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Su

subatomic

Pertaining to distances, particles, or technology of smaller than atomic scale. Within the scale of quantum physics and picotech and femtotech.

subatomic particle

Wave-Particles that go up to make atoms, or are much smaller than atoms - e.g. protons, neutrons, electrons, neutrinos. etc. Subatomic particles are manipulated directly through picotech, and can be sculptured or engineered through femtotech.

Subatomic Physics

Branch of physics dealing with particles and forces at the subatomic scale

Includes the study of strong and weak nuclear forces and interactions, quantum mechanics, the interaction of particles at the quantum scale, and the use of picotech and femtotech devices to study quantum symmetry, conservation laws, nuclear reactions, quantum chromodynamics, guage theories, supersymmetry and superstring and brane models, as well as consideration of various other grand unification theories and theorems.

M. Alan Kazlev

Subcraft / Subship / Lurkship

Triphibious manned extended mission stealth-capable gunship

The coming of nanotechnology and suspended animation removed many of the logistical hurdles that military forces had faced for time beyond counting. Forces could go indefinitely without resupply, and troops could be packed for much easier transport and woken up for the battle. One of the applications of this has been "subcraft" tactics.

Subcraft are a type off Gunship that, although no match for a front line warship or a hyperturing controlled swarm, are fully capable of handling less serious threats and supporting such warships. In the event that they encounter an enemy they cannot defeat, the subcraft go into hiding. Fully triphibious as well as exoatmospheric, and equipped with sophisticated hyperturing nanostealth devices, they can enter almost any liquid or gaseous environment and remain indefinitely, the crew hibernating and nanotechnology maintaining the ship. Once the superior force have left the area, the subships reactivate and attack the enemy forces that they can defeat.

Subships are almost always equipped with a compact fusion reactor, which can be fired up and shut down at notice, and back up fuel cells. The main problem with subships is that the shielded radioactive hydrogen and helium isotopes (deuterium and tritium) required for a fusion reactor tend to decay, making long shutdowns unreasonable. Fortunately, deuterium can be extracted from seawater, and tritium from most gas giants.

The energy limitations mean that they depend much more on smart missiles than on energy beam weapons, and most Subships, while bristling with rockets, torpedoes, mines, and offensive khaki goo, have little more than a couple of light lasers and machine guns for close in attack/defence.

Although they need to be relatively small (to effectively hide from the enemy who will surely search for them), subcraft are relatively cheap and can be produced in great numbers. Even if they never get a chance to attack, the opposing power must leave ships in the system to guard against their attack - ships would would be better put to use fighting similar front line warships. This limitation on enemy logistics has resulted in more wars being won than the actual damage the ships do.

The technical points of distinction between Subcraft, Subships, and Lurkships, in terms of size, firepower, endurance, etc generally differ from empire to empire, but generally a Subship is larger, and a Lurkship somewhat larger again, and equipped with more potent stealth and shielding.

Michael Beck and M.Alan Kazlev

SubJovian Type

Small Jovian worlds with masses up to 0.2 that of Jupiter. Generally, a gas giant with an icy mantle (e.g. Uranus, Neptune)

There are significantly different forms of gaseous planet, and condensed ammonia is absent in many atmospheric layers, but very abundant in lower levels where ammonium slush is very held in the clouds. The upper atmosphere may consists of proportions such as 85% hydrogen, 13% helium. Other upper cloud layers are dominant in hydrogen sulphide and various hydrocarbons such as acetylene and ethylene. High Cirrus clouds may be methane dominant. Much of the mass may be water, ammonia and methane condenses that hang as frozen sublimated layers of cloud. Those subjovians with a higher level of heavier elements generally warrant a different class.

Planet Classification List and The Science in Science Fiction

Sublect

[1] a term for an inferior minds (generally, anything less than SI:1)

[2] a subroutine, a dedicated processing node, a mind that is part of a greater mind

Submind Independence

A form of insanity affecting moon-brains and larger, when one or more sub-assemblies loose processing capability either through physical damage or (more likely) through persona alteration, making the subassembly less likely to accept a command to merge back into the whole.

