Metric Weapons

[SpaceMarine93]

I have been hearing a lot about something called "Metric Weapons" in Science Fiction. Now, I KNOW via research that they have something to do with exploiting the Space Time fabric to destroy their targets, but I simply don't know anything else about it beyond that. So theoretically how do they work? Which civilizations in Science Fiction could build and use them? What types of Metric Weapons are there in science fiction?

[OmegaChief]

Metric Weapons? Are they opposed to Imperial Weapons or somthing? With some kind of Sci Fi war going on over decimilsation and adopting more logical systems of currency or somthing?

[Number Theoretic]

In his "Revelation Space" trilogy, Alastair Reynolds introduced such weapons. For example "hypometric weapons", which are able to cut pieces of spacetime out of existence, including everything which is in these (spherical) volumes of spacetime. I personally think, this is a rather awesome form of Fridge Horror.
In the Revelation Space universe, these weapons are ususally developed by civilizations at least a million years after they started into the spacefaring age and that it is horribly difficult to calibrate these things and state their accuracy, because due to their nature of messing with spacetime itself, the concepts of range and accuracy almost fail to apply.
He also briefly hints, that these weapons belong to a class of "weakly acausal weapons", which perhaps means that these weapons mess or can mess with causality under special circumstances.

[lordofchange13]

Metric Weapons? Are they opposed to Imperial Weapons or somthing? With some kind of Sci Fi war going on over decimilsation and adopting more logical systems of currency or somthing?

He's probably talking about the clarktech weapons used in Orions Arm. they uses metric technology at super guns.

[Ford Prefect]

'Metric technology' is a catchphrase which is increasingly growing in prevalence in sicence fiction. It's a shorthand term for technologies which do funky shit. I don't know where the term originated, though I first spotted it through Alastair Reynolds. 'Spacetime metric' is a real piece of terminology referring to how we measure spacetime so ... who knows lol. It was all elaborate eggbeaters whisking away at the quantum foam and doing spooky shit. I've borrowed it, personally.

[Omeganian]

Edmond Hamilton just called it "The Disruptor". Worked just fine, thank you very much.

[Ellindsey]

Sounds similar to the Dimension Eater weapons in Macross Frontier. Essentially a modified Fold drive which permanently rips the surrounding space out of the universe. An expensive weapon no doubt, especially as it seemed to require Fold Quartz (which at the time could only be harvested from dead Vajra) as an ingredient, but the first use of one in the series destroys a good chunk of a planet.

[Thinktank]

Sounds similar to the Dimension Eater weapons in Macross Frontier. Essentially a modified Fold drive which permanently rips the surrounding space out of the universe. An expensive weapon no doubt, especially as it seemed to require Fold Quartz (which at the time could only be harvested from dead Vajra) as an ingredient, but the first use of one in the series destroys a good chunk of a planet.

That whole sequence from the triggering to the wideshot of the planet afterwords
was really well coordinated. Visually you got pretty good sense of just how truly
devastating such a weapon might be.