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Gr to Gt

graben

A valley between two faults. A rift-valley

Gradual Uploading

Process in which the sophont gradually, incrementally expands eir mental capabilities with the addition of various cyber- and wetware augmentations.

Most if not all of these allow em to "outsource" much of eir thought processes and memory storage to external substrates that are well-removed from the sophont's own, until finally most of the sophont's thoughts, perceptions, memories, identity, etc. take place outside and away from the mass of grey matter the sophont initially came equipped with. When/if the sophont's original body (and hence eir brain) ceases to function, it is about as significant to em as losing a fingernail or getting a haircut, since most of eir thoughts, etc. now occur outside. As with most evolutionary processes, it is difficult to tell exactly where one entity ended and another began. But the individual's consciousness is never, necessarily, interrupted.

Mike Parisi

The Grand Confluence

Multi-clade civilisation in the Sparks, a stellar cluster (IC 4756) of the Serpens Region, attracting other species to join into the "grand confluence". It is a large, somewhat expansionist asymptote civilisation that chooses to remain apart from the mainstream of Galactic society.

The Grand Confluence apparently developed around a very early (pre-First Federation?) AI probe ("The Founder") from the Sol system, that for its own reasons set up a "waystation" to build various picotech equipment in orbit in the very asteroid and volatile-rich system now called Confluence (Lambda Scintilla). Later various clades arrived, likely intrigued by the emissions from the now long defunct picotech factories. They traded, fought, combined and synthesized for a long time before developing into the current form, not unlike the development of Gerkletoss. Over time a stable religion/philosophy has developed, where all beings are invited to join the unique and all-encompassing stability and confluence the civilisation can offer.

Anders Sandberg

Grand Tour

granite

igneous rock that is light-colored and coarse grained. Granite has a modest density and high silica content, and is characterized by the minerals orthoclase and quartz with some plagioclase feldspar and iron-magnesium minerals. It is formed in association with differentiation processes where, being low in density, it tends to float to the surfaces of planets that have had extensive melting in the outer layers. Granite is found primarily on Gaian Type worlds, where it underlies much of the continental crust.

Grapeships

Grapeships are the most common wormhole nexus passenger and cargo liners in the Inner Sphere and along the main wormhole routes. The ship consists of a "stem" onto which bulbous shuttles are attached (giving them their name due to their similarity to grape bunches). The grapeships travel along fixed routes on a regular schedule. As they enter a system as a rule they exchange a few shuttles with the local terminal or other grapeships, and continue to the next wormhole. This maximises throughput and avoids having to dock at terminals in every system (often a slow process). Of course, delays and mishaps do occur, and many speak highly of the Negentropy Alliance where the grapeships always go on time.

Anders Sandberg

grapeship ownership

Grapeship ownership varies according to polity, situation, and local laws and regulations. There are big transport and passenger corporations, as well as ships run by clades and their organisations. Private ships fill in the gaps and run the odd errands and tourist lines.

M Alan Kazlev and Anders Sandberg

Grav

Slang term for a negative event or item, especially in the Solarian, THRN, and Keterist empires.

"They grabbed you? That's grav, zar!"

John B

gravitational collapse

the contraction of an object like a star or an interstellar dust-cloud under its own gravitational attraction

gravitational constant

(abbreviated G) the constant of proportionality discovered by Newton's that describes the gravitational attraction between objects; their gravitational attraction (F) depends only on their masses and the distance between them, according to the formula F = Gm1m2 / r2. Henry Cavendish, in 1798, determined the numerical value of G to be 6.668 x 10-8 dynes cm2/g2.

gravitational lens

a massive object in space, such as a galaxy, that generates sufficient gravity to bend light passing it

gravity

one of the fundamental physical forces of nature, it binds objects together on the macroscopic scale. Mass produces a gravitational force, which attracts all other masses. The more massive an object, the stronger the gravitational force. The late industrial / early atomic age physicist Einstein showed in his theory of general relativity that gravity can be explained in terms of local curvature of space-time

gravity assist manoeuvre

also gravity assist fly-by; gravitational slingshot. The use of a large celestial object (such as a planet, star, or black hole)'s gravity in order to change a spacecraft's trajectory. In a close encounter with a large object, a small part of the object's orbital energy is transferred to the spacecraft. Very useful with low energy or limited propulsion space flight (especially late atomic and information age, and some long-distance probes ever since); nowadays favoured by some vacuum-adapted clades for sporting purposes

