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"As the rate of technological development speeds up, the gap between science fiction and what we’re living now is getting narrower all the time."
- Richard Morgan
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| Black Coating | ||
| A material that absorbs practically all incident light. |
One good way to be invisible in space is to be non-reflective.
| “Well, we have a black coating now that’s ninety-nine percent absorptive, and I don’t need ports or windows. At that, though, one percent reflection would be enough to give me away at a critical time. How’d it be to put a couple of the boys on that job? Have them put a decimal point after the ninety nine and see how many nines they can tack on behind it?” |
| Technovelgy from Gray Lensman,
by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1942 Additional resources -
|
Compare to absolute black from The Shadow and the Flash (1903) by Jack London, absolute black from Douglas Adams' 1980 book Restaurant at the End of the Universe and fuligin from Gene Wolfe's 1980 novel The Shadow of the Torturer.
Thanks to Winchell Chung (@nyrath at Project Rho) for submitting this item.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Gray Lensman
More Ideas
and Technology by E.E. 'Doc' Smith
Tech news articles related to Gray Lensman
Tech news articles related to works by E.E. 'Doc' Smith
Black Coating-related
news articles:
- Femtosecond Laser Pulse Turns Metals Pitch Black
- Carbon Nanotube Blackness Blacker Than Black
- New Black From NASA Uses Nanotubes
- Blacker-Than-Black Corrugated Metamaterials
- NASA's Super-Black Now Even Blacker
- Army Wants Black Blacker Than Black
- Vantablack Is Blacker Than Your Black
- Blackest Black? New Disordered Nanostructured Material
| 'Mooncrete' Lunar Regolith Concrete (LRC) |
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
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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 Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
