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"Science fiction is what scientists would do if they could - if they had enough grant money, enough time, and enough brains to do the wonderful things they would like to do."
- Greg Bear
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| Superluminal | ||
| Faster than the speed of light. |
As far as I know, the first use in a science fiction story.
| Slowly across the micro-universe they were weaving the copper webs which would define the positions of entry and termination of their superluminal jump through tachyon space. |
| Technovelgy from Patterns of Chaos,
by Colin Kapp. Published by Worlds of IF in 1972 Additional resources -
|
No less a science fiction luminary than Isaac Asimov used this word in a gritty 1969 article The Luxon Wall in Fantasy and Science Fiction:
It turns out, as you can see for yourself if you try a few random examples, that for any object traveling at superluminal velocities, the proper-mass is imaginary.
The earliest mention I can find is in Seeing Things. The Scientist and Spiritualism by Rupert Hall in Pearson’s Magazine (US) February 1909.
He finds that the manifestations of the mediums are not progressive, but devolutionary, infra- and not super-normal, sub- and never super-luminal.
Of interest (to me, anyway) is the fact that the word derives from "lumen" which is the unit of luminous flux, but can also be derived from a latin word meaning "opening" into a central cavity or interior space.
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