Bosonic Drive

[RedDwarfIV]

In a book I read, Hull Zero Three by Gregory Bear, Ship [AKA Golden Voyager] has for engines a \'Bosonic Drive\' which runs off of water mined from an Oort Cloud moonlet attached to the spacecraft.

I haven\'t found any information on the Internet, so i\'m asking here.

How would an engine utilise the Higgs Boson?

What would a Bosonic Drive even look like?

[Kryten]

I\'m afraid that\'s almost certainly just technobabble. \'Boson\' was just the sciencey sounding word he decided to put on his bog-standard sci-fi engine, it could have been \'superstring\' or \'quantum\' and made no difference.

[RedDwarfIV]

It was supposed to emit particles [from what was described as \'broken-up atoms] as reaction mass, and this could cause severe radiation in the engineering section of the hull.

It had a cap of 20% lightspeed.

Apparently a fusion reactor was used as the engine\'s \'starter motor\'.

[Cthulufaic]

Well a Superstring engine would work in theory, but we just have to prove string-theory, and make something that can interact with said strings.

[RedDwarfIV]

Higgs said he didn\'t know any practical applications for the Boson.

[Endeavour]

Well application usually follows discovery, so we can hope!

[McLuv]

Really, all reaction engines are 'bosonic' in that bosons are force carrying particles. So any engine that works by providing a force to accelerate the craft would require boson interactions. Today\'s engines use the interaction of photon bosons because chemical engines rely on the electromagnetic force of chemical reactions.

[RedDwarfIV]

So it\'s not nescersarily running off a Large Hadron Collider in each hull.

It just has drives that can break up reaction mass in a way that releases energy, without that reaction mass being naturally fissile.

[Ascensiam]

I\'m still waiting for the discovery of Element Zero.

[Cthulufaic]

I\'m still waiting for the discovery of Element Zero.

I may just not of noticed but, WELCOME BACK FROM WHEREVER YOU WERE ASCENSIAM!

[Ascensiam]

I may just not of noticed but, WELCOME BACK FROM WHEREVER YOU WERE ASCENSIAM!

I\'ve been away? Alrighty then. I suppose i\'ve just been lurking a lot.

[RedDwarfIV]

I\'ve been away? Alrighty then. I suppose i\'ve just been lurking a lot.

Trackers lurk. And then they kill.

But only on Hull Zero One.