The source of raw materials, theories and prospective.

Everywhere in the galaxy, mining companies flourish. They extract from the soil the much needed raw materials that allow our economies to provide everything we need, and even more.

   For example, the sentients love to build machines of death. One of this machine is the famous Super Star Destroyer. This colossal ship, several kilometers long, is a big stake of metal and plasteel put together to become a dreadful weapon of destruction. So big is the amount of material used, that the ship itself generates a gravitic field of 6E-9 standard gravitation unit. What does that mean ? It means that if we add all the raw materials used to build ships, SSDs and smaller ones, then planets should be devastated by the extraction, and their gravitic fields significantly altered. Obviously, they are not. Even more, if we added the materials in the ecumenopolises, like Coruscant, the planets should look like cheeses with holes. They don't.

   Old planets from Core are not devastated, and even better, they still produce raw materials for the local economy. We also know for sure that their gravitic fields were not altered, since those fields have been measured for millenia. Even for the inhabited planets where we don't have that much info, we can trace the evolution of the local race and confirm that the gravitic field was not significantly altered over the years. The only explanation is that the mass of the planets in this galaxy is somewhat constant, whatever we extract from them.

   This is a fact well known by the mining companies. If you talk with any director of those companies, he will tell you he is always on the lookout for a good prospector. Prospecting, indeed, is one of their main activities. What is strange, is that they can prospect the same planet over and over again, still finding new deposits. If it happened from time to time, one could think of a coincidence, but it happens constantly, so it's a rule : spontaneous creation of matter happens, ant it happens all the time.

   From what we know of the mining business, that spontaneous creation of matter is mainly concentrated on the following materials : Quantum, Meleenium, Ardanium, Rudic, Ryll, Duracrete, Laboi, Adegan, Rockivory, Tibannagas, Nova, Varium, Varmigio, Lommite, Hibridium, Durelium, Lowickan, Vertex and Berubian. Of course, Alazhi is vegetal, not mineral. So the question was, how is that matter created, and why ?

   A great number of theories have been forged to answer this question, and we will examine now some of them, starting from the local, to go to the galactic.

   Local explanations :

   Most of those explanations were made by races who had no or little access to interstellar travel. Please note that as long as a civilization does not heavily tax a planet ressources, using deep mining technology like lava mining, it might be difficult for it to realize that the deposits are regenerating.

   The solar origin :

   The retarded civilizations usually attribute the formation of complex elements to solar activity. The idea, as harebrained as it seems, is that nuclear reactions transmute hydrogen into more complex atoms. The planets would then be either separated part of suns, or would have received the elements through meteorites. Nonsense.

   The Living Planet origin :

   This one is popular among animistic civilizations. The idea is that the planet is a living entity, and that it is nurturing its children, said children being plants, animals and sentients that dwell on it. The concept is sometimes referred to as Gaïa. The Living Planet provides everything needed by its children, including the raw materials that permit life. The Living Planet is usually worshiped by the sentients on it, like a god. It is believed that rituals must be observed if one wants the planet to continue bestowing its benefits. Most of those rituals are dedicated to showing respect to the planet-mother, and to maintain a form of Balance. For example, one will have to burn or bury part of a hunted prey to ensure its spirit will come back later. Contrary to the preceding one, this theory has some credit, as we will see later.

   This is a variant of the solar origin. In it, the elements are still generated in a stellar body, but this time the white fountains are suspected. The white fountains are the opposite twins of black holes. The idea is that the matter that is concentrated in black hole ends up by modifying the space-time structure, and the excess matter is simply projected back in the universe at a distance. The expelled matter takes the form of a long white streak, hence the white fountain name.

   In the white fountain theory, elements are generated by the stellar phenomenon. The same critic can be made than for the solar theory : if the elements ended forming planetary body at the galaxy creation, why are they regenerating now ? Nonetheless, the white fountains theory is usually a progress in a civilization history. First, it opens the possibility that the space-time continuum can be modified for faster than light travel. For some theorits, it's in the trip between the black hole and the white fountain that matter is created. This second part allows further theorizing about void potential, as seen later. Last, some other theorits thought that the white fountains were unrelated to black holes, being instead remnants of the big bang and source of perpetual creation. In turn, that leads to the continuous big bang theory.

   Galactic explanations :

   These theories are the ones discussed in the galactic universities, whether be it in the Republic, Empire or other ones.

   For tenants of this theory, the big bang who saw the creation of our universe is not finished. There are remnants of it, where creation still occurs. One of those remnants would be white fountains. For the astrophysicists, the process of creation occurs between the atoms, and could happen on microscopic scale as well as on macroscopic one. So microscopic white fountains could exist.

   If we admit that possibility, the center of planets could be the seat of an intense microscopic white fountains activity, allowing for matter creation. That matter would then organize as raw materials, and progress in the planetary strata, pushed by geothermic currents.

   This theory, by putting the matter creation at the center of planets, explains easily how the deposits are regenerated. The nature of deposits would then vary according to the terrain where they matured, influenced by pressure and volcanic activity.

   The continuous big bang theory leads to another debate : what will result of continuous matter creation, perpetual expansion or big crunch ? But that's beyond the scope of this paper.

   In this variant, the matter is created by using the energy of the void. Void could be seen as a bubble defining reality. If you pick a bubble, it explodes, revealing energy. The energy of void would be spontaneously, or artificially (see later), released and transformed into matter. The process would then be identical to what is described above.

