Today on Quantum Vibe: Discouraging hazards Strip 190 - Click strip above to goto the next strip.
First Seen: Fri 2011-09-09
Story & Art: Scott Bieser - Sci-Fi Adventure Monday & Thursday.
Quantum Vibe
A thousand years in the future, humanity has colonized worlds in nearly
100 galaxies, thanks to Quantum Vibremonic technologies developed five
centuries earlier. Other new technologies have created various
off-shoots of humanity and extended life expectancies five-fold. The
story begins with how a mad scientist and his plucky assistant, along
with their robot friend, brought humanity to the stars, and continues
with the adventures of some unique people in fantastic places.
What Comes Next [ Mar 18, 2024 ]
The war is over, but This Means War has a ways to go. Novo Paolo/Bubbleopolis is still in a nebula/stellar nursery, no one knows what happened to the planet Sharen (center of the Intergalactic Council), and the status of the now-surrendered Invaders is yet to be resolved. What will they do when they learn their homeworld is basically destroyed? Will Alyss and Li be re-united? How about Diana (the real one) and Otto?
These questions will be resolved in the next few weeks, before This Means War part 3 wraps in late May.
After that, I plan to go BACK in time about 400 years, to when Alyss and Li left their home in the Sol System to colonize a new world on the far side of the galaxy. As one might expect, hijinks ensue. New subtitle yet to be determined, start date sometime in around the start of July. Stay tuned!
Panel 1
Nicole and Seamus sitting on the bed, looking fully comfortable now. Seamus looks amused.
Seamus: Yes, that archaic vulgarity sums up the situation nicely.
Seamus: We have known – or at least suspected – dark matter since the middle of the 1st Century B.S.A.*, when it was noticed that galactic rotations didn't seem to follow the laws of gravity.
Caption: *B.S.A. = Before Space Age, which began in 1957 C.E.
Panel 2
Close-up on Seamus, looking a bit dreamy-eyed as if remembering events from long ago.
Seamus: Dark matter neither emits nor reflects any radation, and can only be detected by its gravitational effect.
Seamus: Originally, it was thought that the stuff was suffused more or less evenly throughout the galaxy, as tiny, discreet particles which would pass right through ordinary matter without incident.
Panel 3
Seamus inset against a shot of the Brahmaputra being pulled off course by an unseen body.
Seamus: Only later did we learn the truth – that dark matter is 'clumpy,' just as normal matter is.
Seamus: It's been estimated that the dark mass which pulled the Brahmaputra off course was a quarter that of Jupiter.
Panel 4
Looking past Nicole at Seamus.
Seamus: There appear also to be much more numerous 'rogue bodies' of normal matter drifting between the stars than we'd thought. Planetoids, dust clouds, and so on.
Seamus: With hazards such as these, and no practical super-luminal drive possible, interstellar exploration has been largely abandoned.