SF Signal: Earth vs. Strangelets

Earth vs. Strangelets

Strangelets are tiny 'fun-sized' nuggets of strange-quarks (not to be confused with the regular, or familiar-quarks). Thought to be a by product of the Big Bang, scientists have been unable to detect their presence, until now.

Not quite the same scale as a wandering black hole swallowing the Earth, but still cool.

Off the top of my head, SF books about Earth and Black Holes:

Forge of God, Greg Bear
Singularity, Bill DeSmedt (a favorite of SFSignal)

And The Black Hole, Alan Dean Foster's novelization of the Disney movie.

Posted by Richard Novak on Monday August 15, 2005 at 5:49 PM

"Eater" by Gregory Benford had an intelligent black hole approaching Earth, IIRC. "Imperial Earth" by Clarke had ships powered by "singularities" (quantum black holes). At least one or more of the "McAndrew" stories by the late Charles Sheffield used singularities as drive mechanisms. Geoffrey Landis has "Quantum Impact" in which astronomers detect an approaching black hole. In "The Forever War", ships jump from system to system using "collapsers", one of these is near enough to Terran space to be reachable (initially) by 1970's technology. I believe that both Varney and Reynolds have used black holes as drives in their books, no?

H.G. Wells wrote "The Star". It wasn't a black hole, but it sure devastated our planet!

Probably a lot more than that, but that's the initial batch.

Posted by Fred Kiesche on Monday August 15, 2005 at 6:28 PM