Alien Life will Most Likely be - Alien

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"Alien Life on Titan Would Stink"
Space.com (April 10, 2010)

"If life does exist on Saturn's intriguing moon Titan, it probably stinks.

"The icy moon has long been seen as a potential spot for extraterrestrial life, but so far, there's no evidence of any living things there.

"And if there were life on Titan, it would likely involve chemicals that are noxious and disgusting to humans, scientists say...."

"...'This idea that you can walk up to the alien ambassador and shake their hand is very unlikely,' said biochemist William Bains of MIT and the Cambridge, England-based Rufus Scientific. He explained that these other worldly life forms would probably be so foreign to us that it might be difficult to recognize them as life, and coming into contact with them could prove hazardous.

"For example, Titan life's metabolism might involve chemical compounds such as phosphine and hydrogen sulfide, which are both foul-smelling gases that are toxic to humans...."

"...Instead of relying on water as a primary ingredient for life, as Earthlings do, Titan's life might have blood based on liquid methane, Bains said. Such a creature couldn't survive on Earth, where methane is a gas at our warmer temperatures.

" 'Their blood would instantly boil then release this great cloud of chemicals, quite a number of which are quite poisonous,' Bains said.

"And instead of using the element carbon to build many of the molecules that make up life, these creatures' chemistry might be based on silicon. While this element is relatively flexible and able to bond with a wide variety of other elements, many of these bonds would be unstable. For example, some compounds that could be present in Titan life would spontaneously burst into flames if exposed to Earth's air...."

I'm not sure that I quite buy the "so foreign to us that it might be difficult to recognize them as life" part of the article. What's described - phosphine, hydrogen sulfide and other substances in liquid methane - would likely enough involve microscopic bags of liquid grouped in larger sacks - like the plants and animals we're familiar with. And fungi and bacteria, for that matter. And yes, I know that plant cells tend to have rather hard walls.

Aliens with different life chemistries most likely wouldn't look like the creatures we're familiar with: but then, neither do the critters found in the Burgess Shale. But we don't have trouble identifying the Burgess Shale menagerie as animals - or maybe plants - but whatever, something living.

Okay: maybe we'll find 'living crystals' or something like Hoyle's Black Cloud: but that's not what the article was discussing.

'Life as We Know It,' Class M Planets and All That

I think there will always be room for stories involving beautiful space princesses and exotic-looking aliens who think 9.8 m/s2 acceleration is 'normal' gravity. And are perfectly comfortable in a 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide mix at 21 degrees Celsius.

I also think there is room for stories where the alien ambassador needs a portable habitat to survive on Earth. And, likely enough, thinks Earth's air is thin and incredibly toxic: but likes the low gravity. ("Earth May Not Be a "Class M" Planet," Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 5, 2009))

Looks like 'serious' scientists are starting to get their heads around the idea that "life" may not always be quite exactly what we've been studying here for the last few thousand years. That's not entirely fair: a competent biochemist worked out a plausible range of possible 'life chemistries' for a wide range of temperatures quite a few years ago:

"...Actually, the idea that life didn't necessarily need water isn't particularly new. A former professor (of chemistry, apparently) at Boston University put together a pretty good argument for a half-dozen life chemistries that might plausibly work in temperatures ranging from near red-hot to near absolute zero:

1. "Fluorosilicone in fluorosilicone
2. "Fluorocarbon in sulfur
3. "Nucleic acid/protein (O) in water
4. "Nucleic acid/protein (N) in ammonia
5. "Lipid in methane
6. "Lipid in hydrogen
   " 'View from a Height' Isaac Asimov (1963), Lancer Books (p. 63)

"Isaac Asimov might be shaky on the sciences of ecology and physics - at least in his fiction - but that was in his professional field: chemistry. I'm inclined to take his view seriously, that life-as-we-know-it isn't necessarily the only sort. We're #3 on that list, by the way...."
(Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 24, 2010)

Then there are the scenarios where the 'aliens' are the descendants of people who left Earth back when humanity first reached the stars: and who have been away from home for a long time.

