Alchemist Devices

With the understanding that came with the unification of the laws of physics, the federation races began to develop technologies to exploit the strong nuclear forces that hold atomic nuclei together, and the technologies that led from this ability to manipulate matter by changing the internal bond strength led to the development of the first alchemist devices in the 2180’s. The alchemist devices, as their name suggests, have the ability to transmute elements on a large scale, converting nuclei from heavy to lighter elements and vice versa.

            The alchemist device is basically a powerful field generator that has the capability of generating waves in the order ten to the fortieth of a metre in wavelength, these field distortions act to change or stimulate the strong nuclear forces temporarily, or to affect the electromagnetic forces that hold atomic components together. A burst of energy needs to be applied to propagate this field beyond the heart of this device, but when applied the outward spreading wave also destroys the weapon entirely, so all alchemist devices are single use.

            There are two main modes that the alchemist devices can operate in, though in most cases specific alchemists are built for a specific function.

The first and most easily achievable is for the device to nullify the electronic forces, that causes repulsion between electron clouds around neighbouring atoms, the result of this is that nuclei can freely combine and fuse together. This process generates a great increase in heavy elements, and is not stopped by the iron limit. Many of these types of devices were used to suffuse Mars’ core with heavy radioisotopes, and therefore to promote core heating and the liquefaction of the outer core (and re-establish geomagnetic dynamo and volcanism), though the yield of such devices was low. The problem with this technique is that the vast amount of energy released from the fusion can act to break apart the new elements when the generated field collapses. This mode of the alchemist devices is called ‘fuse’.

The second and more complicated method is to weaken the forces that hold atomic nuclei together, and this encourages the break up of heavy elements into lighter ones, these devices are consequently described as ‘fracture’ devices. These devices have the problem of generating huge amounts of energy in heavy element objects, which can lead to cascade runaway, as atoms simply fall apart when subjected to the field.

Both of these devices have seen service in military and non-military roles. Militarily speaking it is one of the most powerful weapons that the federation has, it has the power at full yield to annihilate planets and damage stars, though no device has ever been used in warfare anywhere near these ultimate limits. In non-military applications they have been used to generate radio-isotopes in planetary cores to stimulate geologically dead planets back to life, they have also been used experimentally on dim M type stars, to see if they could be stimulated and rejuvenated, the limited testing that has been done suggests it may well be possible to prolong the life of G and K type stars, maybe up to several billion years in large scale projects, significantly increasing their lifespan.

In military uses they have been tried and tested in the Mawa-Rei wars, mostly for detonating asteroids in ship construction facilities, the explosions generated are powerful enough to destroy all nearby ships and facilities, but do not require high yield alchemist weapons. They have also been used against super-large warships, where they guarantee kills without endangering federation ships at some distance.

In the peaceful post Mawa-Rei years alchemist devices have been somewhat refined, and hopefully will never have to be deployed in any other way than the most philanthropic reasons.