I’ve been working on the alien races ( Sappers and Ghosts) that will be part of a story and I prefer to have their origins as plausible as possible. That being said, I welcome any feedback on them. Please pardon the length and choppiness as these are my personal notes.
The sappers:
Sappers are energy based beings whose discovery occurred as a result of humanities first serious attempt at the exploration of a gas giants’ interior. Sappers able to use the superconducting environment found deep inside the gas giant as the core of their ecosystem. Existing as easily in this medium as sea life exist in the oceans. Their “bodies” exists as sentient manifestations of the electromagnetic spectrum. As energy based lifeforms, the only requirement for their continued existence is a means to replenish their reserves of energy and a medium in which to exist.
Their home world can never be fully explored by humanity due to the immense pressures at the core of the gas giant. With their descriptions of it being truly alien with the ground being described as a mixture of super-heated solids of exotic matter surrounded by various layers of energy that can only exist inside the interior of a gas giant. These layers of energy are consumed as a food source of sorts with the Sappers themselves preferring to exist in the massive layer of superconducting metallic hydrogen in the atmosphere. They glide completely without effort around their world openly merging together with others of their own species as well as splitting upon will.
After first contact was made, human engineers created artificial bodies that could house an iteration of the Sapper consciousness. These bodies were created by humanity with internals composed of superconducting materials that allow for a Sapper to inhabit the artificial body. This allowed Sappers their first opportunity to explore beyond their home planet. Yet the idea of a singular existence is as alien to them as their world seems to us. When asked what it is like to be separated from the others of their kind, Sappers attempt to explain by saying we should think of them as individual copies of the entire Sapper race. Even though there may be millions of individual bodies inhabited by instances of the Sapper consciousness, they are exact copies of each other. As for individual experiences had by the individual bodies, they are immediately shared and synced with all other instances of the Sapper race when they come into contact with a White Point.
White Points:
White points are most easily understood to be portable, stable wormholes to another dimension or a point in time where the energy density of the universe was so abundant that a small siphon allows more than enough energy to power a massive starship. The radiation from the drive would easily kill any biological being but Sappers seem to thrive when exposed to their fields.
The ability of a single Sapper to duplicate the entirety of its species allows for the near instant colonization of almost any gas giant so long as it also supports sufficient layering similar to their home world. This also means that Sappers do not fear any type of individual death as they are essentially immortal with endless copies of their consciousness being housed around the universe.
Sappers welcome the opportunity to explore the universe hand in hand with humanity as this exploration is only possible due to the initial first contact.
Ghosts:
Ghosts are beings of probability. They were discovered on a rogue planet that was ejected from its star system billions of years ago. Their discovery by humanity was nearly their extinction. Due to their nature, they can only exist when not directly observed. When directly observed, the particles that make up their body seem to phase out of existence and remain unable to return to their natural state as long as there is any observer. A simpler way of saying this is that if you look at a Ghost, it blinks out of existence until you look away.
They can affect their surroundings while not observed which is how they made their presence known. This resulted in a ban on any interaction with their planet until a system of communication could be setup.
It was discovered that Ghosts were beings who had evolved to exist with virtually no external stimuli. Since their planet no longer had a star to feed it energy, the life that once existed on the planet eventually froze and died off. As is so often the case with life though, something began to take its place.
It is unknown what Ghosts are made of exactly due to their nature, they are impossible to observe directly. It has been proposed however, that they are some type of sentient Bose-Einstein condensate. This is the closest we have come to explaining their existence based on our current understanding of physics. This is supported by the similar breakdown of the wave function of a BEC when observed.
When left to their own devices on their home planet, Ghosts have shown the ability to create points in space that absorb all known types of radiation. It has been requested that Ghosts do not create any of these points while onboard a ship and so far there have been zero instances of a Ghost point being created onboard any ship without it being requested first.
These points do not have the same destructive properties as black holes in that they do not draw in most forms of matter. However, it has been documented that all neutrinos in the vicinity of a Ghost point are immediately drawn in as well. It is unknown by what process they are able to manifest these points. It is also unknown if the neutrinos are used to create these points or if they are absorbed after the points’ creation. This has been the only known method discovered to date that allows for any significant interaction with neutrinos and has been the focus of many studies. It remains impossible to date to directly study any Ghost point due to the nature of their creation as any observance of the Ghost creating the points immediately collapses their wave function and thus terminates the Ghost point.
Significant spikes in Ghost activity occur after a Ghost point has been allowed to exist for a substantial length of time. The exact cause of this activity cannot be determined as of to date. It has been determined that whatever the activity may be, it does not seem to be hazardous to any of the three species nor any of the ships functionalities. When asked about this spike, Ghosts refer to it as a shedding and express an desire in leaving the immediate area for some unknown reason.
When asked why they accompany the other two species, Ghost often respond that they have a desire to understand where they come from and if there are any of their own kind in existence. It is made apparent that even Ghost do not entirely understand their own origins. Their intelligence is comparable to Humanities with obvious deficits in some areas and obvious overshadowing in others.
All human attempts at duplicating the creation of a Ghost point has yielded no results despite the Ghosts best efforts at explaining the process. They have explained that they manipulate certain forces and focus them into a single point.
Ghost do not use any obvious technologies and seem to have no known governing system. All Ghosts seem to act under their own accord with very few instances of any one individual being contacted twice even when requested. When it’s requested to speak to any specific Ghost, the response typically indicates a lack of knowing the one requested.
The estimated population of Ghosts onboard a ship at any specific time is impossible to determine. When the question of population is posed to a Ghost, they often reply with wildly varying answers ranging from one to several trillion.
Thanks for the kind words, I would actually like to keep to as hard of scifi as possible, however unless i have the perfect unified field theory, its true that any hard scifi story I write has to have some “Applied Phlebotinum”.