Lexica:Cosmoria/Technology

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Dance, O Freest Aeon

This content is a part of Cosmoria.

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Index / Lexica / Timeline

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A simple definition of technology, "the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals," is very broad. It includes the first fires to the fusion reactors powering most cities. It includes the first notions of trade to ideologies united trillions. It includes folk medicine and advanced thaumaturgy.

Below are a list of technologies common in Cosmoria. Some of these technologies seem dated by 21st century standards, but the vast majority are more advanced. This page serves to paint a clear picture of everyday life, warfare, medicine, and other fields.

Agriculture

Depending on the region, agriculture takes various forms. For cultivating plants, that is, organisms in the plantae kingdom of domain eukaryota, large open-air farms produce the best results. To maintain healthy soil and plant microbiomes, fields must fallow often and go years without production. This naturally gives places like Eos a huge advantage as land comes cheap on that world. Most worlds are thus not self-sufficient and rely on imports from agriworlds. Such planets are mostly devoted to agriculture and need not be habitable. Through careful importing of soils, domed fields on airless worlds can supply a great deal of crops.

Hydroponics is the practice of using nutrient-rich water to sustain plants rather than soil. While some crops, such as those in the Brassica family, are far easier to cultivate via hydroponics as, unlike most plants, do not rely on the Mycorrhizal Network to grow. This network, found on all worlds where fungi are present—that is to say, all worlds with air and water—is non-negotiable for any kind of grain, by far the most efficient way to feed a hungry populace.

Algae Cultivation is an alternative to conventional agriculture altogether. It focuses on growing algae in highly optimized marine-like environments. While other microbes are needed to keep the algae healthy, this is the simplest way to grow food. For space-based societies operating in zero gravity, using algae as the main source of carbohydrates in a diet is popular. Other microbes, ranging from fungi to microscopic plazmoans and protists. Different species usually cultivate their own plant equivalents, but the previous options are most widely edible.

Genetic engineering is a common way to boost agricultural output but suffers from poorly understood symbiotic pressure. In other words, given the great difficulty in maintaining control over the plant microbiome on a large scale, genetically modified crops often fare worse than their merely selectively-breed counterparts. Wild Genetic Engineering, that is, the ability to create a modified organism that could survive with minimum intervention, is a holy grail in biotechnology.

Automation

Through the usage of computers, simple and repetitive tasks can be automated. In most cases, automation leads to reduced waste, higher productivity, and savings in cost. Many vehicles are also automated such as spacecraft, aircraft, and landcraft.

Total automation of tasks is difficult due to

Electronics

Personal Devices

Animavitrifier

A device that allows its wearer to survive temperatures well below which what would normally kill them. Also sees applications in chemistry and manufacturing to change the temperature at which chemical reactions can take place.

Console Scrolls

A compact, two-dimensional computer that allows the user to interact with it via a stylus. Much like writing on a piece of paper.

Pneumoraq

A device that allows its wearer to survive temperatures well beyond what would normally kill them. Also sees applications in chemistry and manufacturing to change the temperature at which chemical reactions can take place. Lexica:Cosmoria/Technology#Fusion Energy benefits greatly from pneumoraq technology, even if its original purpose was to allow wearer to survive on hot worlds.

Energy

Atomic Power

Atomic power, or fission power, is a widely used form of energy tapping into nuclear fission to produce power. This term generally does not include fusion power despite fusion power also being based on atomic interactions. Atomic power is by far much easier to invent that fusion power, with some civilizations going upwards of one thousand years between mastery of both.

Atomic Drives are spacecraft drives that use atomic energy to push the spacecraft forward. This usually relies on using the heat generated to expel fuel. More primitive versions use controlled nuclear explosions to vaporize and expel fuel, although this approach is very wasteful.

Fusion Power

Fusion power is a widely used form of energy tapping into nuclear fusion to produce power. Fusion power comes in various forms, but generally involves the fusion of protium (H+) and boron-11. This reaction releases a charged alpha particle which can easily be converted into electricity directly without boiling water or some other coolant. Most large cities have several fusion reactors producing power for as many as billions of households.

