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"it slowly dawned on me that the landscape of science is maybe what interests people a great deal in science fiction."
- Gregory Benford
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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. |
| From The Exalted,
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.
Science fiction fans may recall 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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and Technology from The Exalted
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and Technology by L. Sprague de Camp
Tech news articles related to The Exalted
Tech news articles related to works by L. Sprague de Camp
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news articles:
- Slow Light Will Speed Communications
- Light-Trapping Nanodoughnut Like Slow Glass
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| How To Encode The 'Memory' Of Materials |
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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