#scienceofmasseffect

At the ending of Mass Effect 3, the Reapers hijack Citadel station out of the Widow Nebula and park it over London, Earth. We are afforded breath-taking vistas of the Earth’s disc as we board the Citadel and make our way towards the Crucible and conclusion of the Reaper War.

The coloured choice is made. The Milky Way galaxy is changed forever.

But what of Earth and Citadel, provided the latter did not disintegrate in a red blast of bad War Readiness score?

Citadel’s orbit not shown to scale.

1): We have tens of kilometers long object in an unconventional geostationary orbit above Western Europe. 

It is between low and medium Earth orbits, per our sights of Earth as trek to confront The Illusive Man and then the Starchild. Such an orbit would require constant corrective maneuvers to maintain position above London, but for lack of that we can thank and blame the Reapers, element zero and other assorted shenanigans in Citadel’s capabilities.

2): Nights in Western Europe will be affected. Citadel’s Wards’ exteriors will reflect sunlight at evening and morning across the continent and the Atlantic when the Sun has already set. It will be like a mini-moon, and combine that with full moons for prolonged twilight.

3): The garbage disposal systems that created and maintained Widow Nebula are now dusting over Earth. While the planet receives some tens to up to hundreds of tons of cosmic dust daily, this is very dispersed. Citadel’s output would form a stream that stretches from England to perhaps all the way to Newfoundland and Quebec. 

This also will reflect light, present a navigational hazard to spacecraft and dust the Atlantic Ocean and any lands falling under its wake with a cocktail of exotically ground down garbage.

4): Every satellite orbit will be affected. Bad news for anything without its own means to maneuver and correct orbits, there is now a giant 44.7 * 12.8 * 12.8 kilometers large volume of space station influencing them, if not to crash into directly.

Any satellite to be replaced will have to take Citadel’s existence into account or they will de-orbit or get flung out of position sooner or later.

5): Maneuvering to dock with the Citadel got also somewhat more tricky, but only in comparison to its past position in the Widow Nebula. It’ll be routine to pilots who are docking with anything else orbiting planetary bodies.

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I would like to thank and credit the following people and communities for contributing to the discussion when this topic was brought up:

Infrastruct of Cerberus Daily News RP forum

Rhapsody in Taupe of Cerberus Daily News RP forum

Sentient Solutions of Cerberus Daily News RP forum

Turtle of Calibrations Mass Effect Discord

Anjian of Calibrations Mass Effect Discord

Cerberus Daily News RP forum and Discord in general

On the topic of mass relays and transiting them - we can observe a manner of macro-scale uncertainty principle at work.

Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that we cannot predict all values of a particle perfectly at the same time. There is a limit to precision of other variables, if we know one for certain.

Mass relays appear to have a mechanism reminiscent of the uncertainty principle in that they have a finite amount of detail assignable to transiting mass and where the transiting mass arrives.

A communications buoy can transmit a laser beam at very high accuracy to another buoy on the other side of a relay, as photons are light. The available precision can be dedicated to aiming the laser beam to its destination, another buoy with high precision.

Whereas coordinating a massive fleet of tens of warships, the available precision goes into tracking the thousands and thousands of (kilo)grams of mass, leaving the mass relay deposit the transiting fleet just somewhere near the receiving relay in its host system.

This we know from Joker and the Codex.

One could in theory test the limits of a relay by making it transmit unfathomably large mass (say, the asteroid that destroys Viper Nebula's relay) and see how far out it would come out on the other side. Maybe deep inside the receiving star system or well into its Kuiper belt equivalent.

In addition there must be some manner of quantum entanglement communication between the relays. The lost Mu relay was ejected from its host system by a supernova, yet its counterparts could still link to it. 

As part of reading into my previous post on mass relays, I re-read the official CDN news articles for more information, and came across this:

The TR-15 Letus probe made headlines as the closest approach to a neutron star, even though it did not apparently transit through Kappa Iota relay. How is this?

The Kappa Iota relay is transmitting said neutron star's radiation through the relays or more accurately, the neutron star is bombarding the relay's mass transit corridor with its emissions and its transporting all of it to Kappa Iota's vicinity.

What can we learn about this? One can transit without specifying mass! Or the relay mis-interprets the radiation as commands for mass and destination.

