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, but cities have been known to deploy them) 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.