But this post is getting rather long. Goodnight.

Related posts:

• "Titan, Life Without Water, and 'Messing With Old Definitions'"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 24, 2010)
• "Well, That's Interesting: Burges Shale Creatures"
  (February 13, 2010)
• "Beautiful Space Princesses, Almost Certainly Not: Flying Whales, Maybe"
  (December 8, 2009)
• "Earth May Not Be a 'Class M' Planet"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 5, 2009)
• "Life on Ceres? Could Be"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 5, 2009)
  Particularly
  Exploding Martians and the Viking Life Experiment

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Kanji, Romanji, and This Writer

I may have to learn Japanese.

Which reminds me of Mark Twain's short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." If you're familiar with American literature, you may have read it, or at least heard of it. The title, by the way, comes out as "カラベラスの名高いジャンプ蛙郡" when I put it through the Google translator.

When I take "カラベラスの名高いジャンプ蛙郡" and run it back through the same tool, I get "Celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County" - which is better than the experience Mr. Twain had.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County - or - The Perils of Translation

Intellectual property laws were - somewhat casually enforced - in the 19th century. Someone who thought he knew French, or someone who knew English, took the Jumping Frog story and published it in France.

The story had been a commercial success in America. In France, sales just about flatlined. Twain translated the French version back into English.

And wrote about what he got, in

"THE JUMPING FROG

IN ENGLISH, THEN IN FRENCH, THEN
CLAWED BACK INTO A CIVILIZED
LANGUAGE ONCE MORE BY
PATIENT, UNREMUNERATED TOIL."

I get the distinct impression that Mr. Twain was not a great fan of French culture, but that's not relevant to what this post is about.

The first sentence of Twain's story, in English, as he wrote it:

"In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result...."

I know: It's longer than some paragraphs are, these days. But this is the Information Age, that was the Gilded Age. People apparently wanted to get their money's worth from a sentence back then.

The same sentence, after being translated back from the French:

"It there was one time here an individual known under the name of Jim Smiley; it was in the winter of '89, possibly well at the spring of '50, I no me recollect not exactly...."

The rest isn't much better. No wonder it bombed in France.

The title of the French version, translated back by Twain, was "THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS."

In case this post is read by a short-fused francophile, I'm aware that Mr. Twain may have been somewhat unfair in his translation. The first sentence in the French version was:

"--Il y avait, une fois ici un individu connu sous le nom de Jim Smiley: c'etait dans l'hiver de 49, peut-etre bien au printemps de 50, je ne me reappelle pas exactement...."

Which, run through the Google translator, is:

"- There was a time here an individual known by the name of Jim Smiley was in the winter of 49, maybe spring of 50, I do not exactly reappelle....."

Finally, What This Post is About - a Request For Help

I'm working out background for a story I'm setting in Japan. It started out as a spoof of (badly done) 'Manga,' with intentional glitches. There are five main characters, for starters.

I don't want to produce something that reads like that translation of Twain's story, for someone who actually understands Japanese.

The story's starting to get away from me, and seems to be changing into something else, but that's not what this post is about.

What's bothering me right now is a word. Phrase, actually.

The only language where I'd trust my story-telling skills is English. Which is okay, in this case, because my target audience is people who can read English fairly well.

So dialog and just about everything else will be in English. I know: not very authentic. But it worked for Gilbert and Sullivan in "The Mikado," so I'll chance it.

But, for 'authenticity' - and because I think it'll be cool - a few words and phrases will, I hope, be in Japanese. Sort of.

For example, there's a sort of person in the story who is called a 'well artist' or 'well maker' - "well" in the sense of a well from which you draw water. I think the phrase "ido-ka" expresses that idea.

Remember, I said "Japanese. Sort of." I can't, at this time, read Japanese characters and 'hear' words. I'm pretty sure many or most of my readers won't be able to, either. So I'm using the Latin alphabet to spell out close-enough representations of the few Japanese words and phrases I'll use.

One character will be called 'the great ido-ka,' or 'the great well-artist.' Easy enough, right?