0Today’s post was brought to you by a dive into the original run of Cerberus Daily News, active during the first year from Mass Effect 2′s launch.

There are very likely similar posts existing already out there to mine. I hope mine can add something novel to the available offerings.

Outside interactions between Shepard and turians they came across, the terrorist attack on Vallum and following war on Taetrus brought us a lot of turian concepts and terms as part of news articles covering the conflict. This is a list of them with explanations.

Bareface - Turian individual who lacks facial paint of their birth or homeworld. Early in turian history when they began to establish extra-palavenian colonies, these colonies developed their own identities, cultures and symbols to display that. Facepaint was one obvious way of displaying one’s loyalties to their homes. Lack of facepaint meant unwillingness to commit. Barefaced individuals represented the unknown and were threats. Politicians were quickly saddled with this slur.

Meaning of being bareface was covered in the Codex on turian culture.

Cabal - Turian special military unit consisting solely of soldiers with biotic capability.

Wiktionary defition: A usually secret exclusive organization of individuals gathered for a political purpose. A secret plot.

Turian cabalists are a concept of some notoriety, as they distinctly differ from their non-biotic peers. Hierarchy society generally encourages towards honesty and straightforwardness, and the Cabals’ break from this towards subterfuge, separation and at times isolation marks them as comparable to barefaces in terms of social status. In canonical case of Nyreen Kandros, she was re-assigned to the Cabals due to her biotics manifesting, but was underutilized due to their undeveloped nature. She did not realize her powers’ full potential until Aria T’Loak’s tutelage.

Cabals were first mentioned in Cerberus Daily News article from June 10th 2010.

Claw salute - A salute done with hand, or just the claw. Possibly witnessed in Mass Effect 3 during Shepard’s operations on Menae and Tuchanka.

Claw salute was first verbally mentioned in Cerberus Daily News article from April 30th 2010.

Carifinum - Emergency management agency responsible for public crises on Taetrus. Unknown whether this is canonically generic term for all Hierarchy emergency management agencies or solely the Taetrian instance’s name. Some Earth equivalent agencies: FEMA in the United States of America, Ministry of Emergency Situations/EMERCOM/MChS in the Russian Federation.

Most likely inspired by latin word Caritas, meaning something dear, expensive or charity.

Carifinum was criticized first in the Cerberus Daily News article from May 14th 2010.

Enrarium, (The) - Old post office of Vallum city, serving as museum in contemporary times. Source material presentation seems conflicting, the name Enrarium is presented with the, denoting its unique, and then translated as “old postal office” which is a generic descriptor.

Enrarium directly has no existing translation in real world languages. However, Wiktionary tells us that -rium suffix is used to indicate the setting where a given activity is carried out: for example, auditorium, gymnasium, planetarium. So enra or enrar is implied to be something post or messaging related activity.

A turian child was rescued from ruins of the Enrarium in the Cerberus Daily News article from May 7th 2010.

Facinus - Separatist-slash-terrorist group campaigning for Elurian continent’s independence from Taetrus and its colonial Hierarchy administration. Became infamous when they subverted a commercial freighter’s FTL plotter and set it to accelerate into the colony’s capital city of Vallum.

Facinus translates directly from Latin, meaning a deed or an act, or more specifically crime, wickedness or an evil deed.

Investigations fingered Facinus being the culprit in the Cerberus Daily News article from May 4th 2010.

Hielae - A throwball sports court. Were utilized as makeshift storage spaces for turian remains in aftermath of Vallum blast.

Wiktionary and Latin offer no material. Original construct mimicking latin structure.

Rescue services resorted to using hielae courts in the Cerberus Daily News article from May 2nd 2010.

Haemona Medical Center - Healthcare provision establishment with capacity for 1500 patients, vastly overwhelmed in aftermath of Vallum blast after survivors sought help therein. Served as scene for grizzly activity of harvesting organs from the blast casualties.

Haemona itself means nothing, but haemo means pertaining to blood in ancient Greek, as seen in medical contexts like in haemophilia.

Haemona Medical Center was mentioned in above May 2nd entry and then later in Cerberus Daily News article from May 9th 2010.

Laudatix - Ministry of citizenship rankings. Generic term, as it was presented in the article as “the colony’s Laudatix”. Manages official records and processes promotions and demotions of citizen rankings within its jurisdiction. Also organizes oseruns, or ceremonies where the citizenship rank promotions are publicly proclaimed and entered into effect.

