Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
 |
| Straightening the Earth's Poles | ||
| By means of a suitable force, push the Earth until the planet's axis of rotation is perpendicular to the ecliptic. |
The climate of the Earth would be much more regular, without seasons, if only the planet's axis of rotation was not angled at 23.4 degrees to the plane of the planet's orbit around the sun (Earth's axial tilt). As far as I know, this is the earliest use of this idea in science fiction.
| The operation which is being tried by President Barbicane and Capt. Nicholl is as follows:
The production of a recoil, on the 22d of September, at midnight, by means of a cannon a million times larger in volume than the cannon of twenty-seven centimetres, throwing a projectile of 180,000 tons, with a powder giving it a velocity of 2,800 kilometres. Now, if this shooting takes place below the equatorial line, nearly on the thirty-fourth degree of latitude west of the meridian of Paris, at the foot of Kilimanjaro, and if it is directed towards the south, these are the mechanical effects which it will have on the earth’s sphere: Instantly, in consequence of the shock acting with the daily movement a new axis will be formed and, as the old axis will be displaced to the amount of twenty-three degrees and twenty-eight minutes, according to the figures obtained by J.T. Maston, the new axis will be perpendicular to the direction of the ecliptic. |
| From The Purchase of the North Pole (Topsy Turvy),
by Jules Verne. Published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in 1889 Additional resources -
|
Thanks to Yossi Preminger for pointing this out.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Purchase of the North Pole (Topsy Turvy)
More Ideas
and Technology by Jules Verne
Tech news articles related to The Purchase of the North Pole (Topsy Turvy)
Tech news articles related to works by Jules Verne
Straightening the Earth's Poles-related
news articles:
- Arctic Resource Jackpot An Old Wish
| Phil Nuyttnn's City Under The Sea |
| Stick-On Tape Speakers, As Predicted By Bruce Sterling |
| Has Climate Change Already Been Solved By Aliens? |
| Skin Electronics 3D Printed |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
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.
|
'Of course not a vehicle moved by means of internal explosions of a derivative of rock oil...'
'When he had first built them, they had been crude indeed, flying mechanisms with little more than a reflex-response unit.'
'If you couldn't see the ads, how would you know what was fashionable?'
'Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed.'
'Had these machines in some incredible fashion been provided with brains?'
'I used my implant to tell MILLIE what we wanted and she took care of it'
'Under the lower roof there was no water, but a clear and luminous atmosphere...'
