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***BREAKING NEWS UPDATE*** SNN reporters have video of the catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on the Scum Barge Ecstatic Metamorphosis. Casualty numbers are still arriving and the estimated death toll is currently sitting at 100,000. The number of reported casualties is only expected to rise in coming days. Early analysis of the footage indicates the explosion occurred in the interior of the ship near the fusion core. Dozens of smaller ships were also caught in the explosion. It is still unknown how many survivors there are, or how many individuals were actually caught in the tragic accident. Investigators are still analyzing the footage to determine the actual cause of this catastrophe.

Nah, probably nothing nuclear at all, don't give credit to those alarmists. I was on my turn in the shipyards in Extropia last time they came around, and they asked for some repairs in the main engines and energy outputs of their capitol ship. Thing is, they weren't capable of repaying us all with any kind of help or service at all, and simply wanted us to repair them due to our kindness. Now, don't take me wrong, if there hadn't been so much works those weeks, I would have gladly helped, but a large freighter was being repaired after a hit against another ship during the docking sequence, and work was demanding and stressful. Last thing I wanted was to work more on my free time. I did warn them, though, not to fly and wait instead in Extropia for some weeks so we could get on with their own ship. But you know how scum are, they listen to their own and follow their own rules... and I'm not precisely a known member of any @-rep list. So they just said a harsh thanks and took off. I believe some of them did upgrade their resleving contracts before leaving, though, and updated new copies of themselves, so they shouldn't have lost much. Of course, I'm sure most of them didn't. [i]Olga Kirishnova - hangar chief in the Saatchel Brothers Shipyards, Extropia.[/i] The cause was *obviously* not the core. Fusion cores do not explode (despite what preservationists claim). In a worst case scenario they merely vent a plasma jet, and usually breakdowns just light up the cooling baffles. However, Ecstatic Metamorphosis was a lightly modified Doncaster 4300 model, and they keep their D/He3 pellets in a group of cryocyls 20 meters forward of the core. That is quite close to the apparent center of the detonation in the footage. What could make the pellets detonate? Again, no matter what dirthuggers say, no amount of normal violence could have ignited them. Break the cryocyls and they evaporate. However, a detonation strong enough to produce fusion reactions might do it: a thermonuclear warhead or an antimatter charge. In theory even a fission warhead might work, but there are obvious alignment problems - getting a radiation implosion for even one cryocyl would take massive effort and luck. So, what was it? All footage I have found is in the optic spectrum and whites out almost directly. However, I downloaded [this] file from the Quentin Daniels Observatory and you can see a very weak neutrino peak. I interpret this as antimatter: the typical gamma signature got entirely absorbed by the surroundings. Had it been a thermonuke there would have been a sharper initial pulse from the warhead followed by a softer pulse from the pellets. Even with a big warhead one has to put it in the right place to get some of the pellets to detonate. I would guess, based on the size of the detonation and the pulse, that the pellets at most did 75% of the total energy output, perhaps less than 50%. That is still pretty good going: whoever put the warhead in place knew what it would do, and did not trust the warhead itself to wipe out the barge. Given that we are talking about multimegaton charges that assumes more than just terrorism: this was either art for art's sake or an attempt to *really* get rid of something or someone. Too bad about the inhabitants, but as an inverse problem deducing the attack is quite intriguing. I have run a few back-of-the-envelope simulations of the detonation, trying to match it with the observations. Does anybody have recent deckplans or scans of the barge? [i]Icosa Watkins - Plasmawatcher, Protium Station[/i] I remember hearing rumors there were more than just scum on board. I heard there was some weird shit going down on there. Experiments with nanotech and mind-altering computer viruses and shit. Maybe someone took them down for the good of the rest of mankind before they started Fall 2.0, Fall Harder. [i]Anonymous Account, Mesh ID Unknown[/i] If someone were trying to stop that, they would have to blow up half of the solar system. I expect it was just the usual crappy maintenance and/or gangster infighting we have come to expect from the scum. Remember what happened to New Qingdao and Phenomenal Deee-Lite. [i]Stewart Xiang-Lorenzo - rep trader, AboveBeyond Station[/i] Icosa is full of it. The explosion had exactly the right magnitude to be the evaporation of a quantum black hole. Someone had found a way of making them, and then got Hawkinged to plasma. [i]Nightflight - physics enthusiast, Prometheus Station[/i] Black holes don't exist. They are a figment of politically correct physic's fevered imagination and an long-running cover-up in the astronomy community (We have known FOR A CENTURY that Eddington made up his eclipse observations!). Space-time isn't rubber! The Pandora gates are not wormholes. WAKE UP: Riemannian space-time is a tool of oppression. Even Einstein admitted that! See [this], [this] and [this] site for more information how the Riemannian metric is being used by the power elite! [i]AQUAL4INF - Nectaris[/i]