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Pl to Pn

Plain Sight

Secretive society of Hider aioids.

They are traditionally considered among S<1 sophonts to be masters of encryption and usually disguise themselves as random bits in the datastream or pixels in graphics or virch files. They also are able to intercept and decrypt most communication over the planetary nets and even the Known Net itself. As a result they are great keepers of secrets.

Critics and hackers observe the decryption claims are overblown. Which doesn't mean that people do not believe in them - Plain Sight perfectly fits the urban legend attractor, and has become the perfect fodder of myths, virches and urban myths. Need to add a shady contact to your story in order to advance the plot? Make it a Plain Sight aioid cracking the archailect code. Need some reason things are going badly? It must be the machinations of the Plain Sight. Who knows the location of the whole Grail? Guess who?

Meanwhile, the real Plain Sight quietly flows through the datastream doing whatever they do in peace.

Todd Drashner and Anders Sandberg

(the True) Plain Sight

The true Plain Sight (assuming it even exists) almost never has contact with the rest of terragen society. Their possession of secret or restricted information comes from a combination of centuries of developing their hacking skills (much like the Cyberian network hackers, also the subject of much fiction) and simply being present, but hidden when some secret event/communication happened to occur in their presence/local node etc. They simply pass through a restricted node or access a secret file simply out of curiosity rather than some desire to actually do anything with the information. They would for the most part be almost totally indifferent to the things that concern most members of galactic society. They ghost through the data nets on their own mysterious errands.

Todd Drashner

planai

A planetary ai controller. Also used to denote other high-level governing ai systems such as system-wide logistics entities.

Anders Sandberg

Planckscale

Plancktech

Technology based on or working at or with the planckscale or planckscale phenomena.

Although wormhole engineering is planckscale (since it is necessary to catch a wormhole by going down to such a size), advanced planckscale tech using "planckites" is completely beyond the reach of even hyperturings, and pertains to advanced clarketech and to the higher Archailects Emselves

M.Alan Kazlev

planes of existence

According to a number of esotericist memeticities, reality can best be understood in terms of ontological gradations, ranging from the dense physical universe to realms or dimensions of pure spirit. The number of planes or worlds that are posited varies; three, four, or seven are the most common

M.Alan Kazlev

planet

A solid (or partially liquid) body orbiting around a star but too small to generate energy by nuclear reactions.

One of six categories of matter that make up solar systems, nebula, and galaxies, and can be harvested for interplanetary or interstellar development (the other categories are interstellar gas, dust, planetisimals, brown dwarfs, and stars

Planet Classification

planetary nebula

An expanding shell of gas - actually the surface layers - ejected from a medium-mass star during its last stages of evolution a a rate of 20 to 30 km/sec; resulting in a circumstellar gas cloud that has spheroidal shape and often appears as a faint disk in telescopes or long-range scanners. The name is misleading, it has nothing to do with planets except for the rough resemblance to a planet's shape when seen at long range. With the result of the loss of surface layers the white-hot interior is exposed, which emits intense ultra-violet radiation. This ionizes the gas in the expanding shell, making it glow like a huge ring of fog unto a light year in diameter

planetary ring

planetesimal

One of the small bodies in a solar nebula, from which protoplanets may form. They usually ranging from micrometers to kilometers in diameter. On the larger scale, planetesimals shade into asteroidal class planetary type bodies.

Planetoid Class

Generally, rocky (more rarely metallic or icy) bodies, either irregular or regular in shape, mostly large asteroids, some small moons, about 51 to 1,000 km along the longest axis. (Hence intermediate between Asteroidal and Terrestrial Classes). Includes Cerean (rocky), Hadean (metallic), and Kuperian (icy) Types

modified from Planet Classification List

Planetologist

One who studies a planet, whether a naturalist or as part of a surveying or scientific research team.

A planetologist will record or measure the type, age, and geological history of the world; the effects of stellar primaries and planetary companions, and resulting tides and radiation, the nature of the moons if any, the frequency of cometary impacts, weather conditions (if there is an atmosphere), tectonic activity if any, and so on, survey local landforms, and so on. Or e may specialize in a particular world type, such as Gaian, Europan, gas giant, etc.