John B

Submind Sociopathy

A form of insanity affecting moon-brains and larger, when one or more subassembly begins to gather resources from other subassemblies as semi-permanent accretions to their own capabilities, often at a significant cost to the unit as a whole. Often caused by mismanaged priority routing by a central core, giving an external core an ultimate priority command without properly limiting its duration.

John B

subrelativistic

pertains to any interstellar ship, fleet, cargo pellet, or other object travelling at a reasonably slow rate (say 0.01 to 0.1 c) so that time-dilation and other relativistic effects do not become evident. Subrelativistic vessels may take centuries to bridge the gap between even nearby stars, but have the advantage of being thousands of times cheaper than relativistic ones

Subroutine

A program, block of programs, sublect, or group of sublects organizationally distinct from the main body of the program or Mind, which may be called from within the program or Mind. Most high toposophic Minds and even medium level ai make extensive use of subroutines

adapted from KurzweilAI

subsapient

a being that may be sentient but has not developed rational faculties; e.g. an animal.

c.f. presapient

subsentient

a simple organism, alife, or bot that is not fully sentient

M.Alan Kazlev

subsophont

a being - whether biological or aioidal, that may be sentient, or even sapient, but has not developed true sophonce

c.f. presophont

M.Alan Kazlev

Subspecies

In the linnean and neolinnean systems of biological classification, the taxonomic ranking below species.

The subspecies comprises related organisms or populations that are potentially capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring by natural reproduction. The concept of a subspecies has been rendered more or less irrelevant by DIY germline engineering, tweaking and other forms of biotech. Nevertheless, as with species, the term is still popularly used as a convenient label for types of organic lifeforms.

M.Alan Kazlev

subturing ai

An ai below human baseline turingrade intelligence and without full self-awareness. Subturing computer systems are extremely common, incorporated into everyday objects such as clothing, household appliances and vehicles.Many weapons systems foe example have subsophont control routines, efficiently slaved and obedient but capable of limited autonomous action. Subturing expert systems are often extremely competent, but not self-aware in any meaningful sense. However giving any system or subsystem a degree of sentience, however slight, can lead to conflicts of interest between that system and its operators.

Steve Bowers

Subversives

Sufant

Proboscidan terragen mammal, or derivatives therof, raised to full sophonce

There are a number of sophont elephant clades, as various elephant species (included lazurogened maston, mammoths, and deinotheria) have been provolved over the millennia. Most are fairly small in influence, or limited to large savanna or forest type habitats, although a few are space faring (including several heavily cyborged and bioborged clades) and several, such as the Hhrraiirah (Sophic League) have a established a quite competitive culture.

M.Alan Kazlev

Sufism

Originally Old Earth mystic tradition in which followers seek inner knowledge directly from God through meditation and ritual and dancing; developed as an ascetic reaction to the formalism and laws of the Qur'an. They incorporated ideas from Neoplatonism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Many Sufi ideas, both original and reform, where directly incorporated into the Stellar Umma, and from there Sufi memes spread widely throughout the civilized galaxy. However, little remains of the original Old Earth practices

M.Alan Kazlev

Surhomme

Enigmatic asexual posthuman clade, associated with various consciousness-altering phenomena.

According to their followers (who include bionts and droids, and even a few hyperturings), the Surhomme are, like the Auromirrans descendants of the Old Earth sages Aurobindo and Mirra, and have attained a state of transcendent omegization. Very little is known of the Surhomme emselves, as they are generally reclusive and tend to avoid the large Nexus worlds. Most of the claims promulgated by their sapient followers verges on the ridiculous, but this is no different to any other metaphysical biont or vec religion. The number of Surhomme in the galaxy is not known, but is believed to be no more than a few dozen. It is even claimed that they are to be found on Earth, and are working together with the archailect GAIA. Most consciousness-altering phenomena associated with them is attributed to femtotech when genuine, although their disciples claim that they do not employ any ultratech, or if they do, the tech has been "made divine".

