vnend@ukecc.UUCP (D. W. James) (11/24/86)
In article <1040@husc2.UUCP> chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP (lucius) writes: >In article <156@fortune.UUCP>, stirling@fortune.UUCP (Patrick Stirling) writes: >> >ucbvax!brahms!gsmith Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 >> > Since "Ringworld" is a good example of the "hard" sf genre, it might >> >be instructive to take a look at the various impossible and illogical >> >things which we find in it. >> >The ship has a GP hull, >> >which means it is made out of Very Hard Stuff #1. They find a Ringworld >> >made out of Very Hard Stuff #2. As if two completely different kinds of >> >VHS were not enough, they could have simply used the "stasis field" in >> >either case--and why didn't they? Note, each instance of a very hard stuff (I'm a die-hard Beta fanatic, I refuse to use initials like VHS! :-)) the stuff was discovered by a different race. Puppeteers discovered the technology behind the GP hull, scrith was developed by Protectors, and the Stasis Field was independantly discovered by humanity, though we know that the Slavers had it(though it is very doubtfull that they discovered it themselves). So the idea of there being different types of stuff isn't quite as bad as it seems. We have NO evidence at all that Protectors have anything like the Stasis field, else you could be sure that they would have used it to reinforce the structure of the Ringworld (they wouldn't have based it on it, they wanted something that would conduct heat!) But they could have used a Stasis grid to reinforce it to the point where a meteor like the one that caused the Fist of God mountain couldn't have gotten through. Also note that 'Lying Bastard', the ship they flew to Ringworld in, was equipped with a Stasis field for emergencies. So although it used a GP hull, it also used the Stasis Field. >> >> I don't see >> anything wrong with 2 kinds of VHS; for all we know, they may have been >> different forms of the same basic stuff. The book seems to make it clear that the GP hull and scrith are two VERY different things. GP hulls reflect everything but visible light and gravity; scrith was a superconductor (at least for heat, remember the flashlight laser beam didn't even heat it), but it did stop 40% neutrinos, and that stumped EVERYBODY. Ergo, different stuff. > > You can enclose things in the stasis field and thus protect them, but >by definition time comes nearly to a halt for all things inside the stasis ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ see note below >field -- sometimes useful but not always what you want. And you can't make a >wall all the way around your hull out of stasis fields by having an inner >field that negates the time-stopping effect of the outer one because, as >explained in <World of Ptavvs>, some fundamental law of physics (as presented >by the book) makes it impossible to have one stasis field inside another. > First, not all stasis fields are equal. As you noted, in world of Ptavvs we have an example of humanity's first working stasis field. The scientist who is researching it says that it slows down time a lot (Sorry, I don't remember the exact ratio), but that his doesn't stop time. He does say (correctly) that perhaps the Thrint's field does, and of course all the fields we see later do stop time completely. But they don't have to. But this is a trivial point. You COULD build a ship with a MOSTLY stasis field hull, simply by enclosing a non-conductive material inside a conducting shell, something like: cccccccccccccccc cnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnc cncccccccccccccccc cnc v v is a viewport/hatch cnc c cncccccccccccccccnc cnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnc ccccccccccccccc where c is conductive and n isn't Sorry about the crude artwork, I hope you get the idea. Of course you still have a weakspot, but the rest of your ship is perfectly safe. Of course, you still have the problem of leaving openings for sensors and drives... But it could be done. If you really wanted to. >> >In the sequel, we discover that the >> >Ringworld was made by protectors--but protectors are clearly in contradi- >> >ction to known facts about primate evolution on the earth >> I agree with your parenthetical comment, but evolution is hotly contested >> even now, and is not perfectly understood, and is a THEORY. I don't think >> you can call the Protectors a major error. There's no illogical contradiction, >> a reasonable explanation is that the protector world is like ours, and when >> humans arrived here (with protectors), we eliminated all competition, and >> the primates already here never developed into "native" humans. The protectors >> then died out, because their staple food won't grow here. Particularly since the evidence that Protectors built Ringworld didn't come to light until Ringworld Engineers came out. The arguement against evolution is spurious and not well thought out, but the answering arguement below has problems of its own. > > I have news for you. It is now essentially proven that humans evolved >from lower primates which in turn evolved from lower forms of life, by the >science of Molecular Biology. Examination of DNA sequence homology, among >other things, allows one to distinguish between convergent evolution and >divergent evolution -- in the latter case you get much more homology than in >the former, since evolution consists mainly of modification of what's already >there. For example, if we hadn't evolved from something close to chimpanzees, >we wouldn't have ~98% DNA sequence homology to them -- for this to happen on >another world by convergent evolution would be exceedingly improbable. And we >have lesser but still impressive DNA sequence homologies to other, more >distantly-related organisms. O really?? I know a few Molecular Biologist who would be interested to hear that. While DNA comparison is exciting, it isn't the panacia you seem to think it is, and has its challengers. But even granting its validity does not solve our problems. You see there was this Slaver empire about a billion years ago. We know (from <World of Patvvs>) that Earth was once a slaver food planet. And we also know that Slavers controlled most if not all of the galaxy. It is possible, you can even say likely, that they introduced a certain microbial heritage to a large number of habitable planets through out the galaxy, from which both humans and Protectors could have emerged. And if breeder stage Protectors DID evolve into our hominid branch, they could have diverged into both humans and chimpanzees. The other DNA similarities that we share with the rest of the planet could come from a more distant source, the Slavers, with a reinforcement by the Protectors. That was a slow boat that the protectors arrived on, they brought a working ecology with them. They would likely introduce a number of thier own species to the Earth along with themselves. So the DNA record is a lot more muddled than it could be to make it usable. And who says that it NEEDS to be that direct a connection! It's a fun (and good) book. It has other more obvious flaws, no one has mentioned the really BIG ones. But then you have to think a little to see 'em. And NONE of this answers my original question. I've seen one posting about a problem with rings that I still need to check out. Other than this it's all been fluff. > -- Lucius Chiaraviglio -- ******************************************************************************* Later y'all, Vnend Ignorance is the Mother of Adventure. *******************************************************************************