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"Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it [science fiction] is par excellence the literature of the open mind."
- John Brunner
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| Gravity Lens | ||
| An optical lens created using the lightbending properties of gravity. |
The classic experiment to demonstrate the lightbending properties of large masses was performed in 1919. And in 1936, Albert Einstein published a further prediction that immense gravitational fields would bend and focus light as an optical lens would.
Finally, you can get the same effect without a solar-sized mass.
| "How do you like my telescope?" Alice said "The whole sky?" "It's a gravity lens ... You know that a gravity field bends light? Good. I can make a field that warps light into a focus. It's lenticular, shaped like a red blood platelet. |
| Technovelgy from Protector,
by Larry Niven. Published by Del Rey in 1973 Additional resources -
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and Technology from Protector
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Tech news articles related to Protector
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Gravity Lens-related
news articles:
- A First: Planet Found With Gravitational Microlensing
| When Colds Threaten You Can't Do This - Or Can You? |
| MAI-Voice-2 Microsoft Text-To-Speech |
| Prufrock-MB2 Ready In Nashville |
| US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
