Engineering Core Generates Small Scale Temporal Rift

A small plasma vortex powers a synthetic Horologium
crystal to generate a small-scale rift in space-time
during a test of the new TFD1 device.

The CiDR Engineering Core successfully generated a small-scale temporal rift during a test at a San Francisco laboratory on Tuesday. The test was part of the development of a new temporal field detector called the TFD1. Previously, engineers have only been able to generate larger rifts with the original WWII-era temporal device because of its proportionally large Horologium crystal. 

 "The results are very exciting," lead researcher Justyn Myers said, "The ability to scale the size of a temporal rift has opened the door to a whole range of new research technology. It's very exciting to see all of the theories and concepts we've been working on come to life." 

Because of its unique molecular properties, Horologium crystal can generate a rift in space-time when charged with the right amount of plasma energy in a partial vacuum. This is similar to the piezoelectric properties of Quartz crystal used in many analog wrist watches.

Thanks to the efforts of mineralogist and materials engineer Dr. Heinrich Ruland and the Horologium Synthesis Project, engineers are now able to use synthetic crystals of almost any size to generate a rift. This is a key innovation for the development of portable research devices like the TFD1. 

"This smaller rift seems to behave in a slightly different way than the larger one in the [WWII device],"  said Dr. Nagarjuna Gupta, one of the scientists involved with the project, "It seems to be more stable, as we predicted, and I believe it will function well in the new device."

The smaller rift also appears to create less of a temporal radiation hazard. Although many more tests need to be done on crystals of different sizes to fully understand the properties of different sized temporal rifts, the use of smaller crystals will likely lead to safer research devices.

The success of this test was a major step forward in the development of the TFD1. The CiDR Engineering Core reported that the project is just under %60 complete and they expect to begin deploying the devices into the field before the end of this year.