A million years ago, the ancient race of "Vwryddans" had weapons that "'...novaed suns...'" That is an interesting linguistic development. Nova is a Latin adjective meaning "new." Stars that had not been visible from Earth but that suddenly became brighter, in fact exploded, and therefore did become visible were mistakenly called stellae novae, new stars. Thus, in English, a "nova" is a star that explodes. And to cause a stellar explosion would indeed be to "nova" the star. Thus, nova has evolved from a Latin adjective into an English noun and could also become an English verb. Although we hope not.
What else were the Vwryddans capable of? When a human crew restored the Vwrddan gravitomagnetic generator, it taught the Solarians half of what they now know about g-m fields.That is the sort of scientific jargon that most of us skip over in sf. However, it is highly significant. The four forces of nature are the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism and gravity. One intuitively plausible idea is that there is one force that has split and appears as four, just as water, ice and clouds appear to be three distinct phenomena but are all hydrogen oxide.
Einstein failed to unify the forces of nature but the Vwryddans succeeded in generating a field that united gravity with magnetism, thus with electromagnetism. Ghosts, exterminated dinosaurs, novas and a unified field: what will they think of next?
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