Timeline for How do stasis fields work in Larry Niven's Known Space?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 25, 2019 at 17:40 | comment | added | Zeiss Ikon | @PaulA.Clayton Canonically, the "rescue button" on Kzanol's space suit had worn away over the billion hears he was in stasis -- he was released when humans tried to read his mind because the button he pushed to put himself into stasis popped up under spring pressure during the fraction of a second internal to the field while the outside stasis field was up. | |
| Jul 25, 2019 at 17:37 | comment | added | user11683 | I think one of the Man-Kzin Wars short stories (where a computer spent its idle time simulating the universe) mentioned the use of neutronium for the external switch. This would probably not be canonical and I do not remember details. | |
| Jul 25, 2019 at 13:24 | comment | added | Organic Marble | @ZeissIkon I checked and you are right. The human scientist mentions that the ratio of inside to outside time changes in large "quantum jumps" and that they have only achieved 20,000:1. Thanks. | |
| Jul 25, 2019 at 11:25 | comment | added | Zeiss Ikon | @user This is a tactic gotten from The Peace War series by Vernor Vinge, but it should work equally well for stasis fields as for Bobbles: set the field to run for, say, a millisecond internal time, then spend a microsecond checking exterior conditions and deciding whether to restart the field for another (internal) millisecond. To humans inside the field, it'll be "blip-done" as it was for Louis Wu during the crash of Lying Bastard. | |
| Jul 25, 2019 at 11:23 | comment | added | Zeiss Ikon | @OrganicMarble don't have access to the book at this moment, but early in the novel, when the human telepath is going to attempt to read the mind of the Sea Statue, they point out that the (human-built, early version) stasis field has a ratio of something like a few thousand to one. | |
| Jul 25, 2019 at 8:17 | comment | added | user | Even if the generator is inside the field, if time is running so slowly how will it observe the outside world to check that the danger has passed? | |
| Jul 24, 2019 at 23:20 | comment | added | Organic Marble | Can you supply a quote from an Niven text that states time inside a stasis field moves at any rate other than zero? In World of Ptavvs it says "...time will cease to flow..." | |
| Jul 24, 2019 at 20:28 | comment | added | Harry Johnston | I don't think the process of opening a Slaver stasis box was described in enough detail for us to be sure how the outer stasis field was controlled. And I don't recall any mention of stasis fields being used as weapons, which suggests that you can't generate one at a distance. Still, that's not conclusive, perhaps it can be done either way. | |
| Jul 24, 2019 at 19:22 | comment | added | Zeiss Ikon | @HarryJohnston Actually, it can be either way. Opening a Slaver stasis box usually involved putting it inside another stasis field momentarily, controlled from outside. | |
| Jul 24, 2019 at 19:04 | comment | added | Harry Johnston | World of Ptavvs establishes unambiguously that the field generator sits inside the field it generates, so there's no problem protecting it. And because, as you say, it just slows time rather than literally stopping it, there's no problem having it turn itself off after a set period. | |
| Jul 24, 2019 at 16:22 | history | answered | Zeiss Ikon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |