X-2: Negative Deuterium
Rare to find, expensive, and hard to produce, X-2, otherwise known as x-deuterium, negative deuterium, or 2X. Another way to write individual particles of negative matter is an X over a p, n, or e for proton, neutron, or electron, respectively. Though happening upon it as a non-traveling civilian is rare and wondrous, there is no doubt it plays a powerful role in interstellar travel and science regarding the manipulation of gravity and artificial gravitational waves. This isn't an essential article to read, but it definitely helps to know about X-2.
Utility
The most obvious use for it is for interstellar travel. See The Jump Drive for more details. Negative matter reacts in the opposite direction to gravity, and it can work as its own source of gravity if negative energy is conducted through a superconductor. Despite this, there is no working evidence that the Centaurians ever used it for artificial gravity. The problem is that this currently takes up too much power to be practical for long-term use. The Centaurians may have figured out a way to be efficient, but our limited knowledge of them can only tell us that they were more advanced than us on an unprecedented scale.
Manufacturing
X-2 as we know it (the Centaurians may have created other versions) is structured like a living organism, though very few scientists believe it could actually be alive. What I mean by this is that X-2 is not just a fluid made up of regular molecules. Upon close inspection, you can see that it is actually made up of cells, just like life on Earth. Most agree they don't qualify as living because they don't have any organelles and can't reproduce on their own. No nuclei, no chromosomes, and no mitochondria whatsoever. To manufacture more of it, mere atoms of it must be put into a cylindrical container similar to a warp core, electromagnetic field and all. Then, it must be spun at a high speed, heated, and put under intense pressure.
The state of matter it's in at room temperature is similar to plasma, though X-2 is its own state of matter. Doing this breaks the bonds of the atoms within even further, and a stream of deuterium atoms in the form of plasma is shot into the container. Only about 0.1% get caught by the X-2, and once the container cools down, the hydrogen that was put into the tank has merged with the X-2, seemingly "converted" into a different state of matter. Larger amounts of X-2 or deuterium being used usually results in them repelling each other, and though there are a few theories as to why this is, it is currently unknown as of 2131. All of this contributes to a really slow process that results in 20,000 cylinders producing about 10 grams a day. You can probably tell why X-2 is so rare and expensive.
Children Technologies
Access & Availability
Civilians can't buy warp cores (giant cells holding X-2) willy-nilly. First, a registered port must be found and a military-authorized vendor must be contacted 24 hours ahead of time. Then, a loading team, usually followed by armed guards and defense probes, will arrive by shuttle and load the warp core into the jump drive's particle accelerator. As you can tell, it's not the easiest thing ever to buy warp cores legally. Illegal vendors do exist, however, and most of these stores get X-2 from pirates that have stolen it. X-2 is absurdly expensive, after all, so robbery might be worth it to some people. There have been a few major government heists before, and some have pulled off robberies worth dozens of billions of credits.
Discovery
On April 17th, 1964, three Centaurian probes were discovered to have arrived in the Sol system. Within them was a total of 16 metric tonnes of a mysterious substance contained within some sort of tank, in a state of electromagnetic stasis. It appeared to be a highly advanced containment cell, similar to one that stores fusion fuel. However, it wasn't for regular hydrogen, nor was it for anti-hydrogen. It was similar to how anti-hydrogen, the antimatter form of regular hydrogen, is kept away from any matter via a vacuum and strong electromagnetism. Upon closer inspection, it was found to be a type of exotic matter, one that shouldn't exist within the universe. It was negative matter, and that answered the question of why the substance could only move faster than light, and also why it seemed to just be floating in the centre of the container. The electromagnetic field was just there to keep it in a dense, orb-like shape.
For some context, deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen that has a mass of 2, hence the notation of 2H. Anti-deuterium is, you guessed it, the antimatter form of regular deuterium. In a similar fashion, negative deuterium is just the negative matter version of the deuterium atom. The technology was later reverse-engineered into a functional drive for spacecraft. The original Centaurian craft were repurposed, old as they were, to serve as test vehicles. After years of testing, it was found that it could be used for faster-than-light travel. For more details. see the article on the jump drive.
Related Vehicles