If I really knew Japanese, yes. As it is, not so much.

I'm fairly sure that the word (phrase?) I'm looking for is 凄い.

That comes through the Google translator (the most reliable tool I've found, so far) as meaning:

Great
adjective

1. terrible
2. dreadful
3. terrific
4. amazing
5. great
6. wonderful

adverb

1. to a great extent
2. to a large extent

This is the cluster of meaning that I'm looking for.

Or maybe what I'm looking for is グレート.

My guess is that 凄い is what I want.

Just one problem: I haven't a clue what it sounds like. The Google translator will helpfully tell me what "great" sounds like in English: but I already know that.

I've tried looking up 凄い online - but unsuccessfully.

Another line of inquiry gave me "sugoi" as a word meaning terrible, dreadful, terrific, amazing, great. It's possible that 凄い is what sugoi looks like - but I can't verify that.

Given the rules I've set for myself, I'm stuck with using Romanji. (I think that's the term for Latin alphabet used to express Japanese words and phrases.)

And, one thing I don't have, yet, is a working knowledge of Japanese.

So, I've written this post and intend to solicit help from some folks I know online, who may be able to help me out. Thanks in advance.

The Questions

1. is "凄い" an appropriate word to use in a phrase like "the great ido-ka"?

2. Is "sugoi" the way 凄い is pronounced?
2a. If not, how is 凄い pronounced?

3. I think that the phrase "the great well-artist" would come out in Japanese as "sugoi ido-ka" - if my guesses are right about the meaning of those words. Is this an appropriate or 'normal' way to arrange those elements of the phrase?

Finally, I've decided that I do need to develop a working knowledge of Japanese. But that'll take time - no problem, by itself, but I want to get moving on this story in a matter of weeks, not years.

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Updated 10:55 p.m. January 11, 2010

I started a discussion thread on BlogCatalog, "Help? How Should 凄いbe Pronounced?," and got one response so far. (Thanks!)

Now, I need to turn in.

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Updated:

• "Successive Approximation and Creating a Coherent Japanese Phrase"
  (January 15, 2010)

"And Make it Look Like an Accident" - Plausible Settings for Epic Science Fiction

While preparing tomorrow morning's posts for another blog, I ran into an article about a huge cloud of hydrogen and helium in our neighborhood - 'neighborhood' on a galactic scale, anyway. Barring unforeseen circumstances and gremlins, it'll be on Apathetic Lemming of the North in about 17 hours. Look for a post titled "Our Sun and The Fluff."

There were a few intriguing points about the article I was micro-reviewing for that post, and while checking some of them out I ran into references to the Local Bubble, the Gum Nebula, and other fairly large-scale features within fifteen thousand light-years of us.

The best illustration I've found yet, as a one-stop introduction to the area immediately around our sun isn't at its original URL any more. Either that, or their server is down at the moment. I did, however, find a copy of it, with a pretty good description, here:

• "Astronomy Picture of the Day"
  a service of LHEA at NASA/GSFC & Michigan Tech. U. (February 17, 2002)
• "The Local Bubble and the Galactic Neighborhood"
  NASA Images - a service of the Internet Archive (Linda Huff (American Scientist) (April 12, 2000?)
  • This one's a zoomable version of the illustration, with links

I'm still digging around, to see if I can find a moderately large-scale event roughly 10 to 30 million years back, that left a mark like the Gum Nebula or Local Bubble: that I can make look like a serious industrial accident.

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Update (December 28, 2009)

I may be on to something here:

• "The History of the Local ISM: The Last 50 Million Years"
  Goyette, J.; Bruhweiler, F. C.; Pitts, M.; Gabel, J. - American Astronomical Society, 198th AAS Meeting, #65.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 33, p.884

Milky Way Galaxy: "You are Here"

Like yesterday's post ("Humanity Is Not the Eldest" (November 22, 2009)), This one isn't much more than a link and a few comments.

First, the link: "A Map of the Milky Way>," Atlas of the Universe.

