[HN Gopher] The Shape of Space (2019)
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       The Shape of Space (2019)
        
       Author : conanxin
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2021-09-27 13:53 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (placesjournal.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (placesjournal.org)
        
       | awb wrote:
       | > On the surface of a planet like Earth, we can imagine "down"
       | (or in) as a vector passing through our body toward the planet's
       | center. Down starts at our feet. But in spin gravity, down is a
       | vector pointing away from a shared center. Spinning around the
       | center axis of an O'Neill Cylinder, Bernal Sphere, or Stanford
       | Torus, we lose track of the comforting presence of Earth's
       | (illusory) ground plane. The Torus designed at the Summer Study
       | had an aluminum skin less than three centimeters thick. If that
       | boundary were breached, anything lost through the hole would fall
       | "out" at a speed of about 200 meters per second, likely ending up
       | in an independent -- and possibly unrecoverable -- orbit around
       | the Earth. Just thinking about that could be enough to induce
       | vertigo among the inhabitants. As Sun-Ra said, space is a
       | bottomless pit.
       | 
       | I wonder if there would be a way to create mild, progressive
       | exposure to this new living space. I've heard that small doses of
       | direct exposure can be an effective treatment for phobias and
       | fears.
        
         | ncmncm wrote:
         | People can get used to practically anything, by small
         | increments. If conditions of those small increments all happen,
         | it's hard even to notice. But even moving to a Bernal sphere,
         | it would feel familiar after a time -- days for some, months
         | for others -- and any children raised there would find it
         | perfectly ordinary. Even, the packing into a heavily shielded
         | shelter to wait for a solar mass ejection to blast by.
         | 
         | The move from a farm to a city apartment is not really a
         | smaller change.
        
       | mjreacher wrote:
       | If anyone ever asks about optimism in the 20th century I will
       | point them to this article and the wonderful illustrations
       | within.
        
         | Koshkin wrote:
         | That optimism peaked in 1913.
        
       | whym wrote:
       | Are these public domain illustrations in the United States
       | because they are works of the federal government or does the
       | artist retain the copyright?
        
         | trutannus wrote:
         | You could also just check if the copywrite has expired. They
         | are from 1975.
        
           | ncmncm wrote:
           | So, no. But anything can be released to the public domain, or
           | under a liberal license, anytime, and there is no central
           | registry to consult whether this has happened.
           | 
           | And, very incidentally, "copywrite" is not a real word.
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-27 23:01 UTC)