For a Newbie wanting to do a versus

[18-Till-I-Die]

What kind of tech would the Xeelee be able to bring out, and more importantly, what could Manifold do. I'm not into that whole sector of scifi, but i'd like to be, and i'd like to dod some versus

[The Nomad]

I didn't read Manifold, but the Xeelee...


Their starbreaker beams ( handgun-sized stuff ) is a lightspeed gravity-wave weapon ( quit bitching, they've an outstanding in-universe reason for using it ) that can probably do BDZ level damage to a planet ( smashed Titan quite neatly ) and canonically triggers a chain reaction that causes stars to go nova.

Their construction material is grown from perfect M-to-E convertors called Xeelee Flowers, is proton-thick, very light, and virtually unbreakable ( to 50th century's science at least ) as well as impervious to most if not all EM radiation. It is thought to be either a material bound by nuclear forces rather than EM bonds, or a material in which the Pauli Exclusion Principle has been turned down.

Their nightfighters use antigravity sheets ( 'hundred(s of?) mile(s)' wingspan ) to accelerate at litteraly millions of g's, can start from dead rest to 0.5c in a tiny fraction of a second.

It is not known for sure wether or not they have 'energy shields', but a group of primitive humans used their own primitive hyperdrive as a shield against radiation in Jupiters' subsystem, so I'd say they do have some kind of shields.

They have two types of hyperdrives, intragalactic ( 1000 ly an hour ) and intergalactic ( 1 million ly an hour at least ). Their intergalactic works on a instantaneous-jump sequence. Their intra' is probably ( though it's not sure ) a more powerful version of the one the younger races reverse-engineered from them, that is, a classical "travel through an hyperspace medium" thing ( vessels can remain at will - even for centuries - within hyper ). Up to tens or hundreds of thousands ly in case of emergency jumps for the inter'.

Their devices are said to draw power from the structure of the universe itself.

They can throw loops of cosmic strings at galaxies to scythe through them and cause ungodly damage ( STL weapon, takes millenia of million years to work, but hardly stoppable ).
Compare this with the puny-in-comparison Xeeleeverse humans that send a neutron star as a high-relativistic missile against a Xeelee structure ( according to a comment about time dilatation factors, I calculated that the KE of that thingy was about 1e52 J - I'd have to check, I did this from my memories of Flux ).

They created the antiXeelee, a quantum-wave being that exists at the fundamental level of reality, is instantaneously aware of most of the stuff that happens in the universe, and has apparently superior intelligence as well as god-like powers ( though this is a bit apocryphal ).

They created the Ring, a structure shitloads of ly wide with the mass of ( tens of, hundreds of ? ) millions of galaxies, a Kerr-metric area generator to travel to other universes. Also known as the Great Attractor.

They have high-end time travel, and it causes "causality stress" - short story long story, you can kill your father before it knocks your mother, and create a new timeline without popping out of existence ( there is a freaky quantum-mechanics/probability analogy in Timelike Infinity ). The whole Xeelee species time-travelled 1 billion years after the Big Bang to improve their own history.

They have 'moon-sized' freighters, and countless nightfighters.

They have instantaneous communication through an evolved version of quantum inseparability ( "No, that's not possible. You can't send down information through quantum inseparability channels... - Tell the Xeelee... " ).

They do have FTL sensors that can probe an area 1 billion ly wide in a matter of days, hours, perhaps even minutes.

They can create reliable semisentient AIs.

Their devices can still work after a few million ( billion ? ) years.

They can create folded space areas ( areas that contain more internal space than their external dimension shows - this is not an optical illusion ). In fact, they locked humanity within an hypersphere ( 4D-space sphere... ).

They show mercy, and even saved humankind ( after a little smackdown ) despite the fact that we attacked them first out of sheer penis envy. Though no one ever saw a Xeelee, we do however know that they are smaller than humans.

Why call them Xeelee ? Call them God .

Hope this helps

[The Nomad]

Compare this with the puny-in-comparison Xeeleeverse humans that send a neutron star as a high-relativistic missile against a Xeelee structure ( according to a comment about time dilatation factors, I calculated that the KE of that thingy was about 10e52 J - I'd have to check, I did this from my memories of Flux ).

Shit .

