The whole drag-in-space Allegiance myth

[Adept]

QUOTE (Cookie Monster @ Apr 14 2010, 05:50 PM) Actually I think in the Alleg fiction alephs are wormholes to other systems (the first ones were found on the edges of our own, so every sector is in a different solar system.

In the original ZGs I think the alephs led to various parts in the Sol system. It's been a decade though, so I can't be sure if I remember this right.

[Makida]

QUOTE (Cookie Monster @ Apr 14 2010, 12:11 PM) Well then why can I see suns and planets which do not look fuzzy at all!

Sometimes you can! Though from the same sector, you might see a planet from one system (sometimes even our own!), a nebula that would not be visible from that planet at all, constellations that no world has ever named... Because you are really looking out through a distorted window made out of space and time itself, that might appear to be only a few kilometres across from your perspective, but might span unimaginable distances in the outside world. Sometimes, it is true, a sector will sit neatly within a single solar system, perhaps even near a inhabitable world, and you will see it fairly clearly. But being in such a sector is all the more disturbing, for though you can clearly see, perhaps, a pleasant blue-green planet, and long to leave the cramped metal container in which you spend far too much of your life to reach out and touch its verdant surface... you cannot, for a literally infinite abyss of twisted reality sits between you and that world, and there are no ways in or out of your glass prison, until you have fought across the map and reached the destination aleph jealously guarded by your alien foes.

P.S. This is also why drinking is recommended by some veteran pilots as a means of coping.

QUOTE (FIZ @ Apr 14 2010, 12:19 PM) Your not drunk enough.

[Cadillac]

All the sectors have suns and planets

What are the chances of that!

[Makida]

QUOTE (Cookie Monster @ Apr 14 2010, 12:25 PM) All the sectors have suns and planets

Laddie, I have seen sectors as black and dark as Hell itself. <Takes a drink.>

However, it is true that a disproportionate number of sectors appear to have large visible astronomical bodies (though not all!) Our best scientists speculate that this is because the sector's aspect in the outside universe might be attracted to deep gravity wells, or at least interacts with them in some manner.

P.S. Wait, do all the sectors have visible planets and what-not? I was under the impression that it's only some of them, and some just have nebula, and some just have stars and not much else. Though then again I never pay much attention to the background, and I haven't installed any of the fancy mods...

[Cadillac]

Alright "Scotty" your theory is pretty watertight, well done

Edit: Yes they do all have suns and astrological bodies.

[spideycw]

How does girly's explanation handle Aleph Res passing between sectors? Or HOD?

[Cadillac]

A chemical charge designed to cause a cascade reaction within the aleph causing it to destabilise? The aleph must re-stabilise itself and achieves this via an explosion otherwise it would shut down forever!

[Makida]

That's a good one. Though instead of a chemical charge, I think the Aleph Resonator is actually, basically, a very small, very powerful ripcord system. Remember, ripcording was invented after studying the alephs, and is based on the same basic principles (though exploited in a primitive, much less powerful way). Methinks the aleph res uses this fact. Perhaps it teleports highly charged subatomic particles back and forth across a very small space, but very rapidly, and at just the right frequency that the space-time distortion from the teleportation resonates with the pattern of distortion within the aleph itself. Especially if the aleph res does this while it's in the aleph, in the split second in which it is on "both sides"... I like your idea of the explosion being the aleph's way of re-stabilizing itself, and if someone finds a way of coding "resonators" that can temporarily close an aleph someday, it will fit in nicely.

[Cadillac]

Alephs are artificial phenomena after all, think stargate

[Makida]

The original storyline claims that no-one is really certain whether the alephs are natural or constructs of an alien species. If they were built by someone... That'd make for an overpowered faction to put the Phoenix to shame.

And someone should design it.