A Brief Treatise on the Cosmology
of Hyperspace, for Space Adventurers
by Indigal Black Spiral, Senior Cosmologist.
Published in Big Truths, New
Galactic Year 4,000,908,786.414
Every
intelligent species evolved in a state of nature for untold millions of years
before it found the slightest interest in building starships and conquering the
cosmos. Evolution shaped our brains in
such a way as to enable our ancient predecessors to find energy, produce
offspring, and escape death. We all
began this way- wormlike or medusoid, catlike or avian, blob or walking tree,
net or monkey. We were in the business
of catching prey, seducing mates, hiding eggs, capturing sunlight, feeding on
electrons, reducing sulphur, and escaping the things that wanted to use it as
food. Dealing with other intelligent
beings, friend and foe, conspecific and otherwise, honed our minds as well, and
gave us the ability to think about the abstract intentions of others. We overcome incredible obstacles to go on
interstellar voyages, and each sapient species follows its own path.
The sense
organs of this hypothetical ancestor are attuned to its immediate needs. Anything extra is an expensive or dangerous
distraction. Heightened cosmological
awareness, or even an inappropriate fascination with shiny things, could get it
killed, or at the very least, cost it energy it needed to grow. It is for this reason that most sapient
beings sense the world in three dimensions.
This is no great cosmic mystery.
Prey swim around in three dimensions.
Rain, clouds, mountains, and burrows are three dimensional
constructs. Because time has the
asymmetric arrow of causality, guiding our present continuously along a maze of
possible futures, this other dimension seems a thing into itself. Seasons come and go and come again, things
die and do not come back, and this other thing, time, is a spiral that keeps
going and going. Our creature sees
space, and senses time, but to it, there is no spacetime.
Sapient
beings are almost inevitably social in one respect or another. The demands of group living induce the
evolution of more complex minds. It is
impossible for a single sapient being to develop science alone. Group life affirms our sense that the world
we perceive is, in fact, real, and that it is the same world perceived by
others.
If you are
familiar enough with cosmology to take an interest in this treatise, you are
aware that nothing can be farther from the truth. We see what we think we see based upon sense
organs evolved for very practical purposes, and the information is cobbled
together into a coherent narrative of the world that we come to believe, even
though it is a fiction. The universe our
senses present to us is a fiction, written by evolution, for a species that no longer
exists, on a world likely demolished by the sapient beings that arose from it.
My own
sensory experience seems relevant here.
As a Uruquar, my ancestors lived, by the thousands, in mud tunnels by
the sea. We sensed electrical currents
in the muddy salt waters of our home, we smelled the rush of seasonal floods
coming through our burrows, we sensed vibrations in the land above us and
below. To raise the top of one’s head to
the surface and gaze out at the heavens with our pineal eye was to see the
stars and cosmos, but what did we really see?
There is a pattern of lights in the sky that mark the seasons of our
world, and the tides that come and go with the wanderings of its two moons, but
for untold eons, we saw magical eggs in an endless sea.
Our pineal
eye did not evolve to recognize our red suns for what they are, enormous balls
of plasma, or our moons for what they are, frozen rocky orbs nearly the size of
worlds in their own right, or the stars for what they are, enormous balls of
plasma strewn by the trillions in a spiral mist that is a great galaxy among
many other great galaxies, in a universe, that lies parallel to so many others
along the axes of invisible dimensions that are present everywhere but
impossible to senses. As we grew to understand
the universe through science, our senses maintained this fiction even as the
facts contradicted it. Our minds
struggled to understand the difference between what we see and what is actually
going on. We built burrows on land to
master fire and discovered the means to channel electricity through wires, but
the stars looked the same. We
discovered a theory of gravitation and a theory of electromagnetism, but the
stars looked the same. Since we are
electrical creatures in our mind eye, it was through electricity that we
discovered the cosmos. Sathran kind
never reached for the stars the way humanity did. We reached into the microcosmos with our
wires.
I hear
from a human friend that, to a man, the Uruquari homeworld presents a lovely
night sky. Our world sits above the
plane of a giant spiral galaxy. There
are stars bright enough to cast shadows.
With his mind, a human can form a mental picture of a forest with tree
trunks and leaves and things living in those trees. Some part of him looks for places to climb,
like his ancestors, and his mind is well suited for the task. He uses his eyes. I struggle with pronouns here because
Uruquari do not come in male and female and I truly cannot understand why this
hypothetical human must have a sex.
