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Science Fiction
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"...being predictive, being right about the future, is not the point of any given story or novel. The point is about exploring as wide a range of possibilities as possible."
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![]() A man and his wife go looking for a good deal on a woodlands "scenedow" for their apartment.
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.
Compare to glassite from Brigands of the Moon (1930) by Ray Cummings,
artificial transparent element from Last and First Men (1930) by Olaf Stapledon,
neo-crystal from Master of the Asteroid (1932) by Clark Ashton Smith,
transparent car roof from Sinister Barrier (1939) by Eric Frank Russell,
plani glass from Crystalized Thought (1937) by Nat Schachner and
thermalite from Planet of Eternal Night (1939) by John W. Campbell. Comment/Join this discussion ( 7 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
resources: Slow Glass (Scenedow)-related
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Science Fiction
Timeline
LLM 'Cognitive Core' Now Evolving
'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
Bacteria Turns Plastic Into Pain Relief? That Gives Me An Idea.
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
When Your Child's Best Friend Is An AI
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
China's Drone Mothership Can Carry 100 Drones
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
Drones Recharge In Mid-Air Like Jets Refuel!
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
Australian Authors Reject AI Training Of Llama
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside?
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
Maybe It's Too Soon To Require Autonomous Mode
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
Is Agentic AI The Wrong Kind Of Smartness?
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
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