Nova bomb (Andromeda)

A nova bomb is a fictional weapon of mass destruction in the Andromeda series. It functions by briefly weakening, nullifying or inverting gravity in a large area, with the intended purpose of artificially inducing a supernova.

The destructive power of the nova bomb is not clearly defined, but there is an established upper limit - in the second episode, the Andromeda Ascendant's entire complement of 40 nova bombs was not powerful enough to destroy a relatively small black hole, although they did temporarily neutralize enough of its gravitational field to briefly turn the black hole into a white hole. However, since a main-sequence star consists of a large body of extremely energetic superheated gas, held under pressure by the gravitational field generated by its own mass, it is actually highly unstable – it would only be necessary to temporarily neutralize a relatively small proportion of a star's gravitational field to drive it to go supernova. It is seen to be able to destroy a solar system filled with Magog by firing into the solar system's sun.

Consequently, while a nova bomb can easily destroy a star, its effect on planets or ships is less certain.

Notably, when used against the Magog world-ship, which is a superstructure made up of an artificial sun surrounded by several hollowed out planets, a nova bomb succeeded in driving the star to go supernova (although, virtually all of the energy released was absorbed by the Spirit of the Abyss), but apparently had no effect on the world-ship's superstructure.

Although Dylan exhausted the ship's initial supply of nova bombs shortly after waking up from his three-hundred-year 'sleep', Dylan acquired a new one during a visit to an abandoned High Guard satellite base, which he subsequently used in a failed attempt to destroy the Magog world-ship during their first confrontation with it. Harper subsequently built a new bomb that he called 'Rosanne', which he claimed had the combined power of three nova bombs put together, and was subsequently used by the Eureka Maru to close a dimensional tear and destroy the over ten thousand ships that were traveling through it.

It should also be noted, that deployment of any number of Nova bombs, normally, requires authorization of four officers. This is seen in the second episode of the series.