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Description
Rounding off (for now) my series of charts, this is a schematic view of Sol System, noting the position of the planets and their respective L3, L4 and L5 Lagrange neutral-gravity points (their L1 and L2 points are too close to the planets for this view). The chart shows the out-system helical jump points (the red stars) and the in-system helical jump points (the dotted blue lines) that are known at the time of the first book of the series, circa 450 Anno Diasporae Humanarum. The jump points are labelled from innermost to outermost, not in order of discovery.

The first jump in human history took place in the Triton L1/Sirius jump point, by accident, in the year 13 Before Diaspora. Scientists and engineers aboard the test ship Amaterasu, led by Dr Shintaro Yasomoto of the International Consortium and Dr Samira Khan of the Pan-Asiatic League, attempted to create a stable wormhole by spinning an annular train of supermagnets, experimental synthetic gravity projectors and other devices. They expected to create a wormhole that would be stable for seconds, of a few hundred metres' diameter; after 49 hours of spinning the train, however, they had produced no results. At the end of their funding from the Consortium and having exhausted their theoretical frameworks, Dr Yasomoto triggered a hard shutdown of the device out of exhaustion and frustration; in order to do so, some of Amaterasu's coolant was vented directly into space. Approximately forty-two seconds later, Amaterasu vanished in a momentary blast of hard radiation, leaving the support crew at nearby Adelaide Station in a panic. Amaterasu herself experienced an instantaneous power surge which led to an immediate loss of power and the destruction of over half of the ship's systems. As Amaterasu's shaken crew worked to restore power and basic systems, those crew near viewports and in the cockpit began making startled reports of being able to see two suns.

After an hour's work, with some basic computer systems restored from cold backups, Dr Khan suggested combining the spectral information from both stars to arrive at an approximation of the binary's catalogue information. The computers threw a positive result: Sirius. Able to triangulate their location from a number of bright stars, the ship's single surviving communications array was pointed towards Sol; very faint, garbled signal leakage from the system dated to 3,142 days previously - 8.6 years, the same as Sirius' distance from Sol (8.6 light years), indicating that however Amaterasu arrived in Sirius, it did so instantaneously.

Able to use the Sirius primary's much brighter light to recharge some of the ship's batteries through careful use of the photovoltaic sails (which were angled so as not to expose them to Sirius' full glare and risk damaging them further), Khan and Yasomoto rallied their crew and set about recreating the circumstances that had led to their departure from Sol. As one of the main device busses had been shorted out, this required spinning up the annular array - what Yasomoto had begun referring to as the "key" - by hand. He and Khan calculated that they would be able to trigger the return after as little as twenty minutes' spin; Yasomoto ruefully remarked that he should have shut down the experiment a lot earlier and saved everyone a sleepless night. Khan remarked that had he done so, the extra charge present in the ship's batteries could have killed them all.

Six hours and fifty-eight minutes after Amaterasu disappeared, the crew on Adelaide Station were desperately trying to work out what had happened - there had been a radiation flash, but not enough to account for the destruction of the ship. There was no residual heat to speak of, and no debris; the flash did not tail off as expected, either; it began to fade for an instant and then simply stopped. A detailed analysis of what little dust there was where the ship had been was confusing and bore little relation to space dust they were familiar with.

Amaterasu successfully jumped back into Sol System almost exactly seven hours after she departed, both from the point of view of her own crew, and from the point of view of the support crew on Adelaide Station. The return jump destroyed 90% of the ship's remaining systems and severely affected the crew, causing six acute coronary events and two confirmed strokes, as well as triggering an epileptic fit in one of the technical staff. The ship's systems were largely deemed to be beyond repair, and she was towed to Adelaide Station by the station's shuttles.

Later on, back on Earth amid a storm of publicity - the experiment had, after all, taken place amid the First Temperate War - Khan and Yasomoto confirmed to the Consortium funding panel that they had created two successful wormholes - each had existed in a stable form for approximately 10^-43 seconds. The International Consortium activated the sole-usage clause of the funding contract and set about planning for developing jump as a viable technology. Thirteen years later, after six successful exploration missions, the Consortium founded the first out-system colonies on Malinche, Orel and Atlantaea. The age of jump travel had begun.