Sexual creatures see dichotomies easily, and imagine false ones just as
easily. Humans see. Uruquqri sense. To a human, dipping a toe into the pond is a
symbolic act. Perhaps the human’s toe feels cold. It feels something very bland and uninformative
called “wet”. A Uruquar dips a nose into
the water and forms a picture of every reed, all the mud and the creatures
burrowing in it, every tunnel running to and fro, the way the water
drains. To early human scientists,
electrons were negatively charged particles orbiting atomic nuclei. To early Uruquari scientists, electrons were
a very small class of tunnels. It was
the nature of the electron that led Uruquari to a scientific understanding of
cosmology. For humanity, it was
observation of galaxies.
Neither a
human nor a Uruquar can see, or even imagine a complete picture of the
universe, and yet we use science to build models of it. We test those models even thought they drive
us to illogical conclusions, and a picture emerges. Here is a model of the universe, built by the
science of many species. This model is
of tremendous practical significance, because we can use it to find potential
ways to move from one part of the cosmos to another without actually crossing
the space between. We have a word for
the matrix of connections between worlds this cosmos enables. We call it the
Void Matrix.
The
particular universe you inhabit has three space-like dimensions and one
time-like dimension. It is finite, in
three dimensions, but inconceivably large.
If you were to travel for long enough in any given direction, thousands
of trillions of light years, you would come back to the same place. It has gotten considerably larger in the time
it took you to read this sentence, but it remains finite. With respect to the one time like dimension,
it is bounded on one end, the past, but not on the other, the future. This is rather unusual. Most universes have closed time loops as
well, some of rather short duration. Your
universe also has seven small-scale dimensions compressed within it, each one
finite, and closed on a very small scale.
These dimensions are invisible to you, but they are responsible for the
behavior of subatomic particles.
Universes without compressed small dimensions do not have particles, like
electrons or protons There are also
dimensions that transcend universes. We
call them Z dimensions, because, according to mathematical convention, a Z axis
is orthogonal to the x and y axes.
Universes
typically have eight to fifteen dimensions, of which one to five are expanded
to very large scales, or are infinite.
Of these, from zero to two are time-like, and expanded. Most universes are finite in all dimensions,
but some are not. Many are small, but
just as many are inconceivably vast.
There are universes that repeat time every few moments. There are universes without time. There are many one-dimensional universes, all
of which are finite strings. There are a
great many known universes. The vast
majority of these are uninhabitable by any known for of life. Some universes host forms of life very
different from our own. Some are filled
with black holes. Others are full of
exotic matter, with negative light and antigravity. In some, time flows backward relative to
others. As different as they are, these
universes all share relationships with each other due to their relative
positions in the hyperspace manifold.
Let’s
consider a single universe for a moment, ours.
Using whatever organ serves as your mind, compress its dimensions into a
two dimensional sheet. If he universe is
finite in both of these two dimensions, that universe now takes the form of a
spheroid in hyperspace, because the curvature in two Z dimensions is
responsible for the sheet bending back on itself. The larger cosmos beyond our universe extends
in at least nine dimensions that transcend universes. We call them Z dimensions. Our universe is like a bubble in a pond full
of bubbles. There are bubbles within
bubbles. The bubbles are universes. The
ponds are hyperspace. Hyperspace is any space considered when a Z dimension
enters the picture. These bubbles are
all separated from each other along Z dimensions, and float in hyperspace. This curving sheet of spacetime that makes up
the surface of our bubble is made up not just of every object in the universe,
it is made up of every object that has ever existed, or could have ever existed
in this universe. These quantum
possibilities, different timelines, are layered together in a structure, such
that every state in it is a universe exists because of the states surrounding
make it possible. These quantum aspects
of the two-dimensional sheet that makes up our bubble can be thought of as
arranged on an axis of rotation. This
axis of rotation is actually a specific Z dimension-the z dimension orthogonal
to the universe’s time like dimension.
Universes with no time like dimension lack such an axis, and are
naturally frozen in a single state-at a fixed angle. Universes with more than one time like
dimension are chaotic, and no object can be properly said to exist. Rotate an object in your universe a small
amount, and it enters a state very close to the original. If a point in reality is rotated in these
quantum dimensions, it alternates among the different universes that were
possible for it. Rotate yourself a
millionth of an arc second. Perhaps you
didn’t swallow that sea worm earlier, put off the process of setting seed, or
had tea rather than coffee when you woke up this morning. Rotate yourself another millionth of a
degree, and perhaps you have a deep scar, are very wealthy, or are dead. Few objects in any universe survive the
rotation of a full degree.