Latin verb laudo, meaning “I praise/commend/eulogize/compliment” conjugates to laudatis, amongst other forms.

Taetrian Laudatix resumed normal operations in the Cerberus Daily News article from May 11th 2010.

Mexta - A traditional turian sword with both ceremonial and practical uses, such as dueling.

Appears to be an invented word.

Turian general Partinax wanted to fight the Facinus figurehead with a mexta in the Cerberus Daily News article from June 3rd 2010.

Oserun - Citizenship rank promotion ceremony. Official ceremonies are arranged by the local Laudatix.

Appears to be an invented word.

See Laudatix for the article where it was first mentioned.

Radiatum, (The) - The Taetrian parliament building. Possibly also a generic name for turian parliaments, but use of the leans heavily on unique building name. Earthly equivalents: The Russian State Duma building, Brazilian National Congress building.

From Latin radiatus, past participle of radiare (“to radiate, furnish with spokes, give out rays, radiate, shine”), from radius (“a spoke, ray”).

It all began in the Cerberus Daily News article from April 28th 2010.

Sevnis, (The) - A building in Vallum that served as emergency government headquarters after the blast. Was targeted by an aircar bombing attempt.

Appears to be an invented word.

The Sevnis made headlines in the Cerberus Daily News article for June 1st 2010.

Signis, (The) - Office of the primarch of Taetrus. Was obliberated in the Vallum blast, and later rebuilt. Seems to denote an unique building.

Fom Latin signum (genitive signī);a mark, sign, emblem, a miracle, (Medieval Latin) a signum (medieval tower bell used particularly for ringing the 8 canonical hours).

Was destroyed in the Cerberus Daily News article from April 29th 2010, and later rebuilt in August 8th.

Viceroy - A Hierarchy political role. A primarch’s second-in-command.

It would appear that the length of a GST year in comparison to an Earth year was in fact 1.09 and not 1.1 as I had calculated previously. This information of the GST year’s length (and in fact all the GST measurements) came from a physical print of Mass Effect Codex that was given out as feelie in deluxe versions of the first Mass Effect game. What follows is a revised section of my old article with new numbers and higher accuracy.

Galactic Standard Time is what the Citadel Council races have agreed to use to measure time. 20 hours to a day, 100 minutes to an hour, 100 seconds to a minute, and one GST second equals 0.5 Earth seconds.

A GST hour holds 100*100= 10 000 GSD seconds or 5000 Earth seconds. This translates into 5000/3600 = 1.389 Earth hours or 83 minutes 20.4 seconds

A GST day holds 20*10 000=200 000 GST seconds or 100 000 Earth seconds. This translates into 100 000/86 164.098 903 691 (stellar day or the 23 hours 56 minutes 4.01 seconds one) = 1.16057617119369 days, or approximately 27 hours, 51 minutes, 14 seconds rounded up.

The Galactic Standard Year has been described to be an average of Palaven’s, Thessia’s and Sur'Kesh’s. Palaven and Sur'kesh both have orbital periods of 1.2 Earth years and Thessia has just 0.9. The average would have rounded up to 1.1 Earth years or 401 and a half days. However the physical ME1 codex states it is actually 1.09 Earth years or 398 days, 3 hours, 1 minute and 48 seconds.

GST year in Earth time is 31471749.9002522 (Earth year in seconds) * 1.09 = 34304207.3912749 seconds. From this we can derive GST year’s length in its days.

34 304 207.391 274 9 / 100 000 (GST day in Earth seconds) = 343,042073912749 GST days. Rounding it up we come to 343 GST days and 84 GST minutes.

First division without remainder gets us seven 49-day months for neatest numbers. Anything beyond that goes into results with fractions. This can be also divided by seven to get us a neat seven weeks that are seven weekdays. Again, anything beyond this is ugly fractions.

There’s something to twist your head around.

and the same without clutter:

GST minute 100 GST seconds = 50 Earth seconds GST hour 100 GST minutes = 83 Earth minutes 20.4 seconds GST day 20 GST hours = 27 Earth hours 51 minutes 14 seconds GST week 7(?) GST days = 8 Earth days 2 hours 58 minutes 36 seconds GST month 49(?) GST days =  56 Earth days 20 hours 50 minutes 15 seconds GST year 343 GST days 84 GST minutes = 398 Earth days 3 hours 1 minute and 48 seconds.

