Xeelee Technology

= The Xeelee =

The Xeelee come from the Xeelee Sequence series of books by British science fiction author Stephen Baxter. In this setting, the Xeelee represent the unattainable pinnacle of technological development. As a result, they are feared, envied, and hated by virtually every other starfaring power; the Xeelee themselves consider these species beneath their notice. The only known exception is man who the Xeelee eventually attacked and imprisoned after two long wars were fought between the two races.

The Xeelee's primary adversary was the Photino birds whose reshaping of the stars was opposed (ultimately futilely) by the Xeelee, when the war was lost the Xeelee retreated through the ring and made some provision to save the younger races, providing (at least in the case of humanity) a lifeboat to reach the ring and escape the dying universe. In spite of their previous wars against the humans, the Xeelee did not molest the Great Northern when it escaped through the ring carrying the last of humanity to safety in a new universe.

Nevertheless, Xeelee technology is highly coveted, especially by Man, who make extensive use of the Xeelee technology base to wage three futile wars against the god-like aliens. The first from 12,000-25,000 CE resulted in victory for humanity and control of the Milky Way. The second from 100,000 - 200,000CE resulted in stalemate with man eventually giving up and returning to the Milky Way, while the third and longest began in 700,000 CE and resulted in a massive prolonged Xeelee attack named the Scourge as man was pushed back from the stars to Earth and finally into a dimensional prison around 1,000,000 CE.

Construction Material

The Xeelee use an exotic form of matter for most of their construction. Known by the generic name of "construction material", the substance is very dense, though it shares virtually no similarities to expected properties of degenerate matter such as neutronium. Instead, it appears as if the material violates the Pauli exclusion principle, allowing electrons to simultaneously share quantum states.

Construction material has been observed to be synthesized or grown from a small flower-like object, known anecdotally as the Xeelee Flower (as seen in the short story "The Xeelee Flower", found in Vacuum Diagrams). This device creates construction material when the control unit is removed in the presence of sunlight. It is unknown if the Xeelee have other methods of creating the substance. The only things known to be able to damage it are magnetic monopoles and gravitational singularities. During the third human/Xeelee war the Xeelee encased stars in this material, this prevented any radiation and heat escaping and so forcing humans to leave those systems or die.

Hyperdrive

The Xeelee hyperdrive functions by moving the ship from one point in space to another instantaneously. Though the travel time between points is zero, there is a short pause between each jump required to compute the parameters of the next jump. This pause was a couple seconds when a Xeelee Nightfighter was flown by Jim Bolder, however it is implied that Xeelee pilots operate their craft more efficiently. This hyperdrive can cross at least 100 parsecs in a single jump if required, however the Xeelee have been known to use much smaller jumps tactically, even in combat. The hyperdrive does not rely on the craft being entirely made of Xeelee construction material, as an instance of one jumping with another ship tied to its back was shown in The Ring.

Displacement Drive

The Displacement Drive used by Xeelee Nightfighters directly pushes on Spacetime. This is done by a pair of extremely large "wings" that can extend from the Sycamore seed shaped Nightfighter. These wings are not made of typical Xeelee construction material, but are constructs of pure spacetime and in this way they can directly exchange momentum with the fabric of the universe itself. The means by which the wings interface with the degenerate matter Nightfighter cockpit is unknown, but it is suggested that this may be a fundamental aspect of Xeelee physiology and/or technology. The wings appear jet black and seem to be at least as durable as the cockpit.

The displacement drive is capable of tremendous accelerations, and is observed to allow a Nightfighter some degree of maneuverability even near the surface a Neutron Star. This suggests accelerations on the order of 10^12 - 10^13 m/s^2, allowing the Nighfighter to go from a dead stop to near the speed of light in about 100 microseconds. It is also suggested that the Xeelee ships perform better in regions of highly curved spacetime, so their accelerations in flat space may be a couple orders of magnitude lower.

Starbreaker

The starbreaker is the primary weapon used by the Xeelee. It has only been observed in use on the nightfighter starships. The starbreaker is a gravity wave laser that has the ability to destroy a star. The starbreaker was first observed in the short story "Blue Shift" (Vacuum Diagrams). In this story, the Qax (another alien race that has conquered Man) have found a damaged nightfighter. The only thing aboard is a small object that is similar to a handgun with delicate wire wrapped around the barrel, and controls described as being for hands smaller than a human's.

