Diaspora

Topological space: An abstract set of points, plus the bare minimum of additional structure required to determine the way in which they're connected to each other: a collection of certain subsets of points, defined to be the "open sets" of the space. (In the Euclidean plane, the open sets are just the interiors of circles of any radius, or unions of any number of such circles.) A point P is called a "limit point" of a set U if every open set containing P also contains at least one point of U—implying that P is arbitrarily close to U, without necessarily belonging to it. (For example, any point on the border of a circle would be a limit point of its interior.) Then a set W is called connected if it can't be divided into two pieces, U and V, such that V contains no limit points of U. (A figure-eight in the plane would be connected, but the interiors of the loops would not.)

Trait field: In a mind seed, a field where a number of different instruction codes are known to produce safe variations of some trait.

UT: Universal Time. Conventional astronomical/political system of specifying physical date and time, equivalent to local mean time at the Greenwich meridian. Universal Time is extended across interstellar distances by use of a reference frame at rest with respect to the sun.

Wormhole: A wormhole is a "detour" in space-time, similar to the detour in the surface of the Earth created by an underground tunnel. In general, the distance through wormhole can be either shorter or longer than the ordinary distance between its mouths. In Kozuch Theory, all elementary particles are the mouths of extremely narrow wormholes.

REFERENCES

The broad principles of the Konishi citizens' mental architecture were inspired by the human cognitive models of Daniel C. Dennett and Marvin Minsky. However, the details are my own fanciful inventions, and the Konishi model is intended to describe, not the current human mind, but a hypothetical software descendant. Dennett's and Minsky's models are described in:

Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett, Penguin, London, 1992.

The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky, Heinemann, London, 1986.

Kozuch Theory is fictitious. The idea of a correspondence between wormhole mouths and elementary particles is due to John Wheeler, while the possibility of accounting for particle symmetries through wormhole topology was inspired by the Dirac belt trick and Louis H. Kauffman's quaternion demonstrator. I encountered these ideas in:

Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity by John Baez and Javier P Muniain, World Scientific, Singapore, 1994.

Knots and Physics by Louis H. Kauffman, World Scientific. Singapore, 1993.

Lacerta G-1 is fictitious, and its accelerated orbital decay only makes sense in terms of the novel's invented cosmology. The closest known binary neutron star consists of a pulsar, PSR B1 534+12, and its companion; this system is 1500 light years away, and is not expected to coalesce for about one billion years. Gamma-ray bursts are a real phenomenon, though it remains unclear whether or not they're produced by colliding neutron stars. Information on binary neutron stars, gamma-ray bursts, gravitational radiation, gravitational astronomy, and the behavior of wormholes in General Relativity was drawn from:

Black Holes, White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars by S. L. Shapiro and S. A. Teukolsky, Wiley, New York, 1983.

"Binary Neutron Stars" by Tsvi Piran, Scientific American, May 1995.

"Gamma Ray Bursts" by John G. Cramer, Analog, October 1995.

Black Holes and Timewarps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip S. Thorne, Macmillan, London, 1995.

The detailed effects of Lac G-1 on Earth are speculative, but as a starting point I used:

"Terrestrial Implications of Cosmological Gamma-Ray Burst Models" by Stephen Titorsett, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 1 May 1995.

The particle acceleration method employed in the Forge is based on:

"PASER: particle acceleration by stimulated emission of radiation" by Levi Schachter, Physics Letters A, 25 September 1995 (volume 205, no. 5).