   This theory is surprisingly popular. Altough scientific proofs of the existence of that pervasive energy field that is called the Force are not available, people still use the concept as if real. Nonetheless, for tenants of the Force, the energy field could be tapped to create matter. Here, we rejoin the Living Planet theory. As the Force is supposedly tied to living beings, the planets would be nexus of Force, and that would explains why matter is created here.

   Among pros for the Force origin, we can report the case of Telos IV. Having been devastated by orbital bombardment during the Sith wars, Telos IV was a dead planet. Scavengers who rushed on it were able to extract a lot of materials from the debris, but no deposits were found to be exploited. Once the Telos Restoration Project was completed, new deposits were found again, as if the project did indeed bring back life to the planet.

   Among the cons, the Force theory seems ill placed to explain the creation of matter on Gas Giant or on Moon.

   For Pr Imbrius, an Ithorian, the Force origin is fully compatible with the Living Planet one, where the nexus of life is generated by the planet itself, seen as a living body, and not solely by the life on it.

   For Pr Freedo, the creation of matter is documented by the legend of the Forge, a mystical artifact from the Ancients (see below) that could produce an army out of nothing.

   According to this theory, the materials mature inside the planetary core, and then inside the planetary crust. They would appears as basic isotopes, then transmute into heavier atoms inside the core inferno. At the periphery of the core, they would start cooling, and spontaneously organize themselves as crystals. Then, depending upon the strata they'll have to go through, and upon the speed of progression into the crust, they would evolve as more basic, less organized materials.

   According to Pr Exadius, the devolution, based on atomic organization and density, would be : Laboi > Adegan > Berubian > Lowickan >  Vertex > Nova > Hybridium > Quantum > Varium > Durelium > Meleenium > Rockivory > Ardanium > Duracrete > Varmigio > Lommite > Rudic.

   Notice that the more common raw materials are the one in the middle of the devolution, which would led credence to this theory. Also, Tibanna Gas and Ryll are not in the devolution. Tibanna is only present on gas giant. Given the size of those planetoids, one could wonder if the gas is regenerated, or if new deposits are just results of undercurrents pushing them on the surface.

   As for Ryll, most scientists excludes it from the devolution, but Pr Odo indicated that he could be between Rockivory and Ardanium, because of atomic similarities.

   For Pr Xeltor, the Rockivory is a dead-end in the devolution. He cite for evidence that the Rockivory is semi-crystalloid. That would be a U-turn, back from metallic to crystalloid. It is his explanation for the relative abundance of this material.

   The Ancients were an old race who ruled all the galaxy and then disappeared. Like the Force, proofs of their existence are rare, but some rather intriguing technologies and vestiges can be found. Also, the Ancients are convenient to explain the presence of humans on most planets of this galaxy, as they could have transported them.

   The tenants of the Ancients theory do believe that they mastered the Force, which is how they conquered the whole galaxy. They also believe them to have build gigantic machineries, some of them inside planets as to modify their environments. According to the Ancients origin theory, raw materials would be synthesized inside planets, using the Force as the energy, and then placed in the outward crust by the Ancients' devices.

   What is interesting there, is that scientists surmise that the raw materials produced were the ones of interest for the Ancients. So the Ancients civilization would have made great use of crystals like Berubian, Vertex, Adegan, Laboi or Nova. Either they also used the other materials, either those ones are actually byproducts of the crystal ones.

   If their technology was more advanced, perhaps did they use a lot of other materials. That would explain why Rockivory is so abundant, when we have practically no use for it.

   For Pr Octavus, the theory is valid, but the Force has nothing to do with it. The creation process would be a natural one, like in the continuous big bang theory, and would then effectively be exploited by Ancients machinery. Or, there could be a device at the center of planet that extracted potential of the void, and then nurture the process of raw materials creation.

   For Pr Erastos, the Ancients did create creatures to take care of the process. Especially little ones, like Ewoks, Ugnaughts or Jawas. One may note that Jawa do indeed collect materials, although from debris, and that they do live in gigantic vehicles. Sandcrawlers looks a lot like mining convoys to the careful beholder. And if one listen carefully to Jawa communication, he could believe hearing a technical programming language. That would lend a new light on the so called Jawa "culture", and ridicule the people that spent so much time studying it …

   Among the cons for this theory, it would mean the Ancients did install machinery inside practically all the planets of this galaxy, a daunting task even for them. Plus, we have only sparse proof of the existence of such devices, even if it is true that the core of a planet is terra incognita. After all, nobody did ever make a planet explode to see what is inside, and it's probably not going to happen.

   So, finally, we established that spontaneous creation of matter occurs, at least on planetary level. That this creation provides raw materials largely used in our industries. Two main theories have been forged to explain the creation process, and two main other theories have been forged to explain how the raw materials are formed. For the creation process, we have the choice between a natural process, probably linked to the big bang phenomena, and a mystical process, using the Force. For the material transmutation process, we have again two explanations available, the natural one, using nuclear and chemical interaction, and the Ancients one, stating that the elder race did program the process.

   One by one, those theories can be combined to form four main explanations of the creation of matter. The natural / natural one is popular among scientists, who believe they can eventually explain how it works with their equations. The Force / Ancients one is popular among archaeologists and historians, who believes they have found relics that prove it. The natural / Ancients one and the Force / natural one are less popular, but hold credit.

   All those theories still fails to explain a lot of things, like what happens on gas giants or asteroids for example. Further researches are needed to complete the picture, and more importantly, to bring scientific proofs behind the claims.