"'...if the cosmos is in fact in such a metastable condition...[i]t's possible to tap energy from the unexpended substrate..." (p. 10)
Metastability is neither stability nor instability so what is it? Do you think you know until you are asked? I had to google it. Again, what is a substrate? Something underneath something else?
"'I'm glad you know the difference between a scalar and a vector.'" (ibid.) (I still don't.)
"...slopes spalled by frost..." (p. 20) (Sounds painful!)
"Life on Earth took three billion years to venture from the seas to the land. Our giant Moon, a cosmic freak, may well have hastened that by the tides it raised." (p. 21)
(I think of a billion as a million million but the American meaning, a thousand million, has taken over.)
Three billion years! That is how long a process can take when it is unconscious and unplanned. Is our giant Moon a cosmic freak? A knowledgeable friend has told me that Earth-Moon-like double planets have been detected in extrasolar systems.
Just another day in a Poul Anderson universe!
1 comment:
"difference between a scalar and a vector."
For those who still don't:
A scalar is a property that has only magnitude eg: the mass of an object.
A vector has magnitude AND direction eg: the velocity.
The vector can be expressed as a magnitude & angles from some reference directions, or magnitudes of the components in each direction, eg: North-South, East-West, Up-Down.
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