Gravity Wave Detector Argus co-function

The widely spaced gravity wave detectors developed for the Reality Intratextualization Project have also been useful in more conventional astronomy. The laser and neutrino interferometer instruments involved are now linked with the Argus array information net to produce a gravity wave map of the universe, showing neutron stars and black holes throughout this and neighbouring galaxies.

The Gravity Wave Detector Argus co-function as it is called has also produced detailed information concerning the early years, minutes and even seconds of the post-Big Bang universe, showing the fine detail of this period and the surprising complexity of the high energy cosmos. Some cosmologists and esotericists refer to this period of complexity as the Alpha, postulating an advanced intelligence or civilisation at this time of unknown origin.

Steve Bowers

Great Annihilator

powerful x-ray source located near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Great Annihilator is almost certainly a huge black hole. This object produces anti-matter in the form of positrons, which, when they collide with ordinary electrons, mutually annihilate, resulting in the production of x-rays and other radiation. A number of neumanns and other clades have launched missions to the galactic core, although it will be many tens of thousands of years before any news is forthcoming.

great apes

Old term for the primate family Pongidae. Include the gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans. All are presophont. All the species of Pongids were provolved during the information and early interplanetary ages.

Great Attractor

huge mass equivalent to some 100,000 galaxies exerting a gravitational pull on nearby galaxy clusters. No unambiguous evidence has yet seen of the galaxies of the Great Attractor sufficient to create the effect, and it has been suggested that this is actually an artifact left by an ancient civilization.

Great_Cygexba_Sell-off

Great Expulsion

Great Dying

Name given to the human-caused mass-extinction of a large proportion of baseline life and biodiversity on Old Earth; one of the six great extinction events on Earth (the others being the end Ordovician, Late Devonian, end Permian, end Triassic, and end Cretaceous). Only the end Permian extinction is considered worse in estimated number of species and groups of organisms that died out.

Minor in the Industrial Age, the Great Dying became more serious during the Atomic Age, and reached chronic proportions during the early and middle Information Age. By the late information age, most of the damage was done. Some genomes were salvaged in the Burning Library Project, although even some much of this data set was lost during the nanoswarm period. Attempts at reconstruction of both Holocene and earlier terragen (with various degrees of success or controversy) have been undertaken on a regular basis since the First Federation era. It is also often claimed that GAIA has resurrected a great many of the species lost during the Great Dying (as well as various Pleistocene biota), but such statements are believed by serious analysts to be extremely unlikely, or at best exaggeration. In any case, it is impossible to verify these claims, since GAIA only allows very limited access by scientists and instruments to the Earth's surface.

M. Alan Kazlev

Great Rift

series of dark, obscuring dust clouds in the Milky Way Galaxy. As seen from the Inner Sphere, These clouds stretch from the constellation Sagittarius to the constellation Cygnus.

The Great Whale ISO

Caretaker archailect of Pacifica and Beta Virginis.

The Great Whale ISO is thought to be a high toposophic Mind, somewhere in the range of 3.3<S<4.8. Although there is no firm date when the Great Whale ISO arrived in of Pacifica, by the 2500s it became clear that a high toposophic Utopia sphere entity had colonised the oceans and become a planetary protector. Worshipped under many names such as Poseidon, Big Surf, Deep Blue or the Great Whale, E remains fairly hidden most of the time, but has revealed Emself several times during major periods of crisis, such as the aiball isolationist transcensions and the Second Empires War.

