Kaidan nods appreciatively at Micah's scientifically right and proper equivocation about calling wormhole travel FTL before a soft laugh escapes in response to the question burst. "I should start by saying that I'm a tech nerd, not a physicist. But I guess I have some, ah, personal experience with the mass effect," he says, one hand lifting to trace the edges of the amp port at the nape of his neck while he gathers his thoughts to summarize a couple hundred lectures, received and given.
"The mass effect is the dark energy phenomenon observed when you place what we've named 'element zero -- eezo for short -- in an electrical field. It's... a converter, sort of," he reaches for an explanation while also knowing there are at least eight more accurate and polysyllabic words an actual physicist from his reality would be able to share with their else-reality kin. "It lets you manipulate dark energy's gravitational effects even though the dark energy itself stays as unaffected by electromagnetism as ever. Although it's not consumed in the process, so I guess it's a catalyst, too. But once you have a way to increase or decrease gravity within a field... well, I'm sure you see where our science went with it."
no subject
"The mass effect is the dark energy phenomenon observed when you place what we've named 'element zero -- eezo for short -- in an electrical field. It's... a converter, sort of," he reaches for an explanation while also knowing there are at least eight more accurate and polysyllabic words an actual physicist from his reality would be able to share with their else-reality kin. "It lets you manipulate dark energy's gravitational effects even though the dark energy itself stays as unaffected by electromagnetism as ever. Although it's not consumed in the process, so I guess it's a catalyst, too. But once you have a way to increase or decrease gravity within a field... well, I'm sure you see where our science went with it."