That should read 1e52 J ( or 10^52 ) .

Does it matter much, though ?

Note : I pulled this, not out of my ass, buy out of my medium-range memories from Flux, so I might be mistaken.

My assumption was that the neutron star had travelled, what, 10 000 lys while about 500 years had ellapsed within the neutron star. The distance might have been indeed quoted somewhere in Flux ( it is at least indicated that the star had travelled outside of its home galaxy ), the timescale is precisely quoted by a Colonist, but I don't recall where exactly. So if someone's memory-related brain areas are a little less damaged than mine...

[NecronLord]

Shit .

That should read 1e52 J ( or 10^52 ) .

[godvoice]It is edited.[/godvoice]

[18-Till-I-Die]

I didn't read Manifold, but the Xeelee...


Their starbreaker beams ( handgun-sized stuff ) is a lightspeed gravity-wave weapon ( quit bitching, they've an outstanding in-universe reason for using it ) that can probably do BDZ level damage to a planet ( smashed Titan quite neatly ) and canonically triggers a chain reaction that causes stars to go nova.

Their construction material is grown from perfect M-to-E convertors called Xeelee Flowers, is proton-thick, very light, and virtually unbreakable ( to 50th century's science at least ) as well as impervious to most if not all EM radiation. It is thought to be either a material bound by nuclear forces rather than EM bonds, or a material in which the Pauli Exclusion Principle has been turned down.

Their nightfighters use antigravity sheets ( 'hundred(s of?) mile(s)' wingspan ) to accelerate at litteraly millions of g's, can start from dead rest to 0.5c in a tiny fraction of a second.

It is not known for sure wether or not they have 'energy shields', but a group of primitive humans used their own primitive hyperdrive as a shield against radiation in Jupiters' subsystem, so I'd say they do have some kind of shields.

They have two types of hyperdrives, intragalactic ( 1000 ly an hour ) and intergalactic ( 1 million ly an hour at least ). Their intergalactic works on a instantaneous-jump sequence. Their intra' is probably ( though it's not sure ) a more powerful version of the one the younger races reverse-engineered from them, that is, a classical "travel through an hyperspace medium" thing ( vessels can remain at will - even for centuries - within hyper ). Up to tens or hundreds of thousands ly in case of emergency jumps for the inter'.

Their devices are said to draw power from the structure of the universe itself.

They can throw loops of cosmic strings at galaxies to scythe through them and cause ungodly damage ( STL weapon, takes millenia of million years to work, but hardly stoppable ).
Compare this with the puny-in-comparison Xeeleeverse humans that send a neutron star as a high-relativistic missile against a Xeelee structure ( according to a comment about time dilatation factors, I calculated that the KE of that thingy was about 1e52 J - I'd have to check, I did this from my memories of Flux ).

They created the antiXeelee, a quantum-wave being that exists at the fundamental level of reality, is instantaneously aware of most of the stuff that happens in the universe, and has apparently superior intelligence as well as god-like powers ( though this is a bit apocryphal ).

They created the Ring, a structure shitloads of ly wide with the mass of ( tens of, hundreds of ? ) millions of galaxies, a Kerr-metric area generator to travel to other universes. Also known as the Great Attractor.

They have high-end time travel, and it causes "causality stress" - short story long story, you can kill your father before it knocks your mother, and create a new timeline without popping out of existence ( there is a freaky quantum-mechanics/probability analogy in Timelike Infinity ). The whole Xeelee species time-travelled 1 billion years after the Big Bang to improve their own history.

They have 'moon-sized' freighters, and countless nightfighters.

They have instantaneous communication through an evolved version of quantum inseparability ( "No, that's not possible. You can't send down information through quantum inseparability channels... - Tell the Xeelee... " ).

They do have FTL sensors that can probe an area 1 billion ly wide in a matter of days, hours, perhaps even minutes.

They can create reliable semisentient AIs.

Their devices can still work after a few million ( billion ? ) years.

They can create folded space areas ( areas that contain more internal space than their external dimension shows - this is not an optical illusion ). In fact, they locked humanity within an hypersphere ( 4D-space sphere... ).

They show mercy, and even saved humankind ( after a little smackdown ) despite the fact that we attacked them first out of sheer penis envy. Though no one ever saw a Xeelee, we do however know that they are smaller than humans.

