The goings on in Ohide

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
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Grapevine and eye witnesses tell us that the Amarr Empire has built a new stellar transmuter in the A0 high-security Amarr system of Ohide.

After what happened in Turnur, this seems like a reckless move. The technology obviously was not well under control there. Should a similar accident happen, or should some terrorist with access to knowledge about the events and the devices decide to make one happen, the risk to civilian life would be significant.

A burnt child does not play with fire, they say - but the Empire seems less capable than an average child to learn from mistakes.

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Do not fret; you’ll be right behind us in sticking your fingers in the flames.

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Well it seems the Minmatar will be doing the same thing too. Guess we will see who is more responsible.

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So far, those are only rumors. The Great Caravanserai is not exactly a ‘no-gossip’ zone.

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Oh of course they are rumors, but sometimes rumors become true. Why wouldn’t the Minmatar want to build these, especially since they have demonstrated their ability to safely shut them down should be become unstable? The Amarr clearly see a use in this tech and are willing to place their population at risk, the Minmatar would be stupid to not also take advantage of them.

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Because when you build a WMD that can eliminate life within half an au of a star, it doesn’t matter if you can shut it down from normal operations. What matters is whether or not you can shut it down when a cult of maniacs like the EoM board it, smash all of the safety/shutdown mechanisms, and defend the place while they send it into overload.

Oh, FFS. If your enemy is doing something stupid, let them, but don’t do it yourself.

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Rewrite your astronomy textbooks, ladies and gentlemen.

The life is now a factor in stellar evolution.

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Where did you you get the source for half an au of a star? That can hopefully be proven to the empire’s benefit seeing that Ohide III is like 0.8 au from the star.

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I doubt they’d actually put something in a system they own without enough safeguards in place. The tech is already proven, and the worst case scenario has been explored. Expect these all over in a few years.

And when it comes to dangerous weapons wielded by fanatics, we’ve already seen EoM do more with dreads and a titan. Why sabatoge something that is local when they can get big guns in under security already? Heck, chemical, biological, radioactive and antimatter weapons are already routinely produced en mass, what’s stopping an antimatter bombing campaign already? If you want to see unique acts of terror, look at what the Aenebra get up to.

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When the Amarr harvester went in Turnur, Upwell structures near the star were vaporized, the planetary surface at Turnur I was basically cooked sterile at 0.4 au and the station in orbit—a station whose shields can ignore most weapons fire since the advent of entosis shielding—was severely damaged. Facilities at 0.6 au, however, remained intact.

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We have not. Kahah III remains capable of supporting life. Turnur I is not.

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Then supposing the transmuter in Ohide performs the same as the one in Turnur there should be no danger to life in said system as the closest two planets to the Ohide star are lava planets.

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Is that so? I hadn’t read up much about it, it wasn’t exactly an event I cared too much about I’ll admit.

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Well, they are building them. It’s no longer rumor. Barkirk is the site of a Stellar transmuter, only 2 jumps from Hek.

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We have exactly 1 point of data. Do you know what you call making safety decisions based on 1 point of data? Idiocy.

For why, we need look no further than the stars themselves:

Turnur:

  • Luminousity: 1.91
  • Age: 4.597by
  • Radius: 393,100 km
  • Spectral Class: F9 VI
  • Surface Temp: 6080 K

Ohide:

  • Luminousity: 0.31
  • Age: 3.637by
  • Radius: 156,650 km
  • Spectral Class: F9 VI
  • Surface Temp: 6103 K

Barkrik (since this is now confirmed):

  • Luminousity: 12.02
  • Age: 1.106by
  • Radius: 977,500 km
  • Spectral Class: F9 VI
  • Surface Temp: 6111 K

Barkrik, for example, is already throwing off 40x as much energy as Ohide. It’s 6 times the radius. If we were to look at just the volume, Barkrik’s 3.9 quintillion cubic kilometers dwarfs Ohide’s 16 quadrillion cubic kilometers of stellar material. And that’s without factoring density, which we know we should, because that much stuff has that much more gravity. Turnur, for the record, comes in at 254 quadrillion km3.

So what do those differences actually mean? We don’t know. It’s one of a long list of 'we don’t know’s involved in this technology. For example:

We don’t know if the Turnur incident reflects an average result, a particularly energetic event, or an incredibly minor event.

We don’t know if a larger, more massive star will be better or worse at containing whatever disruption occurs. Maybe the additional mass will re-absorb some of the energy and reflect it around inside the core the way light bounces around inside a star for thousands of years before making it to the surface. Or maybe the increased density will work to accelerate the event, like a concussion wave that travels farther and stronger through more dense material.

We don’t know if a more energetic star is more or less likely to even have this runaway reaction occur, or if creating the kind of cataclysmic reaction we saw in Turnur would, in a more massive star, take so much energy that the process would essentially shut itself down. If that’s the case, then that does that mean a smaller, less energetic and less massive star like Ohide is more susceptible to this kind of calamity?

We just don’t know.

We do know disaster is possible at 0.41 au. Is it possible at greater distances? Say, out to 0.8, if (for example) the harvester’s been operating longer, or deliberately set to overload? If Ohide goes sideways, does it release a smaller event because there’s less total energy in the system, or a larger one because there’s less stellar mass to act as insulation?

I think that information is all stuff the inhabitants of the temperate world of Ohide III, at 0.7au would like to know before this thing begins operation. Don’t you?

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