Hammond-Zhōu Quintessence

**Hammond-Zhōu Quintessence (HZQ)** is a poorly-understood form of exotic matter that originates inside wormholes and is ungoverned by conventional laws of physics. Discovered in the late 22nd century by *Crusadar* program physicists Cameron Hammond and Zhōu Mǐn, it was first isolated from the Bifrost and subsequently reproduced via the McBride process of matter-antimatter reactions. While the full extent of its properties has remained elusive despite centuries of study, its ability to produce sagittarius fields when in contact with normal spacetime has been exploited by humanity to develop FTL travel and settle nearby star systems. It is also believed to be at least partly responsible for the gravitational effects attributed to dark matter.

## History

### Discovery

Hammond-Zhōu Quintessence was first discovered, unknowingly, by a China National Space Administration deep-space probe in the early 1990s that detected a small gravitational anomaly at the edge of the Sol System. A similiar NASA probe made the same discovery several months later, but both readings were too slight for any scientist to notice. That changed in 1998 when World Initiative for Space physicists detected a light anomaly in the trans-Neptunian region and rediscovered the old gravity readings; the light bending matched the gravitational lensing effect of black holes, but the gravity readings gave no evidence to such a conclusion. As a result, the WIS began the secretive *Crusader* Program to study the object over the course of decades.

For the next two centuries, six deep-space *Crusader* probes visited the object, designated "Bifrost", to study its properties. They discovered that the object possessed enough mass to become the central gravitational point of the entire Sol System, surpassing the mass of the Sun, yet had a gravitational pull similar to Mars' moon Phobos (approximately 0.006 m/s²) that could also bend light; such properties should have been impossible within the laws of conventional physics. The *Crusader* scientists deduced that the object's gravity was being exerted *within* the object, which they finally realized was a wormhole. The intense gravity within the Bifrost prevented any attempts to pass through, but its matter around its event horizon could be captured and analysed; this became the job of the scientists aboard *Jump Zero*, specifically the physicists Cameron Hammond and Zhōu Mǐn.

Finally, in 2191, Hammond and Zhōu used the McBride process to isolate and produce the Bifrost's unique matter, which they named "Hammond-Zhōu Quintessence". Their subsequent experiments unveiled HZQ's warping effect when in contact with normal spacetime, generating immense fields they named "sagittarius fields"; when these fields were directed, they created warped areas of space where matter, energy and physics behaved differently, including reducing the mass of anything within the field. When HZQ's discovery was publically announced, several aerospace corporations immediately began building engines that could use HZQ as fuel: the first roemer drives.

## Properties

### Sagittarius Fields

When HZQ interacts with normal matter, energy or spacetime it produces negative energy fields called sagittarius fields.

### McBride Point

The McBride Point is the energy threshold that a matter-antimatter annihilation must exceed in order for a sagittarius field to be created.

## See Also

* McBride Process
* Roemer drive
* Sagittarius fields