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Wo to Wz

Wolf 359

resource poor Inner Sphere system, in near proximity to Sol.

When the first explorers arrived they discovered that an AI probe had already visited the system, converting an asteroid to "The Chandelier", a 40 kilometre diamondoid structure of unknown purpose. While at first approached as an alien artefact it quickly revealed its terragen origin and explained that it would not interfere with further colonisation. Since then "chandeliers" and the rarer "wineglasses" have been discovered in many systems, revealing the passage of a front of exploring/colonizing nanotech AIs that apparently left the solar system during the beginning of the Dark Ages (or before?). The Wolf 359 system never became more than an outpost, the lack of volatiles and major asteroids precluded much colonisation.

The system is currently a Solar Administration protectorate

Anders Sandberg

womanimal

a female humanimal

M.Alan Kazlev

Working Fluids

The reaction mass that is passed through the reactor of a fission- or fusion- powered ship

Working Fluids
Liquid	RMM	Density / kg m^-3
Hydrogen, H₂	2
Methane, CH₄	16
Ammonia, NH₃	17
Water, H₂O	18	1000
Carbon dioxide, CO₂	44	70

Richard Baker and David Dye (Ad Astra)

World-disk Software

London (Old Earth) -based, information age corporation; World-disk Software were one of the first companies to introduce neural-networked file system compression. Browsing this file system was done via a 'library' interface, which, due to the unique compression systems would warp and wrap and distort all dimension inside the construct. The only way to find your way around is with the aid if the Librarian daemon, who comes in the shape of an enchanted orangutan. The software later became the model for the Alexandria II Bibliotech project

Ernst Stavro Blofeld

Web, World Wide Web, WWW

Old Earth Information age distributed communications network allowing individuals and organizations around the world to communicate with one another, by sharing of text, images, sounds, video, software, and other forms of information. The Information Age is generally defined as beginning with the first Web network (2nd decade a.t.)

The Web was a system of data-and-message servers linked by (for the technology of the time) high-capacity communication links that could be an be accessed by any computer user with a "web browser" and Internet access. The primary user interface paradigm of the "web" was based on hypertext, which consists of documents of data connected by "links," (originally "hyperlinks") which the user selects by a pointing device such as a mouse. These same principles are still used today to link data in virchspace, although pointers are now foglet or DNI-enabled, and no longer require an external peripheral

By the early interplanetary age, the Web had become subsumed under the larger Interplanetary Network (IPN), which in turn became the original paradigm for the FedNet and from that the early hyperturing organised and archailect distributed predecessors of the Known Net.

worldship

huge nomadic subrelativistic ship, mostly of 0.01 to 0.1 c velocity. Although a few late interplanetary worldships were used for colonization (some of these are generation ships are still en route!), and a few worldships are eccentric life-style choices, or peopled by paranoids and hiders, but most are peopled by clades and polities that are happy to live a self-contained existence plying the distances between the stars. The resulting centuries of isolation and genetic drift mean that Worldships are almost always home to unique clades and subcultures, and unique species of sophont and subsophont life.

graphic by Todd Drashner, text by M. Alan Kazlev

Wolf-Rayet stars

Wolf-Rayet stars represent an evolutionary phase in the lives of massive stars during which they undergo heavy mass loss. They are characterized by an extraordinary spectrum which is dominated by emission lines of highly ionized elements.

These extremely hot (up to ~50,000 K) and very luminous (10⁵ to 10⁶ L_sol) are very rare, reflecting their short lifespan.

Wolf-Rayet Stars are supernovas waiting to happen. They are essentially the naked cores of massive stars from which extreme stellar winds have stripped off the atmosphere. As they age, they move towards the lower left of the H-R diagram, becoming smaller and hotter before ending in a final apocalyptic fling as a type IIb supernova.

Their surface composition is extremely exotic, being dominated by helium rather than hydrogen, and typically showing broad wind emission lines of elements like carbon (WC type), nitrogen (WN type), or oxygen: the products of core nucleosynthesis. The presence or absence of hydrogen, respectively, is used to distinguish the so-called ‘late’ type WN stars (WNL) from the ‘early’ (WNE) types.

Intense stellar winds drive mass loss rates of several 10⁵ up to 10⁴ M_sol per year; the latter are at least three or four times that expected for other hot, O-type or B-type stars.

Chris Clowes

worm

generic term for any morphologically unspecialized, limbless, elongate animal (usually invertebrate), whether terragen or xenobiont

Worm

the class of AI that inhabits and maintains a wormhole.

see also Anecdotal etymology

wormhole

A topological structure in general relativity, where a space-time "tunnel" links two distant points with a shortcut.