The eye-popping feature on that page is a pretty good map/diagram of our Milky Way galaxy, showing our position, and the location of six of the arms. There's also a map of known areas of neutral and ionized hydrogen, and quite a bit of information about our home region.

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Update (November 26, 2009)

Another link: "The Structure of the Milky Way"
Gene Smith's Astronomy Tutorial
Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences, University of California, San Diego

Of interest: the Cassiopeia OB2 complex; NGC 7538 (possibly 9,100 light years away); emission nebula (H II region) Bubble Nebula/NGC 7635/Sharpless 162, (possibly 11,000 light years away).

Four Millennia of Human Nature: I Think Qoheleth is Right

Cuneiform writing is one of the oldest information storage and retrieval technologies we know of - apart from artwork left of cave walls tens of thousands of years ago. Cuneiform made it possible to record data without relying on the memory of human beings: a breakthrough in information technology.

That was about 5,000 years ago.

Roughly 4,100 years back, someone wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's almost certain that the story dates from an earlier period. We don't know about earlier versions, because they most likely were part of an oral tradition: and left no permanent record.

There was a real Gilgamesh, who lived about six centuries before the story was written. I'm not so much concerned with the historical king of Uruk as I am of the character in the story.

The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Human Condition

The title character in the Epic of Gilgamesh is rather larger-than-life: one of the sort of King Arthur/Robin Hood/Luke Skywalker types that 'serious' writers are supposed to disdain. Which is another topic.

I am not doing justice to the story, but a short-short-condensed version is this: Gilgamesh starts out as a young and powerful ruler, and an oppressive one; Anu, one of the gods, creates a sort of counterweight for Gilgamesh - Enkidu; Gilgamesh and Enkidu become friends, and Enkidu dies.

This is where it gets interesting, I think. Gilgamesh is grief-stricken at the death of his friend, and lets his life collapse. He's realized that, like Enkidu, he will die, too.

By overcoming enormous obstacles, Gilgamesh gains access to immortality: and loses it. He gains the power to become young again: and loses it.

Gilgamesh returns to his city, perhaps wiser.

Perfected Human Nature? Don't Hold Your Breath

There's a sort of science fiction story where all of humanity's ills are solved - generally by a combination of psychology, eugenics, and big machines. They've given way to the sort of post-apocalyptic dystopian story I mentioned in yesterday's post. I'm willing to recognize the potential for literary worth in either sort of story: but I'd rather do something I can regard as a bit more plausible.

Judging from the glimpse of the human experience we get in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other ancient writings, I think it's safe to say that, when it comes to people:

"What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun."
"Ecclesiastes," 1:9

That's not as hopeless as it sounds.

It's getting late, and I need (desperately) sleep. I'll have to pick this topic up on another day.

More-or-less-related posts:

• " '...Into the Future...' - Excerpt; Attitude; Comment and Theme"
  (July 3, 2009)
• "- - - 'And We're All Gonna Die!' "
  (June 30, 2009)
• "The Story of Mankind in 79 Words"
  (June 30, 2009)
• " 'The Dream' - a Short-Short Story"
  (June 28, 2009)
• "Predicting the Future: a Look at a Will Be that Was"
  (June 26, 2009)

Background:

• "Ecclesiastes," 1:9
  United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
• "The Near East"
  Exploring Ancient World Cultures,
  University of Evansville, Indiana
• "Cunieform Writing"
  Missouri State University Department of History
• "Gilgamesh"
  Washington State University

- - - 'And We're All Gonna Die!'

As associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Iris Wagman Borowsky, authored a study that hit the news yesterday.

"Challenging the notion that risky behavior reflects a youthful sense of immortality, a new study has found almost 15 percent of American teens believe they will die before age 35 -- a perspective strongly linked to risky behavior...."

"...The interviews revealed that nearly 15 percent of the teens believed they had just a 50-50 chance of living to age 35...." (Forbes)

The good news is that 85% of teens in America don't think they'll die young. Still, it's not good when one in seven make decisions based on the assumption that they've got something like 20 more years left to work with, instead of around 60, on average.

