Accelerative discontinuity

This needs heavy editing ... I'll get around to it soon, I hope.If there's any physicists reading, some help would be apprciated

First discovered by Professor Lincoln Hecht in 2006, these deep-space regions were a final blow against the 'rubber sheet' theories of classical physics.

A discontinuity is a region, usually distant from any planetary body, which exhibits a perceptible gravitational field while not apparently demonstrating conservation of momentum or of energy. A discontinuity normally exhibits a weak gravitational force in a single direction. This force diminishes according to a normal inverse-square relationship up to a distance of approximately 2 miles, at which point the force cuts off sharply. As the observer becomes distant from the discontinuity in a direction perpendicular to the direction of force, the observer experiences a force equal to the parallel component of the gravity which would be generated by a point mass. This force also cuts off sharply outside an ellipse about a mile wide, for which the point of the discontinuity is one focus.

It addition to its gravitational forces, a discontinuity emits a constant level of weak EM radiation. Scientists have yet to determine where this energy comes from. One popular theory, Larraman's Law, states that discontinuities are simply not subject to normal laws of conservation of energy. A rival hypothesis, postulated in 1387 by Bennyan Gillies, is that energy 'lost' by an object passing through a discontinuity in a direction opposed to its gravity is stored in some as yet unknown form and emitted at a constant rate as time passes.

An object passing through the discontinuity in a direction parallel to the gravitational fields (a direction known as the axis of acceleration which passes through both foci of the eliptical region) can (under the right circumstances) be dramatically and instantaneously accelerated, even exceeding lightspeed. This phenomenon is perhaps best demonstrated by discontinuous transits, a primative form of interstellar travel.

Movement

Discontinuities can be stationary with respect to local objects, or can move slowly (up to about 0.2m/s has been recorded). As an intangential region of space, there is no known way to change the velocity of a discontinuity. However, it has been observed that a discontinuity only ever travels along lines of isogravity, and that any discontinuities whose axes of acceleration point directly towards each other will continue to do so. It now seems that most discontinuities are paired in this manner, and sets of 4 or even 6 discontinuities have been recorded on a common axis. Those observed so far always appear in even-numbered collections, although it is not known whether this is a universal law.

Theories

It has been suggested that discontinuities are a form of dark matter which does not interact with normal matter except by gravitational forces. According to this theory, they may have been formed at the same time as the rest of the universe. Each pair or quad-group of discontinuities was originally a single patch of this exotic matter, which separated into several components travelling in opposite directions. The hypothesis states that these discontinuities continue to align to each other either as a consequence of the conservation of angular momentum, or because of some unknown force which continues to link the pairs.

This does not, however, explain the sudden increase in the rate at which new discontinuities are being discovered in the last 300 years. The suggestion generally given to the public is that more discontinuities are discovered as more regions of space are explored. However, in reality the rate of discoveries is in no way proportional to the volume of surveyed space. A more plausible theory may be that as discontinuous transit becomes a more popular form of travel, such discontinuities are more likely to be reported. Possibly before the increase in use of discontinuities, they would have simply gone unreported or even dismissed as a sensor glitch by anyone who happened to pass close enough to detect them.

An alternative explanation, proposed by Ludwig Xiansen but heavily criticised by the Theocratic Science Service (and thus not reliably investigated by most universities), is that discontinuities are somehow produced as a by-product of the temple ships' jump drives.