The All is one of the 2 most mysterious bodies in the game, along with The Creator. Nobody seems to know what it is, whether it's a star, a black hole, or something else. It emits little light and has little interaction with gravity for its size. The All is closely tied with Kerbal Mythology, but was long forgotten and branded a myth before being rediscovered, sparking the beginning of KSP.
Although scientists don't know much about its properties, decades of precise measurement taking has allowed kerbal astronomers to deduce that The All serves as the gravitational center for the Kermes Cluster, the star cluster that kerbals call home.
In-Game Description
"Light can only exist with a source to provide it. Likewise, the continued existence of matter requires The All to maintain it. The All is one, and the one provides for all."
Properties
According to all measurements taken so far, The All has a very weak interaction with the space-time continuum and only faintly influences other objects with its pull of gravity. However, this does not mean The All has little mass, as the object appears to be immune to gravitational acceleration from stellar objects orbiting around it. Thus, The All's inertial mass appears to differ greatly from its gravitational mass, which is a property no other types of matter in the universe have been known to exhibit. This property also violates fundamental postulates of Keinstein's Theory Of Relativity (as well as the more basic Laws of Kewtonian Mechanics), and so The All is an object of great mystery and ambiguity due to its uncanny ability to ignore physical laws (unless the laws are wrong).
Because The All does not follow any known laws of physics, it is impossible to identify its true mass or density, assuming those terms even apply to such an exotic object. Many of the physical properties of The All have been declared "unquantifiable" by kerbal scientists as a result.
Another fact about this object that baffles kerbal scientists is its apparent age. The most precise dating equipment known to kerbals have placed The All's age at just over 13.82 billion years, which is longer than the accepted age of the universe. Many theories have been proposed on why this is, ranging from reverse time dilation to inaccurate dating methods, but none of them have been proven thus far.
Discovery
In ancient kerbal mythology, The All was recognized as the caregiver of the Universe. Many kerbals believed that The All was a kerbal-like god that kept Kerbin and other celestials from collapsing. After the inescapable collapse of ancient kerbal religion for unknown reasons, The All and other kerbal gods were quickly dismissed as being myths from older, less intelligent kerbals.
Much later, about 53 years ago, kerbal astronomers found that Karkua, the perceived center of the known galaxy, was actually moving at an angular direction, which led to the conclusion that Karkua itself was orbiting something else. The search for the unknown force took two years, as scientists and astronomers were trying to detect a body with a larger gravitational influence than Karkua. They instead made one of the greatest discoveries in kerbalkind.
The All's discovery took 2 years, due to both its incredible distance from Kerbin, and the fact that it has very little interaction with gravity, and instead it had to be calculated mathematically before telescopes were able to point it out. The first images were only able to catch its glare, but significant studies were made just by observing said glare. It wasn't until later that year that scientists were able to find out what the surface of The All looks like.
The highest resolution image of The All taken by ground-based telescopes.
List of Bodies
The only bodies currently near The All are The All itself, The Creator, and Karkua.
Storyline
According to StarCrusher96, the developer for the Kerbal Star Systems mod, there is a storyline around The All and The Creator in development. No storyline has been implemented into the game or announced, but it has been announced to be a planned addition. At the moment, the nature of The All remains a mystery.
In the future, players will be able to seek out the storyline piece by piece by playing the game. Solving the mysteries of the Kerbal universe will come as an endgame reward for visiting all the celestial bodies in the mod.
Trivia
- The All is the center of the Kerbal Universe. In KSS, all the bodies orbit around it.
- Due to its low gravity, Kerbol orbits The All in over a million years.
- In KSS, the stock sun is The All. Kerbin orbits a different star.
- The All is the only object in KSS that appears to be older than the current observable universe. Kerbal scientists are baffled by this, and are convinced that their measurements must be wrong.
- The All was the 64th object categorized by the astronomer Kessier Kerman. Therefore The All is sometimes known as Kessier 64, and the Kermes Galaxy is occasionally referred to as the K64 Galaxy among the scientific community.