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"The point sticks in your head: physics rules. Virtue does not triumph unless the physics allows it."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Vibration Machine | ||
| A device that neutralized the gravitational force of the sun on the earth. |
The Comet-people wanted the Earth for their own - so they created a diabolical machine to wrest it away from the arms of the sun!
| They were setting up an apparatus that would neutralize the sun's gravitational power on the earth. They have learned that the emanations of gravitational force from any body have a measurable wave-length, and that this wave-length is different in the case of each different body. The vibrations of gravitational force from the sun are thus different in wavelength from those of the earth, and it is the same always; the wavelength of no two emanations are the same. Thus the invaders could neutralize the sun's gravitational power on earth without affecting the power of the earth itself, or any other body. They would set up a wave-plant, or vibration machine, which would send out vibrations equal in wavelength to the sun's gravitational emanations; these would meet and oppose and neutralize the gravitational force of the sun. In that way, the sun with no longer pull earth, and the earth, therefore, would fly off into space on a tangent. |
| From The Comet Doom,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Amazing Stories in 1929 Additional resources -
|
Although convenient for use as a plot device, the gravitational "emanations" that connect the sun to the Earth seem no different from any others. However, it does pick up on the Theosophical idea that different planets have different vibrations, which would have been popular with Hamilton's audience in the 1920's.
Compare to cavorite from H.G. Well's 1901 novel The First Men on the Moon,
gravity neutralizing disks from Hamilton's 1937 story Fessenden's World and the etherometer from Frank Belknap Long, Jr's 1937 story Spawn of the Red Giants.
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