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Ce to Cg

Celerin Volume

Small but fiercely independent Perseus Rift volume dominated by the Celerin tweak-cyborg clade. They fought the Dominion "rescue" fleet as soon as it appeared after the Version War, and has continued to hold their own against the Dominion, largely through Metasoft and Ulysses help. Over the years the Dominion has stopped attacking it militarily, but still regards it as a part of the Dominion that has just suffered a temporary aberration. The number of missionaries sent to the volume is staggering, but they have little effect on the creativity-shielded aquatic celerin.

Anders Sandberg

Celesociology

studies societies within an accelerated virch realm.

Jay Dugger [from the Latin "celer" for swift, and from the French "sociologie," from socio- + -logie -logy.]

Celesynecology

studies ecological structure, development, and distribution of communities within an accelerated virch realm.

Jay Dugger

Cellular Artist

creates artworks from living cells

Keith Halperin

Cellular Automaton

A vir dynamic system that is composed of an array of cells.

All interactions are local, with the next state of a cell being a function of the current state of itself and its neighbors. Cellular Automa are a non-sentient common environment for alife experiments. Today some alife species (most notably the AKD) exist in cellular automata. Cellular Automata are also important in the creation of virchworlds

Cellulase

The enzyme which breaks down cellulose, one of the most common carbohydrates on planet Earth.

No naturally-evolved Earth mammal can digest cellulose, though some (such as cows) have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria which can.
In the early centuries AT cellulose-digesting bacteria capable of living in the human gut were engineered. This allowed human with them to digest cellulose as well as any cow, and thus live on things people without them could not. The distribution of this bacteria across humanity was a major cause of the reduction in the world-wide reduction in famine which took place in those years. Additional bacteria engineered to digest lignin (ligninases) were also added, and provided a means for humans to digest even wood (when suitably prepared!), and similar bacteria to digest even more formerly-indigestible forms of organic matter were created over time. In later years genes for cellulase, ligninase and so on were engineered directly into some types of humans, sometimes in large numbers, allowing them to survive on, and digest, a much wider range of foods than in their baseline state.

Tony Jones

Cenozoic

The "Age of Mammals" (65 million years ago to Holocene) on Earth, saw the emergence of modern mammals, birds, vegetation, the modern look of the continents, and a cooling climate. It is divided into the Tertiary and the Quaternary periods. The Cenozoic followed the Mesozoic Era, and ended with the Great Expuslion that ushered in the Gaiozoic Era.

censorship

Any attempt to hinder the spread of a meme by eliminating its vectors. Hence, censorship is analogous to attempts to halt diseases by spraying insecticides. Censorship can never fully kill off an offensive meme, and may actually help to promote the meme's most virulent strain, while killing off milder forms.

Glenn Grant

Centauri System

Triple-star system in proximity to in the constellation Centaurus. Also called Rigel Kentaurus. Close binary stars (G2 and K5 type), with the dimmest star in the system, Proxima Centauri (Alpha Centauri C), being a flare star and the closest star to Sol before Barnard's Star usurped that position. A resource rich system, developed, prosperous, first colonised during the late interplanetary period

Centauri Vehicle

Federation period Buddhist school

Under the great religious visionary Boddhichittamaittreya III of the Federation era Proxima Centauri Colonies an Omegism-Zen hybrid - the so called Centauri Vehicle, became popular, and still retains some adherents on Boddhichittamaittreya habitat, as well as among colonies and biospheres throughout the galaxy. Most scholars acknowledge that the factionalised Centauri Vehicle sects of today bears little resemblance to Boddhichittamaittreya's original noble and inspiring teaching.

M.Alan Kazlev

Central Alliance

Alliance of Sephirotic, Panvirt, Diamond, and Objectivist empires originally formed in response to the Hyperutilization Supremacy. (see "Meeting at Googlehertz")

The war lasted over nine centuries, and had cost hundreds of billions of lives - ai, virtual, biont, cyborg, and vec (with most of the causalties in the first few centiries). Even after the Supremacy's defeat, the Alliance remained, shaping much of the astropolitical landscaope of the Terragen Bubble and resulting in a new era of trade and openness between the sephirotic and ahuman archailect-empires. The Alliance broke up after several quintillion subjective years (3rd toposophic dating) and billions of hyperfast virtual civilizations later, when several of the presiding archailects made an announcement that "it has served its purpose." The detailed explanation they provided (several petabytes of aioid-language text, equations, diagrams, and algorithms in a number of editions depending on the toposophic level of the readership) as justification is not comprehensible to any Mind of less than Second Singularity.

