[really, really Infinities] strange things are afoot

[Proginoskes]

Well, initially it was a kind of cheat -- I never said how the dome was grown, just that it was done "with handwavium".  I have of late decided that they used the handwavium not directly, but to create nanoconstructors which themselves built the dome (and laced it with handwavium and 'wavium-enhanced mechanisms, as well as the sensor cameras and whatnot).  Regardless, I had always envisioned the hull -- at least the top -- starting out flexible, in two accordion-folded halves grown and situated underground that then unfolded and met in the middle to form the upper dome, essentially curing to final hardness upon exposure to air.   Which isn't typical behavior for simple fused silicon.

Ah. I always assumed that the Handwavium-as-nanoconstructors, once the dome was in place, transmuted it into something at least closely resembling simple fused silica. (There's another set of replacement errors for the thread in the Fanfiction forum: silica is silicon dioxide (SiO[sub]2[/sub]: quartz and the main ingredient of glass); silicon is a semiconducting metalloid; silicone is an extremely broad category of compounds (polymers with the general formula [R[sub]2[/sub]SiO][sub]n[/sub], where R is any organic group), the most familiar of which to most people would be silicone rubber.)