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Science Fiction
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"If I can make you see the world the way I see it, then you will automatically think the way I think."
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![]() In the novel, Verne correctly predicts that the three men traveling in a projectile to the moon would experience a weightless state. Being a formidable writer, he does a great job of describing it!
However, Verne wrote that the men would only achieve a state of weightlessness at the point in the journey where the Earth's gravitational pull and the moon's pull canceled each other out. And, as we know, even shuttle astronauts in orbit a mere 250 miles from the Earth experience weightlessness.
Astronauts in orbit are still subject to Earth's gravity; but they (and the space craft) are constantly falling toward the Earth and thus are weightless. More recently, the term microgravity has been used to describe the weightless state in an orbiting spacecraft. Physicists note that orbiting astronauts experience tidal forces because the gravitational force varies infinitesimally over the distance from head to toe (when pointing straight away from the Earth). Also, if the orbit is low enough to encounter even the slightest amount of atmosphere, the drag on the spacecraft will provide a slight deceleration due to friction.
In 1638, The Man in the Moone by Bishop Francis Godwind, was published posthumously. It contains what appears to be the first account of the concept of weightlessness. Comment/Join this discussion ( 3 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
Biohybrid Robots Made Of Living And Synthetic Materials
'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
Poul Anderson's 'Brain Wave'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
AI Note-Taking From Google Meet
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
Qore IcePlates Are Personal Cooling Suits
'... underneath they consisted of networks of cooling tubes against the skin.'
Waymo Cars Shout At Each Other, Autonomously
'My cars talk to one another. I have no doubt about it...'
Seeing Faces On Grains Of Sand (AI Pareidolia)
'... the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell.'
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