Technology

Novatoxin

"Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledge hammer."
-- Major I. L. Holdridge, USMC

Based on the evidence that nova powers are weakened or disrupted by microtubuli-inhibiting toxins, the DHS has developed a special toxin that should be able to take out novas. It is a potent Nocodazole derivative, which is combined with an equally strong sedative. It can be distributed as aerosol, using autoinjectors, tranquilliser darts or as a contact poison.

Novatoxin is highly toxic: the median lethal dose for injection or through skin is 0.5 mg/kg. It causes tiredness and a general feeling of weakness, abdominal cramps, diarrhoea, nausea, and numbness or tingling in hands or feet due to peripheral neuropathia, anemia, hair-loss and infertility. Combined with the sedative effect it can be quite deadly due to choking on vomit. The half-life in the body is 24 hours, making most effects vanish after a few days.

Novatoxin is too deadly to be used in subduing ordinary novas, but an excellent weapon in desperate situation where the survival of the nova is not the objective. Researchers are trying to create less deadly “damping” toxins, but progress is slow despite heavy funding. Another problem is that it has to get past forcefields, armour and other nova defences.

[A standard dose corresponds to 10 points of lethal damage and an extra 10 points of stun (handled normally). If it gets into a person’s system each success at a Stamina+Megastamina roll will reduce the damage by one. Each remaining point of damage will also reduce dice pools of mega-attributes and quantum powers. The effect (but not the damage) is halved every 24 hours.

E.g. a nova with Stamina 4 and mega stamina 2 gets 5 successes. He suffers five levels of lethal damage, and will not have any mega-stamina for the duration. After 24 hours the reduction is still 3 dice, and only after 48 hours will his mega-stamina start reappearing. ]

Eruption Inhibition Projects

Several nations have projects studying how nova eruptions can be prevented. While novas theoretically can be a great boon to a nation, a mis-eruption can wipe out the benefits directly – as witnessed in Phnom Penh and Mbabane. Hence it would be beneficial to prevent novas from erupting in general, and maybe find a way of creating controlled eruptions. Unfortunately there is not much data to work on. It is believed that when nova detectors become better it will be much easier to find latent novas and study what makes them erupt. Hopefully a way of protecting civilians from eruptions will one day be developed.

Nova Enhancer

Never invest in something that violates a conservation law
- John Walker

An idea that is being secretly pursued by most of the nova powers is finding ways of amplifying nova powers. Ironically it is easier than dampening them. The DHS has worked hard on extending microtubuli networks, and now can culture them in special gels. Getting a nova to imprint them is hard, but some experiments have demonstrated that a nova with sufficiently large area of non-skin cells in contact with microtubgel can extend their range slightly, and seems to integrate the microtubuli into their power “aura”. In Europe Dr. Operov’s team is instead using a nova able to “possess” a machine in quantum mechanical experiments, placing him in strange superpositions and entangling his state with a beam of photons.

sunshine wrote on Mon, 27 October 2003 10:00

What if we could construct a device to further our own abilities to find novas. Like node binoculars, wouldn't that be a lot easiear than the machine operov is working on now? (Does it have a name?) Then we might be able to take away the need for a global system. The drawback, ofcourse, is that we really have to monitor things all the time.

An interesting idea! We might have looked at the problem from the wrong angle. Instead of developing technological powers to imitate nova powers we develop technology to enhance nova powers!

Hmm, this suggests a very interesting experiment to me. If we could extend nova quantum resonance over a longer distance then the detection abilities might become sharper (the nova would have a better baseline array to triangulate with, as well as a larger near field). I know the DHS have been working with fullerene and microtubuli antennae, this could be what they have been aiming for.

AH! I got it! EBCs! Make the nova go into resonance with an Einstein-Bose condensate, Josephson junction or maybe a metallic hydrogen resonator. Then entangle that system with another distant system and watch what happens. The nova resonance would likely be present at that remote location too - it should at least be noticeable to other novas. And this way we might extend the detection capabilities a lot.

Booster, we need to arrange for you to come to the condensed matter lab here in Switzerland as soon as possible...

-- Dr Operov, Post at ENA internal forum March 2005.

Quantum Scanner

The currently best systems for nova detection consists of a number of isotope samples linked to scintillation detectors and computers comparing the decay rates. In the presence of novas decay rates shift, and the relative ratios of different kinds of decays also change. Unfortunately the effect is extremely weak, and it takes either very large samples (making the detector immobile and obvious radiation equipment) or long time to detect statistically significant deviance from normal decay.

The range for the immobile sensor is about 30 meters for a normal nova, who can be detected after one minute. Stronger novas can be detected at greater distances or shorter times. Different novas have different “quantum signatures”, but it is hard to tell what they mean. Dormancy hides from the detector; roll an intelligence + computer roll vs. dormancy for detecting a hiding nova. The mobile sensor is ten times as inaccurate, but looks like a bulky attaché case and connects to a palmtop display.

It might be in place to describe how the detectors actually work, in order to clear out misconceptions. Here is a popular science explanation:

My team here at CERN have discovered that novas do have a low-level effect on the fundamental physical fields. Even novas without any nuclear or electrical powers affect the strength of the nuclear forces and electromagnetism in their vicinity slightly. The effect is nontrivial, most likely some kind of variation in the strength of the forces that varies with the activity of the nova (our explanation is that novas affect the curled up extra dimensions of spacetime).

Originally we measured this by sending a particle beam close to the nova and using CERN's huge detectors for measuring the change in particle properties (http://sbnt.jinr.ru/CERN_and_its_Machines1.html). This was of course ridiculously inefficient.

The solution was to take radioactive materials and measure their decay. The decay depends on the relative strength of the nuclear forces and electromagnetism, and the presence of a nova will change what kind of decays happen and how often they happen. A nova makes some decays more or less common than they should be. Unfortunately this varies over time quite quickly (likely less than a millisecond) and the measurable effect is more like an increase in the variation of the decays. This requires sensitive detectors that can detect the shifts and increased variances. This is why it takes such time, we need enough data to reach statistical significance. We can speed things up by using larger samples or more intensely radioactive substances, but that makes the detectors unwieldy.

Different novas do seem to have slightly different "signatures"; we know that Struck promotes alpha decay of Polonium 206 to Lead 202 over the EC decay to Bismuth 206 most of the time, and Gustave fittingly makes Radon 221 decay to Francium 221, at least when he is distracted (Booster of course messes up a lot of decays by making nuclei spin in his monopole field).

Later experiments with gravity have shown that novas affect it too, but it is too weak to use in any detector. We can make a rough direction estimate by having several detectors running in parallel, and comparing their readings to find which is closest to the nova. Not very exact, unfortunately.

In any case, I think that we will be able to shrink the detectors significantly over the next months (we already have a laptop prototype), but their range remains limited. I know the Japanese are trying to use metallic hydrogen neutrino detectors to find novas, but they can only pick up those with nuclear forces (like Miss Atom - apparently the Hosegawa group can pinpoint her when she goes active straight through the Earth, but she is special).

I doubt we will see many nova detectors before we find a substitute for radioactive elements and expand their range by a few orders of magnitude.

-- Dr. Operov, posting internal ENA forum May 2005