When I was a solitary, bespectacled and distinctly oikotropic child growing up in Dundee, I was fascinated by the little roundabout, like the one pictured above, in the play area of my local park. While my compatriots were trying their best to kill or maim themselves by using the swings, the slide and the witch’s … Continue reading Coriolis
Tag Archives: Physics
Saying “Centrifugal” Doesn’t Mean You’re A Bad Person
Despite its daunting size, the huge structure was in fact a very simple machine, essentially a massive slingshot exploiting the rotation of the KBO to hurl objects into space. Slugs of refined, processed matter were loaded into open-topped buckets at the KBO’s surface. For the first hundred kilometres, they were hoisted up the length of … Continue reading Saying “Centrifugal” Doesn’t Mean You’re A Bad Person
Greg Egan: The “Orthogonal” Trilogy
Greg Egan is an Australian mathematician who has been writing hard science fiction for thirty years, although his hard science is the stuff that sits at the borderland of philosophy: the relationship between mathematics and reality, the nature of consciousness, the implications of quantum mechanics. Previous novels have involved speculations on what life might be … Continue reading Greg Egan: The “Orthogonal” Trilogy