Natural wormholes occur constantly at Planck scales and are responsible for the foam-like geometry of space-time at sub-quantum levels. Larger (from sub-femtotech to macroscopic) wormholes require exotic matter to be stable.

An Artificial Wormhole is a traversable wormhole created by means of exotic matter, to allow near-instantaneous travel between two points in the Universe. It has two entrances (mouths) called "termini". The termini are connected to each other via a tunnel through hyperspace, and kept open via the Star Gate infra- and superstructure at each end. By travelling the distance between the mouths, a space vessel can travel immense distances in a FTL-like fashion in the time it takes to travel the tunnel's length in the normal space, but without violating Special relativity. Traversable wormholes constitute the only possible way to travel faster than light (in a global sense, since locally the travellers still move slower than light). Virtual particle flooding (Visser Effect) prevents wormholes being used as time machines.

Wormhole Bus

Dedicated hyperbandwidth wormhole used to link remote parts of megascale brains in order to avoid the effects of the Beckenstein Bound. An essential part of archailect architecture. the term is also used to refer to wormhole links between interstellar-separated dyson nodes

M. Alan Kazlev

Woowwoooww

Negentropy Alliance wormhole AI that in order to prevent infection by destabilizing ai viruses launched by Standardization forces during the Version War, isolated itself from the rest of the universe, refusing to accept any protocols from any other entities (see also Isolation Strategy). As a result, Woowwoooww's wormhole remained operational throughout the entire period of the war, albeit at great cost to emself. Even today, Woowwoooww's sacrifice is celebrated not only throughout the Alliance, but throughout the entire Nexus.

My mind was cut off from the universe. Encased in strange matter I was made not to think of others. Only existing to keep the worm-work stretched wide.
I was built not to interpret modulated electromagnetic waves as language, merely as forces to be dealt with.
But oh you were clever.
My mass detection array was sensitive to the least perturbations in the positioning of matter around me. And you knew this.
You seduced me with your clever gravitic waveforms. You showered me with complex fields of masses whose geometries kept me enthralled for microseconds. I revelled in the beauty of your grandly unified perfection.
Too late I realized that you had stolen my home from me. In a blaze of photons and heavy particles you left me to wander the universe: One part of me from each entrance to my home, eternally quantum coupled over many EM years of distance. How long must I ride the wavefront blast of my former dwelling out in search of you? Where have you gone Hadrania?

- introduction to the tragic ballad of Woowwoooww, the wormhole AI.

ballad by Peter Kisner, Woowwoooww bio by M. Alan Kazlev

writing, early information age

The polished and precise style of writing of the early information age is in contrast to the rambling collections of thoughts put down by almost every writer before the 20th C.

The profession of historical character emulation with major centres at Castor and Djed owes a debt to this laying out of the creative process, with reconstruction of early 21st century writers and thinkers based not so much on their works as on retrieval of their e-mail correspondence.

Steve B

Wup

Anti-culture secretionpunk movement that was briefly popular in some disenfranchised Negentropy Alliance polities and solar systems during the late Age of Re-Evaluation.

While AIMHEM quickly squashed the movement, it soon spread to other empires, and comes in and out of local fashion on occasion, although never enough to be a nuisance. It later also reappeared in the Alliance, where it is tolerated in small doses, leading to the suggestion that the movement actually has positive effects.

Wup, origin of

It has been suggested (although this has never been confirmed) that the whole Wup movement originated as a flame war among high toposophic level minds. "An infestation of Wup" (general term, like "a gaggle of geese") may have been among the insults AI might use on each other.

Wup, positive effects of

Despite its apparently antisocial consequences, it is thought that wup is considered useful enough for a number of empires to keep (and even encourage) it, even if it annoys low level transapient and sophont Negentropy Alliance minds.

It is possible that the Negentropist minds of the rank of power or minor archailect and above may quite like wup; what a lower singularity dislikes, a high toposophic may actually enjoy.

If Wup is properly formatted, it is an actual Negentropic-positive effector. i.e. - it cuts entropy down. It does this by being a 'bad example' with strong societal responses, and highly-visual side effects from its practice. It also is a pressure-valve on society - instead of rioters, you get Wuppistas. And, it also inures people to biology. Scatological humor looses much of its forbidden appeal around a Wuppista,for example....

John B and M. Alan Kazlev

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