Anders Sandberg and M. Alan Kazlev

Greater Self

An avatar or leftbehind's term for the higher toposophic being which directs, guides, incarnates, and/or confers understanding or abilities for that avatar

M.Alan Kazlev

Greater Superchimps

Postchimp-led sapientchimp superpolity

Many provolved chimpanzees have ascended beyond the first singularity, often forming advanced societies which are very different to posthuman societies. The aggressive Greater Neochimps in the Centaurus Expansion have developed a toposophocratic form of dictatorship led by transingular superchimps.
(see also Bolobo Wars)

Steve Bowers

green goo

[1] a plague of bionano (non-drexlerian) goo; especially of strong biotic form. Green Goo outbreaks are (like Golden Goo) quite common, but easily managed, at least in those areas with good access to blue goo and equivalent

[2] facetious term for biological life spreading throughout the galaxy. c.f. pink goo.

[3] (archaic) the scenario of nanomachines or bio-engineered organisms used for human population control, either by governments or eco-terrorist groups (generally by sterilizing people through otherwise harmless infections)

greenhouse effect

increase in the global temperature of a planet as heat energy from sunlight is trapped in the atmosphere. Methane, carbon dioxide and water vapor all are greenhouse gases. A runaway greenhouse effect results in a Venus Type planet

Greenice of Palmas

MPA-Keterist mind designer and ascendist.

Developed by Palmas Corporation at Djed in 2109, it quickly became one of the major mind designers at Kiyoshi during the formative years of the MPA. Among its designs the Kiyoshi Dysonette minds, the habitat climate controllers of Djed Aberq Ring and Ulla Brittant earned it major renown. In 3203 several copies of Greenice migrated to the Keter Dominion, where they participated in the coalescence of Aleph Absolute and the Institute of Ascendics. The MPA copies remained in close contact with their Keterist copies, and became the major players of the Kiyoshi merging, ascendics and unleashing business. To this day Greenice remains the standard (and main accrediting instance) of MPA mental merging consultancy.

Anders Sandberg

Gregor's Mat

terrestrial colonial mat-like organisms, made of trillions of amoeba-like cells, indigenous to Euripedes Mey

During the sporing season the individual amoebas that make up a Gregor's Mat combine to form a single super-organism that may reach dozens of square kilometers in size (the largest Mat recorded was in 9208, with a single colony of 6,700 km²) They remain in this state for several weeks, before dispersing or attenuating. However some mats may continue for months. The mats show emergent behavioural properties that are beyond the capability of individual amoebas, but none have ever been considered sophont or sub-sophont.

M Alan Kazlev

Gregor 23

explorational and poet-theologian relativistic Neumann Probe; catalogued some 504 stars and planetary systems, some of which included worlds with simple methanogenic and other extremophile prokaryote ecosystems, but this was the only world with a rich ecosystem. Eir last known message was received from the outer Empledokcetic Volume in 10035. Claims that e succumbed to pirates, Verifex, or a long-range Amalgamation nanoship can all be safely discarded

M Alan Kazlev

The Greks

Grek is a religion whose gods are based on mixture of the ancient gods of Greece and Rome during the Bronze Age on Earth. Arising in the early 4000's, the founders of the Grek religion were mainly obsessed bionts and cyborgs seeking a link to a seemingly simpler past. They rank the different gods by their perceived rank of power and date of emergence into femto or picohood. Though the main gods (Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and others) are femto level AIs, many of the lower gods are of pico, and there are even some advanced nano gods. Almost none of the AIs that the Greks worship play an active role in the religion, and most would rather have nothing to do with it. The fact that many of the high level AIs are reluctant to let themselves be known complicates matters to where some of the gods might not exist altogether, while still others might not be mentioned. Most large systems have their local temple to pray to their system's god, in addition to areas to pray to Jupiter, and the other femtos. The temples are usually built in classical Greek style. The names given to the gods are based on their rank of power and/or any imagined or real affections they have for a certain activity. For example Jupiter/Zeus is given to the most (apparently) powerful AI while names like Bubona are given to less powerful AIs. The duty of each god has changed to be more relevant to modern times also. For example, in classic times, Stata Mater was the goddess who protected humans from fires, but today she is now given the responsibility of protecting life from nanoswarms. Gaia is usually referred to as Terra, the goddess of Earth. The total number of Grekans is about 50 billion, but recently it has had a surge of converts and may be headed to be one one of the major religions.

