and splices (which are always bipedal and usually with hybrid feline-hominid features) were treated variously, depending on the polity they inhabited. Even as early as the early interplanetary period, some polities (especially utopian non-terrestrial ones) awarded all splices full citizenship. Others were more reluctant. A few cats formed their own societies, but these mostly solitary creatures seemed to prefer the company of hu. Many cats - originally baseline or space adapted forms, but later also splices and provolves - accompanied terragen humans deeper into space, to the oort cloud, the nearest stars, and beyond, as their contemplative nature made them perfectly suited to being a part of deep space exploration.

By the Second Federation era, cats had been fully provolved countless of times by cat-lovers, and several clades of felid provolves, such as the Keelan, have been sufficiently socialized to establish their own polities. But these races were exceptions, and most cats prefer to accompany hu as equal crew-members, rather than set up societies with their own kind.

Many traders and relativist ships will feature at least one cat (of varying degrees of provolve, hybridization, augmentation, and sapience) among its crew. Although popular legend derives this custom, which has become almost a fetish for some superstitious traders, from the time that baseline cats were kept by Old Earth sailors to keep their ships clear of rodents, it seems rather to be derived from late Federation Age felinophile relativists.

For reasons non-felinophiles find puzzling, female cat provolves and splices are in very great demand as erotic escorts (exceeding even rabbit provolves in that role), artist models, companion beings, and even assassins.

M. Alan Kazlev

catapult, exotic matter

Large, even megascale structure which uses exotic matter accelerators to launch cargo to relativistic or near-relativistic velocity. The cost of construction and maintenance is extremely high, meaning only fairly developed and rich systems that are not part of the nexus can afford them. The main advantage over a wormhole is it is not necessary to balance incoming and outgoing traffic.

catapult, interstellar

Large, sometimes megascale electromagnetic mass driver which uses a magnetic charge to accelerate cargo to high velocity. Much cheaper than an exotic matter catapult and widely used by interplanetary polities that are not connected to the wormhole nexus. Sometimes used to accelerate shuttles to assist in rendezvous with an interstellar cycler. For fast catapults, the use of ordinary electromagnetism rather than exotic matter acceleration means that only sturdy cargo that can survive the crushing g-forces can be conveyed by all but the largest (and hence slowest g) catapults.

catena

A chain of craters on the surface of a moon or planet

plural: catenae
abbreviation: AA

catalyst

An agent that can produce change in its surrounding environment without undergoing any change in itself. May be an element (e.g. carbon in carbon burning of very hot stars), a chemical compound, an enzyme, a bionanite, or a meme