I have known Jennifer longer than everyone here but Cris and she only has me beat by a few years
I thought I might help by coming in and translating what Jennifer has posted for anyone not functioning at her harmonic resonance. Why would I do this? Because I'm at work. I'm bored. And I think her idea is really hawt!
One option, is to play on the idea that Celestials actually are what we've been saying they are: Masters of quantum mechanics.Quantum mechanics is how itty bitty stuff at the atomic and sub-atomic levels function and act. Celestials are supposed to be experts of that stuff. They totally pwn the itty bitty.
By combining tech from a Celestial version of a quantum clock (as posted over in MG3K Universe Technology) and the rare and exceptional properties of Bose-Einstein condensates, Portals would be timed, charted, plotted, powered and condensed for travel. Celestials could have become masters of the itty bitty by using an awesome freeze ray effect on all that quantum stuff so they could get a good look at it and so they could see what outrageous stuff those itty bittys are doing when they're slowed down enough for us to actually keep up with them (because when you're that tiny, you're also really freaking fast).
Also, when you forces those itty bittys to slow waaaaaaayyyy down, they do stuff they might never do otherwise. Probably because they're bored.
Helping Celestials do all this studying and to apply it to making mind-blowing machines from the quantum level up, they would need to use subatomic clocks (like on another thread) running any tools because all tools working with the itty bittys would have to be precision timed and synced with the itty bittys.
Bose-Einstein condensatesThis is what scientists and smart chicks like Jennifer call the state itty bitty stuff is in after being hit with the Freeze Ray. The rest of us might call it, Slow Mode or SuperDuper Slow Mode.
--theorized in 1924 by Satyendra Nath Bose (the Indian physicist who worked in mathematical physics and quantum mechanics in the 1920s and lived from 1894 to 1974... not Amar G. Bose who designed and founded Bose the speakers and audio company)This explains which Bose is the real Boss in Jennifer's books. She didn't want anyone to think that the Indian guy who invented my smooth new speakers was alive to work with Einstein. She wanted to make sure that none of us brickheads posted, "Dude! The guy who founded Bose Speakers helped make the Freeze Ray?!"
and Albert EinsteinShe spelled his whole name out... you know, so we'd know she meant the crazy haired guy on all the posters in science class.
--are states of matter produced by super cooling various bosons.Duh, me! This sentence says there are actually a couple of different states that the Freeze Ray can cause. Slow Mode, SuperDuper Slow Mode, Freak You Out By Dancing Mode, etc. I was incorrect a moment ago when I implied there was only one state.
The bosons enter the lowest quantum state of external potentialThe itty bitty stuff slows down. All the way down.
and allow any quantum effects to become macroscopic and so visible.So slow that our eyes can see that magic of the itty bitty dancers.
It took seventy years for their prediction to come true.The Boss and Albert guessed it. They even drew pictures. But the other brickheads in science took 70 years to make it so. Implied: It only would have taken fifty years if Mama J was on the case.
In 1995 bosons were cooled with lasers to 170 nanokelvin (roughly -273 C), very close to absolute zero, the absence of all thermal energy.They proved the idea that you could slow down teeny weeny stuff and get a better look at it by making it cold enough to freeze the *beep* off a polar bear. Also, once *beep*less, apparently, the polar bear does neato stuff it never did before. Uh. I mean, the itty bittys do neato stuff they never did before.
One example was when helium-4 was supercooled. It became an entirely new kind of superfluid which had the amazing property of zero viscosity (the ability to flow or move without losing any force or energy). One of the teeny weeny could go fast and far without ever wearing out. It was cold but it was happy!
This boson also exhibited quantum vortices which were irrotational -- their vector calculus or curl is a vanishing curl... in three dimensions. Once they were so very cold, the scientists also saw that the helium-4 teeny weeny guys were curly! Oooo! But their curls dipped out of visible space! WOW! The curls were kinda like those tiny whirlpools that form when you let the water out of a deep tub.
At the center of these vortices, you'll find excited particles, air, perfect vacuum, and other unexpected and wonderful occurrences.Just before the curly whirlpools dip out of space that we can see, they have a cluster of cool stuff that's even tinier that the teeny weeny itself. There were pockets of air (where done should be). There was perfect vacuum. There were activated particles. Air is good for breathing. Vacuum is good for preserving stuff. And activated particles are good for being active and making energy.
Now, when I say "excited particles" I'm not being flip. I mean it like I might say, "Six flavors of quarks." I don't mean they have a taste. There just happens to be six different variants of quarks that I'm talking about and people often refer to these as flavors. When I say "excited," I mean: energized.In this paragraph, my BFF is saying: "I am being smart and using the real scientific lexicon because it is correct to do so. Any brickheads might think I am making this stuff up because some correct scientific lexicon sounds silly. But I am not making anything up. So there." This is my favorite paragraph.
In short, scientists use BEC to see quantum mechanics (the interaction of quantum matter and energy) as never before.i.e. Really slow.
