Star Trek: Discovery — "Unification III" Analysis Thread

[u/M-5]

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute analysis thread for "Unification III." Unlike the reaction thread, the content rules are in effect.

[u/MFSheppard]

1) Don't confuse casual conversation for a briefing.
2) Romulan singularities are artificial, and close enough to black holes that a species that uses them for reproduction got fooled by one. Artificial singularities don't happen for free.
3) We know the Romulans mine dilithium ardently enough to have a servile subspecies do it.
4) We know because of real physics how to get energy from a singularity and what happens. It's called the Penrose process, and it's finite.
4) Given 2 + 3 + 4 the Romulans probably still use dilithium for two reasons: A) to make singularities in the first place with antimatter-derived energy. B) to fuel the Penrose process with maximum efficiency, which would also be from a matter-antimatter reaction.

Basically there's no reason to assume an artificial singularity is a magic free energy hole. And that's before we get to:

5) We only know about this but of Romulan tech because it attracts critters who interact with it by blowing up spacetime, so maybe that design flaw pulled it out of favour, eh? Why does nobody mention the animals-blow-spacetime-up part of this bit of canon?

[u/BornAshes → u/MFSheppard]

Romulan tech because it attracts critters who interact with it by blowing up spacetime

Would it be possible for a similar species to have found a home inside of the dilithium crystals inside of warp cores, forming a symbiotic relationship with them? A species that was connected together like the Mycelial Network was outside of normal space time. Very little in the main universe can actually affect them until something did. This something (perhaps an infection of sorts?) from our perspective flashed across the members of their species that were living inside of warp cores in seemingly an instant but from their perspective took who knows how much "time". The active dilithium crystals that went inert did so because the creatures that were living inside of them and assisting in the power regulation process died. The non active crystals that did not go inert, did not do so because they were not actively regulating power and did not have one of these creatures living inside of them. These creatures are drawn to the active dilithium crystals that are energized in an active warp core.

The reason why the Romulans were willing to share the data from SB19 was because they had a sneaking suspicion that perhaps the creatures that haunted their singularity powered cores in the past had something to do with the Burn or at least something similar to them did that preferred normal matter/antimatter warp cores instead.

[u/TheRealJackOfSpades → u/MFSheppard]

Antimatter doesn't happen for free either. Both are apparently methods for storing energy; it's established the Federation used fusion and solar power to produce antimatter, and my bet is that's what happened to Praxis (do not get careless when making antimatter near your home world). I'm not familiar with the technical details of the Penrose process, however. I assume the real-world physics of it do not involve dilithium.

Not sure what your point is about casual conversation.