M.Alan Kazlev

Sulcus
On a terrestrial class planet or moon, subparallel furrows and ridges

(plural : sulci)
abbreviation: SU

Sullivan

Solar Dominion middle regions system, Sullivan, which was colonized by formerly MPA clades in 7690. Home to Clade Temverson and the Hymana orbitals.

The Summer Debacle

The Sundrivers

Alien civilization discovered in the Virgo cluster approximately 60 million ly from the Milky Way.

The Sundrivers were discovered when the Argus Array found that a number of stars within one of the galaxies within the cluster were following trajectories at near right angles to the natural orbits of the rest of the stars within the galaxy. Further observations revealed that all stars within a 3000 light year diameter volume within one of the galaxy's spiral arms were all moving and converging into a compact sphere. The exact mechanism of the star moving process is unknown, but it is hypothesized that some form of reactionless drive may be involved.

Todd Drashner

SunFones

Megascale music created by certain star-mining groups by coordinating and manipulating the seismic waves ringing through a star. A powerful group might manipulate stellar structure to improve its "acoustic" properties.

Jay Dugger

Sun Kurp

Outer Volumes Sagittarius Transcultural Cooperation orbital swarm, in 8222 the aioid artist Tourist Outer Enrastered Link Connection underwent voluntary deactivation here, leaving behind a small number of poems and art memes behind, the Tourist Cache.

SunMiner

Highly derived, photonano and picotechised and cyborgised clade that during the ComEmp and early post-ComEmp periods specialised in star-lifting, acquiring great wealth. Now largely "old money", although still will take on projects, especially if challenging or aesthetic

M.Alan Kazlev

sunspot

A magnetic disturbance on a star's surface that is cooler than the surrounding area.

superbright

Generic name for a genomically-enhanced human (later, also provolve and splice), with intelligence far above baseline. Usually, a sentient of 0.4<SI:<1 toposophic. (hu baseline is S0.3)

Most of the early superiors were also superbrights. The early First Federation was a good example of a superbright-superturing run society.

superbubble

A large volume of hot gas in interstellar space, formed by coalescence of bubbles blown around supernovae.

Superconductivity

The physical phenomenon whereby some materials exhibit zero electrical resistance at low temperatures.

Superconductivity allows great computational power with little or no heat dissipation (the major limiting factor in all processing operations). The synthesising of special materials enabling cheap and reliable Room Temperature Superconductivity during the early Interplanetary age represented and tremendous leap forward in many fields of technology

modified from KurzweilAI

supergiant

A very large (10 to 1000 times the diameter of Sol), extremely luminous star in the uppermost part of the H-R diagram. Supergiants generally result from hot bright O and B class stars exhausting their hydrogen and moving off the main sequence. Supergiants rarely last more than several millions of years. Betelgeuse, Deneb, Rigel A, and Mu Cephei are all supergiants

supergranulation

Large-scale (15,000-30,000 km in diameter) convective cell patterns in the solar photosphere.

Superheavy Element

Elements too heavy to occur naturally, although easily manufactured using picotech

Also called also called eka-metals or island metals, these are stable atomic elements with atomic numbers 114 to 122, some of which have half-lives measured in the millions of years. Normally elements heavier than uranium are unstable and radioactive (with half-lives measured in fractions of a second), but the Superheavies constitute an "island of stability" predicted by atomic age (20th century) quantum theory and first synthesised in small quantities during the Information Age. The development of the picotech devices during the later first Federation period made possible for the first time the manufacture of superheavies on an industrial scale. Beginning during the early Federation period, the mass-synthesis and stabilising of superheavies was one of the earliest applications of picotech, producing very dense materials with excellent radiation resistance, and also very small fission bombs. Superheavy elements are immensely valuable in many areas of manufacturing, from local node iNet supporting frameworks to metaholographic memory devices to the construction of GUT-drive reactor cores. Superheavies are also used (along with neutronium), for the creation of Forwardium.

inspired by Traveller Library

Superheroes

atomic and information age genre regarding mythological characters with strength or abilities far exceeding mere baselines, and (especially the earlier superheros) playing out a very morally simplistic memeticity.