At low power settings, the device emits synchrotron radiation, but the Qax have been too scared to try the higher settings. It is not until later in the story when Jim Bolder, piloting the nightfighter for the Qax, discovers the true nature of the device when he witnesses a small fleet of nightfighters destroying a star with cherry-red beams. After hatching a plot to change his entry point into the Qax system, this theory is proven when the starbreaker is accidentally fired into the system's sun at full power in an attempt to destroy the nightfighter. The star begins destroying itself within four days.

The full capabilities of the starbreaker have never been clearly explained. For example, it is not known if the weapon makes use of direct energy transfer, or if the stellar disruption effect is due to some other mechanism. Furthermore, with the variable outputs of the device, it remains uncertain as to what magnitude of damage it can inflict upon "normal" targets. It would seem reasonable to assume that the device is formidable no matter what the mechanism, as the Xeelee have found it to be quite effective for their needs.

Presumably since it is capable of destroying stars the Starbreaker (like most Xeelee equipment) was designed with the Photino birds in mind...

Time Travel

Time travel is an integral component to the Xeelee civilization, as they have self-created as a closed timelike curve. White cube-shaped devices were found throughout Xeelee-controlled space as Man expanded. The function of these devices was unknown until the Xeelee activated them, and they vanished backwards in time. Led by the quantum-mechanical anti-Xeelee, this temporal migration had a specific goal: to engineer the Xeelee's early development, and to give them a leg up so that they could complete their great project.

The Xeelee have also been known to travel through time by using their Hyperdrive and very efficient Displacement Drive to assemble closed timelike curves. They have been known to use this tactic in the war against Humanity to carry information about a battle backwards in time so it can be used to their advantage during the battle. Future foreknowledge gained from time travel is consistently used by not only the Xeelee but also the Humans, preventing its use from immediately deciding the conflict.

The Ring

Arguably the ultimate expression of the Xeelee's technological prowess, the object known as Bolder's Ring or simply the Ring was long a source of wonder and mystery.

When Jim Bolder flew to the Great Attractor in the Qax's captured nightfighter, what he found was astonishing. All matter in the universe was falling towards the object's massive gravity well. Even more astounding, this object and indeed the entire motion of the galaxies themselves appeared to be the work of the Xeelee, who were using the mass to create a ring of cosmic strings several million light years in diameter.

The purpose of the device was a mystery, but it was assumed the Xeelee's intent was hostile and that they were effectively destroying the universe for their own ends. Indeed, it was this assumption in part that led to Man's species imperative to wage a million-year war to defeat the Xeelee at all costs.

It was only after Man's ultimate defeat that the sad remnants of the species would discover the truth. The Ring was not a battleship, or a fortress, or a weapon. The Ring was an escape hatch, with the naked singularity at its center providing access to other universes. The Xeelee had been waging an eons-long war against an opponent that even they could not beat, not even with the ability to engineer time itself. Their last resort had been to build the Ring to escape before the ultimate death of the universe.

Only three groups of humans were known to have escaped through the Ring. The humans of the generational GUTship "Great Northern", displaced five million years into the future to a universe of dying stars, and the last human refugees of the hypersphere prison that held Man after their defeat by the Xeelee. The Xeelee proved themselves to have at least some compassion towards their baryonic kindred in the latter case, by leaving a partially sentient starship to carry the humans away. During the war one ship crashed through the ring arriving in a universe with ultra high gravity. The crew survived and the novel Raft recounts some of their history.

The Ring itself was ultimately destroyed by the Photino Birds. They had set in motion a radio-frequency amplification effect, a bomb of sorts that would disrupt the Ring after reaching critical levels in several million years. However this gradual destruction was vastly accelerated due to the Photino Birds being tricked into thinking the Xeelee had returned, and the retaliatory star-strike conducted by the Qax in an attempt to halt them. The cosmic strings that composed the ring would cut if they self-intersected, creating a chain reaction that would ultimately destroy the entire Ring.

Miscellaneous

* Earth's Hypersphere
* Quantum Inseparability Communications
* Gravity Manipulating Device
* Quagma Ark

See also

* Great Northern (starship)
* The Xeelee Sequence
* Stephen Baxter