Yes, there are trade-offs. We discovered that. Trade-offs not only in astrophysics but in life.
I remember Shep became interested in folding planets in half when we were in high school. He got kicked off the tennis team for folding the tennis balls. We'd show up for practice and unfold them. You squeeze them and they pop back out. That was the moment of inspiration—that popping sound. Shep said, Do you have any idea how much energy is being released?” To me, it seemed like only a modest amount, but he said, Just one tennis ball, folded in half, could power this watch for almost half an hour!” He was still wearing a windup watch at the time.
Nobody else had his vision. He was the first to demonstrate the theoretical possibility of giant atomic-powered hands. Now you see these hands everywhere, but back then they were unthinkable, revolutionary. We both attended Princeton, and one day I was sitting in the school cafeteria which we called the Caf) when Shep burst in waving pages of calculations that he said proved you could build these hands. Make them big enough, he continued excitedly, and they would even be able to fold the moon in half, which could produce enough energy to run the entire Tokyo subway system for seven weeks.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 18, 2023-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 18, 2023-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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INSIDE JOB-"Hit Man"
Years before Hannah Arendt coined, in the pages of this magazine, the phrase \"the banality of evil,\" popular films and fiction were embodying that idea in the character of the hit man. In classic crime movies such as \"This Gun for Hire\" (1942) and \"Murder by Contract\" (1958), hit men figure much as Nazis do in political movies, as symbols of abstract evil.
WHATEVER YOU SAY
Rereading Jenny Holzer, at the Guggenheim.
SUBCONSCIOUSLY YOURS
Does every generation get the Freud it deserves?
BY A WHISKER
Louis Wain and the reinvention of the cat.
Beyond Imagining
Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.
STATES OF PLAY
Can advocates use state supreme courts to preserve-and perhaps expand-constitutional rights?
THE LONG RIDE
The surf legend Jock Sutherland's unlikely life.
ARE WE DOOMED?
A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through.
GOD EXPLAINS THE RULES OF HIS NEW BOARD GAME
Guys, want to play this new board game? It’s called Life. No, it’s not “one of God’s impossible-to-understand games that take three hours to learn.” It’ll be fun, I promise!
RED LINE
With the election approaching, the U.S. and Mexico wrangle over border policy.