Neal Stephenson Quote

If you make certain assumptions about the force of gravity, and how the weight of an object diminishes as it gets farther away, it’s not improbable at all, Isaac said. It just happens. You would keep going round and round forever. In a circle? An ellipse. An ellipse… and here the bomb finally went off in his head, and Daniel had to sit down on the ground, the moisture of last year’s fallen apples soaking through his breeches. Like a planet. Just so—if only we could jump fast enough, or had a strong enough wind at our backs, we could all be planets.

Neal Stephenson

If you make certain assumptions about the force of gravity, and how the weight of an object diminishes as it gets farther away, it’s not improbable at all, Isaac said. It just happens. You would keep going round and round forever. In a circle? An ellipse. An ellipse… and here the bomb finally went off in his head, and Daniel had to sit down on the ground, the moisture of last year’s fallen apples soaking through his breeches. Like a planet. Just so—if only we could jump fast enough, or had a strong enough wind at our backs, we could all be planets.

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About Neal Stephenson

Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and baroque.
Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes nonfiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.
Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and also co-founded the Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020.