An idea for a bit of xenotech that I had after a conversation with a friend (said conversation consisted of telling me all about the "good old days" of early sci-fi and me making notes for ideas to steal). Concept: Atomic Wormhole Generators Found either singularly or in pairs, this artifact appears to either produce or destroy matter when observed as a single piece. Only when both portions are examined does the truth reveal itself. These artifacts consist of a pair of 11.238m diameter spheres that are missing a conical section 30 degrees across and extending to near the center of the sphere, with a shifting, "oil slick" appearance in visible and ultraviolet light. A trio of rings, made of a high tensile strength formulation of carbon nanotubes interset with various metals, set around the equatorial region and two more set at 90 degree angles to the equator, appear to be for purposes of anchoring the spheres against the possibility of the considerable thrust from escaping matter. The spheres themselves are made of some form of exotic matter, hypothesized to be similar in composition to the Pandora Gates. However, unlike the Pandora Gates, there is no library of addresses or much of an interface at all; instead, the two spheres have a constant and very small wormhole connection that allows matter to pass directly through from one sphere to the opposing sphere, in accordance with local atmospheric pressures. Unfortunately, the wormhole is not very stable, and any matter that is passed through is torn apart and reduced to its component atoms, reappearing in the aperture of the other sphere as monoatomic vapor. It appears that whichever civilization originally created these devices used them for bulk material movement; three of the planets in the system in which these were found had nearly identical atmospheres, and it is hypothesized that at least one of the spheres has been held aloft in one of the system's gas giants as a means of hydrogen mining, due to a sphere found aloft in orbit in a ring of tenuous hydrogen. Their maximum range is unknown. The maximum flow rate appears to be limited by the wormhole's maximum aperture, which is set by the diameter of the base of the conical section, which is approximately 25 centimeters across. The spheres each weigh approximately 12,000 metric tons apiece. Thus far, four complete pairs have been found, along with another three individuals whose partners have not yet been identified. A means by which one can activate and deactivate the spheres has not yet been found. Of the complete pairs found thus far, two pairs were loaded onto large transportation platforms--essentially, flatbed trucks--approximately 50 kilometers from the Pandora Gate, while two more have been observed in situ elsewhere in the system and been proved to be linked by the simple means of dropping objects with distinctive chemical makeups into the wormhole and observing the resulting gases from the other side. The three spheres whose partners have not yet been identified are in local space, often trailing long streamers of gases, rendering them easy to detect. One of these spheres--the one producing hydrogen in planetary orbit--is in a spin, giving it no net thrust as it spews out gases, while the other two are in the outer system, steadily gaining velocity. Thoughts? Ideas? I've been having some fun with ideas for what to do with these myself, including dropping one half on Mars and the other half on Venus and getting two terraformed planets for the price of one, and dropping one on Earth and making off with all of that lovely oxygen and nitrogen. A trash recycler seems a bit trite, but they'd do wonders at reducing wastes to monoatomic feedstock, and using them as a rocket engine seems a tad wasteful.