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"Science Fiction is speculative fiction in which the author takes as his first postulate the real world as we know it, including all established facts and natural laws."
- Robert Heinlein
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| Weightlessness (Kepler) | ||
| The notion that there could be a location with zero effective gravity. |
If Somnium is the first science fiction book (which many people argue is true), then this is probably the first reference to the idea of zero gravity, or weightlessness.
| "...for, as magnetic forces of the earth and moon both attract the body and hold it suspended, the effect is as if neither of them were attracting it..." |
| Technovelgy from Somnium (The Dream),
by Johannes Kepler. Published by Not Known in 1634 Additional resources -
|
Note that the word "gravity" is not used to describe the attraction between masses; Isaac Newton did not describe universal gravitation until 1687.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Somnium (The Dream)
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Tech news articles related to Somnium (The Dream)
Tech news articles related to works by Johannes Kepler
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
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'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
