06-20-2022, 12:17 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: 1822 superscience
It does, but it's a somewhat different category, and unlike today, an awful lot of things would fall into the category of "doesn't exist as far as we know, but if someone claimed to have discovered it we wouldn't be too incredulous" -- for example, new elements were being discovered fairly regularly, and prior to the periodic table (1869) no real theory about what elements might be discoverable.
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06-20-2022, 12:17 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: 1822 superscience
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06-20-2022, 12:23 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: 1822 superscience
That's the thing, they believed such technology to be impossible. Not surprised, considering that their idea of energy source was what could be produced by steam.
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06-20-2022, 12:23 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: 1822 superscience
I wouldn't agree about adamantium or vibranium. Both of those are purportedly elements. But we know all the elements that make up the periodic table; there aren't any unfilled slots. And elements off the top end would be far too unstable to be carried around as a shield or the like. They're not just "haven't been discovered yet"; they're "their existence would contradict known science."
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06-20-2022, 01:38 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: 1822 superscience
There are generally two types of unobtainium one runs into in fiction. One is simply a purely-fictional material that has purely-fictional properties - the antigravity metal (humorously named unobtainium) from Avatar, Dreamstone from Chrono Trigger (also the Rainbow Shell for that matter), etc. The other is a theoretical material that modern science predicts could exist, but currently no samples have been found - from what I understand, negative-mass matter falls into this category. What you describe largely falls into the first category, but it looks like the discussion in this thread is about the second. Both are arguably superscience, but the latter is a bit closer to hard science than the former.
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06-20-2022, 01:46 PM | #26 | |
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Re: 1822 superscience
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Of course, in the 1840s, the most likely explanation was another, unknown planet, and that would have been even more true in the 1820s. And it probably wasn't even possible to realize the problem much before the 1840s at the earliest - Kepler or Newton could have, in theory, calculated Mercury's orbit but both lacked access to the precision watches and photographs that were necessary to discover that Mercury was advancing by 43 arc-seconds per century faster than the path predicted by Newtonian mechanics. Whether or not physicists could have realized they needed relativity in the 19th century, it certainly would have been superscience in 1822 to suggest there was a maximum speed that can anything could move in the universe, that light always moved that fast, and that the Newton's laws of motion were incorrect at speeds close to the speed of light.
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06-20-2022, 01:52 PM | #27 | |
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Re: 1822 superscience
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06-20-2022, 04:52 PM | #28 | ||
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Location: U.K.
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Re: 1822 superscience
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06-20-2022, 05:26 PM | #29 | |
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Re: 1822 superscience
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06-20-2022, 05:35 PM | #30 |
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Location: Brazil
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Re: 1822 superscience
Does modern communications also counts? Because they had no way to predict in 1822 about about radio and electromagnetism. So, things they couldnt possibly imagine possible also count? Because anything with electricity would be superscience to them in that case, if not outright magic. Computers, internet and even our limited AIs is nothing short of magic to even the most fanatical consumers of SF of the time. Would those also count? Because our own futuristic ideas about teleportation for example are just pure fantasy for now, but supposing it could be possible for a moment in the future (or even EASY), even if for us today that holds as much value as magic mirrors (such as our phones)?
Wouldnt fantastic tech impossible to predict because there's not even ground to allow such prediction count? Another example: sci fi with psiquic powers (or the Star Wars "the Force") is nothing short of pure futuristic fantasy. But "the Force" is just as magical to us as a computer connected to the internet would be for someone from 1822 (mere 200 years ago, that's crazy) |
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science fiction, tech level |
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