Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"People are choosing to allow television and Electronic Arts to do all their imagining for them."
- Peter Watts
 |
| Slow Glass (Scenedow) | ||
| A window made of Bose-Einstein Condensate that slows light to a snail's pace. |
A man and his wife go looking for a good deal on a woodlands "scenedow" for their apartment.
| The most important effect, in the eyes of the average individual, was that light took a long time to pass through a sheet of slow glass. A new piece was always jet black because nothing had yet come through, but one could stand the glass beside, say, a woodland lake until the scene emerged, perhaps a year later. If the glass was then removed and installed in a dismal city flat, the flat would—for that year—appear to overlook the woodland lake. |
| From Light of Other Days,
by Bob Shaw. Published by Analog in 1968 Additional resources -
|
A piece of exposed slow glass was called a "scenedow:"
Bose-Einstein condensates are created when atoms are cooled to absolute zero; the atoms collapse into the lowest quantum state, producing a superfluid. Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein worked out the details in the 1920's. The unusual optical properties of BECs were predicted at that time.
Bose-Einstein condensates have optical densities such that the speed of light passing through the mass is extremely low - walking speed as opposed to its usual 186,000 miles per second.
This idea was used prior to Shaw's story; see the slow glass rod from The Exhalted, a 1940 short story by L. Sprague de Camp.
If you're interested in making light do tricks, check out NYC Heliostats and Star Wars Orbital Mirrors.
See the "Slow Glass-related news items" below for real-world applications.
Apart from its stupendous novelty value, the commercial success of slow glass was founded on the fact that having a scenedow was the exact emotional equivalent of owning land. The meanest cave dweller could look out on misty parks—and who was to say they weren't his? A man who really owns tailored gardens and estates doesn't spend his time proving his ownership by crawling on his ground, feeling, smelling, tasting it. All he receives from the land are light patterns, and with scenedows those patterns could be taken into coal mines, submarines, prison cells.
This story anticipates the successful creation of Bose-Einstein condensates in 1995. A dilute vapor consisting of approximately 2000 rubidium-87 atoms was cooled to one twenty-billionth Kelvin (not degrees Kelvin - see minor note comments).
Comment/Join this discussion ( 7 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Light of Other Days
More Ideas
and Technology by Bob Shaw
Tech news articles related to Light of Other Days
Tech news articles related to works by Bob Shaw
Slow Glass (Scenedow)-related
news articles:
- Light Captured In A Crystal
- Slow Light 'Scenedow' Close At Hand
- eBayaday Sells A View On eBay
| 3D Printed Damascus Steel Now Possible |
| 3D Printing Of Metallic Glass |
| Draw Circuits With Conductive Ink |
| How To Encode The 'Memory' Of Materials |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'... filling their great tanks with the finely divided dust which the ionic rockets would spit out in electrified jets.'
'In the napcap a client became an instant yoga master...'
'Employees above a certain level were implanted with advanced microprocessors...'
'Jeremiah is a sports-model to begin with and that kind is awfully hot-tempered.'
'If anything can glue the asteroids back into the planet they once were, magnology will do it.'
A cooling unit had to be strapped to every commuter's back, by law.
'...lined with durite, that strange close-packed laboratory product.'
'He was still roaring when the knife missile flicked past him...'
'Swallow it in an emergency--it goes down easily and works just as well inside as outside.'
