Older —(prop n) Informal title or ethnic slur applied to immorbid Queendom residents by the morbid, mortal peoples of Lune.
Oort cloud —(n) A roughly spherical shell surrounding any solar system, in which gravitational perturbations have amplified the concentration of large, icy bodies or “comets.” Sol's Oort cloud extends from 30,000 AU at its lower boundary to 100,000 AU at its upper, and has approximately 300,000 times the mass and one-billionth the overall density of the much smaller Asteroid Belt. The orbits of Oort bodies can have periods of millions of years, and may be inclined in any direction. The total mass of Sol's Oort cloud exceeds that of Jupiter.
Ophiuchus —(prop n) A large, dim, nonzodiacal constellation, “The Snake Holder,” beginning between Scorpius and Sagittarius near the Sol ecliptic plane and extending some 50 degrees northward.
Oxygen candle —(n) A mixture of sodium chlorate and iron, typically enclosed in a metal housing, which smolders at 600°C, producing iron oxide, sodium chloride, and approximately 6.5 man-hours of oxygen gas per kilogram of candle. Widely used in spacecraft, submarines, caves, and mines where breathable atmosphere may be intermittently unavailable.
Palasa —(n) Barnardean term for aristocrats or other privileged individuals, often considered derogatory.
Pantrope —(n) Any organism whose morphology or genome has been altered for the purposes of pantropy. Applied especially to human and human-descended beings.
Pantropy —(n) Literally: complete change. The practice of altering the genome or morphology of an organism to enable its survival in a new environment. From the English “pantropic,” or “found everywhere,” and/or the Greek “pan” (completely) and “tropos” (turning or changing in response to a stimulus). Attributed to James Blish.
Passfax —(n) Any fax machine including both an input and output plate operating simultaneously. Such devices are employed where presorted buffer mass is unavailable or where mass buffers are smaller than the objects being produced.
Periapsis —(n) The point along an orbit at which gravitational potential is minimized and kinetic energy is maximized. The point of “minimum altitude” above the orbit's focus or centroid.
Petabyte —(n) A measure of data storage equal to 1015 bytes or 8 quadrillion digital bits.
Pharyngitis —(n) Inflammation of the pharynx. A sore throat.
Philander —(n) A title granted to formal consorts of the Queen of Sol. Only four Philanders were ever named.
Photobraking —(n) The gross reduction of velocity by means of a photosail.
Photosail —(n) Any nearly two-dimensional device whose primary function is to derive mechanical energy from the pressure of reflected light, including sunlight, starlight, and radiation from artificial sources. The term “solar sail” is sometimes applied colloquially, but in fact solar sails are a subset of photosails.
Photosphere —(n) The hot, opaque, convectively stable plasma layer of a star beginning at the photopause, responsible for most thermal and visible emissions. Usually less than 1000 kilometers deep, with temperatures of several thousand kelvins and the approximate pressure of Earth's stratosphere. The photosphere floats atop the deep hydrogen convection zones of the stellar interior.
Photospinnaker —(n) A photosail anchored and/or controlled by guylines, with no direct physical attachment to its parent vehicle. In practice, most photosails other than mill sails are photospinnakers.
Photovoltaics —(n) Materials or devices capable of generating an electrical voltage with the input of light energy, through the liberation of bound electrons in a preferred direction. In many isolated devices, wellstone pseudomaterials must be photovoltaic in order to maintain their other properties using ambient radiation.
Picometer —(n) A measure of distance equal to 10-12 meters or one-billionth of a millimeter.
Picosecond —(n) A measure of time equal to 10-12 seconds or one-billionth of a millisecond.
Pid —(n) Possibly an abbreviation of “period.” A measure of time equal to 20 Barnardean hours or 71,875 standard seconds. There are 23 pids in a Barnardean day. Attributed to Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui.
Piezoelectric —(adj) Decribes a substance, often crystalline, which produces a voltage when pressure is applied to it, or which experiences mechanical deformation in response to a voltage.
Pilinisi Sola —(prop n) Formal title of the Prince of Sol.
Pilinisi Tonga —(prop n) Formal title of the Prince of Tonga.
Pion —(n) An unstable, spin-zero meson possessing one-ninth the mass and +1, 0, or -1 times the charge of a proton, and a half-life of 2.6 ¥ 10-8 seconds.
Planette —(n) Any artificial celestial body consisting of a stony or earthy lithosphere surrounding a core or shell of supercondensed (neutronic) matter. The vast majority of planettes are designed for human habitation and include Earthlike surface gravity and breathable atmospheres.
Plibbles —(n) Fruits of the plibble tree. Colloquially: deranged or misinformed.
Podship —(n) Any vehicle designed to operate both in space and on the tuberail system of a planetary surface. Employed extensively in the Barnard, Wolf, and Lalande colonies.
Positronium —(n) A material consisting of “atoms” made from one electron and one positron orbiting their mutual center of attraction. Unstable in free space, positronium is generally stored in magnetic nanobottles between the fibers of bulk wellstone.
Print plate —(n) The largest single component of a fax machine, responsible for assembling and disassembling finished goods at the atomic level. Print plates are generally flat and most typically rectangular, although with effort they can be fashioned as cylinders or other three-dimensional forms.
Prokaryote —(n) Any member of a domain of single-celled organisms lacking intracellular organelles and an organized nucleus. Some prokaryotic cells are capable of forming systematized colonies, with minor details of cellular morphology and activity varying as a function of position within the colony. However, no true multicellular prokaryotic organisms have been identified in any star system. Prokaryotes are thought to be descended from archaea.
Pseudoatom —(n) The organization of electrons into Schrödinger orbitals and pseudo-orbitals, made possible with great precision in a designer quantum dot. The properties of pseudoatoms do not necessarily mimic those of natural atoms.
Quantum dot —(n) A device for constraining the position of one or more charge carriers (e.g., electrons) in all three spatial dimensions, such that quantum (“wavelike”) effects dominate over classical (“particle-like”) effects. Charge carriers trapped in a quantum dot will arrange themselves into standing waveforms analogous to the electron orbitals of an atom. Thus, the waveforms inside a quantum dot may be referred to collectively as a pseudoatom.
Reportant —(n) Any person or mechanism gathering information for public distribution.
Rodenbeck, Wenders —(prop n) Playwright and Poet Laureate of the Queendom of Sol.
Sensorium, neural —(n) Any system for channeling synthetic neural inputs into the brain. Sometimes employed as a form of torture, but generally considered a medium for education and entertainment, especially in remote environments.