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"But the problem with reincarnation is that it's hard to imagine what the storage medium for past lives would be. Not to mention the input-output device. I hesitate to rule it out completely, but I'd need pretty definite proof."
- Arthur C. Clarke
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| Magnetic Control of Nebulae | ||
| Controlling the structure and shape of nebulae using magnetic fields. |
This is one of those big picture concepts; in the novel, an enormous space cloud - a nebula - is seen coming toward the solar system.
| "I imagine that the beast orders the material of the cloud magnetically, that by means of magnetic fields he can move materials wherever he wants inside the cloud." |
| Technovelgy from The Black Cloud,
by Fred Hoyle. Published by Harper and Row in 1957 Additional resources -
|
Here's a quote from the cloud:
[Y]our very largest animals have been mostly bone and muscle with very little brain... By and large, one only expects intelligent life to exist in a diffuse gaseous medium... The second unfavourable factor is your extreme lack of basic chemical foods. For the building of chemical foods on a large scale starlight is necessary. Your planet, however, absorbs only a very minute fraction of the light from the Sun. At the moment, I myself am building basic chemicals at about 10,000,000,000 times the rate at which building is occurring on the whole ... surface of your planet.
Be sure to read about the recent discovery of magnetic fields in planetary nebulae.
Compare to The Poison Belt (1913) by Arthur Conan Doyle.
[I]t is most unusual to find animals with technical skills inhabiting planets, which are in the nature of extreme outposts of life... Living on the surface of a solid body, you are exposed to a strong gravitational force. This greatly limits the size to which your animals can grow and hence limits the scope of your neurological activity. It forces you to possess muscular structures to promote movements, and ... to carry protective armour ...
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Black Cloud
More Ideas
and Technology by Fred Hoyle
Tech news articles related to The Black Cloud
Tech news articles related to works by Fred Hoyle
Magnetic Control of Nebulae-related
news articles:
- Magnetic Fields Found To Shape Planetary Nebulae
- Precursor To Life Found In Space Cloud
- Should SETI Talk To Molecular Cloud Barnard 68?
| ESA To Build Moon Bases Brick By Printed LEGO Brick |
| FLOAT Levitating Train On The Moon ala Clarke |
| SpaceX Intros Extravehicular Activity Suit |
| SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha |
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'The actuating mechanism that should have operated by the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell...'
'The only real cost was in the plastic balloon that guided the growth of the coral and enclosed the coral's special air-borne food.'
'The border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'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...'