This
aspect of spacetime is essential to interstellar voyages. Meaningful travel in hyperspace implies that
the object, perhaps a starship and its crew, retain its integrity. Thus, its angle of rotation must be preserved
as it traverses the wormhole and establishes itself at its destination. Special devices are required for this. The Aker Ming autotorque, is such a
device. In essence, this device records
the essential connection of the transported objects to their past and possible
futures. During hyperspace travel, many
sapient beings experience déjà vu, or even mental hallucinations of other
realities. This is because the rotation
of the object experiences a “wobble” during passage through a wormhole. Particularly sensitive sapients sense enough
information to construct mental pictures of the alternate timelines that are
close to their angle of rotation
Malfunctioning Z drive augmentors produce a common and often tragic
misjump phenomenon, where the ship reaches a destination in alternate reality. There are several famous cases of starships
emerging from jump space and crashing into alternate versions of
themselves. Impressive, Thune stargates
were constructed to use this phenomenon intentionally, to connect to alternate
realities within the same universe. The
Thune homeworld, Reptilicus, is said to have been connected to sixteen
alternate realities of itself, all in communication, and connected by the
constant travel of Thunes and their artifacts.
Once
again, consider our bubble. Universes of
any scale or magnitude have many convolutions, involutions, folds, ripples, and
yes, wormholes. In addition, other
universes are layered above and below it like the mud strata of a pond. A given point in any universe is likely to
convoluted in such a way that very distant places are close in hyperspace. Humans have thermoregulatory artifacts called
blankets. Any given universe is like an
erratically folded blanket, and the layer above or below in z space is likely
very far away in spacetime. This is an
essential aspect of the void matrix that makes astrogation both interesting and
challenging. In any given planetary
system, the hyperspace manifold is such that traversable wormholes can be
created to a limited set of destinations.
Some places are highly folded, with many possible connections, other
places are flat, with few or none. There
is little correspondence between distance in spacetime and hyperspace
connectivity. Two planetary systems just
a few light years away may be on opposite ends of the void matrix, or
permanently isolated from each other, because of the curvature of
spacetime. Neighbors in the void matrix
are therefore likely to be in distant galaxies, or neighboring universes.
Two
universes can exist very close to each other along a Z axis. That is to say,
two universes can be very close together in hyperspace. The only physical force that acts in Z
dimensions is gravity. This aspect of
the cosmos produces the so-called “dark matter” phenomenon. Universes close to our own possess matter
densities that exert gravitational attraction in their own spacetime and also in hyperspace. Galaxies in nearby parallel universes exert
mutual gravitation such that they tend to overlap each other. In many cases, a series of parallel galaxies
may sit on top of each other in hyperspace, bound by their own gravity and by
the gravity that bleeds through from parallel dimensions. Thus, the so called “dark matter” of a
galaxy-the matter present in parallel universes but still gravitationally significant,
can exceed the matter in a galaxy by an order of magnitude or more. Fortunately, gravitation attenuates through
hyperspace, and universes crushed into a series of black holes by dark matter
are rare.
The
universe bubble we have created, in our hyperspace pond, is highly convoluted
and involuted. In addition, it is filled
with many bubbles, and surrounded by many as well. A typical involution of our bubble might have
entirely different universe curled up within it. Thus, there are regions of spacetime where Z
drive travel to other universes is possible.
In fact, there are many places in space where arrays of parallel
universes are very proximate to our own, and navigable by spacecraft with
fairly standard designs. The so called
“Trade Corridors” of the Void Matrix are such areas. Deep involutions of our universe produce
concentrations of dark matter. Dark
matter is simply the gravitational influence of matter in universes close to
our own in z space. Attracted to common
centers of gravity, because their involutions are parallel, galaxies in several
parallel universes fall into these regions and concentrate there. Theses strands of galactic clusters are the
largest structures in the each of these universes. Major hubs of communication in the Void
Matrix are almost inevitably strung along these hyperspace folds. Their strategic importance in economic,
cultural, and military conflict cannot be underestimated.
As
cultures accumulate the scientific knowledge necessary to engage in
interstellar travel, they inevitably formulate a theory to explain the
relationship between gravity, spacetime, and the speed of light. One manifestation of a successful theory is
the existence of gravity wells. Human
and K’tarra scientists call this relationship “relativity”. Gravity distorts spacetime, and this
distortion can be imagined as a divot in a two dimensional sheet. Large concentrations of mass produce deep
divots. Deep divots produce strong
distortions of spacetime. Very deep
divots effectively create tunnels to other universes, or regions of the
universe that have folded over it in hyperspace. We call these tunnels wormholes. In the vicinity of a gravity well, spacetime
is curved in a Z dimension, either positively, or negatively. In these places, time runs slower than
outside. Objects are distorted, relative
to those outside the well. These effects
are precisely the same as the “time dialation” effects observed when two
objects move with respect to each other at speeds approaching the speed of
light. This is because the spacetime
distortions produce analogous displacements in z space. Distortions in spacetime produce predictable,
reproducible effects that can be emulated by the right devices. For a nascent technological civilization,
this insight is a first step to the void matrix.
