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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Asimov and scientific revenge
Message-ID: <1318@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Aug-85 17:36:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1318
Posted: Wed Aug 21 17:36:40 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 18:51:41 EDT
References: <149@rtp47.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 41

In article <149@rtp47.UUCP> throopw@rtp47.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes:

>The story was told from the viewpoint of a third fellow, who observed
>the incident and smelled a rat.  The reason the pool ball took off like
>a bullet was that it was made *massless* by the gravity-nullifying
>device.  Massless particles *must* travel at the speed of light, hence
>the ball takes off at lightspeed.  Upon leaving the gravity-free zone,
>the transition back to massy-ness, and back to sane velocity (for massy
>particles) is incomplete, and the ball still has near-light speed.  In
>the story, there is foreshadowing of this, and after the fact this
>effect is used to manfacture energy (by blowing small particles into the
>field and capturing the radiation that results yeilding heat, driving
>turbines, etc, etc).

>Now then, in the story, the slow fellow had figgured out what was going
>on before making his shot.  He realized that a particle going into the
>field "ought to" leave the field along the same line, but accelerated to
>near-lightspeed.  The third party suspected him of this, but the slow
>guy covered his tracks well, by promoting the theory that the exit path
>was random.  The third party was the only one who noticed that the ball
>went *into* the field aimed directly at the quick fellow's heart, and he
>couldn't get anybody else to believe him.

>Sadly, it seems to me that there is a problem with Asimov's reasoning.
>Such a field "should" act on the elementary particles that *make up* the
>pool ball, not on the pool ball as a whole.  Thus, since the particles
>that make it up are vibrating every-which-way (in thermal motion), the
>ball should have *exploded*, leaving a sizeable crater, rather than
>turning into a pool-ball-diameter beam of hard radiation.  Ah well, a
>fairly nice short story with a twist ending, even so.

A more serious problem is that this violates mass-energy conservation rather
severely.  Unless you're pumping enough energy into the thing, when the thing
comes back out, either the velocity must go away or you've got to lose a lot
of mass.  (you also need it to get rid of momentum.)  An object that can
accelerate a cue ball to near lightspeed is sopping up a LOT of energy.

It's also hard to imagine what happens to a bunch of massless particles having
both color and charge.

Charley Wingate