Stasis (fiction)
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Stasis (IPA: /ˈsteɪsɪs/) is a science-fiction concept akin to suspended animation. Whereas suspended animation usually refers to a greatly reduced state of life processes, stasis implies a complete cessation of these processes, which can be easily restarted or restart spontaneously when stasis is removed. Depending on the work, stasis has other properties useful to science fiction story lines.
A stasis field is a region where a stasis process is in effect. Stasis fields in fictional settings often have several common characteristics. These include infinite or near-infinite rigidity, making them "unbreakable objects", and a perfect or nearly-perfect reflective surface. Most science fiction plots rely on a physical device to establish this region. When the device is deactivated, the stasis field collapses; that is, the stasis effect ends.
Time is often suspended in stasis fields. Such fields will thus have the additional property of protecting non-living materials from deterioration. Story lines using such fields often have materials as well as living beings surviving thousands or millions of years beyond their normal lifetimes. This property also allows for such plot devices as booby traps, containing, for instance, a hand grenade with a pulled pin or an angry rattlesnake. Once the field collapses, the trap is sprung. In such a situation, it wouldn't do to let the protagonist see what is in the field, so in stories like this, the story line will not allow normal beings to see something protected by a stasis field.
The noted science fiction author Larry Niven used the concept of stasis fields and stasis boxes to a great extent in a direct or indirect fashion all through his many novels and short stories set in the Known Space series. Niven's stasis fields followed conductive surfaces when established, and the resulting frozen space became a completely invulnerable and perfectly reflective object. They were often used as emergency protective devices. They could also be used to create a weapon called a variable sword, a length of extremely fine wire in a stasis field that makes it able to easily cut through normal matter. For more information, see Slaver stasis field.
One of the best examples of a stasis field exists in Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. Upon discovery of the ability to create stasis fields, humans soon began to use turtle tactics with the fields. Essentially, a group of soldiers would heft a large device which emits the field with them into the center of an enemy base, then pop out of the field and wreak havoc. Soon, however, it became clear to the enemy that they simply needed to saturate the field with constant fire, and wait for the humans to peek out. The field's basic premise was this: The amount of energy required to make the field grows exponentially with size, thus massive fields are unfeasible. Inside the field, no object can travel faster than ~30-50 m/s, which includes electrons, photons, and the field itself. For this reason, soldiers inside the field must be wearing suits with a special coating, otherwise all electrical activity within their body would stop and they would die. Also, fast particles scatter and degenerate upon touching the field, but it is not dark inside the field. A complicated physical effect allows some photons to exist inside the field, resulting in a dull gray, colorless environment. Furthermore, objects entering the field at >50 m/s instantly drop to 50 m/s. If the object passes through the field unaffected, it exits the field at its entering velocity. Because of this, combat within the field becomes medieval, facilitating ancient weapon arts for stasis combat. In the novel, the main character defeats an enemy army which has besieged a small remaining contingent of human troops on a moon world, by arming a 'nova' nuclear device inside the field, and then moving the field away from the bomb. Once the bomb is revealed, its electrical activity resumes, and it promptly detonates. This vaporises the surrounding 'Tauran' army, and a large chunk of the ground beneath the field. The soldiers emerge some weeks later to see if their trick worked, and find themselves alone at the bottom of a large crater, their enemy destroyed.
Stasis can also be used as a form of suspended animation for various purposes. A notable use is in the Red Dwarf television series and books, where a stasis chamber is used to preserve the protagonist David Lister for 3 million years.
Stasis is also used in The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton under the name "Zero Tau", used mainly for avoiding long starship journeys. It is also used as a major plot device to exorcise "possessed" humans from their possessing souls. One possible way of creating a stasis field is through warping space-time, which could be achieved by creating a contained, rapidly rotating, high gravity field. To create the needed gravity, theoretical and practical knowledge of gravity would have to be far in advance of the technology of today. Some precursor technologies to this type of stasis would be artificial gravity and gravity shielding.
Stasis can be neither proved nor disproved using modern knowledge, even theoretically. We are far from the understanding required, it may not be developed or proven impossible for another five hundred years or more.
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