Mass Industries Corporation—(prop n) Queendom-era supplier of neutronium and especially finished neubles. Majority-owned by Bruno de Towaji, MIC at its peak operated a fleet of over five hundred neutronium barges. Mass wrangler—(n) Term applied to any worker in the neutronium industry, and especially to the maintenance crews of the barges and dredges themselves.
Matter programming—(n) The discipline of arranging, sequencing, and utilizing pseudomaterials in a wellstone or other programmable-matter matrix, often including the in situ management of energy and computing resources. Microwatt—(n) One-millionth of a watt, a measure of power useful in microelectronics and the application of starlight.
Mulm—(n) An edible polymer of monounsaturated fats, typically served in pellet form.
Nanofiber—(n) Any fiber of nanoscopic dimension. Often refers to the quantum-well-based electron conduits that are woven together to form wellstone and related materials.
Nanoscopic—(adj) Existing or examined on the nanometer (10-9 meter) scale of quantum electronics and molecular machinery.
Nescog, The—(prop n) New Systemwide Collapsiter Grid. Successor to the Inner System Collapsiter Grid or Iscog; a high-bandwidth telecommunications network employing numerous supraluminal signal shunts.
Neuble—(n) A diamond-clad neutronium sphere, explosively formed, usually incorporating one or more layers of wellstone for added strength and versatility. A standard industrial neuble masses one billion metric tons, with a radius of 2.67 centimeters.
Neutronium—(n) Matter that has been supercondensed, crushing nuclear protons and orbital electron shells together into a continuous mass of neutrons. Unstable except at very high pressures. Any quantity of neutronium may be considered a single atomic nucleus; however, under most conditions the substance will behave as a fluid.
Neutronium barge (also Neutronium dredge)—(n) A space vessel, typically one billion cubic meters (1000 × 1000 × 1000 m) or larger, whose primary function is to gather mass, supercompress it into neutronium, and transport it to a depot or work site. Although less numerous, smaller neutronium barges also existed for transport only.
North—(adj or adv) One of the six cardinal directions: parallel to the positive spin axis of the sun.
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 the Oort Cloud exceeds that of Jupiter.
Ordinal direction—(n) Any of the six orienting points for the interior or exterior of a ship: port, starboard, fore, aft, boots, and caps.
Oxygen candle—(n) A compound 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.
Pandanus—(n) A plant genus characterized by woody trunks supported with numerous aerial prop roots. The pandanus palm or textile screw pine produces large, tough leaves whose fibers were widely employed in Polynesian cultures for thatching, rope, wicker, and basketry. When specially prepared, the fiber of white pandanus, or kie, can form a soft, silklike cloth.
Photovoltaic—(adj) Capable of generating an electrical voltage across the junction between dissimilar materials, with the input of light energy, through the liberation of bound electrons in a preferred direction. Many natural materials (e.g., silicon) produce minor photovoltaic effects across grain boundaries. However, the much greater efficiency of quantum-well devices such as wellstone makes them preferable for most applications. In many isolated devices, wellstone pseudomaterials must be photovoltaic in order to maintain their other properties using ambient radiation.
Pilinisi—(n) Prince. Traditionally, any Prince of Tonga.
Planet—(n) Any natural satellite of a star whose gravity is sufficient to pull it into spherical shape. Sol system includes hundreds of planets, mainly in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.
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.
Port—(adj or adv) One of the six ordinal directions: along the negative pitch axis, perpendicular to the fore/aft and boots/caps directions.
Pseudoatom—(n) The organization of electrons into Schröedinger 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.
Pseudochemistry—(n) Electron shell interactions taking place among pseudoatoms, or between pseudoatoms and natural atomic matter. Also, the systematic study or exploration of pseudochemical interactions.
Pseudomaterial—(n) Any material composed partly of pseudoatoms and existing within the matrix of a programmable substance such as wellstone. “Pure” pseudomaterials cannot exist, since the nanoelectronics required to generate and maintain them must be atomic in nature.
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.”
Raw—(adj) Unfinished. Uncooked. In a natural, unrefined, or crude state. Youthful. Colloquially, fashionable or exquisite.
Restoration, The—(prop n) Interglobal election that established the Queendom of Sol under Tamra I. The term derives from the presumption that monarchy is the “natural” state of human beings, owing to a genetic predisposition.
Sila’a—(n) A pinpoint fusion generator or “pocket star” consisting of a wellstone-sheathed neutronium core surrounded by gaseous deuterium. From the Tongan si’i (small) and la’aa (sun).
Sketchplate—(n) A thin, rectangular block or sheet of wellstone sized and preprogrammed for the portable display and input of text, drawings, and physical simulations. Sol—(prop n) Formal name for the Earth’s sun, derived from the Latin. The Greek Helios was considered archaic for most Queendom uses.
South—(adj or adv) One of the six cardinal directions: parallel to the negative spin axis of the sun.
Squozen—(adj) Squeezed. Reduced symmetrically in diameter, as with the Squozen Moon. Attributed to Bruno de Towaji.
Starboard—(adj or adv) One of the six ordinal directions: along the positive pitch axis, perpendicular to the fore/aft and boots/caps directions.
Superabsorber—(n) Any material capable of absorbing 100% of incident light in a given wavelength band. The only known universal superabsorber (i.e., functioning at all wavelengths) is the event horizon of a hypermass. (Approximations of 100% absorption are generally referred to as “black.”)