State-of-the-Art Neuroscience, About Two Dozen Centuries Back

When it comes to how the universe works, what we know, what we don't know, and what we think we know that just ain't so, has changed quite a lot since information technology made it possible to 'freeze' our thoughts in somewhat permanent form. That's a span of around 5,000 years now. (August 3, 2009, January 4, 2010)

Not that everybody wrote down what they thought. Take Aristotle, son of Nichomachus, for example. He lived almost two dozen centuries ago: from about 384 to 322 BC. These days someone in his position probably specialize by studying some narrow topic. Aristotle's interests included aesthetics, biology, ethics, government, logic, morality, physics, and poetry. ("Aristotole," The Literature Network) Think Leonardo DaVinci in a chlamys.

At least some of Aristotle's books are thought to have been written by his students, from lecture notes. He wouldn't be the first professor who, although brilliant, wasn't quite up to speed on the latest information technology.

On the other hand, I've run into enough sources with phrases like "Aristotle's writings" to think that the ancient genius wrote at least some of his thoughts down, himself.

What We Know, What We Think We Know

It's a little late to have Aristotle take a standardized intelligent test, but there doesn't seem to be much doubt that he was a very smart man. He's credited with getting quite a bit of Western civilization's intellectual life started.

And he seems to have had the good sense to find out what things looked and felt like, before deciding how they worked.

Maybe you've heard that Aristotle thought the brain was a sort of radiator. That's so - sort of - although his analysis of that 'marrow' we keep in our heads was a little more complicated than that.

Considering what he had to work with, I think Aristotle did a pretty good job of analyzing the brain's function. He was wrong, but at least his model was internally consistent.

One of the facts he got right was that the brain has no sense of touch - something that makes in possible for neurosurgeons to operate on the brain of a conscious patient. On the other hand, Aristotle used that fact as a proof of what turned out to be a really wrong idea. Here's part of what Aristotle had to say about the brain:

"...That it has no continuity with the organs of sense is plain from simple inspection, and is still more clearly shown by the fact, that, when it is touched, no sensation is produced; in which respect it resembles the blood of animals and their excrement...."

Don't laugh. Aristotle wasn't stupid - but he was working near the start of Western civilization's efforts to sort out how the universe works.

Two dozen centuries from now, some of what's in your high school science textbook, and what's coming out of CERN, may look a trifle daft, too.

Science and the Speculative Fiction Writer

There's a broad range of approaches to incorporating 'real' science into speculative fiction - from 'science? what science?' to old-school 'hard' science fiction, where the authors seemed more interested in practical applications of what was in the latest science quarterly, than delving into empires of the mind.

I'd just as soon write stories with more-or-less 'real' science: but I like full-bore fantasy, too. As far as I'm concerned, it's 'author's choice,' an aesthetic preference.

That said, the example of Aristotle may give me a lot more wiggle room for my 'real' science, than you might think.

There's an excerpt from one of Aristotle's books at the end of this post, a sort of introduction to his discussion of the brain. His analysis was wrong - but quite a few of his supporting facts were spot-on.

The lesson here, I think, is that someone who's making up 'future science' has a lot of room for the imagination to roam. Me? I'm going to make an effort to see to it that the 'future science' doesn't depend on what we can observe being different. In other words, if rocks fall up in the 36th century: there better be a really good explanation for why they don't now.

Back to Aristotle. His analysis was wrong - but not as much as it may seem. The brain looks like marrow, it feels cold, and it really doesn't have a sense of touch - it so it won't respond when prodded. At least, not in a way that Aristotle - or whoever supplied him with his data - could have observed.

