Ansible

Ansibles are wormhole-based devices capable of relaying information from point to point instantaneously, circumventing the restriction of light speed. The ansible network allows access to all kinds of data, from fun and frivolous social media platforms (of which there are many kinds) to interstellar cartography critical to navigation. Distress signals are also dispersed through a specific ansible sub-network linking all active and registered space vessels, stations, and dispatchers. The term ansible is a shortened form of "answerable," being lifted from the fiction works of Ursula K. Le Guin and applied to the device to honor her memory.

Contents

Physical Basis
Mechanism
Relativity Compliance

Physical Basis

Ansible transmission mechanisms operates on the basis of photonic wormholes: entangled singularities, each roughly the size of a helium nucleus, that allow the passage of photons between remote points in space. When the wormhole is opened up, photons are passed through and entangled, establishing a connection that can then be used to transmit information. An added bonus of this direct, stable link is a total lack of environmental interference.

Mechanism

Ansible communications are facilitated by securing both ends of a quan, or direct quantum connection. If both ends of an attempted communication link possess each other's quan, they can communicate with each other directly without any trouble except encryption/decryption issues on either end. Since a direct mutual quan is end-to-end with no physical transmission, it is virtually impossible to intercept (except on either endpoint, of course.)
More commonly, to communicate with a given party, a user is required to use a network connection. The user sends a message through the quan of an ansible nexus, which is shunted around the nexus system until it reaches a nexus with the other party’s quan and is sent to them. This is a more vulnerable method of information transit, as there is an in-between where messages can be intercepted.

Invention

The slightly varying forms of ansible were discovered by each sophont species independently, with the exception of humans teaching the Calypsians and skae the principles of wormhole technology.

Relativity Compliance

Ansibles are a circumvention, rather than a violation, of the theory of relativity. While they comply with the theory broadly, the complications form a bizarre combination of wavelength shift and frame dragging- which is to say, even if an observer is receiving near-instantaneous data through an ansible wormhole where one end is moving at relativistic velocity, that observer cannot converse with a user on the other end of the wormhole connection in absolute "real-time" because the computers on either end have to process the information either down or up in speed to match the local τ (time dilation) factor. For example, if an ansible video-chat between a planet and a starship moving at 0.5c was displayed without frame correction: to the observer planetside, the half-light astronaut would appear to be lagging significantly; to the astronaut, the planet-bound person would be moving and speaking much too fast.
This frame lag occurs in all cases, but in most of them (planet to planet, system to system, ships within the system, etc) all frames are moving at very similar relative speeds and thus there is so little disparity to correct for that it does not create issues. When communicating with relativistic starships, on the other hand, ansible frame lag ranges from several seconds to upwards of three hours, which results in less-than-real-time communication.