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"Science and science fiction, how do you even distinguish the two?"
- Jerry Pournelle
 |
| Atmosphere Control | ||
| Recently terraformed planets require constant maintenance. |
I just thought that this was a clever idea, taking advantage of a planet's natural vulcanism to distribute material throughout the atmosphere.
| Potter was doing most of the talking and all the pointing. "Those twin volcanoes; d'ye see them, Mr. Renner? D'ye see yon boxlike structures near the peak of each one? They're atmosphere control. When yon volcanoes belch gas, the maintenance posts fire jets of tailored algae into the air stream. Without them our atmosphere would soon be foul again." |
| Technovelgy from The Mote in God's Eye,
by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle). Published by Simon & Schuster in 1974 Additional resources -
|
Did I mention that this planet is called New Scotland. I hope that explains the accent.
Scientists believe that volcanoes have played (and continue to play) a vital role in the development of our own Earth's atmosphere. Most of the gas that surrounds the planet came from eruptions from below the surface. Volcanoes can inject remarkable volumes of SO2 and chlorine gas into the atmosphere, as well as dust that alters the albedo of the Earth. Volcanism has played an important role in recent history; the eruption (or explosion) of the Krakatoa volcano caused debris to fall upon locations as far away as Madagascar. Sunsets around the world were notably altered for years, as was the amount of sunlight reaching the surface.
See the entry for Pina2bo from Termination Shock (2021) by Neal Stephenson for another method of seeding the atmosphere, this time for geoengineering to prevent climate change.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Mote in God's Eye
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and Technology by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle)
Tech news articles related to The Mote in God's Eye
Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle)
Atmosphere Control-related
news articles:
- Algae To Clean Atmosphere
- Reduce Hurricanes By Altering The Atmosphere
- Volcanoes Terraformed Mars?
- Dim The Sun With Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment
| Secret Kill Switch Found In Yutong Buses |
| The Desert Ship Sailed In Imagination |
| The Zapata Air Scooter Would Be Great In A Science Fiction Story |
| Could Crystal Batteries Generate Power For Centuries? |
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'Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue smoke.'
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
