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Flux (novel)
''Flux'' is a 1993 science fiction novel by British author Stephen Baxter. It is the third book in Baxter's Xeelee Sequence. Plot introduction Dura and her fellow human beings live inside a neutron star A neutron star is the gravitationally collapsed Stellar core, core of a massive supergiant star. It results from the supernova explosion of a stellar evolution#Massive star, massive star—combined with gravitational collapse—that compresses ..., as they have for generations. As long as they can remember, " glitches" (instabilities of the magnetic field inside the star caused by changes in the star's rotation) have happened from time to time. As the novel starts, the worst glitch that anyone can remember threatens to destroy her home. To survive, Dura must travel to a far-off city, and eventually outside of the star itself. Explanation of the novel's title ''Flux'' is so called as the main race of the book, microscopic human-like beings who live within a neutron star, tr ...
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Stephen Baxter (author)
Stephen Baxter (born 13 November 1957) is an English hard science fiction author. He has degrees in mathematics and engineering. Writing style Strongly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Baxter has been vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society since 2006. His fiction falls into three main categories of original work plus a fourth category, extending other authors' writing; each has a different basis, style, and tone. Baxter's "Future history, Future History" mode is based on research into hard science fiction, hard science. It encompasses the ''Xeelee Sequence'', which consists of nine novels (including the ''Destiny's Children'' trilogy and Vengeance/Redemption duology that is set in alternate timeline), plus three volumes collecting the 52 short pieces (short stories and novellas) in the series, all of which fit into a single timeline stretching from the Big Bang singularity of the past to his ''Timelike Infinity'' (1993) singularity of the fu ...
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Neutron Stars In Fiction
Neutron stars—extremely dense remnants of stars that have undergone supernova events—have appeared in fiction since the 1960s. Their immense gravitational fields and resulting extreme tidal forces are a recurring point of focus. Some works depict the neutron stars as harbouring exotic alien lifeforms, while others focus on the habitability of the surrounding system of planets. Neutron star mergers, and their potential to cause extinction events at interstellar distances due to the enormous amounts of radiation released, also feature on occasion. Neutronium, the degenerate matter that makes up neutron stars, often turns up as a material existing outside of them in science fiction; in reality, it would likely not be stable. Background When a star runs out of fuel available for nuclear fusion in its Stellar core, core, it undergoes gravitational collapse as there is no longer sufficient outward pressure to counteract the inward force of gravity. For stars similar to the Sun ...
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Hard Science Fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's ''Islands of Space'' in the November issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction''. The complementary term ''soft science fiction'', formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural science, natural) and "soft" (social science, social) sciences,) first appeared in the late 1970s. Though there are examples generally considered as Hard and soft science, "hard" science fiction such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation (book series), ''Foundation'' series, built on mathematical sociology, science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that while neither term is part of a rigorous Taxonomy (general), taxonomy, they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful. History Stories revolving around scientific and technical ...
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HarperCollins Books
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the " Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. HarperCollins is headquartered in New York City and London and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The company's name is derived from a combination of the firm's predecessors. Harper & Brothers, founded in 1817 in New York, merged with Row, Peterson & Company in 1962 to form Harper & Row, which was acquired by News Corp in 1987. The Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons, founded in 1819 in Glasgow, was acquired by News Corp in 1987 and merged with Harper & Row to form HarperCollins. The logo for the firm combines the fire from Harper's torch and the water from Collins' fountain. HarperCollins operates publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China, and publishes under vario ...
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1993 Science Fiction Novels
The General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its calendar advanced 24 hours to the Eastern Hemisphere side of the International Date Line, skipping August 21, 1993. Events January * January 1 ** Czechoslovakia ceases to exist, as the Czech Republic and Slovakia separate in the Dissolution of Czechoslovakia. ** The European Economic Community eliminates trade barriers and creates a European single market. ** International Radio and Television Organization ceases. * January 3 – In Moscow, Presidents George H. W. Bush (United States) and Boris Yeltsin (Russia) sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. * January 5 ** US$7.4 million is stolen from the Brink's Armored Car Depot in Rochester, New York, in the fifth largest robbery in U.S. history. ** , a Liberian-registered oil tanker, runs aground off the ...
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Novels By Stephen Baxter
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and Publication, published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek novel, Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term Romance (literary fiction) ...
