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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Scrith | ||
| The material used to build Ringworld; has remarkable tensile strength |
In this excerpt from the novel, Louis Wu is discussing a puzzling discovery.
| "Our telescopes cannot find further details." "So you haven't really learned much." "I would say that we have learned a good deal. One puzzling point. The ring apparently stops on the close order of 40 percent of neutrinos." |
| Technovelgy from Ringworld,
by Larry Niven. Published by Ballantine in 1970 Additional resources -
|
Scrith has another interesting property, revealed when a spaceship plowed a furrow in the scrith forming the foundation of the Ringworld:
The flat, grayish, translucent material beneath the ship was terribly slippery...
"...Watch out when you get down. The surface is almost frictionless."
His feet shot out from under him the moment they touched ground. He landed hard on his gluteus maximi.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Ringworld
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and Technology by Larry Niven
Tech news articles related to Ringworld
Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| GNoME AI From DeepMind Invents Millions Of New Materials |
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'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
