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"...in fifty years, do you believe that people will be recognizably human?"
- Greg Bear
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| Slaver Disintegrator | ||
| Sometimes used as a digging tool. |
Most of the tools that you buy in hardware stores are designed to not hurt anyone, rather than to be the most powerful or effective tools they could be. Not so in the world of Ringworld, were tools stay close to their roots.
| The disintegrator was indeed a digging tool. Where its narrow beam fell, the charge on the electron was temporarily depressed. Solid matter, rendered suddenly and violently positive, tended to tear itself into a fog of monatomic dust. |
| Technovelgy from Ringworld,
by Larry Niven. Published by Ballantine in 1970 Additional resources -
|
Now that's a digging tool.
Some interesting cutting tools came out of WWII, when metal parts for airplanes and tanks were being mass-produced. Better methods for cutting metal were needed. A new method of welding was invented that used an inert gas fed through an electric arc. Charging the gas with an electric current formed a barrier around the weld. Decades later, it was found that temperatures could be raised by speeding up the gas flow and making the release hole smaller. This plasma arc created such high temperatures that it cut through metal easily.
Learn more about it at How Plasma Arc Cutters Work.
Compare to nuclear shears from Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov, the
toaster from Accidental Flight (1952) by WF Wallace, the
Lasgun from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert, and the
atomic torch from One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson.
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Tech news articles related to Ringworld
Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven
| Can A Swarm Of Deadly Drones Take Out An Aircraft Carrier? |
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| We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces |
| Bullet Steers Itself! The Advanced Low-Cost Munitions Ordnance ALaMO |
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'... an artificial intelligence equal to the human.'
'Rayno folded up the microterm and tucked it back inside his jumper.'
'Nemourlon armor of reasonable weight resists penetration by most fragments and any bullet that is not both reasonably heavy and fairly high-velocity.'
'Several thousand of them formed the positioning grid on the rubble pile.'
'Its slack walls tightened, bulged, were crossed by ripples and waves of movement.'
'Norman... had never ridden any motorized device that lacked onboard steering and balance systems.'
You will note that HG Wells also figured out the aspect ratio of the future!
'As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped...'
'At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels.'