Most fusion reactors operate on the pulsed fusion principle, opting for brief and energetic bursts of energy instead of continuous fusion reactions.

A fusion rocket or fusion drive is a spacecraft that relies on a fusion reactor to propel the craft. This technology is the predominant form of spacecraft propulsion.

Solar Power

Solar power is the cheapest form of energy by upfront cost. It is used mostly in remote areas.

Petroleum

Petroleum is a widely-used energy source for vehicles too small to house fusion reactors and too large for solar power to even hope to power them. This includes most land vehicles that do not need to operate in vacuum, although many vacuum-equipped vehicles bring their own oxygen with them to burn. Many handheld devices, like construction or yardwork tools, also use petroleum.

The internal combustion engine burns petroleum to spin a generator to power the vehicle directly and divert a portion to batteries or capacitors.

The vast majority of petroleum is created rather than extracted from natural sources. Modern chemistry allows for cheap large-scale production of petroleum products, but as recently as one thousand years ago, large wars were fought over natural petroleum sources.

Gallium Crude

Gallium Crude is a rare resource that is cheaper to extract from a natural source than to synthesize chemically. As long as supplies remain high, gallium crude offers a powerful fuel that sees widespread use in military applications. It is found only on Eos and D'Naevium, the only worlds with the unique biology to produce this gallium-rich resource.

Technological Noise

Technological noise is a general tendency for technological systems to break down faster in practical applications than in a controlled setting. Even controlling for weather, radiation, or other hazards, technological systems involving networks of even as few as dozens of computers break down over time. Technological noise is the primary legacy of the Nachleben, those who have chosen to transfer their minds to machines. As the Nachleben became increasingly detached from reality, they had AI agents make decisions for them. An AI agent is a language model and hard-coded decision tree that can mimic intelligent beings.

With trillions of these hyper-tuned AI agents being made, some of which inevitably made to self replicate and steal resources from others, these agents inundated networks with traffic far in excess of what they could handle. Worse, this traffic was designed to manipulate other AI agents and the people who happen to see them. To this day, a small portion of the population, Nachleben in hiding, and rogue AI agents seek out modern networks to infiltrate.

Technological noise, made worse by the apotheosis of AI agents in the form of Kalliolel, make the old way of doing things impossible. A broadcasting model has replaced the old decentralized means of spreading information. In around 8000 CE, the average person could, from their own home, spread any idea or feeling they had. Two thousand years later, individuals have far less ability to communicate as even fully text-based networks can succumb to noise.

Peer-to-peer networking, such as over M-lines or through pagers, generally keep out technological noise. When too computers communicate, it is best practice to terminate the connection once finished. Devices are universally unable to download new programs over a network and must have firmware updates applied in person, although there is a large community of programmers and hackers who skirt around these safety features.

Warfare

Infantry Technology

Power Armor

Veldlopers

Macro-Scale Battle Vehicles

Hayit

Ophanim

Memitim

Main Battle Vehicles

Chassuers

Feldwanderer

Drachenframes

Weaponry

Atomic Weapons

Atomic weapons, sometimes called atomic bombs, nuclear bombs, nuclear weapons, nukes, or a-bombs, are a broad class of explosives drawing power from nuclear fission, fusion, or annihilation. Most modern atomic weapons use a combination of fission, fusion, and annihilation to bolster a fusion reaction within the bomb. These bombs fuse material far faster than the cores of even the hottest stars and, for brief periods of history, were a form of fusion energy.

A Nuclear Pumped Laser was once a common means for ground-based militaries to control the space around their planet, at the time creating a near impassable barrier by the technologies of the time. Modern spacecraft, however, are too numerous for this technology to be of much use. These beams convert the blast of a nuclear explosion into a x-ray laser beam that could cut through any material.

Marceum Bombs

Marceum Bombs are a class of atomic weapon that rely on degenerate matter, called Marceum, to create a miniature star far as long as several minutes. This class of weapon is by far the most energy dense, but great costs have limited their deployment.

Other Weapons

Lasers (Cosmoria)

A Laser is a beam of electromagnetic radiation used to great effect in not just warfare but manufacturing, chemistry, and art.