The Reapers are technologically superior to the organic species of the galaxy --  but the degree of that superiority is a matter of debate in the intelligence community.

The Reapers' thrusters and FTL drives appear to propel them at more than twice the speed of Citadel ships. Estimates of their location in dark space suggest they can travel nearly 30 light-years in a 24-hour period.

- Mass Effect Codex, excerpt of Reaper Capabilities

Pondering over how fast the ODSY drive is, I began to dig into the codex and crunch some numbers. We were not told how fast FTL travel really is until Mass Effect 3 came and pegged the organics’ ship tech vaguely to being less than half of 30 light-years a day of the Reapers’ top speed.

So, how fast do Systems Alliance et al fly? Mass Effect Wikia noted in their FTL article it to be “dozen” light-years, but I was not able to find any backing up evidence in the codexes, save for the codex excerpt I’m using.

Let’s put the fork between contemporary Milky Way FTL drive speeds between 7.5 and 12 light-years a day. That should give us a good range of less than half of Reaper velocity.

The distance from Milky Way to Andromeda galaxy is 2 500 000 light-years. Andromeda Initiative states that the journey will take 600 years.

ODSY thus covers the distance of... 2500000/600=4166,67 light-years in a year.

In a day it would cover... 4166.67/365.25=11.41 light-years in a day.

That would be going into the upper bracket of projected contemporary drive velocities! Internally consistent!

What about the Reapers then? We know the light-years/day but we need the light-years/year now.

30*365.25=10957.5

Nearly 11 000 light-years in a year! Reaching Andromeda would only take then... 2500000/10957.5=228.15 years. Reapers could’ve gone to Andromeda and back in one extinction cycle’s span easily! Fortunately for us, their creators never programmed them to extend the “life preservation” program to other galaxies.

I find these numbers internally consistent and thus am content with them. ODSY represents a revolutionary step in drive technology, in which denizens of the Milky Way become capable to cross dark space similarly to Reapers, but not as capably as them.

TL;DR

Contemporary space drive velocity: 7.5-12 ly/d

ODSY drive velocity: 11.41 ly/d or 4166.67 ly/a

ODSY Drive System With the Arks unable to refuel by traditional means in dark space, the journey to Andromeda is only made possible by the ODSY Drive System. The ODSY is a massive experimental drive core specifically designed for this trans-galactic voyage. It is capable of recycling static energy that would typically cause a starship to explode, instead storing it to power the Ark’s primary systems. Meanwhile, an electromagnetic ram-scoop will gather hydrogen from the Ark’s surroundings, converting it into fuel as needed.

-Andromeda Initiative briefing video

As positive or negative electric current is passed through an FTL drive core, it acquires a static electrical charge. Drives can be operated an average of 50 hours before they reach charge saturation. This changes proportionally to the magnitude of mass reduction; a heavier or faster ship reaches saturation more quickly.

If the charge is allowed to build, the core will discharge into the hull of a ship. All ungrounded crew members are fried to a crisp, all electronic system are burned out, and metal bulkheads may be melted and fused together.

The safest way to discharge a core is to land on a planet and establish a connection to the ground, like a lightning rod. Larger vessels like dreadnoughts cannot land and must discharge into a planetary magnetic field1.

As the hull discharges, sheets of lightning jump away into the field, creating beautiful auroral displays on the planet. The ship must retract its sensors and weapons while dumping charge to prevent damage, leaving it blind and helpless. Discharging at a moon with a weak magnetic field can take days. Discharging into the powerful field of a gas giant may require less than an hour. Deep space facilities such as the Citadel often have special discharge facilities for visiting ships.

- Mass Effect Codex, FTL Drive: Drive Charge

The ODSY drive, which seems so far been utilized solely for Andromeda Initiative’s purposes is a revolution in drive technology. Recycling of static energy eliminates discharge needs and ram-scooping more fuel makes the ships self-sufficient.

If (or when) utilizied in the Milky Way, the ODSY drive could become a serious contender to replacing the Reaper-built mass relay network. A ship drive that renders empty space and barren discharge and refueling sites irrelevant to spread of inhabitation and economic exploitation.