A planetologist may also assess the suitability for mining, development, megascale engineering, terraforming, and colonization. While this is generally done with remotes and instrumentation from orbit, extended visits to the surface to study the local conditions and hidden hazards may also be necessary.

Although being a planetologist is seen as a romantic profession that many bionts and vec aspire to, in fact most planetological work nowadays is done by neumann probes and remote surveying ai, usually over extended periods lasting decades or centuries, with little contact (beyond transmitted reports) with the rest of the galaxy

Planetology

The study of a planet, moon or asteroid as a whole, including all its component elements, planetary formation, evolution, and taxonomy

On a terrestrial class planet or moon, a low plain (plural : planitiae )
abbreviation: PL

plankton

Tiny aquatic or dense atmospheric organism that drift along with ocean currents, living near the surface. The ecosystems of most garden worlds incorporates some form of plankton or plankton analogue, as do a number of nanecologies. Many larger animals depend on plankton for food

phytoplankton - photosynthetic or vegetative plants (unicellular algae or exophytic equivalent) - primary producers

zooplankton - small animals or xenozooid equivalents, that feed on phytoplankton

aeroplankton - plankton-like organisms found in the dense atmosphere and cloudtops of some eogaian, eovenusian, and toulusian worlds. Include autotrophs (phytoaeroplankton and autoaeroplankton) and heterotrophs (zooaeroplankton, phageroplankton, and heteroaeroplankton)

joviplankton - plankton-like organisms found in some jovic worlds (rare)

nanoplankton - bionanites and nanoneogens that serve a plankton-like role in a controlled ecosystem. There are also many instances of escaped and wild nanoplankton.

planned economy

Economies in which the ruling AIs decide what goods are produced, the methods of production, and who gets the goods.

Planom Synerg

Mobile weylforge AI, manufacturing wormholes and other femtotech structures, as well as a philanthropic university.

On a terrestrial class planet or moon, a plateau or high plain (plural : plana)

abbreviation: PM

plasma

A usually high-temperature gas consisting entirely of ions, instead of neutral atoms or molecules. Because of the high temperature, the atoms strike each other hard enough to keep at least the outer electrons knocked off. At very high temperatures - e.g. the cores of stars and in fusion reactors - self perpetuation nuclear fusion occurs

plasma gun

Picotech weapon that accelerates volatile gases into a strong magnetic coil. The beam of exhaust gas is charged and fired along a oppositely charged path. Plasma weapons can deal huge amounts of damage in heat and radiation. However, many of these weapons (especially the cheap nanofabricated clones) tend to be unreliable and have problems with heat capacity

adapted from Mark Harris

Plasma laser

Weapon and/or industrial laser characterized by the generation of a high-energy plasma boloid above a superconducting magnetic substrate.

The plasma boloid is 'tuned' to emit a high energy laser beam via micromanipulations of its internal structure by the magnetic base. Plasma lasers are able to change their frequency at will and at nuclear reaction speeds. In some cases, the entire outer hull of a vessel or installation has been known to be employed as a magnetic base for the generation of multiple plasma lasers. These lasers can be combined or separated depending on need and the amount of energy available. They can also be caused to track and move around the hull of the craft as fast as their magnetic domains can be shifted by the underlying substrate.

Todd Drashner

plasma shield

Photonano or picotech distributed device which creates a magnetically-confined shield of cold plasma for use by relativistic vessels and warships to protect against hard radiation and relativistic particles

Plasmic Furniture

Furniture based on limited utility fog, which allows it to reshape itself fluidly into whatever shapes is desired. Design involves mainly selecting the right behavioural parameters for it to predict the desires of its owners and when not in use form aesthetically pleasing "resting shapes".

plasmid

Self-replicating circular DNA molecules found in terragen bacteria, distinct from the normal bacterial genome, and not essential for cell survival.

Because some plasmids are capable of integrating into the host genome they can be used as a cloning vector for small pieces of DNA (typically 50 to 5000 base pairs) using even the most basic genehacking tools. Widely used in early geneering. A number of artificially constructed plasmids are used as cloning vectors.

plastic

A material with the properties of a solid but capable of flowing under pressure.

Some of the layers of the mantle of a large Terrestrial Class planet are plastic

plastic