Ether

Ether, is a fundamental particle natively present within the KOSMOS Universe, where the KOSMOS Saga and GALAXYFANTASY series take place in. It has tremendous interactions with the weak, strong and electromagnetism forces.

The Ancient Race originally found this particle during particle acceleration experiments.

Ether is often referred as magic for most civilisations, as it acts like a magic system. However, getting a good understanding and inner workings of the particle leads to Ether Technology.

Cosmology
Ether represents an abundant 30% of the total mass of the universe, while baryonic matter is a mere 6%. The most common form of ether is ionised, or gather enough mass to create Ether Stars. Ether, in a high state of energy, acts similarly to light and baryonic matter, and bonds with the latter in order to form atoms in this universe.

When Ether Stars expire, they create Ether Nebulas, similarly to regular Stars. In the beginning of the universe, this occurrence allowed for Ether to be evenly distributed throughout the expanding universe, while regular baryonic bodies get to have Ether as part of their composition.

In the current days of the GALAXYFANTASY series, Ether Stars are incredibly rare but allows any civilisation to have enough energy for their entire lifetime. Ether Stars have, in the history of the universe, allowed some civilisations to evolve fast enough to attain interstellar travel.

Life
Ether has a significant role in the creation of life and its evolution. Along with bonding with baryonic matter, simple forms of life can feed off Ether by severing the bond of the particle with the rest of the atom. In a more complex lifeform, Ether may be gathered from ambient air, converted to corresponding nutrients or energy that the body can use. Some lifeforms may entirely depend on Ether to live.

Ether Data
Lifeforms in the KOSMOS Universe developed Ether Data, which is a counterpart to DNA that makes uses of Ether and its functions. Life was partially created thanks to the coupling of Ether Data and DNA in the early days of evolution. That Ether Data contains information stored as Ether in the genes, as for artificial lifeforms, Ether Data is stored in a data bank, or in a nanomachine colony.

Some lifeforms or particular individuals can develop the ability of sensing, or reading Ether data without the need of a computing device, such as Leïla, Autumn, Anaelle and Seraphelle whom can perceive it in different forms.


 * Leïla, by example, has a tight sense of danger, which tickles when surrounded by troubled "Ether waves".
 * Anaelle's perception allows her to sense an "Ether path", which leads to a certain chain of actions or events, allowing her to deduce what to do in certain situations.
 * Autumn is known to have "Ether vision", which highlights high concentrations of Ether despite her blindness.
 * Seraphelle can sense people's emotions through their "Ether wavelength". There are many more instances of how lifeforms take advantage of Ether.

Ether Data, for intelligent species is an easy access to genetical and physical information that can be read much more easily than decoding DNA. Its amount relies on how dependant the species is to Ether during its evolution.

The commonly found information in Ether Data is categorized by clusters:


 * Physical Body Data : cluster commonly called just body info, it gathers all the physical composition of a lifeform, such as physical traits.
 * Race Firmware Identification : cluster of information that contains all the characteristics that pertains to species and racial attributes.
 * Consciousness Pool Host : strange cluster that contains data related to consciousness, personality and individuality.
 * Ether Catalyst System : cluster that stores all the information of how the lifeform deals with Ether.
 * Ether Elemental Affinity : cluster that tells the lifeform's affinity to each elemental force of Ether.
 * Base Ability Metric : cluster of the 5 common abilities that demonstrates physical metrics, such as strength, resilience, agility, durability and Ether apprehension.
 * Flair Phenomenon Ability : cluster that is new to lifeforms in GALAXYFANTASY, where information about the individual's Flair can be found. It shows what the Flair affects in the body, how it is triggered and what it can do.
 * Ether Wavelength : cluster of information that tells the specifics of a lifeform's Ether wavelength.
 * Core Firmware Identification: information exclusive to Realians, it is the unique serial and signature of a Jewel Core, it holds data about its manufacturing info (date, location), its first boot date, how many cycles it went through, how many times it was reset and whose hosts took hold of it. In critical conditions like the Core breaking, it’s the only cluster that is still fully readable and salvageable.
 * Apocrypha Protocol System : cluster of information that only the Apocrypha can read. It contains information on the state of being of lifeforms, thier reincarnation data and extra information to those who came in contact with the Apocrypha.

According to some research, Ether Data may be able to hold information about memories, as proven by artificial lifeforms having them in their Ether Data and not in the brain.

Ambient Ether
Ambient Ether, or also called Raw Ether is the pure form of Ether that can be found everywhere. It can be found in multiple states, like a ionised gas which is its natural state, solidified in the ground due to gravity, or liquefied in dangerous Ether pools or swamps.

Ambient Ether is toxic to lifeforms, as it's a high energy particle, thus they have specific mechanisms in order to purify and convert the ambient Ether into something their body can use. Similar to lungs, most lifeforms have an organ that feeds Ether into the different parts of the body.