Gravity
wells have profound effects on hyperspace travel. When plotting a jump through hyperspace, most
astrogators prefer to place their spacecraft outside the vicinity of deep
gravity wells. It is not that gravity
wells keep Z drives from functioning (a common misconception among humans
especially). It is that gravity wells
profoundly augment the direction and amplitude of Z jumps.
Black
holes are a class of physical phenomenon common to many universes. As naturally occurring wormholes, they have
profound implications to the ultramacroscopic cosmos. A black hole is, by definition, a
concentration of matter such that spacetime is distorted deep enough in the Z
dimension such that a wormhole opens up and inflates a bubble in
hyperspace. The singularity manifests
itself as a point or disk singularity bounded by a three-dimensional structure
(actually a two dimensional sheet warped into an oblate sphere) called an event
horizon. Some basic geometry is called
for here. Two lines meet at a point. Two planes meet at a line. Two three dimensional areas meet in a
plane. When higher dimensional objects
meet, the intersection is a solid in a universe reduced by one dimension,
called a brane. An event horizon is a
brane-the boundary between a three dimensional universe and a one dimensional
universe. Any object that enters an
event horizon leaves its original universe and enters a wormhole bounded on one
side by the event horizon and on the other end by the singularity. By definition, any matter entering a
singularity degenerates and looses it rotation in the space-time continuum,
effectively being annihilated. Black
holes are of tremendous importance the overall cosmology of the multiverse,
however. It is well established that the
flow of degenerate matter into singularities effectively transfers it into
hyperspace, establishing and inflating other universes as a result.
Artificial
distortions of the space-time continuum are at the heart of every method of
faster than light travel. Nearly every Z
drive works on the following principle; gravity produces distortions in
spacetime along a Z axis orthogonal to spacetime. Advanced technological cultures sometimes
discover techniques to convert radiant, or electromagnetic energy to
gravitational energy. The most common
technique is to create reinforcing gravity waves. Another technique uses exotic photons. Sufficient gravitational disturbance can be
shaped to distort spacetime sufficiently to create a topological tunnel. This tunnel can connect to another place in
the same universe, or to a parallel universe.
It is no coincidence that the first spaceships with faster than light
technology often have early versions of artificial gravity aboard. Transforming energy to gravitation is an
essential to both technologies. Z
drives, specifically function by creating a distortion of the space-time
continuum by surrounding the spacecraft in a (usually spherical) brane and
mutually transposing the contents with those of another place in the universe
or in a parallel universe. Only the most
advanced Z drives attempt the latter. A
Z drive has a jump core, which, when powered by sufficient energy, distorts
spacetime in a spherical area surrounding the starship. The surface of this sphere is a brane. The tunnel is not a three dimensional
structure. It exists in higher
dimensions. The spherical brane
surrounding the ship is simultaneously both ends of the hyperspace tunnel,
separated along a Z axis determined by the energy density of the bubble.
Accelerating
the Z drive generator or exposing it to a gravity well affects the orientation
of this wormhole in hyperspace.
Controlling the exact properties of this wormhole is the means by which
it is shaped to connect two precise locations that can be millions of light
years away, or billions. Depending upon
the nature of the tunnel, time may pass inside the bubble during the passage
through the wormhole, and not pass outside.
Any combination of relative rates of time passage is possible, though
typical wormholes used for interstellar travel exist for a few seconds, and no
more, inside the wormhole and perhaps a few standard weeks or months
outside. The reverse may be true as
well. Wormholes that connect alternate
universes may experience no time while time passes, either in the same
direction or in opposite directions, on opposite ends of the wormhole. Thus, when travelling to certain alternate
universes, the ship experiences the perception of travel backwards through
time.
Wormholes
are energetically expensive to create, and require highly advanced technology
to manipulate. Even in sophisticated
starships, the Z drive typically occupies a great deal of mass and consumes a
high proportion of that vessel’s energy budget.
As Z drives increase in sophistication, they confer more possibilities
to travel between destinations.
Primitive Z drives function only in rare, difficult to reach locations
of spacetime, such as the immediate vicinity of supermassive black holes. More sophisticated Z drives may confer three
of four different options for travel from a typical G1 solar mass sun near the
center of an elliptical galaxy. More
advanced drives can reach nearly every region of most galaxy types. The most advanced known drives can seamlessly
create passages to the surface of other planets, sometimes in alternate
realities. There no obvious linear
relationship between the energy density, and the duration of the wormhole, and
the distance it travels in spacetime.