BEC are extremely delicate -- as delicate as the information they give us is fascinating. The slightest interaction with the outside world (outside their controlled, laser and magnet surrounded containment field) can warm them beyond their condensation threshold and they cease to be anything interesting 
If the super cold itty bitty guys become any warmer than super cold, they start going fast again and just look boring to us. Because nothing but the rain is sexy but nothing but the blur is boring.
The BEC bosons have been used to slow pulses of light (literally) to 17 meters per second, to model black holes, and to observe bosons that exist in less than three dimensions, and to exhibit a clear wave-particle duality in quantum materials.By slowing down stuff and then watching it do things and making it do things in that super cold state, we've been able to do things that were impossible before in real life -- such as slow down light, make tiny black holes, and prove theoretical ideas about how itty bitty guys act.
All of these things could be tweaked and twisted to create a trans-dimensional Portal with an unlimited, undepletable, power source. This is her lead-in to her idea based on the above science. Education time is done. Now the idea drops.
The framework would hold the charting/plotting components The archway of the Portal could contain the mechanism that pilots it -- that lets it act as a doorway through space.
-- such as lodestone symbolicallyJennifer throws out that a lodestone (like Maria owns) would be a cool symbol to work into the archway... but...
(though this is for magnetic north ...it only works symbolically because a lodestone works on a planet. Not off a planet.
whereas Celestial would most likely use an astro-compass to actually chart their paths) The more perfect compass is an astro-compass that guides universally in space.
and nano-ceramic reflectors as well as be veined with lasers that would engage the BEC. There would be tiny -- quantum tiny -- ceramic plates on the framework that would bounce lasers around to cool whatever itty bitty or combination of itty bittys were needed to make the Portal break Celestials down into quantum tiny clusters and transport them through the stars. The laser pulses would be like colorful veins throughout the structure.
(Lasers need not be electric. They are simply a cascade effect fallout of an electron getting hassled by a photon and so the electron drops a bit of energy and creates another photon -- all of which is basic quantum mechanics.)The itty bitty or combo of itty bittys make the Portal do its thing. The lasers make the itty bittys do their thing. A photon bothering an electron makes the lasers do their thing. So we'd just need to have something set off the photon.
Jennifer doesn't mention what would set off the photon. I don't think this is a "let a miracle happen" thing. I think it's probably something really, really simple and so she thought we'd all know it already.
Someone should ask her.
Better yet, instead of lodestone, we could have it so that every Portal had to be composed of some element (as in one of the planet's table of elements) from the destination. These would serve as a focus for the Portal.Make Portals out of materials found on other worlds and this would help the Portal "home in" on the planet.
(Which begs the question: How did Celestials ever find out bad stuff was about to go down on a planet back when they were doing missions?)She poses a question because she is inclusive.
The primary element is folded into a quantum vortexTuck some of the planet's special material into the center cluster of that cool whirlpool. Like typing a phone number into the phone or tapping in an address.
and manipulated into a pendant (see any images at the first link below).The archway Portal is folded in space-time into a small pendant shaped like a donut. Fashionable and portable.
A Celestial need only to "seal" the center hole in the pendent by closing it between two fingers or some such movement for the BEC process to begin. Celestials genetics are coded into every Portal so only Celestials can complete the pendant circuit and trigger it to unfold. They start off the whole reaction by covering the hole in the donut.
How does this activate the proton? Someone should ask her.
The Celestial throws or places the pendant on the ground. It unfolds like quantum paper craft.What I said. Very dramatic.
The threshold mirrors the color of the pendant but veined with lasers and reflectors.The color of the pendant and the color of the archway are the same but the archway is more detailed with the veins of colored lasers and those sparkling, glistening nano-sized ceramic reflectors.
These focus inward. A BEC field is created with a central quantum vortex. The reflectors bounce the lasers into the center of the archway and a vortex is created with that curl that dip into other dimensions.
It is coded to take any genetic Celestial either to a single destination or back to Hom depending upon the current location of the Portal as sensed by the device itself.The Portal can take someone to the destination for which is was made or back to Hom. It can tell where it is and sends someone to the opposite place.
The field itself could always be the same color and texture (for consistency in the fiction)The vortex curl would be one color no matter where the Portal went.
but the pendants and the thresholds could change (for Earth, for instance, perhaps you'd make a Portal of an element rich in the specific area you want to "land" in).The pendants and the archways themselves could be different colors.
Note from me: I would suggest keeping the same shape of the archway, though, as well as the same configuration of the reflectors and veins of lasers.
Just some thoughts!Translation: "We should do this. Because it is real and not touchy-feely make believe which makes smart chicks like me throw up a little."
JenniferHer big grrl grown up name.
The End
*cue applause*
I thought I might help by coming in and translating what Jennifer has posted for anyone not functioning at her harmonic resonance. Why would I do this? Because I'm at work. I'm bored. And I think her idea is really hawt!
