On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 07:17:21PM +1000, Tim wrote:
> On the other hand, the balance between Pauli repulsion and strong
> force attraction is very fine.  If nuclear dampers shifted the
> parameters of the strong nuclear force even a little

Or more simply, assume that the Traveller universe has such a shift
naturally.  There would be minor consequences for Big Bang
nucleosynthesis and stronger ones for supernova dynamics, but nothing
that couldn't be patched.

The biggest effect would be that nuclei have no upper bound on size.
There would still be optimum proton:neutron ratios -- with more
neutrons than in our universe -- but there would be a great many more
stable isotopes.  Elements with arbitrary atomic number would be
possible.  Small amounts of extremely heavy (and dense) stable
elements would be produced in supernovas, or could be produced
artificially.

- Tim