Why call them Xeelee ? Call them God .

Hope this helps

Wow...just wow.

Well, um, all i can do is say that i dont think my universe could lick the dogshit from the Xeelee's boots. What about Manifold, though, anybody know about that? Or, are they God too

Jezuz...and to think someone once said i had penis envy for writing about FTL planets as battering rams. Whoever wrote that series must be hing like a gnat to even think up half that shit

[The Nomad]

Jezuz...and to think someone once said i had penis envy for writing about FTL planets as battering rams. Whoever wrote that series must be hing like a gnat to even think up half that shit

Well, he wanted to create a race of godlike beings for humans to hopelessly compete with. The stories aren't focused on the Xeelee, but on the humans or human-equivalent beings and their characters, relationships etc as well as telling fun stuff using sexy bits of real physics ( S. Baxter has a degree in maths and engineering, do you know ? ).

But it is always good to witness one's own erection ripping one's pants . Just occasionaly, of course.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Jezuz...and to think someone once said i had penis envy for writing about FTL planets as battering rams. Whoever wrote that series must be hing like a gnat to even think up half that shit

Well, he wanted to create a race of godlike beings for humans to hopelessly compete with. The stories aren't focused on the Xeelee, but on the humans or human-equivalent beings and their characters, relationships etc as well as telling fun stuff using sexy bits of real physics ( S. Baxter has a degree in maths and engineering, do you know ? ).

But it is always good to witness one's own erection ripping one's pants . Just occasionaly, of course.

That's just the point...anyone who could come up with that is really, really in bad need of A-women-folk and B-a dick that works . Seriously, i write about impossible, fantastical, amazing shit myself, like mini stars and FTL planets, but in the end, it at leats makes sense, i dont acer what ya' say, that there is just him cumin' on himself everytime he writes 'Xeelee' .

[The Nomad]

Just remembered :

Xeelee construction material is frictionless.

Xeelee nightfighters are shaped like sycamore seeds a hundred meters wide when a rest, with active wingspan much greater ( hundreds of miles ). They're 'darker than night itself' (no shit ? ) .

STL GUTships, whose dimensions are measured in miles, can piggyback a Xeelee nightfighter merely by attaching the vessel to the fighter, 'fooling' it into thinking of the ship as a part of itself, allowing a safe hyperjump of 30 ly every second.

Xeeleeverse humans of the year ~4,000-5,000 AD ( humanity fights the Xeelee until up to 100,000+ AD ), while having no FTL, can achieve wormhole travel through space and time ( read Timelike Infinity ), and can achieve relativistic factors of up to 5000 ( 5 million years journey dilated into 1,000 years ). Impressive .

[Dark Hellion]

18 not everyone actually likes creating powerful species out of creating powerful species. The xeelee are a plot device for Baxter, just like the Culture is a setting to banks.
Cut the perpetual newbie act please. You sycophantic and infantile acting is already annoying, and you don't even have 500 posts (i hope not at least).

[Dahak]

I didn't read Manifold, but the Xeelee...


Their starbreaker beams ( handgun-sized stuff ) is a lightspeed gravity-wave weapon ( quit bitching, they've an outstanding in-universe reason for using it ) that can probably do BDZ level damage to a planet ( smashed Titan quite neatly ) and canonically triggers a chain reaction that causes stars to go nova.

They are perfectly able to blow up planets. And cut suns in pieces.

Their construction material is grown from perfect M-to-E convertors called Xeelee Flowers, is proton-thick, very light, and virtually unbreakable ( to 50th century's science at least ) as well as impervious to most if not all EM radiation. It is thought to be either a material bound by nuclear forces rather than EM bonds, or a material in which the Pauli Exclusion Principle has been turned down.

Their nightfighters use antigravity sheets ( 'hundred(s of?) mile(s)' wingspan ) to accelerate at litteraly millions of g's, can start from dead rest to 0.5c in a tiny fraction of a second.

Those are not antigravity sheets, but world planes, two-dimensional defects in normal space, kept together by strings.

It is not known for sure wether or not they have 'energy shields', but a group of primitive humans used their own primitive hyperdrive as a shield against radiation in Jupiters' subsystem, so I'd say they do have some kind of shields.