Remember
that a so called “jump bubble” is a closed universe in its own right. It is bounded in three dimensions. There have been cases of combat, where a
pursuing starship entered the jump bubble created by its adversary. Both ships emerged destroyed-the energy of
their weapon salvos did not dissipate as they would in a normal universe, and
annihilated both primitive combatants.
Hyperwave
communication utilizes particle-wave packets that can be induced to travel in Z
dimensions, through hyperspace. Some of
these so-called “tachyons” will reflect against a neighboring universe and
bounce back in Z space to the sender.
Thus, jump routes can be predicted on the basis of hyperwave probes.
Let us
take a look at the controls of your starship for a moment. You may notice that much of the fuel reserves
are dedicated to the Z drive. They are
either hydrogen and helium of certain isotopic compositions, for the purpose of
thermonuclear fusion, or antimatter.
Antimatter, naturally, demands a containment vessel. If your ship is truly sophisticated, it draws
energy directly from universes with higher free energy. Jump cores are usually iridium or lanthanum
coils configured to create opposing electronic and positronic currents. This is the operating principle of all
antigravity. Pulsed correctly, a “shell”
of currents can create reinforcing gravitational distortions that create a
wormhole. Thus, even for the most
sophisticated starship, a wormhole cannot be opened instantaneously, It takes time to “power up”. You have some version of an autotorque-a
wormhole would destroy a starship otherwise, reducing it to entropy as its
contents were transposed. You probably
use hyperwave telemetry to bounce tachyons off of masses of dark matter,
exploring potential jump routes. If not,
you follow preprogrammed jump coordinates in Z space, knowing that as galaxies
drift, these are bound to change. Your
Z drive is probably configured to jump in from one to nine increments, each
consuming more energy than the last.
That is because stable wormholes are “quantized”, and intermediate
energy states are not stable. Unless you
currently orbit a supermassive black hole, the center of a globular cluster, or
an unusual dark matter galaxy such as Lundmark’s Nebula, you probably have from
one to six hyperspace routes available to you.
I can guarantee, there are additional routes you are not aware of.
Some
creatures are blessed with truly pan dimensional sensory awareness. On Palain, the inhabitants can sit on an icy
spire and extend a tentacle into a neighboring universe as easily as one of us
might rise to the surface for a breath of air.
To a Palanian, we are as blind as worms.
Palanian evolutionary history occurs in a distant universe with much
different parameters than our own, where a sense of the z dimension, sensory
organs that function in hyperspace, was a needed for everyday survival. You are probably not this type of
creature. Palanians and their kind never
build starships. Technology develops out
of need. Where there is no need there is no desire to innovate.
By
convention, hyperspace wormholes are classed by the energy needed to create
them. Among the Syndot speaking human
worlds, these are classed by archaic numerals, I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII, each
increasing by an order of magnitude in terms of the energy density needed to
create it.
Let us
review the terminology of the Void Matrix.
It is a continuous manifold, but for purposes of mapmaking, it is broken
into “nodes” of various sizes. A node is a tangle of worlds connected by
hyperspace jumps of relatively low intensity, usually I to III. There is usually a very loose correspondence between
the worlds of a node, and their astrographic location in the cosmos. Only certain jumps are possible, and the
denizens of a starfaring world may stare at the heavens and never reach the
nearest stars, but travel by hyperspace to other galaxies.
Nodes are
connected by a limited number of higher energy jumps, usually 1V to VII or
higher. Many of these jumps are only
possible in the vicinity of unusual stellar objects, such as neutron stars or
black holes.
A number
of nodes, sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds, make up an octant. Octants of the void matrix are separated by
unusual jumps-ones that bridge large distances of spacetime, or alternate or
parallel universes. Your 66 Suns, by our
reckoning, rest within the sixth octant or the first sector of the thirteenth
zone of the first domain of the Void Matrix.
You enter
the void matrix with at least six thousand other known sapient species. Humanity is only one. Perhaps you are engaging in interstellar
trade. Perhaps your vessel is
military. Perhaps your mission is
scientific or intended to promote the survival of your species. Perhaps you seek adventure among the stars
for its own sake. The Void Matrix connects
more than sixty one trillion worlds, in Several Domains of sixteen zones, of four
quadrants, of eight sectors and eight octants each. It crosses ninety-three known universes and
sixteen hundred known galaxies. Of
these, humans are known to occupy four octants, which encompass a handful of
galaxies in three universes. Very few
human ships ever get very far from home, but the Void Matrix awaits you.