Here's that excerpt:

"Parts of Animals Book II – (Brain)"
Aristotle (English translation), via Alexandra Cuffel (Medieval History), Macalester College

"From the marrow we pass on in natural sequence to the brain. For there are many who think that the brain itself consists of marrow, and that it forms the commencement of that substance, because they see that the spinal marrow is continuous with it. In reality the two may be said to be utterly opposite to each other in character. For of all the parts of the parts of the body there is none so cold as the brain;whereas the marrow is of a hot nature, as is plainly shown by its fat and greasy character. Indeed this is the very reason why the brain and spinal marrow are continuous with each other. For, wherever the action of any part is in excess nature so contrives as to set by it another part with an excess of contrary action, so that the excesses of the two may counterbalance each other. Now that the marrow is hot is clearly shown by many indications The coldness of the brain is also manifest enough even to the touch; and, secondly, of all the fluid parts of the body it is the driest and the one that has the least blood; for in fact it gas no blood at all in its proper substance. Thus brain is not residual matter, nor yet is it one of the parts which are continuous with each but it has a character peculiar to itself, as might indeed be expected. That it has no continuity with the organs of sense is plain from simple inspection, and is still more clearly shown by the fact, that, when it is touched, no sensation is produced; in which respect it resembles the blood of animals and their excrement. The purpose of its presence in animals is no less than the preservation of the whole body. For some writers assert that the soul is fire or some such force. This, however, is but a crude assertion; and it would perhaps be better to say that the soul is incorporate in some substance of a fiery character. The reason for this being so is that of all substances there is none so suitable for ministering to the operations of the soul as that which is possessed of heat. For nutrition and the imparting of motion are offices of the soul, and it is by heat that these are most readily a acted. To say then that the soul is fire is much the same thing as to confound the auger or the saw with the carpenter or his craft, simply because the work is done when the two are near one another...."

Alien Life will Most Likely be - Alien

---

"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

Dinosaurs, Ancient Astronauts, and All That

Mix dinosaurs, ancient astronauts, a dash of paleontology and a handful of imagination. Shake well. It's been done before, but the K-T boundary has been in the news again.

Besides, I haven't got much else to write about today: and I'm scheduled to post something on this blog today.

The Chicxulub Consensus May Not Last Long

First, the news and background, all from Space.com:

• "Rock Solid Link: Asteroid Doomed the Dinosaurs"
  (March 4, 2010)
• "Dinosaur-Killing Firestorm Theory Questioned"
  (December 28, 2009)
• "New Dino-destroying Theory Fuels Hot Debate"
  (October 18, 2009)

More background:

• "Giant impact near India - not Mexico - may have doomed dinosaurs"
  Geology Times (October 17, 2009)
• "Basinward transport of Chicxulub ejecta by tsunami-induced backflow, La Popa basin, northeastern Mexico, and its implications for distribution of impact-related deposits flanking the Gulf of Mexico"
  Geology (February 2005)
• "The Chicxulub Crater - Effects"
  The Palaeobiology and Biodiversity Research Group, University of Bristol (undated?)

Excerpt:

"A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen. And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago.

"Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University and a team of researchers took a close look at the massive Shiva basin, a submerged depression west of India that is intensely mined for its oil and gas resources. Some complex craters are among the most productive hydrocarbon sites on the planet. Chatterjee will present his research at this month's Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon.

" 'If we are right, this is the largest crater known on our planet,' Chatterjee said. 'A bolide of this size, perhaps 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter creates its own tectonics.'

"By contrast, the object that struck the Yucatan Peninsula, and is commonly thought to have killed the dinosaurs was between 8 and 10 kilometers (5 and 6.2 miles) wide...."
(Geology Times (October 17, 2009))

It's early days, but my guess is that that international consensus reported in Space.com (March 4, 2010) is already starting to fray around the edges. That's not a criticism: We've known about the Chicxulub event for decades, and this Shiva crater seems to be a relatively new find.

What jumped out at me was the apparent coincidence: Two major impact events happening almost simultaneously (maybe), on the geologic time scale.

Let's say that the a five-mile wide hunk of rock, and another one 25 miles across hit Earth at almost the same time - on a historic time scale.

