So Darkons are the subatomic fundamental particles of the universe that make up matter and gravity, they're the particles that manipulate and bend space-time. Previously I discussed the different types of darkons but I want to go over it again in a little bit more clearer detail. The first thing is fundamentally there are two types of darkons, l and L darkons, these aren't very easy names so I'll say instead "attractons" and "repulsons". As the name suggests attractons attract space and time towards it, bending spacetime into a continuous source, while repulson repulse space time and push things away. In the normal universe an approximately equal quality of attractons and repulsons exist in a semi-stable balance, each attracton attracts other attractons and repulsons while each repulson repulses the attractons. These equal amounts of attractions and repulsions create a roughly flat universe in empty space.
However, at times attractons will win out this delicate balance, attracting to each other due to disturbances in the balance and clumping together. Each type of darkon has a charge, positive or negative, these charges just like electrical charges repulse or attract darkons. When attractons with like charges come together, the coulomb repulsion eventually wins out the gravitational attraction of the darkons and they go into a stable equilibrium between each other, being pushed back by the like charges but pulled in by the coulomb force. The attraction of this pair of darkons is increased and pulls more attractons into the fold, eventually an equilibrium is hit depending on the type of charge the darkons possess, where the coulumb repulsion, attracton attraction and repulson attraction (which pulls the particle apart), this becomes matter.
Now you might be thinking, what happens when two attractons of opposite charge collide? In general when two attractons of opposite charge collide they annihilate each other, turn to energy, then eventually reform back into attractons moving in different directions. However, eventually these attractons will collide again and repeat the process, the process of constant collision and conversion still creates a space-time attraction from the other attractons and moves them closer to the attracton pair, they too will collide and either form matter with like charged attractons, or continue in the process of annihiliation and reformation with the unlike charged attractons. Most attractons will do the latter and they will create a dispersed neutral space-time warping that doesn't react to electromagnetic waves due to the fact that it must necessarily be electrically neutral, this is often given the name today as Dark Matter and it comprises most of our universe.
Now the formation of matter and dark matter leads to an imbalance between the attractons and repulsons, the repulsons now outnumber the attractons in free space. What this eventually leads to is repulsons slowly moving away from each other and expanding, this formation and the fact it happens omnipresently in free space is where Dark Energy comes from that creates the expansion of our universe. Because a lot of energy goes into comprising matter, dark energy appears to be much larger and more powerful than all the rest of the universe.
STVN (Space time Vortex Navigation) is a form of FTL travel that uses a heavily condensed dark matter pellet fired at an extremely fast speed to warp space time in front of a ship to allow the trip to travel FTL in the outside universes reference frame (see previous articles for the MATH behind it). However the clumb of extra darkons will eventually lead to a warp storm, where the pellet will decay due to outside space attracting repulsons into the pellet, when the decay occurs all the attractons and repulsons will violent erupt from the pellet and shoot out in all directions. The calamity results in extreme and random spacetime warping known as a warp storm, warp storms can be devestating and would make long distance STVN impossible if it weren't for the invention of Echelon.
Echelon is a darkon-resistent material that resists the very space-time warping that other darkons yield it. Echelon is a material entirely made of darkons that has a layered design. The first layer is a layer of liked-charged attractons, the second layer is a layer of unlike charged repulsons, the third layer is like charged attractons again, but twice as much, the fourth layer is twice as much repulsons and so forth. The thicker the echelon (and more layers of attracton-repulson-attractons there are) the more resistent the material is to space time warping. Echelon of this form is known as the AR2 design and the resistance to space-time warping occurs as follows.
A space-time wave from outside darkons moves towards the echelon, the first layer of attractons gets pushed inwards towards the repulsons, the repulsons repulse the attractons which dampens the space-time wave and forces the attractons back into their previous position with no space-time bypassing the layer. If the space-time warp is so strong that even the repulsions are pushed towards it, the repulsons will further move the second layer of attractons which has twice as many attractons, the process will repeat but the wave will be dampened and the reverse effect will be twice as great, you keep doing this, repeating the layer and doubling the thickness of each attracton repulson layer (hence the name AR2) until the space-time warp is successfully repelled. If the space-time warp pulls the attractons away from the layer the opposite occurs, the repulsion amplify the pulling the wave for the second layer of attractons which further attract the first layer of attractons back into its originally position, again if the wave is too strong then the third layer will attract the second layer, or the fourth layer attracting the third layer.
The layer of attractons have to be liked charge as they need to repulse each other so they don't convert into dark matter, the layer of repulsons need to be unlike charges for the opposite reason, they need to attract each other. The reason they are layered in such a way as to double each layer is that although the distance between each layer of attracton is greater than the distance between attractons and repulsons, the layer of attractons is also twice as large, thus the attraction and repulsion on each layer must be equal. Many different designs of echelon have existed, AR2 was the first but is somewhat limited as doubling every new layer results in an exponential increase, realistically you can only have 8 or so layers before the manufacturing becomes too expensive. Many different forms of have existed including ARN, a form where the Nth layer is N times larger than the first layer, the distances between each layer has to be smaller and smaller though which results in a less than stellar design. Other such as ARN2 (which is that the Nth layer has N^2 times larger than the first layer) also existed, many different mathematical functions are used to gauge the best effects with no "universally" better one.
I'll do the calculation at one stage to find out what the "optimum" layering design is for darkons, but won't right now