Robot Area
So, it looks like my penchant for collecting computers and rolling my own parallel clusters has finally gotten to people, and I'm getting a better office and some lab space in a nearby building. But, um, I was just over there, and
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Actually, the name sounds far more spiffy than the actual device, at least from the technological standpoint. No scalar demise field here, folks. Said death ray (or rays, since there were two of them) were simply a redirection of sunlight by a painstaking arrangement of mirrors. Apparently, one of the guys who had too much time on his hands decided to apply his brilliance to finding a way of focusing the equivalent of 67 and 112 suns, so he mounted several dozen tiny mirrors at various angles on hinged, semi-vertical platforms. My speculation in explaining this low-tech approach to science involves the fact that the software and equipment running the plasma thruster next door did seem more than a bit... glitchy. I'm not sure how much of a point he was trying to make with this little endeavor.
I think it's a good thing, though, that there aren't any cats around. Otherwise, I might be inspired to test your idea, and I'm not sure it would end well for either me or the cat, who might object being accelerated in the above fashion.
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