Looking for a short story or novel

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A Traditional Eccentric!
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Is anyone able to point me to the short story or novel that...

...has Earth (or indeed the whole Solar System) in a kind of pocket where the speed of light is slower than the surrounding stars please?

[I know this may sound like a warped query...]
 
Brain wave by Poul Anderson maybe, the earth's travelling through a region of slow light speed then one day emerges and everyone becomes more intelligent even animals
 
There was a short story told from the POView of an alien trouble-shooting team, sent to shut down the hyper drive of a crashed starship. The ship was on Earth. Our Hero was concerned because the drive was affecting speed of light &c on Earth, and we'd designed a science based on those readings. Shutting down the drive would wreak havoc with our perception of the universe! OH's boss told him to shut the drive down anyway because it was a larger problem than one planet having to re-evaluate its science. OH shut down the drive. I think that's about where the story ended... nothing about what happened afterwards.
==Paul E Musselman
 
Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep has the speed of light increasing towards the outer edges of the galaxy, with the solar system's being slower than most, though it's not in a "pocket" as such.
 
Many thanks monkeypooper, PaulMmn and HareBrain. You're all absolutely wonderful.

I don't think I've read Brain Wave and A Fire Upon the Deep is in my tbr pile along with quite a few others!
 
Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep has the speed of light increasing towards the outer edges of the galaxy, with the solar system's being slower than most, though it's not in a "pocket" as such.
While this may be an accurate description, as I recall it the emphasis was on there being two regions of space in which two different physical regimes reigned: the "slow zone", and the rest of the galaxy. Inside the slow zone, where earth existed, faster-than-light travel and superintelligence were not possible.

The idea of "regime" here is similar to things like fluid flow regimes, in which a continuous change in Reynolds number leads to qualitatively different behaviour as Reynolds number crosses certain values, even though the underlying laws are everywhere the same:

http://physics.info/turbulence/
 
Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep has the speed of light increasing towards the outer edges of the galaxy, with the solar system's being slower than most, though it's not in a "pocket" as such.

I read that one about 15 years ago , one the finest science fiction novels ive ever read. (y)
 
Spin by Robert Wilson

Earth is surrounded by a mysterious 'membrane' which slows time on Earth relative to the universe. I think that becomes an issue when the Sun starts to expand into a red giant? (Not too much of a spoiler as they identify that as a threat quite early on and far more stuff goes on!). That sounds like your book. I also hear it is being looked at to be turned into a TV series.
 

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