They have two types of hyperdrives, intragalactic ( 1000 ly an hour ) and intergalactic ( 1 million ly an hour at least ). Their intergalactic works on a instantaneous-jump sequence. Their intra' is probably ( though it's not sure ) a more powerful version of the one the younger races reverse-engineered from them, that is, a classical "travel through an hyperspace medium" thing ( vessels can remain at will - even for centuries - within hyper ). Up to tens or hundreds of thousands ly in case of emergency jumps for the inter'.

The Xeelee only have one Hyperdrive. There are no two different versions.
The sub-Xeelee species use a different drive system, which is not quite the Xeelee system.

Their devices are said to draw power from the structure of the universe itself.

They can throw loops of cosmic strings at galaxies to scythe through them and cause ungodly damage ( STL weapon, takes millenia of million years to work, but hardly stoppable ).
Compare this with the puny-in-comparison Xeeleeverse humans that send a neutron star as a high-relativistic missile against a Xeelee structure ( according to a comment about time dilatation factors, I calculated that the KE of that thingy was about 1e52 J - I'd have to check, I did this from my memories of Flux ).

They created the antiXeelee, a quantum-wave being that exists at the fundamental level of reality, is instantaneously aware of most of the stuff that happens in the universe, and has apparently superior intelligence as well as god-like powers ( though this is a bit apocryphal ).

They created the Ring, a structure shitloads of ly wide with the mass of ( tens of, hundreds of ? ) millions of galaxies, a Kerr-metric area generator to travel to other universes. Also known as the Great Attractor.

They have high-end time travel, and it causes "causality stress" - short story long story, you can kill your father before it knocks your mother, and create a new timeline without popping out of existence ( there is a freaky quantum-mechanics/probability analogy in Timelike Infinity ). The whole Xeelee species time-travelled 1 billion years after the Big Bang to improve their own history.

The Xeelee are a Vacuum DIagram They exist to travel back in time to re-engineer them and build the Ring, and travel back in time and.....

They can create folded space areas ( areas that contain more internal space than their external dimension shows - this is not an optical illusion ). In fact, they locked humanity within an hypersphere ( 4D-space sphere... ).

The ship to save humanity in the end had enough collapsed space inside its paper-thin hull to take up all of humanity...

[18-Till-I-Die]

18 not everyone actually likes creating powerful species out of creating powerful species. The xeelee are a plot device for Baxter, just like the Culture is a setting to banks.
Cut the perpetual newbie act please. You sycophantic and infantile acting is already annoying, and you don't even have 500 posts (i hope not at least).

First, i appologize. Second, i know you think i called you sire, but i want to kill that rumor now. Dig this, it was three freakin' AM, i misspelled Sure. Thirdly, if you read the Blackstar thread, it says explicetly that the tech in Blackstar is merely a way for me to explain the amazing things that happen to the characters. It's a character drama, a space opera, like Lensman not just me wanking. When i finally post some of it on Fanfic, you'll notice that technology is only a tiny part of the story, most of it focuses on the twelve main characters and their stories expanding, for the first whole story theres only oen real space battle, and a handfull of skirmishes. It's a warstory, a drama, not a fanwank. Ok, it is a litle wankish, but that's cause all sci-fi in a way is.

[Kuja]

Xeelee construction material is frictionless.

Really?

How do they handle it then?

[Dark Hellion]

Kuja, the Xeelee aren't very big on obeying laws of physics. Mostly, they think of them as suggestions.

[Shinova]

Don't forget that the Xeelee can also manipulate space-time constants and laws of physics at will. They changed planck constant, and some other things at some points.

They also, out of irritation, enclosed Humanity's galaxy in a space-time prison, IIRC.


The photino birds (antiXelee?) were able to press the Xeelee into desperation however, propelling entire galaxies at the Ring to destroy their chance of escaping to another universe.


The photino birds and Xeelee think their actions in the millions of years. Most typical sci-fi civilizations would've lived their entire existences tens of times over in the time it takes the Xeelee to execute one of their actions. Such is their scale of doing things.

[Xon]

Kuja, the Xeelee aren't very big on obeying laws of physics. Mostly, they think of them as suggestions.

In Xeelee-verse, the 'laws' of physics are just the default state of the universe. And they arent constant and immutable.

