= contraterrene matter
Chiefly associated with, and now almost exclusively used in reference to, a series of stories by Jack Williamson.
[pronunciation spelling of CT, abbreviated form of contraterrene]
For ‘seetee’, to the engineer’s mind of old Jim Drake, meant power. Terror to others, to him it was atomic energy, priceless and illimitable. The whole meteor belt was rich in contraterrene drift. ibid. Molecules of any gas reacted with seetee, in deadly flame.
The stripped seetee nuclei carried now terrific and unbalanced negative charges and repelled electrons, but tended to attract terrene atom nuclei. In their turn the stripped terrene nuclei attracted contraterrene.
‘They may be contraterrene.’ ‘Seetee?’
Both parties, the terrene as well as the contra[-]terrene, entertain exactly the same viewpoint of the Universe. But this sameness cannot be communicated across the gulf that separates our form of physical reality from the one of the seetee world.
Contra-terrene matter, material formed from atoms with reversed electrical charges, sometimes known as C-T or seetee, may be the clue to an inexhaustible supply of energy.
antedating 1942
Jack Williamson (writing as "Will Stewart"), "Collision Orbit", in Astounding
Last modified 2020-12-16 04:08:47
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