The Forbes article gives an overview of how the study was conducted, and a relatively brief discussion of why so many kids might have such a distorted view of their life expectancy, why it's a problem, and what might be done about it.

Forbes quotes Dr. Borowsky extensively. One of the things she said relates to this blog's topic.

" '...Positive media messages also play a role. These are all things that might prevent the development of a pessimistic view among youth.'..." (Forbes)

"Positive media messages" - let's look at that, in terms of how people view the future.

And the Future will Bring: Disease, Destruction, Dementia and Death?!

I was born during the Truman administration, and most of my teen years were spent in the sixties. I remember the trailing edge of a era when science and technology were presented as wonderful tools that would make the future brighter.

And I noticed when popular attitudes toward science and technology were getting back to the Mary Shelley mindset. Technology, industrial tech in particular, started being viewed as a Frankenstein monster that would turn on its creator.

As for the future: Our civilization was doomed by an impending ice age when I was in high school; by the time I graduated, a butterfly expert named Paul Ehrlich had quite a few people convinced that a sizable chunk of humanity would die horribly in the seventies and eighties, and that there wasn't anything we could do about the coming famine.

We got disco instead: which, although probably not one of the greatest achievements of western civilization, didn't actually kill all that many people.

Flame Throwers, Mutants, and Armored Dune Buggies

And, we got movies. Lots of movies:

• The Satan Bug (1965)
• The Omega Man (1971)
• Zardoz (1974)
• A Boy & His Dog (1975)
• Logan's Run (1976)
• Quintet (1979)
• Mad Max (1979)
• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
• Steel Dawn (1987)
• Hell Comes to Frogtown (1987)

And those are just the memorable ones. With the Cold War still going on, I suppose all those germ warfare or post-nuclear-holocaust movies with rampaging mutants, fiery explosions, and armor-plated dune buggies were almost inevitable. Quintet has an almost nostalgic air about it now, with it's future ice age setting.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not criticizing the movies, although they're not exactly in the same class as Citizen Kane. As entertainment, they're junk food for the mind: fun, diverting, and not a health problem, if taken in moderation.

But I think there's a tendency for movie-makers to make their fictional futures grimly dreary. Maybe they don't want their colleagues to think they're producing or directing escapist fantasies.

Think Bladerunner (1982) and Judge Dredd (1995).

It's not all doom, gloom and vile frogs in the movies since the seventies, of course.

The future of The Star Trek movies, whatever one may think of them, carried through the largely optimistic view of times to come that I think helped put the original television series on America's cultural map.

Ecological Disaster, Cancer Everywhere, Humanity is Doomed?!

The parents of today's teenagers were, for the most part, growing up when those movies were released. From somewhere in the sixties up to the present, doom and gloom weren't limited to the movie theaters. Actually, in some ways the fictional futures of Judge Dredd or Bladerunner were downright cheerful, compared to what we were told is coming.

The 'everything causes cancer' craze has been over for quite a while, replaced partly by lists of foods that cause heart attacks, and foods that prevent heart attacks. Just to keep things interesting, the lists kept changing.

It didn't matter anyway, because the coming ice age and/or nuclear Armageddon had been replaced by global warming and acid rain, and human civilization was doomed. Never mind civilization. Humanity itself may be extinct soon.

I'm overstating it, but that sort of 'and we're all gonna die' refrain seems to run through quite a few American sub-cultures.

No wonder one out of seven teens think they've got a 50-50 chance of lasting another two decades. Under the circumstances, they could be seen as optimists.

Deadly Plagues? Nuclear Armageddon? Humanity Reduced to a Handful? Been There, Done That

Like The Omega Man, I'm immune - to the hopelessness that's a characteristic of so much fiction. I think it helped, being an avid reader with a pretty good memory. After a while, I noticed that the dire predictions weren't panning out.

As a wannabe author, I'd probably reject the gloom-and-doom future on aesthetic grounds. It's an approach which may have been over-worked.

