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"Conspiracy theories are big because they're comforting. Any conspiracy is infinitely less multiplex than the real deal, which is multiplex to the point of being unknowable."
- William Gibson
 |
| 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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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
