Plausibility of Peter F. Hamiltons Commonwealth Universe?

[OmgImPwned]

Hello, people of the SD.net forums. I've been lurking here for quite a while, always a joy to watch you guys nuke the average troll to oblivion (and read the odd chapter of Pantheocide, nice one! )

I haven't really had a proper reason for signing up before now, though. So meh, here I am in all my paltry glory Situation: I'm in the midst of a cross-universe argument with one my friends, we usually enjoy arguing like that, and we're running into the inevitable details of how stuff works. Which led me to being curious, how total bullshit is the science stuff in Peter F. Hamiltons Commonwealth Universe really? Is it total bullshit (IE impossible forever and ever), or just generic handwave (maybe in like thousands of years.)

For the people who know nothing about the universe, here is a list of some general stuff.

And here's a list of stuff that isn't on Wikipedia that I'm also quite curious about:

Quantumbuster: Basically a bomb that converts every ounce of matter within a certain radius (usually a few kilometers) directly into 100% energy. Big boom.

Advanced quantumbuster: Same as above, only here the energy from the initial conversion is used to expand the conversion field further triggering even bigger booms. This is used once to trigger a supernova (as the explosion covers a sizeable percentage of the star itself). Given an explosion of that size (from any source), would this actually trigger a nova in a star?

Force fields: Is this in any way remotely possible at all? This universe has both person-sized force fields and kilometer-high domes used for protecting cities and the like.

Niling-D Sinks: From what I gather, this is essentially some kind of energy black hole container, into which you can pump as much energy as you want, with a minimum limit that's high enough to disallow use for convential energy needs.

Obviously there are some things in-universe that are quite impossible, but could you guys in any conceivable fashion think of these as possible, and if you're feeling really groovy today, how would they be theoretically implemented RL?

Do note that this is the noob here. I'm 17, and I have 0 credentials whatsoever (given the penchant you guys seem to have for that around here.) I like reading about physics on wikipedia, but I don't pretend to have anything but a general idea about how most stuff works. Just to be on the safe side here y'know. I'm hoping to learn something from the discussion that might ensue, but I'll take whatever comes my way. You can reply if you damm well feel like it I just thought this had potential for some interesting discourse.

Cheers,

OmgImPwned (forgive the name, I was in a hurry! xD)

[Genii Lodus]

It's overall just as soft as mostly any other space opera.

Niling-D sinks are incredibly high-capacity batteries and as I understood the limitations on their use in the Commonwealth Saga books came about because of their expense not any technical limitation.

Some of the OCTatoo (Organic Circuit) stuff is interesting and plausible but the high end for it is incredibly wanky.

You might want to read the first couple of books in Hamilton's Void Trilogy, still set in the Commonwealth but centuries later. The general level of technology is vastly higher as you would expect.

[OmgImPwned]

Yeah I have read those, and am waiting for the last in the trilogy, which should be out some time this year. Yeah the tech level is getting beyond all credibility there (controllable black hole weapons, the whole Void and ANA thing and so on), but the story is still solid and I love the parts with Edeard, so all in all they're very good IMO.

So I gather OCTattoos aren't out entirely. I'd think most of the implants would be possible maybe within a few centuries, though pretty complex and expensive. What about the more advanced implants, such as the visual interface and the memory cells?