Dark matter
Nonluminous matter inferred from gravitational effects. Its microscopic nature remains unidentified; standard cosmology does not identify it with tired photons.
REFERENCE / TERMS
The language of the unknown.
A concise guide to the central physics and engineering terms used throughout the project.
Ramjet
A propulsion architecture that attempts to ingest material from its surroundings rather than carry all reaction mass onboard.
Bussard ramjet
A proposed interstellar propulsion idea that would collect hydrogen for onboard fusion; capture drag and scarcity are major difficulties.
Tired light
A family of alternative redshift hypotheses in which photon energy changes during propagation rather than exclusively through cosmological expansion. Simple versions conflict with observations.
Photon rest mass
A possible modification to electromagnetism in which photons have nonzero invariant mass; existing experiments place stringent upper limits on such mass.
Proca electrodynamics
An extension of Maxwell electromagnetism including a mass term for the electromagnetic field. Used as a mathematical ingredient in the source hypothesis.
Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT)
A measured quantum interference effect in prepared media allowing controlled optical transparency and steep dispersion, sometimes enabling slow group velocities.
Dark-state polariton
A coupled light–matter excitation appearing in certain quantum-optical systems; used as an analogy for the proposed storage buffer.
Group velocity
The rate at which a wave-packet envelope travels under a specified dispersion relation. It is not interchangeable with every definition of signal or information speed.
Capture cross-section
The effective area over which a physical interaction can collect or deflect incoming particles. A drawn or projected funnel does not establish a measurable cross-section.
Collimation
Narrowing or aligning a stream of particles or radiation to reduce its angular spread.
Alcubierre metric
A mathematical spacetime geometry often associated with the phrase “warp drive”; it is not a demonstrated propulsion engine.
Relational inertia
A class of ideas investigating how inertial properties relate to other matter. The project’s extreme claims about negligible inertia in voids are speculative.
Falsifiability
The requirement that a theory make meaningful empirical predictions that could show it is wrong.
THE JOURNEY STARTS WITH A QUESTION
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