[The Nomad]

The photino birds (antiXelee?) were able to press the Xeelee into desperation however, propelling entire galaxies at the Ring to destroy their chance of escaping to another universe.

Photino birds are beings of dark matter.
The antiXeelee is a being of quantum wave-functions. The prefix "anti" has something to do with some fun quantum physics stuff called a vacuum diagram

The photino birds and Xeelee think their actions in the millions of years. Most typical sci-fi civilizations would've lived their entire existences tens of times over in the time it takes the Xeelee to execute one of their actions. Such is their scale of doing things.

Photino birds are still carrying out their projects 100 billion years in the future...

[Dahak]

Xeelee construction material is frictionless.

Really?

How do they handle it then?

They grow it out of the Xeelee Flowers. WIth 100% energy to matter conversion, that works pretty well.
It's just one of those laws of nature the Xeelee ignore.

To quote Pirates of the Carribean: "Those aren't rules. They are more like...guidelines"

[Dahak]

They also, out of irritation, enclosed Humanity's galaxy in a space-time prison, IIRC.

It was a Hypercube, the only connection to our universe being a 3D cube at the former position of Earth.

[Xon]

The photino birds and Xeelee think their actions in the millions of years. Most typical sci-fi civilizations would've lived their entire existences tens of times over in the time it takes the Xeelee to execute one of their actions. Such is their scale of doing things.

There is a comment on one of the books, that the STL actions of the Xeelee & photino birds are mostly the only a minor potion of the actions the Xeelee & the photino birds do. And the reason humans can see them is the FTL actions are over to damn quickly to notice.

After all they do have an FTL drive which is hidiously fast, With variable speed settings!

[18-Till-I-Die]

The photino birds (antiXelee?) were able to press the Xeelee into desperation however, propelling entire galaxies at the Ring to destroy their chance of escaping to another universe.

Photino birds are beings of dark matter.
The antiXeelee is a being of quantum wave-functions. The prefix "anti" has something to do with some fun quantum physics stuff called a vacuum diagram

The photino birds and Xeelee think their actions in the millions of years. Most typical sci-fi civilizations would've lived their entire existences tens of times over in the time it takes the Xeelee to execute one of their actions. Such is their scale of doing things.

Photino birds are still carrying out their projects 100 billion years in the future...

Three questions: what is a quantum-wave function, how can they be made from dark matter, and how could they function as a civilization if they can only perceive the universe in million year intervals?

[Dark Hellion]

Wow 18, you want to write Sci-Fi and yet don't understand some of the simple quantum physics.
Dark matter isn't that different from normal matter except that it is highly non-interactory. The photino birds ususally just fly around in huge flocks and use their gravity to either implode ships or chuck galaxies around. They percieve the universe at all times, its just that the majority of their plan took about 100 billion years to accomplish. They are rather patient animals.

as for the quantum-wave function, everything has one. What the anti-xeelee refers to is a Feynman Vacuum Diagram, the fact that empty space is always creating an proton, a pion and an anti-neutron, and then destroying itself again in a matter annihilation. This causes both ZPE and the permitivity of space constant (at least, I am rather sure it does).

and 18, save us some time, read Excession by Banks, and just come back when you can wank about a real semi-omnipotant.

[Xon]

I didn't read Manifold, but the Xeelee...
They have high-end time travel, and it causes "causality stress" - short story long story, you can kill your father before it knocks your mother, and create a new timeline without popping out of existence ( there is a freaky quantum-mechanics/probability analogy in Timelike Infinity ). The whole Xeelee species time-travelled 1 billion years after the Big Bang to improve their own history.

Xeelee time travel doesnt spin you off into a seperate universe:

Folded ships hung around him like moths.

There was a sense of motion, a thrumming of huge engines somewhere; as if the Suger Lump and its contents were a great liner, forging through some huge sea.

The antiXeelee cradled him. It studied him dispassionately, huge and cold. Paul felt knowledge wash over him, and slowly understanding grew.

The cube planet had been created at that moment - far in the future of mankind - when the Xeelee reached their full glory. And were ready to depart.

(Depart? Where to? Why? The answers were -awesome; beyond his comprehension.)

