Verteron
Verterons are subatomic particles capable of traveling faster than the speed of light, and which are present in wormholes. (; )

In the 22nd century, a massive verteron array was placed on Mars and used to redirect comets towards the polar caps, for the purpose of terraforming. In 2155, the array was hijacked by John Frederick Paxton, leader of the xenophobic terrorist group Terra Prime, and used to threaten Starfleet Command with total destruction unless all aliens were to evacuate the solar system. ()

In high enough concentrations, verterons could pose a hazard to space vessels. They could be used to obstruct sensor functions, and could even be used to overload a vessel's field coils, disabling a warp-driven ship. Verterons were used in such a manner in 2370 by siblings Serova and Rabal, two Hekaran scientists who were attempting to gain the attention of the Federation by mining the Hekaras Corridor with verteron probes. ()

Verterons were present in dense concentrations in the Bajoran wormhole, taking the form of verteron nodes, large, spherical objects which could potentially pose a hazard to navigation. In 2370, Jadzia Dax and Arjin, a Trill initiate who had been assigned Dax as his field docent, were forced to precision-maneuver their way through the wormhole in order to avoid the verteron nodes, which, every time they passed through a node, caused an energy leakage from a protouniverse which they were transporting back to the Gamma Quadrant. ()

Self-sustaining in nature, verterons allow vessels to safely pass through wormholes at impulse speeds. Verteron pulses can also be used to attract the terminus of an unstable wormhole, a process which was attempted by the crew of the  in 2373, who were hoping to force open the Delta Quadrant end of the Barzan wormhole by bombarding a residual subspace instability with verteron particles. A verteron beam can also be utilized in the form of a geodesic pulse, which could theoretically be used to open a geodesic fold. Such a procedure was attempted by the Ferengi Nunk in 2377, in an attempt to gain access to Seven of Nine's Borg nanoprobes on board Voyager. (; )

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