Como o cavorite funcionava no sistema OnOff?

10

Em Uma Profundidade no Céu , os Aracnídeos descobrem partículas nanotecnológicas de diamante misturadas com formações de xisto do passado antigo do planeta. Quando peneirada do xisto circundante, a nanotecnologia aparentemente reativa e exibe propriedades antigravitacionais (tornando-se um material conhecido como "cavorito").

No entanto, em A Fire Upon the Deep , nos é dito que alguma tecnologia, incluindo agrav, só pode ser construída no High-Beyond e no Transcend:

"The Beyond and below are like a deep of ocean, and we the creatures that swim in the abyss. We're so far down that the beings on the surface -- superior though they are -- can't effectively reach us. Oh, they fish, and they sometimes blight the upper levels with poisons we don't even understand. But the abyss remains a relatively safe place." She paused. There was more to the analogy. "And just as with an ocean, there is a constant drift of flotsam from the top. There are things that can only be made at the Top, that need close-to-sentient factories -- but which can still work down here. Blueshell mentioned some of those when he was talking to you: the agrav fabrics, the sapient devices. Such things are the greatest physical wealth of the Beyond, since we can't make them."

Não apenas o único pode ser criado no High-Beyond ou no Transcend, mas eles também exigem que o usuário esteja nessas zonas para manter a funcionalidade de longo prazo

No meio além:

At Sjandra Kei the annual income of an academician might pay for a square meter of agrav fabric -- junk that might not last a year. Here there were millions of hectares of the stuff, supporting billions of tonnes. Just replacements for dead fabric required more High Beyond commerce than most star clusters could command.

No Baixo Além:

It was a team game the two Skroderiders played. While Blueshell chattered, Greenstalk watched everything around them, running her skrode's recorders on all bands, trying to place this environment in the context of others they had known. Technology: What would these people need? What could work? In space this flat, there would be little use for agrav fabric. And this low in the Beyond, a lot of the most sophisticated imports from above would spoil almost immediately. Workers outside the long windows wore articulated pressure suits -- the force-field suits of the High Beyond would last only a few weeks down here.

E na zona lenta:

"That's only part of it. I think we Tines are more flexibly minded than the poor Two-Legs. Can you imagine what it will be like when we make more radio cloaks, when we make our own flying machines?"

Woodcarver smiled, a little sadly now. "Pilgrim, you dream. This is the Slow Zone. The agrav will wear out in a few years. Whatever we make will be far short of what you play with now."

Como o favorito mantém sua função no sistema OnOff, que está claramente na Zona Lenta (e foi, em um ponto, em The Unthinking Depths), apesar de o cavorito ter milhões de anos?

    
por Beofett 05.03.2012 / 16:23

1 resposta

Spoilers aqui, para A Fire Upon the Deep e "The Blabber" (que é um conjunto de novelas no universo de Zones of Thought, ou pelo menos um rascunho anterior):

In "The Blabber" we are introduced to an artifact that works in the Slow Zone but exhibits functionality normally only available in the Beyond (FTL communication, albeit very slow). As a side-effect, it sucks enough energy from the local star to dim it by 0.5%. In A Fire Upon the Deep, Countermeasure produces Transcendent-level effects in the Beyond (continuing for a while into the Slow Zone), and temporarily extinguishes the light from the Tines World sun while doing so.

Portanto, concluo que é possível operar e manter a tecnologia de alto nível na Zona Lenta, contanto que você tenha níveis estelares de energia disponíveis, e que a estrela do OnOff esteja desligada durante a maior parte do tempo. o tempo porque sua energia está sendo usada para manter vivos os artefatos Beyonder ou Transcendent, que são encontrados no planeta em tal profusão que formam estratos geológicos.

    
06.03.2012 / 21:11