Besides, although I'm no Trekkie, I'd rather write about a fictional future that was more than one more devastated Earth.

Which reminds me of Buck Rogers (1939) and the Flash Gordon television series (1954-1955).

That'll have to wait for another day. At 934 words so far, this post is quite long: and I've got more tasks to finish today.

Related posts:

• "Predicting the Future: a Look at a Will Be that Was"
  (June 26, 2009)
• "Getting Details Right: The Vast, Huge, and Very Large City Of The Future"
  (June 25, 2009)

In the news:

• "15 Percent of U.S. Teens Think They'll Die Young"
  Forbes (June 29, 2009)

Getting Details Right: The Vast, Huge, and Very Large City Of The Future

There's a science fiction story I read in my youth, and re-read recently, in which the author paints an evocative word-picture of a City Of The Future. It is on an over-populated (what else?) Earth, where the terribly huge population will face starvation (what else?) if there is the slightest perturbation in production of food.

So far, nothing new. That sort of setting is almost standard, although it was a trifle newer fifty years ago.

Here's the problem.

The author did a fine job of describing this enormous, enclosed city, vast almost beyond imagination, layer upon layer of moving walkways, ramps, corridors - you get the idea. Huge. Enormous. Far beyond anything of our period.

More accurately, beyond anything of the period in which the author wrote.

That wonderful description of a vast city-world would work fairly well today, except for a couple of details.

The author described where it was, and told the reader how many people lived in it.

In terms of geographical extent, his super-city was almost exactly where the built-up area on the east coast is - with Washington, D.C. in the south, and New York City in the north.

And the population of American's coastal 'megalopolis' is, if memory serves, roughly the same as that of the author's super-city. Just one difference. The author very clearly indicated that his super-city was crowded with people. Really, really crowded.

Now, I understand that there's continuous urban development between Washington, D.C. and New York City: But it's not all as densely built up as the south end of Manhattan Island. And the last I checked, Jenny Craig was still making money with a weight-loss plan. Starving, Americans aren't.

And the Lesson is: Check Your Numbers

The author, who should have known better on several points, failed to do some basic math. In written science fiction, I like to think that the author did a little checking: and if there's a city of a given area, with a given population, and limited vertical development: that the 'overcrowding' or lack of same will add up.

Today's east coast megalopolis is more built up than central Minnesota, where I live: but it's not a vast enclosed labyrinth, level upon level of swarming humanity, either.

I still like the story, but now I have to work harder to get that willing suspension of disbelief.

Getting Details Right: Cityscapes

I spent part of today studying - and rejecting - a setting in a series of stories I hope to create with my oldest daughter. The period is a little over 14 centuries from now, and this specific setting is a (for the time) mid-size city.

I'd first thought of a design based on the Shimizu Corporation's proposed 'pyramid' for Tokyo Bay: an outsized space frame of struts running along the edges of a matrix of octahedrons. Like many visionary designs, the Shimizu pyramid looks very cool, requires materials that aren't available yet - at least not commercially - and, in my view, vastly underestimates how much infrastructure needs to be devoted to moving people around.

I made a pretty good start, I think, on a transportation system/building ration that looks reasonable: when I realized just how complicated the model would be.

Here's the deal: these stories are, as currently imagined, going to be comics. "Graphic novels," if you want to sound grown-up, or manga, if you're looking at some of our inspirations.

That means that, at a minimum, some of the settings will have to be drawn. And, since I plan to make heavy use of 3d modeling software, 'virtually' constructed.

I've created a moderately complex setting or two, but nothing approaching the Shimizu pyramid. Since it's an open framework, at least a rough model of the entire structure would have to be constructed.

Back to the drawing board.

I'm using some of the research I did for the pyramid: including the traffic circle and (even better) roundabout. Those systems of handling intersections are visually interesting, give a moderate degree of flexibility for 'serious' design, and could - in principle - be automated.

A real-world example of a roundabout is The Magic Roundabout in Swindon (between London and Bristol). There's a pretty good writeup about Swindon's roundabout in the Wikipedia.