When All Else Fails, Throw Rocks

Dinosaurs and the other big critters on Earth, 65,000,000-plus years ago, don't seem to have been as consistently dim-witted as we once imagined them: But I think it'd snap the willing suspension of disbelief to write a story where they were as smart as we are. Not if the story was supposed to be even vaguely serious.

I'm about as certain as I can be that whatever long shot may have happened when the K-T boundary was created was a natural event.

On the other hand, what if it wasn't.

I know: It's been done. In a Dr. Who two-parter, "Earthshock" (1982), for example. That time the blast was caused by a spaceship hitting Earth.

There are many other options, of course.

Let's try this on for size:

The war had begun long before. Neither side was willing - or able - to surrender. And neither side had a significant advantage over the other: hardly surprising, as they were both descended from the same people. Not that either side's leaders would admit that this was the case.

They had established rules of conduct for the conflict. Both had found that people - intelligent races - were a rare phenomenon. Both believed that intelligence was important, although they differed on how it should be applied.

And so they agreed that their war would not be a threat to any people they might find.

Each side were, in their own way, quite ethical.

Which made the current situation so revolting.

A warm, damp planet had recently been found. It was virtually useless to both sides: The climate was not within their comfort range, and lacked the aesthetic appeal they demanded of their homes.

Besides, even if they had wanted to do so, neither side could settle there. An exploration team had found - not people, but creatures which showed great promise of developing intelligence.

So the planet was declared off limits.

The star this planet circled, however, was ideally positioned for one side to use as a - let's call it a "listening post." Such an installation could easily be placed in orbit around any of the star's planets, or in orbit around the star itself.

Instead, they built installations on a planet. The warm, damp one. Two installations, actually, near the equator but on opposite sides of the planet.

This was a brazen violation of a long-standing agreement: but the installations remained. They had been made self-sufficient, and so blockade was out of the question. They had defenses which were more than adequate to repel the largest force that their enemy could mount.

And the installations were gathering valuable information, which could easily break the long stalemate.

Something had to be done.

Finally, in desperation, the side which was now losing assembled a vast fleet and took control of the space around the damp planet's star. Then diverted two asteroids toward the damp planet, after mounting a formidable defense system on both.

The two installations could have destroyed any missiles directed against them, and were effectively protected from directed-energy weapons by the damp planet's atmosphere, and their own shielding.

The designers of the installations had even built adaptive intelligence into their defenses, so that as the enemy developed more sophisticated weapon systems, the installations could develop more sophisticated defenses.

The designers had not foreseen that the enemy would throw large rocks.

The larger of the two projectiles was already blasting a crater in the planet's surface while its remaining defenses, on the 'upper' side, were neutralizing a formation of missiles directed on its smaller companion.

Both installations were destroyed, of course.

The war ended not long after.

A few research teams returned to the damp planet. Most of the species which their predecessors had cataloged were gone. The researchers studied what was left, made their reports, and moved on to other tasks.

After a while the researchers stopped coming. Some life remained on the planet, small scurrying things which had somehow survived the twin cataclysms: but the species which had shown so much promise was gone, along with - as far as the researchers could tell - all similar creatures.

New creatures emerged, and changed as the damp planet turned cold. Several species of strange animals which could grasp branches with all four feet developed. One of these moved out of the forest, walking on its rear hands: which had lost most of their grasping function.

In time the descendants of this species chipped Troodon fossils out of rocks which had been sand and mud when incandescent waves of rock engulfed lands around the now-forgotten installations.

Okay: It's Not Shakespeare

Troodons were smart, sort of: probably about as bright as an ostrich. And they had hands. Again, sort of.

No, I do not think they were people. But there could be people built along the same general lines. We might find that we're the oddballs among this galaxy's races.

Assuming that there are any besides us, of course.

Which is another topic.

Artificially Enhanced Human Beings: That's So 20th Century

Many GEICO commercials play with a disconnect between the (once) popular notion that "cavemen" were "primitive" - and what we've been learning about people who lived before some maniac got the bright idea of planting seeds and waiting for them to grow.



