Hi, all! I’m Ric and this is a video. So Romulans are one of my favourite scifi
species, definitely my top Trek one. A lot of that can be attributed to their ship designs
especially the D’Deridex and Mogai warbirds. But it’s not only the style of vessel that
makes them stand out for me, but the primary technology at play within its emerald hull.
When it comes to warp travel, massive amounts of energy are needed to create a stable warp
field that can bend space time and allow for a ship to propel itself at faster than light
speeds. Most races in the Trek universe eventually settle on the controlled annihilation of matter
and antimatter to produce energy of a sufficient level to generate the effect needed using
magnetic containment to manoeuvre the volatile antimatter and then running the reaction through
a Dilithium Matrix to create incredible amounts of power. How did I write that sentence without
any full stops…. Then all sorts of difficult, supercomputer
level calculations go on to generate a warp field from a starship’s nacelles around
the ship and there you go, warp bubble. Apply momentum and off you fly on your wibbly pocket
of warped space-time. That last part it consistent across all forms of warp travel, it’s what
makes the Warp Drive a Warp Drive and we’ve already explored other versions of FTL travel.
But whereas this is how it’s done for Starfleet, the Klingons, Vulcans and practically every
other species, it’s not how they Romulans fly.
They, the crazy bastads that they are, took one look at the cosmic destruction of matter
and antimatter at a subatomic level and said, “Nah, too tame. Let’s whip a Black Hole
in our spaceships and use that to generate power! That would be metal As a Veruul.”
I may be adlibbing a bit. But the point is that Romulus decided to use
Artificial Quantum Singularities instead of the traditional Warp Core at the centre of
its vessels as a power source. These were effectively micro-black holes but the knowledge
of how they are formed is kept secret from the Federation although possibilities included
the use of Red Matter to make a collapsed point, or the collision of high energy particles
in an accelerator of some sort. Once created, the singularity would generate powerful gravitational
forces so an apparatus around the point would be needed to counter its effects, which is
no biggie, we already know variable gravity is a common technology in the Trek universe.
This may be the nullifier cores that are aligned around the singularity which also regulated
the rate of the emitted radiation. This radiation is created by the fluctuations
and may be based on the speculated Hawking Radiation theories to emit from real life
Black Holes and is most likely the energy source that the Romulans then harnessed. When
the nullifier cores are precisely aligned and everything is functioning as it should,
the Romulan core is easily masked by a cloaking device but should there be even a slight misalignment,
the slightest ripples in space time caused by the singularity can be detected as an intermittent
distortion. We know that they harness some energy from
the Black Hole and then use that to supply power to a warp drive as Romulan vessels still
have nacelles for bending space time. In theory however, and with a much bigger singularity
and a lot of advanced tech, a ship could perhaps use a Black Hole itself to bend space time
and achieve a warp like effect, but the core of a Romulan vessel is not at this level of
power nor technological advancement. Another possibility is that they constantly
feed fuel of some sort above the event horizon and somehow the rotating particles are used
to influence the rotation of the singularity generate power. This method, known as the
“Penrose Process” would eventually deplete a core of its rotational movement and in effect
become an equivalent to a “fuel limit”. One weakness of the singularity core however
is linked to its very nature as a gravitational hole in space-time. Several instances of unintentional
time travel have been linked to the cores of Romulan Warbirds, usually when they were
an unknown variable. Another issue is that once powered on for the first time, the singularity
cannot be deactivated. Perhaps this is because once the Singularity Core is powered down,
the Forced Quantum Singularity dissipates as it was artificial in origin and only exists
for as long as it is kept stable by the reactor chamber.
Of course the most dangerous part about sitting on a contained black hole is that you need
to keep it contained. Just as a breach in the antimatter containment system of a Federation
Starship will lead to a runaway reaction of the antimatter reacting with matter outside
of the warp core and then an explosion, a breach in the singularity core’s gravimetric
containment would create a corridor of space open to the full effects of the black hole.
In short, once containment fails, the singularity devours. In the shows, we see Romulan Warbirds
explode, and I’d speculate that that’s because the core shuts down and the singularity
dissipates before the ship breaks apart, but in Star Trek Online, we can see that when
a Romulan vessel is defeated, it collapses in on itself in an implosion as a containment
failure plays out. It’s a nice touch and very consistent with the lore.
Whatever the Trek science behind the operation of the Forced Quantum Singularity Core of
a Romulan Warbird, I think it’s a unique trait that marks out the Romulan species as
a people who like to stand out from the others. I can almost picture them not using a standard
matter-antimatter reactor just because everyone else does, and the Romulans are superior to
everyone else. Mmm, Naturally. Thanks for watching this quantum point of
a lore episode and until the next video, I’m Ric and I’ll see you later! Jolan Tru.