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"The first thing that's wrong with being a science-fiction writer today is that the present has caught up with the future and surpassed it."
- Peter Watts
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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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Tech news articles related to Protector
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Gravity Lens-related
news articles:
- A First: Planet Found With Gravitational Microlensing
| Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction |
| Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark |
| Can 'Tactical Umbrellas' Shield One From Drones |
| Chinese Aircar Light And Airy, Not For Blade Runners |
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'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