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1993 British Novels
The General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its calendar advanced 24 hours to the Eastern Hemisphere side of the International Date Line, skipping August 21, 1993. Events January * January 1 ** Czechoslovakia ceases to exist, as the Czech Republic and Slovakia separate in the Dissolution of Czechoslovakia. ** The European Economic Community eliminates trade barriers and creates a European single market. ** International Radio and Television Organization ceases. * January 3 – In Moscow, Presidents George H. W. Bush (United States) and Boris Yeltsin (Russia) sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. * January 5 ** US$7.4 million is stolen from the Brink's Armored Car Depot in Rochester, New York, in the fifth largest robbery in U.S. history. ** , a Liberian-registered oil tanker, runs aground off the ...
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Habitability Of Neutron Star Systems
The habitability of neutron star systems is the potential of planets and moons orbiting a neutron star to provide suitable habitats for life. Of the roughly 3000 neutron stars known, only a handful have sub-stellar companions. The most famous of these are the low-mass planets around the millisecond pulsar PSR B1257+12. Habitability is conventionally defined by the equilibrium temperature of a planet, which is a function of the amount of incoming radiation; a planet is defined "habitable" if liquid water can exist on its surface although even planets with little external energy can harbour underground life. Pulsars do not emit large quantities of radiation given their small size; the habitable zone can easily end up lying so close to the star that tidal effects destroy the planets. Additionally, it is often unclear how much radiation a given pulsar emits and how much of it can actually reach a hypothetical planet's surface; of the known pulsar planets, only those of PSR B1257+12 ar ...
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Xeelee
The ''Xeelee Sequence'' (; ) is a series of hard science fiction novels, novellas, and short stories written by British science fiction author Stephen Baxter. The series spans billions of years of fictional history, centering on humanity's future expansion into the universe, its intergalactic war with an enigmatic and supremely powerful Kardashev Type V alien civilization called the Xeelee (eldritch symbiotes composed of spacetime defects, Bose-Einstein condensates, and baryonic matter), and the Xeelee's own cosmos-spanning war with dark matter entities called Photino Birds. The series features many other species and civilizations that play a prominent role, including the Squeem (a species of group-mind aquatics), the Qax (beings whose biology is based on the complex interactions of convection cells), and the Silver Ghosts (colonies of symbiotic organisms encased in reflective skins). Several stories in the Sequence also deal with humans and posthumans living in extreme c ...
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Bob Eggleton
Bob Eggleton (born September 13, 1960) is an American science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction, horror artist. Eggleton is a nine-time Hugo Award–winner for Best Pro Artist in science fiction and fantasy, first winning in 1994. He won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book in 2001 for his art book ''Greetings from Earth''. He also won the Chesley Award for Artistic Achievement in 1999 and was the guest of honor at 58th World Science Fiction Convention, Chicon 2000. His illustrations have appeared in Dark Horse Comics, Random House ''Godzilla'' books, IDW Publishing, IDW’s ''Godzilla'' comic series and on covers for ''Famous Monsters of Filmland'', ''G-Fan'' & ''Japanese Giants'' magazines. In film, he has worked as a concept artist on ''Sphere (1998 film), Sphere'' (1997), ''Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius'' (2001) and ''The Ant Bully'' (2006). He also illustrated matte paintings on the short film ''The Idol (2007 film), The Idol'' (2007) and was an extra in the Millennium ''Godzil ...
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Glitch (astronomy)
In astronomy, a glitch is a sudden small increase of around 1 part in 1 million in the rotational frequency of a pulsar, which usually decreases steadily due to braking provided by the emission of radiation and high-energy particles. It is not known whether glitches are related to the timing noise which all pulsars exhibit. Following a glitch is a period of gradual recovery where the observed periodicity slows to a period close to that observed before the glitch. These gradual recovery periods have been observed to last from days to years. only multiple glitches of the Crab and Vela pulsars have been observed and studied extensively. Cause While the exact cause of glitches is unknown, they are thought to be caused by an internal process within the pulsar. This differs from the steady decrease in the pulsar's rotational frequency, which is caused by external processes. Although the details of the glitch process are unknown, it is thought that the resulting increase in the ...
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Neutron Star
A neutron star is the gravitationally collapsed Stellar core, core of a massive supergiant star. It results from the supernova explosion of a stellar evolution#Massive star, massive star—combined with gravitational collapse—that compresses the core past white dwarf star density to that of Atomic nucleus, atomic nuclei. Surpassed only by black holes, neutron stars are the second smallest and densest known class of stellar objects. Neutron stars have a radius on the order of and a mass of about . Stars that collapse into neutron stars have a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses (), or possibly more for those that are especially rich in Metallicity, elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Once formed, neutron stars no longer actively generate heat and cool over time, but they may still evolve further through Stellar collision, collisions or Accretion (astrophysics), accretion. Most of the basic models for these objects imply that they are composed almost entirely o ...
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