For example, about 800,000 years ago people in one place, at least, lived in a place with a distinct kitchen. Granted, it didn't have a GE Energy Star Dishwasher: but the residence had areas for specific functions like food preparation.

The people who lived there most likely looked a bit like the fellow in that picture. We call folks like him Homo Erectus, and around 1,000,000 years ago our ancestors almost certainly looked a bit like that.

I'm not bothered by the idea - but then, I've seen old family photos. I look a bit like my ancestors: but not quite. For example, on the Campbell side, we lost the characteristic 'wry mouth' several generations back.

Change happens.

The more we learn about our distant ancestors, the more like us they seem - in my opinion. As I wrote in another blog, about that stone age kitchen:

"...But - human? Pretty much like me, basically? I don't see why I shouldn't think so. Their brains were between half and two thirds as massive as ours, on average, but that archeological dig shows that they may have thought more-or-less the same way we do.

That artist's impression doesn't look 'human?' I'm not so sure. You're not likely to see that expression in people's photos today, outside supermarket tabloids, but think of him saying something like, "you want three rocks? You carry one!"

Or, "whaddaya mean, they only come in green or gray?!"..."
(Apathetic Lemming of the North)

Eugenics: It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time

For decades after World War II ended, the idea of replacing most of us with superior human beings was 'well known' to have been the work of those nasty German Nazis.

Since by then many people seemed to realize that they weren't on the 'preferred' list, improving the race wasn't a very popular concept. In fact, if you were around then, or your parents were, your skin may have crawled when you read "Nazis" and "improving the race."

It hasn't always been that way.

Right up until the national socialist party in Germany started 'improving' the human race - arguably, until places like Auschwitz and Dachau hit the news - applying modern science and Victorian ideals to weed out inferior classes and pep up the race seemed like a really good idea.

At least among well-bred, educated Englishmen and their cousins in America.

Science fiction written before WWII had quite a number of examples of what the new-and-improved human race would be like:

"...Over all, John comes across as a sort of socialist version of the Nietzschean ideal with a couple of the rougher edges rubbed off. In other words, human morality has no call on him, but he occasionally feels mild guilt. This is supposed to indicate his superior moral plane, but he comes across more as an odious, amoral little tick. Stapledon assumes that human superiority over lesser animals is quantitative rather than qualitative. In other words, we enjoy our position over the animals because we have more of some quantity called intelligence rather than some unique quality; be it sentience, self-awareness, or an immortal soul.

"Or to be blunt about it, morality is something shared between the strong and denied to the weak.

"Because of this, Stapledon's supermen are allowed to rob from, seduce, exploit, manipulate, dispossess, and even murder 'lesser' people when they get in the way of the supermen's plans due to the higher moral need to advance the interests of the master race. This sort of an argument has an unfortunate track record and Stapledon could just get away with this in the '30s. In less than ten years, however, a certain group of would-be supermen put such ideas into practice and the world is still trying to wash the taste out of its mouth...."
(Tales of Future Past > Future Man > "Odd John")

'It Can't Happen Here?' Don't be Too Sure

The word "eugenics" still hasn't quite regained the panache it had before the forties: but the idea is back. Phrases like "quality of life" are used: but the same old approach of eliminating the unfit is there. Except now it's for 'benevolent' reasons.

I don't think killing people who don't live up to some standard of physical perfection is a good idea. But then, I'm one of those defective products of conception that aren't living a quality lifestyle. Being used in a medical experiment didn't help - but that's another story. (A Catholic Citizen in America (February 3, 2009))

Defective or not, on the whole I prefer being alive to the alternative.

What's With All the Quotes?

I've started using David S. Zondy's Tales of Future Past website as a reference and resource. Partly because he's done a marvelous job of bringing together vintage science fiction virtual memorabilia and ideas. Partly because he seems to see the world in roughly the same way I do.

I don't want to shock anyone, but I think that the physical world is real, not an illusion; that God exists; that some things are moral and others aren't; and that people have souls. And I want to write speculative fiction?!

