Hyper-fusion

Everybody knows about atoms and atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs. Those iconic images of mushroom clouds invoke unfathomable power. Atomic bombs use nuclear fission and hydrogen (or thermonuclear) bombs use nuclear fusion. Fusion reactors have been touted as one possible source of renewable, nearly inexhaustible energy drawn from water, of all places. Sounds very enticing, right?

Well, a group of scientists have put forward the theory that there may be a source of energy no less than ten times more powerful than nuclear fusion. They have postulated that there is a reaction when you fuse quarks together that releases an incomprehensible amount of energy. And you don't need specialized equipment to extract deuterium or tritium from seawater. All elementary particles are made of quarks. Splitting atoms up into quarks and then getting them to fuse is not something you can do in your basement, at least not today. Right now, you need something like the Large Hadron Collider operated by CERN but it has been done. The Higgs Boson was confirmed to exist three years ago. It is the fermion that actually carries the dimension of mass. You just need to smash matter together really, really hard and you get a shower of quarks and other subatomic particles.

So say we have an "easy" way to produce quarks. Turning this theoretical discussion into a functional reactor producing usable power is way, way off in the future, if ever. But still, the idea of limitless, free energy taken from ordinary matter is the stuff of science fiction. That is until it becomes science fact. After all, that is the reasoning behind the entire Rome's Revolution universe. Once you have limitless, free energy, mankind can evolve and pursue tasks and discoveries without having to worry about paying for dinner each night.