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"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Magnetic Control of Nebulae | ||
| Controlling the structure and shape of nebulae using magnetic fields. |
This is one of those big picture concepts; in the novel, an enormous space cloud - a nebula - is seen coming toward the solar system.
| "I imagine that the beast orders the material of the cloud magnetically, that by means of magnetic fields he can move materials wherever he wants inside the cloud." |
| Technovelgy from The Black Cloud,
by Fred Hoyle. Published by Harper and Row in 1957 Additional resources -
|
Here's a quote from the cloud:
[Y]our very largest animals have been mostly bone and muscle with very little brain... By and large, one only expects intelligent life to exist in a diffuse gaseous medium... The second unfavourable factor is your extreme lack of basic chemical foods. For the building of chemical foods on a large scale starlight is necessary. Your planet, however, absorbs only a very minute fraction of the light from the Sun. At the moment, I myself am building basic chemicals at about 10,000,000,000 times the rate at which building is occurring on the whole ... surface of your planet.
Be sure to read about the recent discovery of magnetic fields in planetary nebulae.
Compare to The Poison Belt (1913) by Arthur Conan Doyle.
[I]t is most unusual to find animals with technical skills inhabiting planets, which are in the nature of extreme outposts of life... Living on the surface of a solid body, you are exposed to a strong gravitational force. This greatly limits the size to which your animals can grow and hence limits the scope of your neurological activity. It forces you to possess muscular structures to promote movements, and ... to carry protective armour ...
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Black Cloud
More Ideas
and Technology by Fred Hoyle
Tech news articles related to The Black Cloud
Tech news articles related to works by Fred Hoyle
Magnetic Control of Nebulae-related
news articles:
- Magnetic Fields Found To Shape Planetary Nebulae
- Precursor To Life Found In Space Cloud
- Should SETI Talk To Molecular Cloud Barnard 68?
| JWST Finds Bucking Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 |
| First Trips To Mars Announced By Elon Musk |
| Lava Tubes On Moon And Mars |
| SpaceX EVA Spacesuit Tested By Polaris Dawn Crew |
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'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'
