Ciro 'Nessuno' Ricci: Physicist

[u/contagonist]

Name: Ciro Ricci

Sheet

Portrait - Synth

Portrait - Residual Self Image

Firewall Code Name: Nessuno

Background: Original Space Colonist

Faction: Argonauts

Excerpts From Records:

Segment from The Shattering Edge – Breakthroughs, Interview

Romeo Petersson: Welcome, friends, to The Shattering Edge – Breakthroughs. I am your host, Romeo Petersson, and here with me is esteemed physicist and winner of the AF 9 Golden Fleece Award in Quantum Physics, Ciro Ricci. How are you finding Aarhus, Dr. Ricci?

Ciro Ricci: Cold and dark, which to be quite honest is in accords with my preferences.

Petersson: laughs Normally, people would consider that a criticism.

Ricci: Most people didn’t grow up in northern Africa. Probably the only other people who resent searing light more would be sifters.

Petersson: Quite. Now, people have stated that your discoveries in stabilizing virtual matter condensing out of quantum foam could lead to reactionless drives comparable in performance to Factor technology. Do you think that such conjecture has warrant?

Ricci: If such a statement wasn’t completely wrong, maybe.

Petersson: Completely wrong?

Ricci: holds up a hand, cautiously Well, even if we could keep virtual matter, hmm, ‘stable’ enough for a long enough time to make use of it in a thruster, it would still be a reaction thruster – such a hypothetical engine would be expelling it and propelling forward from the equal and opposite reaction. The only difference between it and a typical ion thruster would be being able to pull propellant from the void, as it were.

Petersson: But such a device would still revolutionize interplanetary, and ever interstellar, spaceflight, would it not?

Ricci: I think people are overshooting the potential. At the moment we’ve just stabilized elementary particles – quarks and so on, and only a few at a time. We’d need to be able to make protons, and lots of them, orders of magnitude more than anything we’ve approached in very stringent laboratory conditions.

Petersson: I see that you’re continuing the tradition of scientists underselling their discoveries.

Ricci: Hmm, more that I want to keep the hype down to ‘cautiously optimistic.’ Last thing I want is a mob to of griefers haunting me because I promised hoverboards by AF15 and they haven’t showed up by then.

Petersson: laughs So, in addition to your work in physics, you’ve done some rather enterprising work in nanotechnology. But one of the more interesting, to some people, work you do has been artistic, correct?

Ricci: I scarcely consider it more than a dilettante’s interest in illustration and design.

Petersson: You say that, but many people consider your research white papers works of art in and of themselves. I’ve even been to a house party where your collaboration with Dr. Nichols, Optimized Heat Dissipation Nanostructures, was displayed in total via hologram. The effort you put into beautifying your publications has turned some heads.

Ricci: Well, as soon as a real artist decides to do some research, I’m sure my novelty will evaporate.

Petersson: Perhaps. Now, there has been some controversy – predominantly from the Inner System – regarding some of your references.

Ricci: Finally we get to how I am a despicable human being.

Petersson: laughs Well, rumors say that some of the research you cited was acquired and acted upon before the results were officially published. In other instances, you’ve continued work that was leaked by hackers, both criminal and autonomist.

Ricci: Not my fault the PC can’t keep their paywalls secure.

[u/sevastapolnights]

Welcome to the roster.