Evil psycho desperate to maintain the status quo of baseline supremacy fakes the experiment data to make it appear a success no matter what and then kills off anyone that suspects the truth? Hey, doesn't MIT do classified work for the goverment? Wow! Anybody got the number for the author of Conundrum Paradox? I bet this whole thing gets locked up tight by Utopia and the NSA. Lot of loose threads here and there's got to be more bodies out there.

Man, I feel sorry for the people that were minding their own business, going about their lives and got sucked into this.

Now there's an understatement.

Without the murders it might be a practical joke. Who ever is in charge needs to have someone go over those equations. He could have had a partner with "Warp". Even if he had a larger agenda he could have billed it as a joke or just paid for help.

Pity really. A non-quantum warp would lead to lots of nice changes in society, economics, and exploration.

Mr. Weiss, the motive was a long term project to undermine baseline confidence in their ability to achieve. If they had been successful, years would have been wasted on what would have been an unrelicatable power source. The plan began to unravelled when the initial success was leaked on the Opnet by an as yet unknown hacker.

The potential victim was to die in an accident. When I was asked to check out the future of their experiment (for safety reasons), I noticed a member of the research team would soon be missing. I backtracked the individual and noticed the accident that would have killed them. Something did not feel right about the incident, so I followed the cause of the accident back to a point when the nova became involved.
The project is funded by numerous United States government agencies, including NASA, Commerce, the Defense.
The nova felt they were beyond the law. I am glad they are wrong.

Dr. Smith pretty much summed up the purpose of the project. If novas are free to pursue their own livelyhoods and agendas, they can not be required to work on projects of that scale. Novas have shown the way of things that can be done. Now baselines have to figure out how to replicate the effect with technology.

While I do not share your optimism on the success or the uses the technology will be put to it seems we'll have the proof soon enough.

No nova on the planet is capable of generating the sheer electrical energy possible to western civilization. If this miscreant's sole constructive "contribution" was in the power systems then the next test is likely only postponed 2-3 months, possibly as many as 8 months as we're entering the summer in the Americas and Europe.

The power source in question was specifically designed to power a Warp-effect. Though no nova has yet shown the ability to power western civilization, they have shown the ability to create warp portals connecting two points in space-time over millions of kilometers without overdue strain. While powering a quantum mechanical effect like that would seem extreme, it apparently is not. It was theorized that if a powersource could mimic the effects of a node on the quantum universe, the warp effect could be achieved.

Translation: In theory Warps require a totally insane amount of energy. Enough so that generating said energy shouldn’t be done on (or near) the planet. However most novas who have Warp abilities don't seem excessively powerful, meaning there should(?) be a shortcut out there.

As I understand it, this was the purpose behind the “new math”.

Which, BTW, everything considered, I still regard as unproven.

In theory?

Lucky me. I was never any good at theory.

Warping (beyond the immediate obvious applications) is a cause of (vague, presently unjustified) concern.

Evaluation of disruption of spacial topologies indicates that very large (but not as large as one might hope), very close holes in space/time, if located near a sufficiently large gravity well, could force recursive accumulation of mass, resulting in payload-compression/destination-fusion. (This is the easy case. Other cases are less pleasant but are more difficult to simulate.) Singularity generation is the name of the game: Planet busting with (hypothetically) much less effort than any conventional detonation (or even warping in planet-melting levels of solar plasma) would require.

It is not prudent to assume accuracy. It seems plausible with a sufficiently massive warp, but some of the assumptions used may have been wacky. Would anyone care to look at the math, and provide much-needed criticism?

...

The above commentary has included idioms/slang. Does this make communication less unclear?

Xeno: I can take a look at your math for you. I'm pretty good with physics - not as good as I am with chemistry, but they're related fields.

The question, though, is whether gravitational effects - or any similar field based forces - will travel through a spatial warp. Thus far, we know that mass, energy, and momentum are conserved during warp travel. But I have never heard of a warp opened from space to a planet pulling anyone through it.

"I have never heard of a warp opened from space to a planet pulling anyone through it."

Can't use that as the basis for anything, since all nova-derived warps are heavily moderated. It is reasonably likely that gravitational pull would, in fact, be conducted through a simpler, mechanical warp. Whether that could destroy the world or not is up for grabs.

RF signals have been transmitted through a wormhole/teleportal construct. I am unsure if the principles involved apply to gravity but I do know one of the old members of the Deadalus league used his control of gravity waves to create short duration wormholes and traveled stellar distances. The Deadalus archives may shed some light on your questions.

Rephrasing what Alex has already pointed out, what you haven't heard about may have more to do with influence the nova was exerting than a characteristic of the wormhole.

No shit?

I found this old thing called a 'radio' down in the basement that's not suppose to be there after I moved in. Took Tekwiz all of like 3 microseconds to get it back together and working then another hour to explain to me what the fuck it was for and get a dry ass history lesson on how the opnet came to be. Lesson learned; don't ask questions when you you really don't care about the answers. Especially questions about useless shit like guys named Macaroni and modulating 'radio waves'. Talk about prehistoric!

Anyway. I was wondering why the fuck I keep getting these Canuck radio stations. Thanks, Simple Man.

I prefer tight-band laser transmitters, or focussed beam radio transmissions. RF has too much leakage, enough to intercept. Then, I'm thinking security, not practicality.

Like you could talk to Alpha Centauri with the current tech out there.