Ether Crystals
Ether Crystals are a natural occurrence on the NANUETTA-HF planet, due to its unique properties. It's a refined form of crystallized Ether, but here is when the Ether has gathered in a dense enough quantity, put under a high pressure they assemble a rigid and organised structure that turns them into crystals, akin to minerals. the Ancient Race found out that, these crystals have a very high amount of energy capacity and density by themselves, while staying perfectly stable. That discovery lead to the groundworks of the Jewel Core technology. With proper tools and knowledge, it is possible to create Ether Crystals artificially by simulating its natural formation in a lab.

In Ancient Race culture, Ether Crystals became both batteries and data storage for all their needs, and most of their technology is based on those crystals. It is said that one 10cm3 of Ether Crystal can power an entire town for a month. They turn Ether Crystals into Ancient Cores, Altissian Orbs, Apocrypha Replicas and Jewel Cores.

Ether Food
Some crystallized forms of Ether can be edible for lifeforms that have adapted in order to absorb them. The L.E.M.S group of species by example, have Ether in their diet, which consists of intaking large amounts of Ether in crystallized forms.

Ether can be turned into powder, to be used in various recipes, or the liquefied form of Ether can serve as material to make food as well. Most of the time, the visual difference between organic food and Ether food is insignificant, only it's composition is. To be edible, Ether has to be put in a lower state of energy by crushing it for the crystallized formation, or by freezing liquefied Ether for preparations.

Ether Wavelength
Anything in the universe that possesses Ether emits Ether Wavelengths. Ether Stars, by example are known to pulsate powerful ones, and lifeforms also have their own unique pulsation for each individual, similarly to a signature.

The wavelength depends on how much Ether cycles in and out of a body, and it's intensity measured in electromagnetic radiation. Most living beings are over one Ether mm. Seraphelle's Ether Wavelength, by example is known to be around 690 Emm, which is strong enough to be emitting visible light and sound in her pulsations, mostly seen on her Jewel Core when she exposes it.

Ether Elements
Ether, in its high energy state possesses the unique attribute of holding different elements within itself. In the rawest form of Ether, it holds all elements but is highly unstable because of it, which prompts Ether to naturally decay into different elements when excited. Lifeforms adapted to this system by having affinities towards certain elements, which represent their environment (by example, a lifeform living in a volcanic ecosystem will have an affinity towards Fire Ether).

The elements themselves are: Fire Ether ; Water Ether ; Wind Ether ; Ice Ether ; Lightning Ether ; Earth Ether ; Light Ether and Dark Ether.

Different elements can combine and forms advanced ones, such as: Explosion Ether being a mix of Lightning Light Ethers ; Steam Ether being a mix of Fire and Water Ethers ; Gravity Ether being a mix of Earth and Dark Ethers.

Ether Elements can be released in "Elemental Release", by organisms that have learned to do it, as well as high energy state of Ether that naturally splits and decays itself into the different elements. Mastery of that release can be similar to being able to control an element, as the Ether will express itself as the element when released. Seraphelle, by example, shows great feats of Explosion Ether elemental release, which feels like she has explosion powers. This mastery is prevalent in the KOSMOS saga era of the universe, however was lost during the GALAXFANTASY series era, because of the Flair Phenomenon, which can achieve the same concept in an easier manner for lifeforms that are strangers to the concept.

Technology
In civilisations that make use of Ether, it can be the foundation of technologies. Most lightbulbs by examples are powered by Ether, or made from Ether by example. Ether is mostly used as a highly efficient power source that can be found rather easily and thanks to Elemental Release, can turn into a desired energy without loss such as heat or electricity.

Ether Stars are a primary target for a civilisation's expansion into interstellar travel. Ether can be directly captured via radiation far away with panels, or covering the star with a capturing structure device that allows the most efficient energy generation solution.

Some may push the idea further, by creating Ether Weaponry, that uses unstable high energy state Ether to use in warfare. Some create artificial lifeforms thanks to it. The Ancient Race, by example tried to make full use of Ether and all its functions to implement in their technology.

Phase Transition
With proper technology, Ether can be forcefully bounded or can forcefully disrupt baryonic matter. With that in mind, Phase Transition is the act to change any particle into any other, in any state or movement and position; by example to change one state of the matter into pure energy. However this technology can be applied to all elementary particles in the universe in a quantum state, Ether is just the most efficient particle to be used for it.

In order to be used, particle mass needs to be highly excited and put into a velocity the speed of light, which is measured in PT mass calculated by: c x (power output/energy density)². 1MPT (1 Mega PT mass) is capable of entirely vaporizing a star. It has been used several times throughout the history of the KOSMOS universe, and often results in catastrophic, cosmological-scale damages.

Lady Melia, who is the Apocrypha incarnate knows this technique and used it during her adventures in the KOSMOS saga. Seraphelle, who can turn into weapons, has the capability of turning into a "PT-cannon", but never does so because of the dangers involved with such technology.