There is also 'The Ruum', a short story by Arthur Porges about an alien object, a quasi-spherical mercury-like antagonist with various appendages, hunting and collecting animal (and human) specimens. My English teacher read it to the class when I was thirteen. https://fongupdates.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/the-ruum-text.pdf On Mon, Feb 11, 2019, 16:16 Stuart Anderson <stuart.errol.anderson@gmail.com wrote:
The problem with a mercuryball is that it isn't "smart" or self-powered.
Animals are smart and self-powered, but generally they aren't round. But what if they were?
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10156997246687008&id=11370382200...
On Mon, Feb 11, 2019, 06:00 <math-fun-request@mailman.xmission.com wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: "Smart" soccer balls ? (Henry Baker)
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Message: 1 Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2019 13:40:18 -0800 From: Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> To: Hilarie Orman <ho@alum.mit.edu>,math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [math-fun] "Smart" soccer balls ? Message-ID: <E1gsaNH-000Dux-MV@elasmtp-masked.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Thanks, Hilarie!
I never read that story when I was a kid.
I presume that someone actually built such a "mercuryball" at the time to test it out?
I also presume that playing with such a ball today would cause DHS instant apoplexy. Someone brought liquid mercury to one of the high schools in L.A. a few years ago, and the officials evacuated the school and brought in people in hazmat suits to remove any possible mercury spills. Irony alert: they apparently didn't realize that a much bigger mercury poisoning threat existed within every fluorescent bulb in the school.
The problem with a mercuryball is that it isn't "smart" or self-powered.
At 10:48 PM 2/8/2019, Hilarie Orman wrote:
Cf. "Stand By For Mars", Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and the game of mercury ball.
If the ball were flying through the air, it could set up asymmetric drag and change its trajectory to some degree. Even if it weren't *guided*, it could still move in a random and impossible-to-predict manner which would thoroughly confuse even the best goalies.
Hilarie lman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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