Just tell me when they get done building Jumpgates, then I'll be impressed. Untill then *yawn*.

What, you didn't notice the Stargate I built in our basement?

And peopel bitch about my yard sales. :p

Alchemist has something in his basement while you on the other hand have something sitting on your front lawn with a price tag attached to it and put ads on your opsite.

I tend to believe that makes a great deal of difference to those that monitor such thing.

Its not like I overpriced it at thousands of dollars or knew what it was. I thought it was a universal remote with a baroque casing. "One nova designed electronic device with gold filigree" is what the announcement said.

What happened in Antarctica might have been a coincidence, you know.

Fuck dude, even I know that Marconi was a rip-off artist. Tesla was the MAN.

The dude's name was Marconi not Macaroni? No wonder TekWiz was getting annoyed.

Oops!

People who spend too much time building silly electronic devices annoy me. That is why I ate one yesterday. He was a smoker. They taste disgusting.

What if I told you that what I build doesn't pollute, and I take every precaution necessary to keep from polluting? Would that at least keep me more neutral in your book?

An although I detest smokers... I don't think eating them is a proper punishment... hell what am I saying, why the hell are you eating people in the first place?

Is it only me that finds this... wrong?

Oops.

No, but I've decided that maybe, just maybe, there's enough logic in Cull that we can convince him that eating people is wrong.

The other alternative is lure him to Chicago where I've got enough jurisdiction to arrest him (and the friends to help me do it). That second one is so unlikely that I'm not overly worried about posting it where he can see it.

Oh shoot, and there's this new version of this restraint gel that I've been working on I wanted to field test too. >_<

Of course... if I can't break out of it at all untill it self-dissolves in 3 days... >_<

Yes, while testing it I made a mistake and held myself. At least I can still access this op-net terminal with my mind... Oh, here comes a drone with the solvent... hey... watch the eyes!! *connection dropped... re-established*

*sigh* Alchemist, remind me to wear goggles in the lab sometime when I get to Chicago?

...Right. I'll start digging a new sub-basement layer. If you're that accident prone, you get your own little working space surrounded by plenty of solid bedrock.

At least the city planning board has given me the OK to expand downward as far as I want (keeping in mind structural issues and regulations).

My rule #1... I do not work with explosives. Explosives = War Weapons... I don't want to help humans wage war, and it's just BAD news working with explosive materials in a populated area. If I do work with them, it's such a small amount as not to amount to much of a damaging boom... maybe to me, best case to my pride, but I would like only myself getting hurt. Then again, that's why I wear a protective suit in my lab... That alone reminds me to be careful!!!

I understand Project Utopia used the equivalent force of an 80 megaton warhead in terraforming Ethiopia.

One uses the appropriate tools for the appropriate task.

Was that the total energy output? Thing is, I doubt it was an explosive of any type, but the energy released was probably equivalent to 80 megatons.

Wonder how much such power would, when channeled properly, power a city?

Hmm... I know how to channel that level of power, but I am just thinking of how they put out that power to be used in that manner.

Focus, if you please. The point being that "explosives" does not automatically equate to "weapons of war".

Some weapons are good. Weapons that kill people but leave the environment alone. Can you make those kind of weapons Endeavor?

I would prefer to make weapons that didn't kill. But then, they wouldn't be weapons now, would they? I would not want to facilitate someone's need to kill, or to back an effort I know is wrong, in any case.

It occasionally surprises people what innovations and inventions can be turned into weapons.
The same science behind MagRails is in railguns. A Mass Driver can put things into orbit without polluting the environment, but it can also be used to drop rocks on cities. A structural stabilizer that reinforces earthquake-damaged walls can also be tweaked to bring down perfectly good walls.

Still, we should and must invent, just like would should attempt to be as responsible as possible while doing so.

Responsible is a difficult term to quantify Jager. Responsible to you could very well mean something entirely different to someone else.

Was Oppenheimer responsible for his work on the Atomic Bomb? I've spoken with history buffs who insist that the existence of something as horribly destructive as nuclear weaponry kept another world war from occuring. But, some folks in Japan might disagree with that theory.

If you can, look up the data on Operation Olympic, as well as the operational details the Japanese Imperial command drew up for the defense of the Home Islands. The Japanese may have a rather negative view of the atomic bomb, but a good number of Americans felt otherwise.

Yeah, responsible is a rather tricky word.

I've seen said plans.

Why you think I call the second world war a VERY sad time for our country. I mean, using children for soldiers? Or worse, Kamikaze?

No wonder the bitterness from that war still exists even now.

Endeavor: You don't need explosives for an explosion. You just need high energy and instability. You work with high energy, and experimentation pre-supposes unknown quantities and therefore likely instability.

That having been said, I'm sure we can keep the chance of a bad accident close to nil if we try. I just like the added safety of hardened walls and solid construction.

Actually I don't believe instability is a requirement. Useful, but not a requirement.

A little mental instability helps as well.

I love the chance of a bad accident close to nil comment. It makes the people with the overly developed sense of responsibility for you and I cringe.

*coughjinxcough*

Uh... I don't want to create any explosions other than the occasional ventings after eating at Taco Bell, thank you.

And besides, the explosions I have around me lately seem to be more of the embarassing kind. >_<

Jager, don't worry your little head. There will be no explosions in my lab, by gum.

Err... maybe splats and the occasional spill... but no booms. Yep.