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"I went [to the top of] Vehicle Assembly Building and looked down, and tears burst from my eyes. The size of this cathedral where the Rockets take off to go to the moon is so amazing."
- Ray Bradbury
 |
| Proton Pistol (Proton Beam) | ||
| A device that unleashed a 'protonic storm' of energy. |
In this story, the two survivors of an expedition to a mysterious fragment of a world fight an invisibly small enemy. Better safe then sorry...
| Nothing could appear more harmless than those eddying [dust] motes; yet at sight of them both Rolf and Kerny were gripped by a vague, cold suspicion that among those specks might drift the instruments of sudden, ghastly extinction...
The two men, possessed of the same thought... acted in an identical manner. Their proton beams flared out, lashing the subtle particles into violent motion, and reducing them to fragments too fine to be visible, even if magnified a thousand diameters. The entire atmosphere within the war turret was submitted to the sterilizing action of the beams. Any living thing in the paths of the protonic storms from the pistols, must surely have been destroyed. |
| Technovelgy from A Menace in Miniature,
by Raymond Z. Gallun. Published by Astounding Stories in 1937 Additional resources -
|
Here's a bit more detail, in pulp classic style:
By the time Gallun wrote this in 1937, research into cosmic rays (the largest single constituent of which are protons) was just starting. By the turn of the century, physicists were puzzled by radiation in the environment, which seemed to be higher than would be expected from terrestrial sources.
To settle the debate, a daring German scientist, Victor Hess, ascended to more than 17,000 feet in a balloon (without oxygen!) in 1912. His gold leaf electroscope showed that the higher he got, the more the radiation level increased. Scientists became convinced that the radiation did indeed come from outer space and coined the phrase "cosmic radiation" to describe it.
By 1929, Russian physicist Dmitry Skobelzyn observed cosmic ray tracks in the newly invented cloud chambers. Further research demonstrated that cosmic "rays" were primarily composed of particles. Subatomic particles were finally seen in 1937, giving birth to the field of particle physics. Particle physicists used cosmic rays for their research until particle accelerators were developed in the 1950's.
He yanked a proton pistol fom the belt around his bulky attire, and sent a blue cone of flame belching from its maw.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from A Menace in Miniature
More Ideas
and Technology by Raymond Z. Gallun
Tech news articles related to A Menace in Miniature
Tech news articles related to works by Raymond Z. Gallun
Proton Pistol (Proton Beam)-related
news articles:
- 'Protonic Storms' Unleashed On DNA In Space
| Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade |
| Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones |
| China's Handheld Electromagnetic Gun |
| Is The Seattle Ultrasonics C-200 A Heinlein Vibroblade? |
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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
