Post-transuranic materials, usually called post-transuranics,[1][2][3] PTU, or PTUs, are ultra-high-strength materials made using stable isotopes of very large atoms, which are not produced by natural nucleusynthesis and therefore do not occur naturally anywhere in the universe. Creating post-transuranic elements requires vast amounts of energy. PTUs are therefore extremely expensive.
PTU materials are commonly alloys,[4][5][6][7] but they may also be composites[8], "macromolecular lattices"[9], or "matrices".[10]
The extruded supermolecules[11] that form the shells of annie-plants rely on PTU atoms[8] for their strength, presenting something of a bootstrap problem because annie-plants are also the best source of the power required to make more PTUs.[5] A technological civilization needs millennia to produce enough PTUs for annie-plants, unless they are assisted by a more advanced civilization, as humans were.[5] Large annie-plants are by far the most expensive component of a given structure; annie-plant damage can total a warship.[12]
The economy of Sol System, and presumably of any publicly known galactic power of the 31st Century, revolves around energy production and thus PTU production.[9]
The ancient Oafa civilization was able to make PTUs much more efficiently than current galactic civilization can, using transbaryonic technology, and used them as bulk structural materials in their ships and megastructures. This makes newly discovered Oafan relics, especially ship hulls, a fantastically valuable resource. With the conclusion of the Baryon War and the return of the exogalactics, PTU-manufacturing technology equal or better to the Oafans' will soon become available once more.
The PTU hull of the ancient Oafan warship later named Breath Weapon, an ovoid slightly more than 500 metres long, is worth more than the annual economic output of Sol System,[13] and the PTU hull of the ancient Oafan transport ship later named Cindercone, a sphere 8 km wide, is worth thousands of times as much.[14]
Fragsuits' armor-plates contain "crazy amounts" of PTU.[15]
Spelling[]
The Oxford Dictionaries spells "transuranic" without a hyphen,[16] as did Schlock Mercenary in 2016 and later.[1][2][3] More often but earlier, Schlock Mercenary used the spelling "trans-uranic".[4][5][17][6][7]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Schlock Mercenary, 2016-04-03 — Danita: "This may explain why the Tausennigans had enough post-transuranics to become a galactic super-power, ...".
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Schlock Mercenary, 2016-04-05 — Gasca: "We have attempted to track several thousand "points of interest" that could prove to be sources of post-transuranics."
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Schlock Mercenary, 2017-10-16 — Petey: "Don't you mean polymer, piezogel, and post-transuranics?"
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Schlock Mercenary, 2012-07-24 — Kevyn Dietz: "Familiar stuff: super-stable, post-trans-uranic alloys." / Kevyn Andreyasn: "We use those in annie plants and high-end hull plates. Using our most efficient fabber tech, a P.T.U. project just one one-hundredth the size of Oisri would bankrupt a small star."
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Schlock Mercenary, 2013-09-13 — Henri: "Post-trans-uranic alloys require enormous energy to create. The most efficient generators, annie plants, require PTU's in their construction, presenting a bootstrap problem."
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Schlock Mercenary, 2015-04-02 — Karl Tagon: "As promised, General Bala-Amin, ten thousand ancient Oafan hulls, each one made from annie-grade post trans-uranic alloys."
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Schlock Mercenary, 2015-09-22 — Kevyn Foxworthy: "Built from priceless post-trans-uranic alloys, and hiding a dangerously tasty middle layer?"
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Schlock Mercenary, 2014-03-30 — Haley Sorlie: "Well, if the hull is really the PTU composite its neutrino shadow made it out to be..."
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Schlock Mercenary, 2014-07-13 — Hioefua: "Population growth here in Sol system tracks the energy economy. Energy expenditure is greatest in the fusing and fabrication of post-transuranic elements, molecules, and macromolecular lattices." / Hesh-Baz: "... I am well versed in basic economics."
- ↑ Schlock Mercenary, 2013-08-15 — Kevyn Andreyasn: "Well, it's tough stuff. PTU matrices, braids of amorphous alloys, powered fullerenes..."
- ↑ Schlock Mercenary, 2012-03-18 — Gasca: "In 2821 the Tausennigan Kssthrata completed construction of an annie plant with a three-hundred-and-two kilometer diameter. It still holds the record as the largest annie plant ever created. ...Or destroyed. Imperfections in the extruded supermolecule resulted in catastrophic failure. But in its fifteen seconds of glorious operation Ssthra's Folly demonstrated that the annie plant power curve holds true. Bigger is exponentially better. And now for the point of this history lesson... Oisri appears to be an annie plant over ten times the diameter of Ssthra's Folly, and close to a thousand times the diameter of the largest plants we can confidently build."
- ↑ Schlock Mercenary, 2013-01-14 — Petey: "The annie plants are a total loss. Everything else is insignificant."
- ↑ Schlock Mercenary, 2015-03-30
- ↑ Schlock Mercenary, 2015-03-31
- ↑ Schlock Mercenary, 2018-05-13 — Schlock: "It's got crazy amounts of pee-tee-you in the plating."
- ↑ "transuranic - definition of transuranic in English from the Oxford dictionary", archived on 2015-10-31
- ↑ Schlock Mercenary, 2014-03-23 — "Note: ... The tiny, swirling clumps of neutronium inside an annie plant cast fairly solid neutrino shadows, and much, much fainter shadows are cast by the oversized post-trans-Uranic atoms used in the construction of annie plants, as well as the spacecraft hulls for folks who can afford such extravagance."