New type of energy for a story?

[dashell]

Greetings all,
Not sure if this is the appropraite section or not so please excuse me if this topic is misplaced...
I'm a comic book writer and am seeking help from somebody obviously much smarter than myself...
I'm attempting to create a brand new type of energy for a story...
but I'm not entirely sure how to proceed...

In the sci-fi story that I am contructing I need a brand new form of energy source that doesnt exist today. Something powerful, that shall be misused.
The only issue is that this is fiction so it can literally be anything I suppose, however I want it to seem realistic in a unrealistic way...something that one day could perhaps work 100's of years from now or whenever. For example: In Astroboy they had red and blue energy-energy that came from within a star.

I would greatly appreciate any help or ideas that anyone could provide. I've been stuggling with this topic for some time now..and it's quite frustrating...
thanks
-Dashell

[Luckmeister]

Hi Dashell, my thought is instead of a new form of energy, how about thinking up a new, very contolled way of converting mass to energy?

[tommac]

NEGATIVE ENERGY .... it is the coolest thing ever!!!!!! Please please please ....

Greetings all,
Not sure if this is the appropraite section or not so please excuse me if this topic is misplaced...
I'm a comic book writer and am seeking help from somebody obviously much smarter than myself...
I'm attempting to create a brand new type of energy for a story...
but I'm not entirely sure how to proceed...

In the sci-fi story that I am contructing I need a brand new form of energy source that doesnt exist today. Something powerful, that shall be misused.
The only issue is that this is fiction so it can literally be anything I suppose, however I want it to seem realistic in a unrealistic way...something that one day could perhaps work 100's of years from now or whenever. For example: In Astroboy they had red and blue energy-energy that came from within a star.

I would greatly appreciate any help or ideas that anyone could provide. I've been stuggling with this topic for some time now..and it's quite frustrating...
thanks
-Dashell

[dashell]

Hot damn! thanks both Luckmeister and tommac! very insightful both! negative energy does sound very unique!

[J Riff]

Read any of a thousand pulp/sci-fi stories. They always had to think up a cool name for their energy source...call it ' the Dashell drive' ...a way of converting something-or-other into enough power to send your spaceship whizzing about the galaxy. )

[eburacum45]

Mirror inversion annihilation would be a useful source of energy. You use a tiny twist in space to invert a normal atom into antimatter, then allow that atom to touch another (normal) atom. Instant energy.

You could even invoke some superstring technobabble to explain the twist in space -you could say it is a 'Cabali-Yau Alternator' or something.

[Jeff Root]

The problem with those space twists is that they take as much energy
as the matter/antimatter reaction releases....

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[MAPNUT]

If you want something more down-to-earth, it could just be fusion. The difficulty with fusion is just getting it started. (Understatement.) So your hero, or villain, or hero and villain could just build a big fusion plant, and then find a way to parcel out the ongoing reaction into suitcase-sized units that could power a vehicle or small spacecraft for a year, and sell for lots of money.

[Strange]

The difficulty with fusion is just getting it started. (Understatement.)

Don't H bombs rather contradict that. I thought the main problem was keeping it going and contained. (As well as doing that while using less energy than is generated.) So perhaps the key technology is a safe, low-power containment mechanism. Perhaps some technospeak around a new material (Non Transitive Super Conductor) or technology (Phase Alternating Lines) or both (Supersymmetrical Epitaxial Containment Anti Magnet).

[Swift]

If you want something more down-to-earth, it could just be fusion. The difficulty with fusion is just getting it started. (Understatement.) So your hero, or villain, or hero and villain could just build a big fusion plant, and then find a way to parcel out the ongoing reaction into suitcase-sized units that could power a vehicle or small spacecraft for a year, and sell for lots of money.

I like this idea too, for a more down-to-Earth / realistic source. There actually is still on-going research on cold fusion, maybe you could have a fictional form of that.

[Frog march]

there could be a discovery on a cold outer planet, or moon, where an organism, perhaps a worm, or something had evolved the ability to use cold fusion, and they could be tapped for energy.

