The Telpher: Telepathic Teleportation New Perspectives on a Common Science Fiction Tropeby Steven Eckroad Teleportation is now a reality—at least at the quantum level. It is information, not matter, that is teleported in the subatomic world. Science fiction sometimes invokes quantum teleportation of information to explain teleporting. The information encodes a person’s matter (e.g., for…
Superheavy Elements Stable Superheavy Element found in Nature? This post discusses the chemistry of stable superheavy elements in nature (i.e., not artificially created in nuclear reactions or accelerators). To date none have been found on Earth, though scientists and geologists have searched the world over for the past half century. However, in my novel Copernicium-296…
Sci-Fi Weapons: How the Peacemaker Works As I explain in my novel, Copernicium-296, I have my female lead, Jana Anders, learning the truth about a sidearm issued to her as a Federation Navy Ensign, fresh out of Academy. The weapon was initially designed to be more than the simple stun gun for crowd control. The…
The “Peacemaker” I had fun inventing the handgun used by Jana in Copernicium-296. The Peacemaker, aka PKR, is the 24th-century Federation Navy’s working name for a sidearm issued to Federation Marines for personal self-defense. In coming up with the name for the weapon I remembered that a handgun used in America’s wild west had been…