Description
Rounding off (for now) my series of charts, this is a schematic view of Sol System, noting the position of the planets and their respective L3, L4 and L5 Lagrange neutral-gravity points (their L1 and L2 points are too close to the planets for this view). The chart shows the out-system helical jump points (the red stars) and the in-system helical jump points (the dotted blue lines) that are known at the time of the first book of the series, circa 450 Anno Diasporae Humanarum. The jump points are labelled from innermost to outermost, not in order of discovery.

The first jump in human history took place in the Triton L1/Sirius jump point, by accident, in the year 13 Before Diaspora. Scientists and engineers aboard the test ship Amaterasu, led by Dr Shintaro Yasomoto of the International Consortium and Dr Samira Khan of the Pan-Asiatic League, attempted to create a stable wormhole by spinning an annular train of supermagnets, experimental synthetic gravity projectors and other devices. They expected to create a wormhole that would be stable for seconds, of a few hundred metres' diameter; after 49 hours of spinning the train, however, they had produced no results. At the end of their funding from the Consortium and having exhausted their theoretical frameworks, Dr Yasomoto triggered a hard shutdown of the device out of exhaustion and frustration; in order to do so, some of Amaterasu's coolant was vented directly into space. Approximately forty-two seconds later, Amaterasu vanished in a momentary blast of hard radiation, leaving the support crew at nearby Adelaide Station in a panic. Amaterasu herself experienced an instantaneous power surge which led to an immediate loss of power and the destruction of over half of the ship's systems. As Amaterasu's shaken crew worked to restore power and basic systems, those crew near viewports and in the cockpit began making startled reports of being able to see two suns.

After an hour's work, with some basic computer systems restored from cold backups, Dr Khan suggested combining the spectral information from both stars to arrive at an approximation of the binary's catalogue information. The computers threw a positive result: Sirius. Able to triangulate their location from a number of bright stars, the ship's single surviving communications array was pointed towards Sol; very faint, garbled signal leakage from the system dated to 3,142 days previously - 8.6 years, the same as Sirius' distance from Sol (8.6 light years), indicating that however Amaterasu arrived in Sirius, it did so instantaneously.

Able to use the Sirius primary's much brighter light to recharge some of the ship's batteries through careful use of the photovoltaic sails (which were angled so as not to expose them to Sirius' full glare and risk damaging them further), Khan and Yasomoto rallied their crew and set about recreating the circumstances that had led to their departure from Sol. As one of the main device busses had been shorted out, this required spinning up the annular array - what Yasomoto had begun referring to as the "key" - by hand. He and Khan calculated that they would be able to trigger the return after as little as twenty minutes' spin; Yasomoto ruefully remarked that he should have shut down the experiment a lot earlier and saved everyone a sleepless night. Khan remarked that had he done so, the extra charge present in the ship's batteries could have killed them all.

Six hours and fifty-eight minutes after Amaterasu disappeared, the crew on Adelaide Station were desperately trying to work out what had happened - there had been a radiation flash, but not enough to account for the destruction of the ship. There was no residual heat to speak of, and no debris; the flash did not tail off as expected, either; it began to fade for an instant and then simply stopped. A detailed analysis of what little dust there was where the ship had been was confusing and bore little relation to space dust they were familiar with.

Amaterasu successfully jumped back into Sol System almost exactly seven hours after she departed, both from the point of view of her own crew, and from the point of view of the support crew on Adelaide Station. The return jump destroyed 90% of the ship's remaining systems and severely affected the crew, causing six acute coronary events and two confirmed strokes, as well as triggering an epileptic fit in one of the technical staff. The ship's systems were largely deemed to be beyond repair, and she was towed to Adelaide Station by the station's shuttles.

Later on, back on Earth amid a storm of publicity - the experiment had, after all, taken place amid the First Temperate War - Khan and Yasomoto confirmed to the Consortium funding panel that they had created two successful wormholes - each had existed in a stable form for approximately 10^-43 seconds. The International Consortium activated the sole-usage clause of the funding contract and set about planning for developing jump as a viable technology. Thirteen years later, after six successful exploration missions, the Consortium founded the first out-system colonies on Malinche, Orel and Atlantaea. The age of jump travel had begun.