And now I present to you the Chicago Bean - one part neutronium sphere, one part Slaver stasis box, one part time bobble.*
Hmm...okay, actually that's not quite accurate. All of the above would be perfect spheres, this is more like an alien spacecraft of some sort. Not to mentioned that a neutronium sphere that size would weigh...lessee, if we pretend it actually is round, call it ten meters high, which is 523,599,000 cubic centimeters.....a cubic centimeter of neutronium would weigh 1,212,541,000 tonnes..so that's about 6.35 x 1017 tonnes…the earth weighs 6.585 x 1021 metric tonnes...okay, so it wouldn't quite weigh as much as the Earth, but certainly well up there. Probably not the sort of thing that you’d leave lying around in a park, although I'm sure it would pull in the tourists.
- Sid
*Respectively, Larry Niven's short story There is a Tide, and Vernor Vinge's novel Peace War.
UPDATE: First, in answer to a couple of inquiries, no Photoshop is involved in the second picture, just a wide angle lens and careful positioning. If you click on the picture to open it at full size, and lean forward to the monitor and squint a bit, you can see me in front of the trees, almost in the exact middle of the sphere, taking the picture. What was involved was a lot of patience while waiting for people to get out of the way.
Second, I have been remiss in not thanking Dan Cooke from my office, who suggested that I visit the Bean during my visit to Chicago. My apologies, Dan - now stop harassing me about it or I won't help you with your CMS problems anymore.
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