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"I wrote many novels which … contained the element of the projected collective unconscious, which made them simply incomprehensible to anyone who read them, because they required the reader to accept my premise that each of us lives in a unique world."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Slow Glass Rod | ||
| A transparent glass rod that makes light travel so slowly that it can trap light within its depths. |
You've heard of burning bugs with sunlight concentrated with a magnifying glass? That's for sissies who can't figure out a different way to concentrate sunlight - by slowing it down.
| He held a contraption made of a glass rod and assorted wires. Methuen sighted along his glass rod and pressed a button. A pop... and a flash!
"By applying the right e.m.f. to pure crown glass, its possible to raise its index of refraction to a remarkable degree. The result is that the light striking the glass is so slowed up that it takes weeks to pass through it in the ordinary manner. The light that is thus trapped can be released by making a small spark near the glass. "I can shoot an hour's accumulated light energy out the front end of the rod in a very small fraction of a second. |
| Technovelgy from The Exhalted,
by L. Sprague de Camp. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1940 Additional resources -
|
Science fans will recognize one of the main properties of Bose-Einstein condensates, which can actually trap light waves, or slow them down to an inch a minute. Read a bit more about Bose-Einstein condensates; also, read about a modern experiment in which light is captured in a crystal.
Compare to the solar radiant energy weapon from The Weapon (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun and the scenedows from Bob Shaw's 1968 story Light of Other Days. Probably the earliest references to the idea occurred in The Mirror That Remembered" (1932) by Christopher Blayre.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Exhalted
More Ideas
and Technology by L. Sprague de Camp
Tech news articles related to The Exhalted
Tech news articles related to works by L. Sprague de Camp
Slow Glass Rod-related
news articles:
- Slow Light Will Speed Communications
- Light-Trapping Nanodoughnut Like Slow Glass
- New Material Absorbs and Stores Solar Energy
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| GNoME AI From DeepMind Invents Millions Of New Materials |
| Omniphobic Liquid-like Surfaces And de Camp's Telelubricator (1940) |
| MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make |
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'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
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'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
'We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,' said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi.