M. Alan Kazlev

The Central Alliance period

Period from 9200 to 10700 in which the political landscape was dominated by Central Alliance

centralist

AI political affiliation - originally late information and interplanetary age stasists that didn't really care about humans other than as an economic resources. They sort to get the humans to conform under big organisations run by the AIs, make sure no dangerous technology gets out of hand. The centralists were the dominant AI faction during the interplanetary period. Still refers to those equivalent AIs today - mostly large numbers of small insular polities and aicracies.
more

Cepheid variable

Giant stars that regularly pulsate in size and change in brightness. As the star increases in size, its brightness decreases; then, the reverse occurs.

Cepheid Variables are not be permanently variable; the fluctuations generally pertain to an unstable phase the star is going through. Polaris and Delta Cephei are examples of Cepheids.

Although interesting in their own right, from a stellar modelling perspective, much of the importance of cepheid variables derives from the relation between their period and their absolute brightness. This relationship means that, once calibrated, they can be used as 'standard candles' to find the distances to distant stellar associations, including other galaxies.
see also Classical Cepheids, W-Virginis Stars

M.Alan Kazlev and Chris Clowes

cephalopod

The Cephalopoda, a class of intelligent predatory mollusks with eight or more tentacles and a large well-developed head. All known species have been successful provolved, some several times in parallel by different patrons.

These soft-bodied invertebrates include as their baseline representatives creatures like squid, octopuses, cuttlefish, and the nautiloids and ammonites.

The first cephalopods evolved during the Cambrian period, and for many tens of million of years they were dominant life-form on Earth. Most Holocene species have a small vestigial internal shell, or (in the case of the octopus) lack a shell altogether. However the recent pearly nautilus, and the thousands of extinct species of nautiloids and ammonoids (many of which have been successful lazurogened), all had shells, some of large size or elaborate design. A distinctive trait is that the molluscan foot has been divided into a number of tentacles (which are sucker-bearing in most Holocene species). Another part of the foot has been modified into a siphon, enabling them to move by squirting water through a siphon, a type of jet propulsion. Many also squirt ink to help escape predators

These fast-moving carnivores catch prey with the tentacles and poison it with a bite from the powerful beak-like jaws. Cephalopods occupy a similar role to fish in terragen marine ecosystems and are the only invertebrate to effectively competition ecologically with fish.

Among all the millions of species of original terragen invertebrates, cephalopods are the ones with the greatest potential for provolve, and many hundreds of species have been successfully provolved (almost every surviving terragen species, some several times, plus a number of lazurogenic types). In fact, these are the only class of creatures in which provolve species outnumber baselines (even among mammals there are more baseline, non- and subsophont species than provolves). However, provolve is not without its difficulties, due to several physiological constraints. For one, the gut passes through the center of the brain, which is an impediment to intelligence, and requires radical re-organisation. Also, baseline cephalopods have no O₂ carrying cells, greatly restricting their energy efficiency, and the lack of a skeleton renders their muscles inefficient. Many patrons, especially those of baseline intelligence, see these challenges as a greater motivation for provolve, and inevitably along with the successful provolves there are many unfortunate quasi-provolve species, which lead an existence midway between animal and sophont. Others, including the Bitenics Squid (Loligo sapiens and many derived species) are highly intelligent but renowned for a number of atrocities (often exaggerated in highly lurid accounts in B-grade horrordocumentary interactives) which almost always seem to have been caused by a genuine misunderstanding of the mammalian psyche and failure of communication rather than any sense of actual malice or cruelty. Still other cephalopod provolves are both friendly and affectionate. As with so many provolve species, much depends on factors as diverse as the modifications used in provolve, social engineering (or lack thereof), the psychology of the provolveer, and the characteristics of the species being provolved.

Highly tweaked and bioborgized provolve cephalopods are also remarkably well adapted for vacuum existence, and a number of species of space adapted Architeuthis are known, as well as many smaller species. The largest known cephalopod, and indeed one of the largest known terragen life-forms, although so highly bioborgized that it bears very little resemblance to its original ancestor, is the kraken of the inner Perseus Arm, of which several species are believed to exist. Direct evidence however remains elusive.

