So I was thinking about a good shadowrun plot, and was wondering have high temperature supraconductors been invented in the SR canon? That got me thinking about other things, so am wondering what is the official SR canon on things like:

- high temperature supraconductors
- how does fusion power work in SR
- what happened to CERN, or the planned/canceled Tevatron in the US?
- the SETI program
- super high tensile solids

All that was given up in favor of magic.
Actually, I don't think its addressed. In SR you just put part of the word "plastic" in something, like"plascrete" and Bam! its Futuristic

I think alot of that is left ambiguous and the focus is on the effect.

I understand that scientific progress came to a halt when magic came into the world, though it seems to have picked up since then. Even then I suppose the highly theoretical has been scrapped in order to do more applied science. I was just wondering has there been any official canon I can fall back on if I introduce my players to such a plot.

For example, if they are building a space elevator, some sort of super tensile solid had to be discovered.

Might exist, but most circuitry is optical nowadays.

Very well, thank you. IIRC, electricity is cheap to the point of being effectively free unless you need a lot of it. The SCIRE had a bunch of reactors in its basement - take that as a metric. 10 fusion reactors to power an arcology.

The Tevatron is neither planned nor cancelled - it is currently in active use at Fermilab. Perhaps you meant the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC)? Which was cancelled in the '90's for budgetary reasons, and presumably was in the SR universe as well.

As for the CERN and the LHC, I bet they were either destroyed or badly damaged in the Crash, and in the time that followed nobody was willing or able to fund repairs.

A huge, abandoned underground complex, with possible associated paranormal phenomena in the Sixth World... hmm.

The SETI program is not particularly well-funded even today - if anyone's looking for LGMs in the future, it's the corps, and they're keeping it under wraps. Does YotC have anything about this?

Sure, why not.

There's a man-portable gauss rifle.

I think its safe to assume SR has pretty much perfected most of these to some degree. The thing is, none of these are game changing so there's no real need for the canon to cover them in detail.

Point well taken.

Scotty, is that you?

Oh hell, I find it impossible to believe that some dragon or some megacorp has never wanted to cast manabolt into a chamber where particles are recreating the beginning of the universe. How does magic work within a singularity? Hell if it works fine, you can scry into a black hole and finally figure out what the f*ck happens when physics no longer applies.

LHC might have gone the way of the dodo, but I doubt that particle physics has been abandoned completely. In fact, depending on how magic reacts with reality in these reality-tearing situations, magic may augment and advance the field by leaps and bounds.

I think a research project smash & grab shadowrun to get info on magic/quantum theory interaction would be a fantastic plot hook.

I agree and intend to steal this the first chance I get!

I've always liked the optical motors and antennas....

Let me know how it goes!

See here's my thinking. If memory serves, didn't they set a nuke off in Chicago and it f*cked with the astral plane a lot? If that's the case, we know that nuclear fission (and a relatively inefficient fission at that) can jack up magic/the spiritual plane.

However, fusion (and fusion generators) don't have the same effect. I know TerraFirst hates fusion plants, as do other groups, but did they ever explain if there was an impact on magic from them? If not, that creates one *hell* of a conundrum at an atomic level, since most modern mass-scale nukes are actually fusion-boosted.

If fusion plants *do* impact the local magic, that presents it's own interesting question of which is more damaging: the bomb or the fusion plant. The plant is sustained, but the bomb is more widespread. Either way, magic clearly has issues or implications at the atomic and sub-atomic scale.

I simply don't see how any mega could resist the urge to delve into this more. Hermetic/theurgic approaches to magic in general would almost mandate a necessity to research the esoteric relations of the basic building blocks of the universe and magical energies.

Magic is traditionally treated in the game as something apart from reality (supernatural) but in fact it's been shown multiple times that magic and "natural reality" are intrinsically linked. While most street/corp mages would never even give two tosses over how magic relates to quarks, some brilliant think tank somewhere *has* asked that question, and some wealthy mega has to be researching the question to see if they can profit from it.

There are also canon references to radioactive orichalcum and the fact that nuclear weapons built before the Awakening somehow don't work after. There is definitely room there for a good plot or two.

Good point. I never realized that the nukes that launched but "never hit" were built pre-awakening.

Technomancers are taking humanity towards magic/technology hybrid, whereas before it was sort of "never the twain shall meet" kind of an approach.

Sorry to be nitpicky. Per the Arcology Shutdown plot book, the SCIRE had precisely 3 reactors in its basement, and not all were running at any given time. (If I recall, one was always down for maintenance)

I bet the fundamental particle of magic emits heavily in the color 1 past the 7th color.

Color? Don't be silly, Everybody knows that magic is a wave function....

dont be silly everything is a waveparticle or a force and a force still needs a particle to transfer it.

Maybe magic is the unified field theory...

Oh wait, no. I got that backward. The unified field theory is magic.

more like needs magic...

Thanks for answering, it seems that all of the stuff has been invented. The mention of interaction between high energy particles magic is very interesting.

Though it is a little strange to me that fusion plants work; though I infer from their size that they might be of the cold fusion variety. Does anyone know if fission plants are still active. I mean even if they are able to function, fusion plants have cornered that market.

Also I didn't know Technomancers had anything to do with magic. I always figured they were the next step in metahuman evolution, an adaptation to the constant wireless signals being emitted. I think I read that their nervous system is more developed as well.

The SR timeline has seen some serious train wrecks with fission plants (Glow City comes to mind), so presumably many wealthier populated areas have gone to fusion. Its not an all or nothing thing tho- I'm sure there are still fission plants in less "developed" nations.

I think you have that backwards - fusion plants (as we understand them today) can't really melt down, fission plants can (well, some types of reactor, at least). All RL reactors that produce electricity are fission reactors.

Yep you're right. I had those backwards... fixed it.

Well, thematically shadowrun has always had magic and technology separated by a big-ass wall, never the twain shall meet. It's why there's Essence and other bits of mechanics to make it rare to have cyber-magi.

Technomancers are people who can manipulate the Matrix through essentially sheer will. Sounds a hell of a lot like magic to me, just magic that only effects technology. Which heretofore has been essentially oil & water.

Now thematically SR could avoid this bridgepoint and gloss over it, but at the same time, it seems to be moving in that direction. It's one of the major (if subtle) theme shifts between 4th and earlier editions.

Except that Otaku performed much the same as Technomancers in 3rd Edition... it is not a 4th Edition phenomenon...

Keep the Faith

and were named better than their 4th ed equivalent.

Personally, I prefer the term Technomancer myself...

Keep the Faith

It sounds better and certainly more like something I'd want to play than Otaku, but that was kinda what I was implying.

They call it octorange. Thereby making the only unrhymable word "purple."

My own question:
Has shadowrun created any negative refraction index materials?

I always thought it referred to UV since normal people couldn't see it and it was a joke on "the color of outer space" which was UV or perhaps xrays.

I never checked. Quite possibly. I was, however, continuing the Color of Magic line of reference.

As to high tensile strength solids, isn't that what monofilament is? I believe its stated to have industrial uses; its use as a weapon / fencing material seems more of an appropriation, not the intended use. A cable made of the stuff might be hugely expensive, but when that cable is a space tether, any weight saved (or strenght increase without weight increase) reduces cost and boosts performance. Obviously, at the extreme end (space elevator), enormous tensile strength is an absolute requirement; its unclear is monofiliment is that strong, but given the performance as a weapon, it seems likely.