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"We [science fiction writers] always wanted to believe in "private sector" space -- hucksters make better characters than a government does."
- Larry Niven
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| Chemotactic Artificial Jellyfish | ||
| Artificial device modeled on jellyfish capable of seeking specific components of liquid. |
Tug is a dedicated student of jellyfish. He creates increasingly accurate models of jellyfish on his computer, and then manufactures small models using piezoplastic microbeads sintered by laser beams. Finally, the discovery of a new material lets him create an artificial jellyfish.
| "...about the size of a deflated football. I dropped it in my swimmin' pool. It was floatin' there, kinda rippling and pulsing, for about two days. Didn't you say that sucker would run for weeks? Forty-eight hours and it was gone!..."
"No way," protested Tug, intensely. "It must have slipped out a crack in the side of your pool. I built that model to last three weeks for sure! It was my best prototype. It was a chemotactic artificial jellyfish designed to slither into undersea vents and find its way to underground oil beds..." [Tug] "My jellyfish didn't send back information because I didn't put a tracer chip in it... I don't think oil prospecting is a very honorable application. I'd really rather see the California Water Authority using my jellies to trace leaks in irrigation and sewage lines." |
| From Big Jelly,
by Rudy Rucker (w/B. Sterling). Published by Four Walls Eight Windows in 1994 Additional resources -
|
"Chemotaxis" refers to the ability of an organism to move in the direction corresponding to a gradient of decreasing or increasing concentration of a substance.
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Tech news articles related to Big Jelly
Tech news articles related to works by Rudy Rucker (w/B. Sterling)
Chemotactic Artificial Jellyfish-related
news articles:
- Cybernetic Jellyfish Evolve
- Artificial Jellyfish Swims On Its Own
- Festo's AquaJellies 2.0
- Squid-Like Robots Soon To Be 3D Printable
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| SpaceX Rocket Quick Reaction Force |
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'... the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
'THE SPACE VESSEL was traveling swiftly… For over five thousand years they had Voyaged on and on.’
'They circled the vast audiences, dancing, twittering, chirping...'
'The sun-quilt was a patchwork of colors and materials on the inward side, but silvered on the outward side...'
'Jim, I saw them reduce four of my doctors and nurses into those little cubes!'
'Fats Jordan was hanging in the center of the Big Glass Balloon, hugging his guitar to his massive black belly above his purple shorts..'
'When confronted by hills, or rough terrain, it did not stop, but simply slowed until the task demanded equaled its steady power output.'
'... the brain is no longer subjected to the accustomed pull, and it expands slightly in all directions.'
