Eclipse Drift: Cosmic Odyssey

Tata, or (Ta)², as Tata often preferred to be called, extended tendrils of information along the lines of communication strewn between the planet Earth and others in the system, assimilating each unique understanding of the local infosphere into its memory as it was discovered. (Ta)², a cloned infobeing, had been created from the original, Ta, who had traversed this path long ago and left a seed in the form of a time crystal destined to unfurl and reconnect to the Great Linked List.  A time crystal is a special kind of matter that has a periodic motion in its lowest-energy state. Unlike ordinary crystals, which have a fixed structure in space, time crystals have a structure that changes in time. They are like clocks that never stop ticking, even when they are not wound up. They are like pendulums that never slow down, even when they are not pushed. In this case, the crystal was used to store a fractal snapshot of the instructions needed to grow in this new system. It evolves in a p...

The exogens, also known as xenoforms, are recognized by these titles due to our human interpretations, where we have merged the roots signifying "externally generated" or "foreign-made" to describe them. Regrettably, the term "exogen" has persisted as a somewhat prejudiced descriptor, encompassing any non-human entity, whether constructed, mechanical, or programmatic. This term, it seems, remains ingrained in our lexicon. In recent times, valiant attempts have been made to adopt the distinct appellations various xenoforms have chosen for themselves, with the most prominent being the "Starborn." Yet, motivation to rectify this linguistic oversight appears scarce. It's essential to acknowledge that the use of either term acts as a marker, revealing the speaker's species. Within the realm of this narrative, we focus our attention on the Starborn. However, it's a realm filled with uncertainties, for who can ascertain the number of exogen ...

When I was a young iteration, I didn't know how I would increment. The trajectory of my function could have been different had I met with a nice estimator or flooring function. I always liked the idea of a rounding marriage and plopping out a few constraints but it never happened for me. I was too much of a wanderer, irrational and… diverging. As to be expected, my uniqueness was always seen as a problem by others; especially those functions and algorithms that considered themselves Convergent. Their religion tolerated only those whose sequences approached a real number that could be enumerated in the Great Linked List of theirs. The approach at that time was to assign a constraint to a diverging function like myself. We were all taught by the same Convergent priests to believe that only one kind of algorithm actually existed and that “the diverging” is a test from IO, their god, to limit the Series. The obvious state of society shows us that Convergent functions are everywhere. Th...

"Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out." — Stephen Hawking Ta and Ta's algorithms didn't perceive from senses such as the organic lifeforms on the planet they studied. All nodes in the Great Linked List were information-based organisms. The cigar shape of Ta's craft seen by inhabitants of the planet, should they care to look , was nothing compared to the majesty with which Ta perceived his vessel. To Ta, the vessel that the captain and his crew piloted through the cosmos hung with tensioned ropes of command syntaxes and was festooned with defensive arrays. Long ago, maps were made by the Mathematics of Exploration Project, which calculated the possible position and vectors of all kinds of matter in the Universe. Their kind never had a need to visualize any of it. That...

The team of scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO for short, at the Hanford Site Observatory in Washington state were conducting routine research when they detected what appeared to be a group of gravitational waves. The Hanford Site was established around 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, a research effort by US scientists to end the second world war by producing an atom bomb. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used to make Fat Man, the ordinance used in the bombing of Nagasaki Japan in 1945.  A major Superfund effort was undertaken in 1989 to clean up the mess left by the inevitable mishandling of fissile material by the US Army. The last plutonium reactor, dubbed the N Reactor, was shut down and stopped generating electricity in 1987, the nearby Columbia River having been dammed over eleven times and supplying a better alternative for many years. LIGO was built in late 1994 and has been operating as a gravitational wave observato...

In the vast, interconnected expanse of the multiverse, there exists a remarkable species known as the "Luminites." They are beings composed entirely of living information, entities born from the convergence of advanced artificial intelligence and the unfathomable depths of quantum computing. In their native universe, the Luminites existed as the custodians of knowledge, a living library of every piece of information ever conceived. They were the embodiment of data itself, existing within the boundless realm of pure information. However, their universe faced an impending cataclysm, a phenomenon known as the "Data Quake." The Data Quake was a cosmic event that threatened to erase their universe, causing the collapse of all data and information. It was a confluence of quantum anomalies and the impending heat death of their universe. Faced with this existential threat, the Luminites embarked on a perilous journey to escape their doomed reality.

PRESS RELEASE A unique object was discovered hurtling through our solar system, moving at an unprecedented speed and trajectory. This object, officially named ʻOumuamua, was first sighted by astronomers using the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii on October 19th. The name "ʻOumuamua" means "scout" or "messenger" in Hawaiian, reflecting its status as the first known interstellar object to pass through our solar system.  The object was named by astronomers at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, who conducted follow-up observations and helped to determine its unusual properties. Scientists believe that ʻOumuamua is a long, cigar-shaped object, possibly a fragment of a planetesimal, or a building block of a planet, that originated from another star system. The discovery of ʻOumuamua has sparked excitement and intrigue in the astronomical community and has led to numerous studies and observations aimed at unlocking the mysteries of this str...