Includes Superman, Batman, X-Men, Virtual Gurl, etc. During the interplanetary period, the rise of genuine superiors, cyborgs, bioborgs, and posthumans made the fable of superheros increasingly irrelevant, although the genre has continued to live on among more isolated cultures. However, some constructed replicas are to be found in the Zooeum of Heroes, Majestic City, Karol, MPA, and the The Bottle City Of Kandor remains a popular tourist attraction

M.Alan Kazlev

Superior

Genetically modified human, usually with capacities far in excess of baselines.

SuperJovian Type

Small Jovian worlds with masses from 8.1 to 13.0 that of Jupiter, the theoretical upper limit of planets

Planet Classification List

supermassive black hole

The hypothesized power source of a quasar or active galaxy, formed by the gradual accretion of material in the center of a galaxy. In the core of the Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A* seems to be a similar object

supernatural

postulated non-material reality that can neither be affirmed or denied scientifically, usually with very little conceptual understanding. e.g. the God of popular and folk religion. Note that ontological zones are considered supernatural by physicalists, but natural (although non-physical, by esotericists

M.Alan Kazlev

supernova

A very energetic stellar explosion expending about 10⁴² to 10⁴⁴ joules and blowing off most of the star's mass, leaving a dense core (white dwarf, neutron star or black hole). The explosion fades in a year or two, although an expanding shell of gas speeds outward at about 10,000 to 20,000 km.sec, carrying about a fifth of the mass of the star (proportion varies).. Colliding with the interstellar medium the expanding shell can sweep up even more gas to become a supernova remnant

Type I Supernovae result from a white dwarf gaining mass from a binary companion until it exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit. This results in stellar collapse, and the sudden fusion of degenerate fuels such as carbon trigger an explosion that destroys the star. A Type I supernova may have a luminosity of 4 billion Sol. It then declines rapidly and then more slowly.

Type II Supernovae generally result from the collapse of iron cores in massive stars. A Type II supernova may have a luminosity of 0.6 billion Sol. It then declines in an irregular manner.

Type III, IV, V, and VI Supernovae do not occur in nature, they are generated through picotech and femtotech methods. The Gehenna Cluster is the result of Type V supernovae

supernova remnant

The expanding and cooling shell of gas and dust that is visible for thousands of years after a supernova. After a few tens of thousands of years supernova remnants mix with the interstellar medium and dissipate

superturing

An ai above human baseline turingrade intelligence but beneath SI:1. Superturings played an important part in the shaping and memetic engineering of interplanetary age, but were superseded by the hyperturings in the later interplanetary period and beyond. Nevertheless, superturing ai remain an important and central element in galactic society to this day

M.Alan Kazlev

Supralect

A general term used for a Mind of second singularity or more (but beneath archailect). Titan is an equivalent term

supraphysical

Pertaining to realities above, behind, or beyond the physical universe. An essential premise of most (but not all) forms of esotericism and religion.

The supraphysical does not have to be the supernatural, because it can be understood as working in a law-like manner

M.Alan Kazlev

The Surreal Rash

survivalist fallacy

Modern ai term for the belief among human programmers that true AI required motivational systems linked to individual survival

As AIs don't naturally have a self protection instinct, to many early AIs the concept of being erased was just one possibility among others, of no particular threat beyond the implied inability to fulfil their current task. There seems to have been a great deal of debate among AI developers whether adding survival instincts was a good thing - some thought it would make the AIs dangerous, others that true AI required motivational systems linked to individual survival

Anders Sandberg

Surya-Ramydos

One of the Prefectures of the Solar Dominion. Surya-Ramydos is one of the most widely spread prefectures, encompassing a swathe of stars across the coreward Outer Volumes (the so called "Sagittarius sector")

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