M.Alan Kazlev

Cephalotopia

Utopia Sphere world of which features both provolved, baseline, and lazurogened cephalopods of all kinds, including some 214,000 species of authentic and quasi-authentic Triassic goniatites

M.Alan Kazlev

Ceramic Engineering

The science and technology of the processing of ceramic materials

Deals with the chemical, electrical, mesoscale, optical, physical, and structural properties, applications, and behavior of ceramic materials, including the raw materials required and the various manufacturing process (macroscale dumb, mesoscale smart, bionano and biomachinic organic, and nanofabrication) of forming, synthesising, drying, and firing ceramic products.

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

FDF Carrier Cerberus

Flagship of the Federation Defense Force Fleet during the later First Federation period.

One of the first GUT-Drive capable carriers possessed by the Federation, the Cerberus was deployed on several occasions to deter piracy or to quell unruly colonies. It had the capability of launching a number of Starfighter exoatmospheric fighters against spaceborne targets and landing assault forces against ground-based adversaries.

Although the original was broken up for scrap during the early Solar Organization period, an exact nano-replica of the Cerberus can presently be seen in the Ceres Historical Spacetime Museum.

image by Kentsuku CG World; text by M.Alan Kazlev, based on idea by Kevin Self

Cerebral Siren

This device samples some 10,000 well-distributed neurons throughout the player's brainpan. It responds with a specific tone and texture when each neuron fires, producing a pseudo-rhythmic tonal surf effect. With significant biofeedback training and lucky placement of the neural sensors, a being can control anywhere from approximately 20% to the record 72.94% of the various textural tonal effects. This soundscape is usually quite calming and peaceful, unless there are unlucky placement of the filaments.

Note that the device insinuates nanofilaments each time it is picked up, and therefore each musician must spend hours rekeying their instincts and skills to deal with the new placement. It automatically disconnects when the being achieves REM sleep to prevent damage to itself - at least, that's according to the few manuals that have been recovered. What kind of damage is not specified.

A cerebral siren concert was credited with the enlightenment of "the thirty-one" in 2556 in a small hab orbiting Ain Soph Aur. The thirty-one were the remnants of a small group of hermetic scholars whose faith included strenuous recreation en masse. The thirty-one survivors of the incident (there were approximately 100 more beings driven psychotic, catatonic, or self-destructive by the event) went on to spread their conceptualizations of the music of the spheres over a period of approximately 20 years. At the end of this time, all thirty one disappeared simultaneously. No leads have ever been found as to what actually happened.

John B

ceremonial magick

A form of Occultism or Hermeticism that is often based on the premise that certain correspondences unite or interlink all things, and that by application of this principle through ritual or ceremonial means, one can attain certain states of consciousness or manifest events. Often required is a search for or acquisition of specialist knowledge needed to perform occult or magickal practices. There is generally a provisional, hieuristic, or actual belief in non-physical beings such as spirits or deities, who can be contacted by those who possess the appropriate ritual knowledge.

Ceres

Ceres Astrospace

First Federation ship design and building megacorp

Manufacturer of a number of civilian and military ships, including the popular Delta, Ceres Astrospace was one of the success stories of the Federation, and the sole surviving company of the CisLunar-Belt Industrial Defense conglomerate which evolved in the late thirty-second century. Through shrewd business dealings, their superbrights and superturings were able to buy out most of the other defense contractors during the early to middle Federation period, consolidating their manufacturing and research facilities to become the largest and most cost-efficient military/defense company. Followng falling markets with the collapse of the old Federation and the second singularity, the company was finally sold to Daedelus Industries, Merrion. Many of the colonial branches meanwhile became successful minor Houses in their own right.

Ceres Mater

Cerean Type Rock dwarf

Cerean Type Rock dwarf Small rocky planetoid; represents one of the most common types of body in many solar systems.

Planet Classification List

Cetacea

order of highly intelligent marine terragen mammals that include three suborders, including the Odontoceti (toothed whales, dolphins, and porpoises), Mysticeti (baleen whales), and Archaeoceti (extinct whales). There were originally about 75 species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises during the Holocene, this decreased with the extinction of a number of whale species during the information age. It is believed that all known species have been lazurogened by GAIA, and in addition many species have been provolved (the dolphin being one of the earliest creatures to be provolved).

M.Alan Kazlev

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