Oolite Bulletins

I had a funny idea about how Quirium might work, but when I wanted to post it, I noticed we actually don't have got a pure Quirium related threat. Isn't our precious, little unobtainium too important for the sake of spouting elite related scientific sounding nonsense (ERSSN)? So I take this chance and start one, as it is a good enough reason as any other.

For starters, let's see what information the wiki gives us: [wiki]Quirium[/wiki]
Let's see. It's:

• a highly unstable chemical
• applied mainly as fuel for hyperspace jumps
• the base of highly reliable space propulsion
• used in areas other than space propulsion
• mainly measured in Lightyears (LY), it enables you to travel
• produced industrially in vast quantities
• sold for a few Credits per LY
• obtainable from the coronas of suns
• named after Dr. Quirahn Falayn
• hard to create a Quirium based weapon, but a bomb (Q-bomb) is easy enough

Don't forget you can just burn it in your fuel injectors.

As one can see Quirium is there for everyone to do everything, not just powering everything (which it apparently does in the future.) I wouldn't be surprised if one can burn it on a longdrink as a neat partytrick. Backache? Spray Quirium on it. There! All better!

Have any theories about Quirium? Questions? Looking for answers? This here could be your nexus of information about this topic. Just post it.

I already posted a threat about Witchdrives (Canon question about the Witchdrive), which naturally contained a lot theories about Quirium. (Disembodied's post about his theories is especially noteworthy.)
I like his idea about Quirium being an allotrope of Hydrogen. Cause you can find it in the corona of stars...which, in most cases, are made up of Hydrogen. It Makes So Much Sense.

But what does make that hydrogen special. A special quantum state? (note how I use quantum state as vague description here, like subspace anomaly in Star Trek. "A quantum state did it!") How does it create/store/pullOutOItsAr** such hugh amounts of energy? Zero-point energy? Vacuum energy? Energy from another plane of the Multiverse? Witchspace? (Yeah, some of the before mentioned might be identical which each other. Meh.)
Then I thought of something. It's without ANY scientific base. I just throw that idea and Quirium at each other and it stuck (loosely) at some points together:

>>Proton decay<<

What is Hydrogen made of? Not that much. A proton, an electron, maybe a neutron. In protium's case most of the mass is stored within the proton. And mass equals an amount of energy. A proton is fairly stable (Some scientists try to prove it isn't, others that it totally is! No exception!). But what if!

What if there is a special quantum state (here it is) of Hydrogen, that keeps its proton at the border of decaying. Holding it back from decaying, but also keeping it at that state and conveniently enough, that quantum state is quite stable in itself. AND the decay could be triggered.

As this is only a fun idea, I did my research only poorly (wikipedia-style, 5min-page-parsing), but here's what I found: Wikipedia:Proton Decay

Protons (p+) could decay into a positron (e+, antimatter electron) and a neutral pion (π0)
p+ → e+ + π0
Antimatter so far. Nice. But the best part is that pion is soooo unstable, it decay immediately into two gamma rays!
π0 → 2γ

That leaves only the position. Did I forget something? Ah, yes there is also that now free electron left. I'm not saying they annihilate each other, but there are electrons everywhere. That positron is bound to hit something sooner or later. And then:
e+ + e- → 2γ
Two more gamma rays.

This would mean 100% mass to energy conversion of a storable matter-fuel. Would this count as superfuel?

Also on a side note: Wikipedia: Corona - Coronal heating problem
It's still not clear why the corona of a star glows with millions of kelvin, while the stars surface is that much colder in comparison (In case of Sol: around 5800 K)
The answer: Destabilizing Quirium -> Proton decay

Muhahahaha! This is great! So much just falls into place.

And now be my guest and rip my theory into shreds.

Bit late but here goes...

Interesting stuff but, personally speaking, I find this approach somewhat limiting.

If I try to use modern science to explain such game phenomena as quirium then the more closely I link it the more I feel it falls down. I'm left asking the same questions.

Why hasn't it been done already?
Perhaps it's on the cutting edge of science and is currently a hot topic for research

Why hasn't it been hypothesised already?
Perhaps it's not viable/practical - maybe it will be in the future

If it's exploitable in the future but not now, don't I need a second theory as to why this might be the case?
Feels like I'm back at square one

So, if I were to speculate, I'd probably want to keep it pretty loose, base it on stuff in the theoretical, hard to measure areas. You could strongly argue that then it is no longer science but one could also argue that such thoughts are part of what helps expand science. Also, this is a game, I only need to satisfy my own mind, not that of an astrophysics genius, and anything I'm likely to propose is unlikely to qualify as 'science' in its strictest sense.

For example...
Suppose the link to the sun/star is particularly significant. What's special about a star? Light, energy, mass. If I pick one of those three, I'll chose mass, then how might this link to the Q stuff?

Maybe at such high mass, something is going on that isn't easy to replicate on a planet (at least without special industrial facilities). Maybe, there's some previously undetected/misunderstood quality akin to a black hole. Perhaps the average, active star has just enough mass to make things go 'a bit wibbly', nothing on the scale of a black hole but just enough to change what's happening both within itself and the area close to its surface.

Maybe fuel scoops don't just capture a material but also its state, with it being the latter that is unstable and unusual. Perhaps it is the 'release' of this state or instability that enables witchjumps or (in smaller doses) high speed travel. Maybe it's not what's in the fuel tank as such but rather where it's been...

If, in our modern world, it would be hard to detect (I suspect we've still got lots to learn about what's going on near a star's surface), hard to collect (we've neither been there nor sent anything to collect from there - or at least, no one's told me) and hard to synthesize (the first two should make this one true in the sense that we wouldn't currently know what we were attemping) then I've kept it all vague enough to give myself an inkling whilst still putting a hefty proportion down to 'wonders of the future'...

You may note that the above still allows for theories similar to those proposed to ocz and Disembodied, it just doesn't go as far. I'm aware of and comfortable with the notion that there's much more to learn, and even 'unlearn', in the future and I'm even more aware (on a good day) that I understand so little of what is known or even (significantly) what is possible.

I've chosen an approach that I feel is limited, rather than limiting, if that makes any sense.

Here is the universal answer when the equations don't match what you see: it's dark matter