On its completion the cube - with its guardians, the antiXeelee, and with a million others - had been sent on an impossible voyage, forging back through the unfolding ages to the birth time if the Xeelee themselves. The Xeelee would erupt fully developed from the cubes, shaking out the wings of their beautiful spacecraft and ready for thier huge projects. Paul sought human words to capture the vast concepts sailing around him. Vacuum diagrams! The cube worlds were anti-particles, moving back through time to initiate their own creation. The whole Xeelee history was a single, vast vacuum diagram, closed and completed of itself.

But ... what of me?

Now Paul sensed a monstrous amusement. He was cupped within the gigantic palms for an unmeasureable period; the time engines surged steadily into the past -

And then he was lifted up and released like a capture bird.

He looked down. He was outside the Sugar Lump, falling towards it. Spline ships converged. There was the City, still alive with the hopes of Taft and the rest, spreading over the meteorite debris. On the rim of the debris was a fallen figure, a young man in a soiled spacesuit lying face down on the glowing surface.

Understanding came at last.

I have no beginning. I have no End. My lifeline is caught up in the vast Xeelee expedition into the past. I am a vacuum diagram too, closed on myself He remembered the absurd refrain 'We're here because we're here because we're here because ...'

He tumbled into the head of the fallen man. Shull drakness hit him like a physical shock, and he felt pieces of his understanding shatter like a dropped vessel, his memories seep away.

In the end he was left only with a vast amusement. Then event that fell away.

Paul is also a spontaneously existing complex entity. As the ending paragraph(which I have omitted) is identical the the starting.

Even the Time Lords would have trouble dealling with them.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I didn't read Manifold, but the Xeelee...
They have high-end time travel, and it causes "causality stress" - short story long story, you can kill your father before it knocks your mother, and create a new timeline without popping out of existence ( there is a freaky quantum-mechanics/probability analogy in Timelike Infinity ). The whole Xeelee species time-travelled 1 billion years after the Big Bang to improve their own history.

Xeelee time travel doesnt spin you off into a seperate universe:

Folded ships hung around him like moths.

There was a sense of motion, a thrumming of huge engines somewhere; as if the Suger Lump and its contents were a great liner, forging through some huge sea.

The antiXeelee cradled him. It studied him dispassionately, huge and cold. Paul felt knowledge wash over him, and slowly understanding grew.

The cube planet had been created at that moment - far in the future of mankind - when the Xeelee reached their full glory. And were ready to depart.

(Depart? Where to? Why? The answers were -awesome; beyond his comprehension.)

On its completion the cube - with its guardians, the antiXeelee, and with a million others - had been sent on an impossible voyage, forging back through the unfolding ages to the birth time if the Xeelee themselves. The Xeelee would erupt fully developed from the cubes, shaking out the wings of their beautiful spacecraft and ready for thier huge projects. Paul sought human words to capture the vast concepts sailing around him. Vacuum diagrams! The cube worlds were anti-particles, moving back through time to initiate their own creation. The whole Xeelee history was a single, vast vacuum diagram, closed and completed of itself.

But ... what of me?

Now Paul sensed a monstrous amusement. He was cupped within the gigantic palms for an unmeasureable period; the time engines surged steadily into the past -

And then he was lifted up and released like a capture bird.

He looked down. He was outside the Sugar Lump, falling towards it. Spline ships converged. There was the City, still alive with the hopes of Taft and the rest, spreading over the meteorite debris. On the rim of the debris was a fallen figure, a young man in a soiled spacesuit lying face down on the glowing surface.

Understanding came at last.

I have no beginning. I have no End. My lifeline is caught up in the vast Xeelee expedition into the past. I am a vacuum diagram too, closed on myself He remembered the absurd refrain 'We're here because we're here because we're here because ...'

He tumbled into the head of the fallen man. Shull drakness hit him like a physical shock, and he felt pieces of his understanding shatter like a dropped vessel, his memories seep away.

In the end he was left only with a vast amusement. Then event that fell away.

Paul is also a spontaneously existing complex entity. As the ending paragraph(which I have omitted) is identical the the starting.

Even the Time Lords would have trouble dealling with them.

Whoa...deep.

Ok, so, the Xeelee exist because they have to go back in time to create themselves, and this 'Paul' exists because he died.

Wow...that's really freaky.