Back to Mr. Zondy and making supermen. He wrote an uncharacteristically serious few paragraphs about eugenics:

"...One of the obvious ways of producing your superman is one that was taken so seriously in the last century that it was actually tried. Ever since the basic ideas of Darwin and the mechanism of genetics were understood, the idea popped into the mind of Sir Francis Galton that what can be done to dogs and pigeons can be done to men, so if you want to create Homo Superior, why not simply breed human beings selectively?

"This wasn't just idle speculation, he was dead serious and many a philanthropist, scholar, scientist, businessman, and politician became determined advocates of improving the lot of the human race by making sure that the 'best' of the breed intermarried while the sick, feeble-minded, and generally undesirable were prevented from reproducing...."

"...Needless to say, Auschwitz and the Nuremburg trials put paid to the Eugenics movement and gave the world a very stern lesson of what happens when you stop seeing people as children of God and more as laboratory animals.

"What is even more frightening is that we have been so slow in learning our lesson and so quick to forget it. We've made great strides in medicine, particularly in genetic research, but in doing so we have reached the point where we are in danger of doing far more harm than good. If not to our bodies, then to our souls. Our society is tampering with things such as contraceptives, fertility drugs, genetic engineering, selective abortion, infant euthanasia, in vitro fertilisation, designer babies, and artificial insemination with so little real discussion of the ethics of what we're doing that we face a very real risk of one day turning 'round and discovering that we are not becoming genetic supermen, but moral monsters...."
(Tales of Future Past > Future Man > "Eugenics")

The Importance of [Not] Being Earnest

Stories where the author has a Point To Make and hits readers over the head with it are as likely to stir my stomach as my heart. Dreadfully earnest stories happen so often that Television Tropes & Idioms has a whole page about being "Anvilicious."

Not that I think there should be no message in a story. Even if it's as basic as 'don't mess with the big guy's wife until you're sure he's dead.' Homer's Odysseus / Ulysses wouldn't have had quite as exciting an ending, if the war hero hadn't cleaned house at the end in a style worthy of Arnold Schwarzenegger's action heroes.

And, as another page in Television Tropes & Idioms puts it: "Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped." Think Aesop's Fables.

The trick, I think, is finding a balance. How? Having somebody else read the story isn't the daftest approach.

I may drop a few anvils as I go along: but I'll try to be careful about it. Apart from artistic and aesthetic considerations, I don't think it's generally the best way to make a point.

Mutants, Cyborgs and Meddling With God's Handiwork

I think Mr. Zondy is right on at least one point: particularly with the sort of power that people have these days, we should think about the ethics of what we do: not just whether or not we feel like doing it.

On the other hand, I don't have a problem with Man Tampering With Nature. In my view, that's what we do, just by being human. We've come a long way from weaving cloth and knapping hide scrapers: but we were messing with 'the natural order of things' long before we started selecting which seeds to use for the next crop.

Isn't It Different With People?

Even if I didn't feel like it, I'd have to be concerned with cruelty to animals. It's in the rules (A Catholic Citizen in America (August 17, 2009))

I'm even more concerned with cruelty to people. I don't think people should be bought, sold, or killed - even if it's for personal profit or convenience. And the way I view the world, the stakes go up when the person is helpless. But I'm getting off-topic.

What About Cyborgs: Those Inhuman Amalgams of Man and Machine?

Don't expect me to be too upset about mixing a human being's original equipment and artificial add-ons and replacements. I'm focusing on the monitor right now with clip-on lenses, My hands and wrists have been surgically altered, quite a few of my teeth have metal parts, I've got two metal hip sockets, and my belly's got plastic mesh in it. Even my brain's been altered, chemically, to clear up some glitches.

And I'm okay with that: I haven't messed with anything that was working smothly in the first place. What's been done to me since about age four has been better described as "repairing" than "tampering."

These models who get surgically altered to match some current fashion: that's dubious, in my view.

