LANGSTON FIELD

The 'Langston Field' is a fictional device featured in the ''CoDominium'' series of science-fiction novels, initiated by SF writer Jerry Pournelle.
The (fictional) Langston Field generator creates a spherical shield around an object (usually a spacecraft) which absorbs energy. Since the shield absorbs all wavelengths of light, it is completely black in normal use, like a black hole. It is necessary to raise sensors through the Field to see anything, much like a periscope. These sensors can be destroyed since they are outside the Field, so there are usually many backups on a warship. As the Field absorbs energy it reradiates it over its entire surface, acting as a perfect black body; the colour of the Field moves from infrared to red and through the visible spectrum to blue as the amount of reradiated energy increases. (However, in ''The Mote in God's Eye'' the field is also described as glowing green or violet, which is not possible for a true black body. It has been suggested that the Langston Field's behavior is a tribute to the ray screens featured in Doc Smith's novel The Skylark of Space, whose color also climbs the spectrum as the energy load increases.) After a certain point, the Field generator can no longer absorb further energy: the Field collapses and the stored energy is released outwards and inwards; this latter usually destroys the ship.

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Expanding Langston Field

Expanding Langston Field

In the novel ''The Mote in God's Eye'', the Moties did not realise that the Langston Field was possible until humans demonstrated it. The Moties were inconceivably superior to humanity in the development of existing technologies, but lacked the ability (or perhaps the inclination) to carry out primary research. Even if they had had the ability, however, it is possible that they would never have developed Langston Field technology; for Humanity it was a purely accidental discovery. In the sequel novel, once the Motie Engineers saw that the Field was possible, they immediately devised an improvement to it: the Fields on Motie spaceships expand as they absorb energy. This gives the Field more surface area to disperse the energy again, and allows it to survive much longer.
The Moties' improvement is not useful for the human blockade ships that guard the original entrance to Mote System, because the entrance is inside the photosphere of a red giant star. Any ship inside of the photosphere absorbs energy proportional to the size of their field. If a ship had an expanding field then the resulting greater surface area would cause them to absorb even more heat instead of bleed it off. Motie ships used the expanding Langston Field, so when they attempted to run the blockade they heated up more quickly and were destroyed sooner.