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"[Science fiction is] anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out."
- Gregory Benford
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| Superluminal | ||
| Faster than the speed of light. |
As far as I know, the first use in a science fiction story.
| Slowly across the micro-universe they were weaving the copper webs which would define the positions of entry and termination of their superluminal jump through tachyon space. |
| Technovelgy from Patterns of Chaos,
by Colin Kapp. Published by Worlds of IF in 1972 Additional resources -
|
No less a science fiction luminary than Isaac Asimov used this word in a gritty 1969 article The Luxon Wall in Fantasy and Science Fiction:
The earliest mention I can find is in Seeing Things. The Scientist and Spiritualism by Rupert Hall in Pearson’s Magazine (US) February 1909.
Of interest (to me, anyway) is the fact that the word derives from "lumen" which is the unit of luminous flux, but can also be derived from a latin word meaning "opening" into a central cavity or interior space.
It turns out, as you can see for yourself if you try a few random examples, that for any object traveling at superluminal velocities, the proper-mass is imaginary.
He finds that the manifestations of the mediums are not progressive, but devolutionary, infra- and not super-normal, sub- and never super-luminal.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Patterns of Chaos
More Ideas
and Technology by Colin Kapp
Tech news articles related to Patterns of Chaos
Tech news articles related to works by Colin Kapp
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| Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn |
| Can A Human Land A SpaceX Rocket On Its Tail? |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
