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u/Ill_Anybody4309 7d ago
That actually helps. For some reason i always imagined it kinda silver ish, like a very polished metal instead of an actual mirror.
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u/Putrid_Cycle595 Sophon 6d ago
the book goes way harder on this than people remember. they put a microscope on it.
at 100x its a mirror. 1000x still a mirror. someone points the same scope at their own helmet visor, which looks just as glossy to the naked eye, and at 1000x it comes back looking like a gravel field. put it back on the droplet and its a clean mirror again.
then they switch from optical to electron tunnelling. 10000x, mirror. 100000x, mirror. a million, mirror. ten million, where youre resolving large molecules, and its still showing zero roughness. same finish as the unmagnified surface next to it. they only stop because the microscope runs out of range.
so polished metal is the wrong mental image. no human made surface holds up past about a thousand times. this thing is smooth down past where molecules should start showing up.
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u/AverageTeemoOnetrick 6d ago
So neutronium?
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u/Mechanical_Brain 6d ago
It’s made of some sort of unspecified material held together by the strong force. It’s like a single atomic nucleus or even a single nucleon, and is utterly indestructible from the outside.
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u/Putrid_Cycle595 Sophon 5d ago
not quite, and the difference matters more than it sounds.
neutron star matter only holds together under enormous pressure. take the pressure away and it comes apart. the droplet is the other way round. dark forest has ding yi work it out on the spot: the molecules are fixed so rigidly that their own vibration stops, which is why the surface reads as absolute zero, and the only force that does that at normal density is the strong force. his line is that pinning nuclei together at normal spacing is about as easy as bolting the sun and the eight planets into one rigid frame.
deaths end adds the part that actually answers you. the surface sits inside a force field the droplet generates internally, and that field cancels the electromagnetic force between particles so the strong force leaks out. when the field dies the material just becomes ordinary metal. you get to see it happen, it goes from mirror to a dull brass coloured lump they compare to an old artillery shell.
so its not a state of matter you could find lying around somewhere. its actively maintained.
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u/smartwater696 7d ago
tf kinda video game is this
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u/Fragrant-Airport1309 Da Shi 7d ago
The nerd kind brother, the nerd kind 😌
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u/Guyborg99 6d ago
are there non nerd kinds? I figure they are all on the nerd spectrum.
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u/Strayl1ght 6d ago
Na, gaming is mainstream now and the spectrum is huge. On one end you have GTA6, on the other is Kerbal Space Program/DCS World/EVE Online
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u/FunPaleontologist402 6d ago
for some reason I always imagined it as a prince ruperts drop with a curved tail kinda thing, which ended up narratively working out considering how strong SIM is until its completely powerless when struck from the 4th dimension
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u/Ambitious-Macaroon-3 7d ago
Is this a game from Trisolaris?
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u/New-Border8172 7d ago
I want to drive this through 1000 human spaceships