Singularity

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A singularity is a term commonly used by 24th century Federation starship personnel to refer to a point or region in the space-time continuum where normal physical models do not apply and extraordinary amounts of gravitational forces are typically present. Singularities can be both natural and artificial: wormholes, quantum matrices of planets, and black holes all can contain singularities, as do certain reactors (e.g., those found in Romulan starships).

The term is derived from mathematics, and for gravitational singularities refers to points of infinite or near-infinite density or space curvature.

There are relationships between singularities and time. Singularities in general, and quantum singularities in particular, are known by 24th century science even when stable to send out waves of temporal displacement that affects, among other things, delta-series radioisotopes. The USS Enterprise encountered temporal effects from a singularity in a black star in 2267. Also, energy emitted by an exploding microscopic singularity can shift chroniton particles into a high state of temporal polarization and/or create "bubbles" in subspace. This latter result can cause temporal anomalies and was directly observed by the USS Defiant in 2371.

Singularities can be detected by the effect they have on local gravimetric field signatures nearby (although they can be buried so far down in subspace layers that they cannot be detected in that way), and/or by using tetryon emissions as a guide.

One example of the use of a singularity was demonstrated in 2373. The Borg, Species 8472, and the USS Voyager were all able to travel between the fluidic space dimension and our dimension via artificially created quantum singularities.

Another, very unusual, use of a singularity was in 2377 when Voyager bounced a tachyon beam off a singularity to permit real-time communication between the Alpha Quadrant and the Delta Quadrant.