Anders Sandberg

grenade launcher

Short-barrelled, large calibre (generally around 40 mm), hand-held projectile launcher

.
Depending on the design, a grenade launcher can use compressed air, a small explosive charge, or a magnetic charge to accelerate a grenade; the grenade by be guided or unguided, and if guided it can be non-sentient, subsentient, or pre-sentient (sentient grenades tend to be difficult to manage). The grenade can carry various types of charge, whether non-lethal crowd-control, explosive, fractal, goo, etc. Many military-grade rifles and AFVs are also fitted with grenade launchers.

Greesob, Greesob Sector

located in the Cepheus expansion direction.

The origin of the name is the anglic "greedy sob", a highly derogative term for an acquisitive being. This became a nickname of Eduaria "greesob" Ilyantov, a first federation relativist trader. When his ship company several generations later was hired as linelayers for the Cepheus development, they took the chance of naming a few systems for their ancestors. The Greesob system would eventually become a significant local administrative center, eventually naming the entire sector.

Anders Sandberg

grey goo

Self-replicating nanomachines spreading uncontrollably, building copies of themselves using all available material. This is the most extreme, "worst case" form of nanotechnology disaster. Fortunately, efficient grey goo is very difficult to manufacture, because of energy constraints and elemental abundances. More frequent are green goo, golden goo and red goo. As a protection, blue goo is used.

Greylag

Negentropy theocratic-monastic world, one of the Five Capitals of the Alliance

Gripler Signal Lamp

Binary Signal Lamp that uses megascale solar storm facility to open and close the myriad vents in the million kilometre wide sheet and send message

Gritwald

Minor, sparsely uninhabited and resource-poor Centaurus sector Negentropist system, was captured by the Paradigm 5480, liberated by PCO forces 5526. The ruins of a partially constructed dyson sphere are still found there, (the former planet Gritwald was dismantled in the process), and the system has recently become a popular tourist site with interactives and totalrecalls from the Paradigm war, as well as an increasing population of ferals who find the huge structure a useful place to squat, and, after original persecution, are now tolerated by local authorities as they add to the ambiance and tourist thrills. Although a nominal member of the Negentropist Alliance, the current Gritwald leadership has more in common with NoCoNeg and even NoCoZo ideology, and it is likely that the system will seceded at some point. The Negentropist central authorities, feeling some concern at this ideological drift, and the possibility of a "domino effect" in the region, have recently cracked down on the local administration, establishing their own governor. There are small several clades and factions currently fighting for a Free Gritwald, but they are poorly equipped and organised and of little more than nuisance value. The regional police and Aimhem officials have acquired a reputation for heavy-handedness, and tourism is beginning to suffer.

M Alan Kazlev

Gross Clade Product (aka GCP)

a common numerical economic measure of the productivity of a specific clade. The acronym can also represent the Gross Civilization Product when referring to larger organizations of multiple clades.

John B

ground state

The lowest energy state for an atom or molecule. When an atom is in its ground state, its electrons fill the lowest energy orbitals completely before they begin to occupy higher energy orbitals, and they fill subshells. Compare with excited state

$Category: Mathematics$ group

a mathematical object, consisting of a set of elements and a multiplication rule such that the product of two elements is also an element of the group, there exists an element called the identity that when multiplied with another element just produces that element, and that for each element there is an inverse element so that the product of them is the identity.

group

[1] A substructure that imparts characteristic chemical behaviors to a molecule, for example, a carboxylic acid group.

[2] A vertical column on the periodic table, for example, the halogens. Elements that belong to the same group usually show chemical similarities, although the element at the top of the group is usually atypical.

Gshru

(NoCoZo), home to a mostly seafaring abdicator civilisation of hermaphrodites, is apparently slowly developing on its own inside the restriction swarms surrounding the system.

GS Vannce

General Soldier (ad)Vance - expert system based on the 251 most efficient humanoid soldiers of the last 4000 years, given out as public domain by Battleprime subsidiary Dark Star Warrior Software during the middle Central Alliance period. Many mercs swear by them.

M.Alan Kazlev

Guangcaishiye

Efficiency Maximization Paradigm system - partial dyson sphere

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