[iniaes]

look up the zpm from stargate atlantis, they are rather nifty batteries (three soda cans that can power a flying space city for centuries).

http://www.stargate-sg1-solutions.co...nt_Module_(ZPM)

[Philippe Lemay]

An idea I heard a while back that I liked was the decomposition of dark matter into regular matter. Dark matter is one of those fringe sciences that's way out there, that's not fully understood, but that we are reasonably confident exists. The premise makes the assumption that there is a 5th fundamental force in the universe that comes into play when dark matter decays, resulting in high energy barionic matter (the regular stuff that we can see and touch).

Seeing as we haven't identified the true nature of dark matter yet, people won't be able to immediately denounce this sci-fi concept as impossible. It will probably remain in "maybe"/"what if" territory for many decades to come.

[m74z00219]

How about a "Cosmic Engine". It magically taps into the vast field of energy that led to the inflation of the universe itself. You could introduce an interesting unintended effect: the over usage of this technology precipitates a big crunch when otherwise there would have not been one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflaton_field

m74

[Cheap Astronomy]

Hard to beat dark energy - 74% of the universe after all (it's probably fictional too)

[forrest noble]

Dashell,

I need a brand new form of energy source that doesn't exist today. Something powerful, that shall be misused.
The only issue is that this is fiction so it can literally be anything I suppose, however I want it to seem realistic in a unrealistic way...something that one day could perhaps work 100's of years from now or whenever.

Magnetism that can be reflected even at the slightest angle could be focused. Such a device could produce a magnetic laser. Such a laser when used from the ground could knock out the electronics on aircraft and satellites, magnetizing them and making them useless. From a satellite, or redirected by satellite, through its magnetization it could knock out ground communications, power distribution, most types of locomotion, stop armies, knock out anti-missile missiles, etc. As a positive tool it could enable nuclear fusion at much lower temperatures. When beamed to a focal point on a spacecraft it could be the power supply for high energy ion propulsion, and create plasma from simple fuel for high force plasma propulsion. So its positive and negative possibilities for both good and evil seem almost endless -- with such a device the world could be conquered or a good comic book article written.

[Jens]

It seems pretty simple to me. Particles usually end in -on, so just make one up and call it a zepton annihilation drive or a zepton reverse entanglement drive or whatever. It won't work anyway, so it doesn't have to be realistic. Just use words like polarity and annihilation and probability and it will work.

[aastrotech]

Since this is to be a comic book? I guess you should just think about how it should look. Just look up some geometric images. Primatives such as lines, lightning bolts, glowing spheres and flattened shockwaves have been done to death. Maybe some kind of spirographic imagery. Maybe a membrane stretching effect like a Bose–Einstein condensate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2...ein_condensate. Not a bad piece of doubletalk generator for your power source since it is a newly discovered phase of matter like solid, liquid, gas, plasma and now Bose–Einstein condensate . I always thought it might be cool to have a membrane stretching effect that stretches out and has a whipping effect on the end. Instead of having just a graph paper membrane like in the picture have a spirographic membrane.

[eburacum45]

The problem with those space twists is that they take as much energy
as the matter/antimatter reaction releases....

If that were true (and it may not be) the 'space twist' method would be the most efficient method of creating antimatter possible, as it would be 100% efficient. In which case it would also be the most powerful form of energy storage possible; in a battery the 'energy density' or 'power density', joules or watts per kilogram or per cubic centimetre are the most important figures. You can't really beat antimatter for energy density (unless you have some sort of collapsed antimatter, like antineutronium).

[eburacum45]

Here are some wiki links;
Energy density -energy per unit volume
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
specific energy - energy per unit mass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_energy
power density - energy deliverable per unit time per unit volume
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_density
specific power- power-to-weight ratio -- energy deliverable per unit time per unit mass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-weight_ratio
Antimatter (well, antineutronium to be exact) comes out top in all of these.

Zero-point energy if it could be used at all, would be a way of generating, rather than storing, energy, so I'm not counting that as a battery/power storage option.

[dashell]

wow...
I just wanted to thank you all personally for responding,...you guys are amazing...
Glad I found this place. So many ideas...and I have only a brief lifetime to write about them....
damn, a million thanks again
-Dash

[J Riff]

No kidding. SciFi writers could, and have, done a lot worser'n some of these suggestions.
Zepton Annihilator field. Fire it up, Scotty.