It's Just Starting to Get Interesting

I've read that Intel has announced a neural interface, due for release around 2020. (Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 2, 2009)) Some of the obvious applications for that sort of technology is people who've suffered brain injuries from stroke or accidents. That, I think, is a very promising development.

The technology will, of course, be misused. People misuse things sometimes. We've killed each other with rocks. My guess is that somebody's going to use those brain chips in ways that'll make what happened at Auschwitz look like a Sunday social. You think we've got problems with malware now?!

But that doesn't make rocks bad: or brain chips. We've cobbled together rules for how to use rocks, and I'm pretty sure we can do the same with brain chips.

We may not be quite the same as we were when we learned how to knap flint: But I don't think we've gotten any stupider.

If At First You Don't Succeed - - -

As a rule, I think persistence is a good idea. But like just about every other human characteristic, it can be misapplied.

The national socialist party's efforts to clean up their gene pool and make room for a master race had unpleasant consequences. I don't think anybody's going to try that approach again.

But the idea of 'perfecting' humanity is so appealing to many, I don't think it'll go away. I'm also pretty sure that someone's going to try again. And again, and again.

The more spectacular blowouts, like what happened in Germany around the 1940s, may put a moratorium on most efforts for a few decades. But too many people are too convinced that humanity would be so much better - if only 'improvements' were made - that I think we're likely going to see superman projects now and again for the foreseeable future.

Some of what I've read about - like making repairs at the genetic level to eradicate conditions like leukemia - seem to make sense. How they should be implemented: that's where things get interesting.

Meanwhile, superman factories and people who think they've evolved beyond good and evil will provide a writer of speculative fiction a warehouse of material.

Some of which I've already used:

• "Birthright"
  (February 19, 2010)

Vaguely-related posts:

• "Etched Ostrich Eggs and Being Human"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 3, 2010)
• "Homo Erectus, Kitchens, and Human (Pre)History"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 21, 2009)
• "Next-Generation Prosthetic Hand - and Intel Says Direct Neural Interface Brain Chips by 2020"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 2, 2009)
• "Tofu Turkeys, Genetically Altered Foods, and the Evil Eye"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (November 14, 2009)
• "Hard Science Fiction, Cultural Blinders and Laban's Sheep"
  (October 29, 2009)
• "Animals: Yeah, the Catholic Church has Rules About Them, Too"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (August 17, 2009)
• "Dinosaurs, Mutant Chickens, Evolution, and Faith in God"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (June 29, 2009)
• "Medical Ethics and Human Experimentation: Why I Take it Personally"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (February 3, 2009)
• "Human Clones Possible: Don't Worry, They're Just for Parts and Research"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (February 2, 2009)

Well, That's Interesting: Burges Shale Creatures

Science fiction/speculative fiction writers have played with the idea of space aliens that don't look all that much like us. There are a few approaches, including the intriguing but relatively uninformative 'too strange for the merely human mind to grasp.'

I've been trying to find plausible body plans for people who aren't human: Olaf Stapledon's "Star Maker" was a reasonably good starting place.

Then there are the creatures of the Cambrian. Some of the strangest fossils from this period come the Burgess Shale. We don't know whether critters on Earth these days don't, as a rule, have five eyes because pairs of eyes work better - or whether opabinia regalis isn't the ancestor of more creatures for reasons unrelated to it's strange-looking head.

So far, I've come up with fifteen plausible body plans - most of which are quite familiar, including the one which was used for millions of years by the bipedal dinosaurs.

But I've got the idea that I've missed something. So today I went back online and checked out a few websites that discuss the Burgess Shale. And other Cambrian fossil finds.

"Early Fauna"
Western Carolina University

• 3+ billion years – life forms
  • cyanobacteria (blue green algae) – very early
  • changed atmosphere – generate oxygen

This page seems to be a resource for a class or classes at Western Carolina University. The style is terse, but there are quite adequate illustrations - and a pretty good presentation of the questions raised by these fossils.

