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"We are all repositories for genetically-encoded information that we're all spreading back and forth amongst each other, all the time. We're just lousy with information."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Scrith | ||
| The material used to build Ringworld; has remarkable tensile strength |
In this excerpt from the novel, Louis Wu is discussing a puzzling discovery.
| "Our telescopes cannot find further details." "So you haven't really learned much." "I would say that we have learned a good deal. One puzzling point. The ring apparently stops on the close order of 40 percent of neutrinos." |
| Technovelgy from Ringworld,
by Larry Niven. Published by Ballantine in 1970 Additional resources -
|
Scrith has another interesting property, revealed when a spaceship plowed a furrow in the scrith forming the foundation of the Ringworld:
The flat, grayish, translucent material beneath the ship was terribly slippery...
"...Watch out when you get down. The surface is almost frictionless."
His feet shot out from under him the moment they touched ground. He landed hard on his gluteus maximi.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Ringworld
More Ideas
and Technology by Larry Niven
Tech news articles related to Ringworld
Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| GNoME AI From DeepMind Invents Millions Of New Materials |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
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'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