More:

"The Burgess Shale Fauna"
Smithsonian / National Museum of Natural History

"Although the Cambrian Explosion is largely associated with animals having hard shells, the soft-bodied biota also diversified during this period. The Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale fauna, discovered by Charles Walcott in 1909, in British Columbia, Canada, provides a rare glimpse of Cambrian soft-bodied animals. This fauna is especially important because the fossil record is biased toward organisms having hard parts. Another famous soft-bodied occurrence is the Chengjiang Fauna, of...."

It's one page of a section on the Cambrian era. No illustrations, more useful for outlining what to look for elsewhere.

There are links to pages with text and photos, but they load in pop-up windows that won't display properly if you don't have the kind of browser and system that the Smithsonian thinks you should. (I don't.) For example, one pop-up about Hallucigenia sparsa is cut off in mid-sentence, with the best work-around I found.

Nice artwork, though.


(screen capture from the Smithsonian, used w/o permission)

The top of the pop-up displayed find: but I'd have to go in and try re-coding the source, to see what's at the bottom. That, or either adjust or replace my system.

Related posts:

• "The Coconut Crab: No, It's Not From a Science Fiction Movie"
  (September 25, 2009)
• "Hurdia Victoria: Cambrian Supercritter of the Burgess Shale"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 20, 2009)

Well, That's Interesting: The Evolution of Galaxies

This might be part of the explanation for why the Galactic Federation of Grooviness hasn't visited us - and why there's so remarkably little evidence that ALF has a real-life counterpart.

"Today's Spiral Galaxies Were Once the Ugly Ducklings"
Space.com (February 8, 2010)

"Beautiful spiral galaxies grew out of odd shapes that astronomers say were the ugly ducklings of the early universe.

"It's long been assumed that galaxies grow over time, and shapes change. But the main construction phase for many modern galaxies was thought to have occurred close to the beginning of time, the first few billion years after the theoretical Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

"Contrary to this conventional view, nearly half of the spiral galaxies of today, like our Milky Way, had peculiar shapes just 6 billion years ago — more recently than had been thought, the study found.

"If confirmed, the finding highlights the importance to many galaxies of collisions and mergers in the recent past. It also provides clues for the unique status of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, researchers said in a statement...."

"...Although our own galaxy is a spiral galaxy, it seems to have been spared much of the drama; its formation history has been rather quiet and it has avoided violent collisions in astronomically recent times. However, the large Andromeda Galaxy from our neighbourhood has not been so lucky and fits well into the 'spiral rebuilding' scenario. Researchers continue to seek explanations for this."

Short version of the article: There were a whole lot more "peculiar" galaxies 6,000,000,000 years ago than there are now. Right around that time, apparently, something happened and the universe started having a whole bunch of spiral galaxies like the one we're in.

Except that ours seems to have had less of the violent activity that normally happened.

By coincidence(?), our sun and Earth formed roughly 4,500,000,000 years back - after the spiral-making events had started.

Maybe it really was a coincidence, with no cause-effect linkage. Or, maybe (really, at our current level of ignorance, this is all pretty much speculation) the universe hadn't gone though the processes it takes for sticky stuff on a wet ball of metal and rock to grow from things wriggling in tidal basins to us - until fairly recently.

With a 1,500,000,000 year lag time, there'd still be room for some seriously old races to be around.

Who knows, maybe that fellow in the magazine was right: and we haven't met E.T. because everybody dies off. Right after reaching the awful, terrible, wasteful and (here comes a frightfully important word) unsustainable level we awful, terrible, wasteful humans are at.

I'm not all that worried, myself. But then, I'm aware that human beings stopped being "sustainable" on Earth when some maniac got the idea of poking seeds in the ground and waiting for them to grow into plants we can eat.

The way I figure it, we're at least 1,000 times over the absolute maximum sustainable limit of this planet. That's assuming that homo sapiens sapiens is strictly and only an opportunistic omnivore, with adults weighing somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty pounds.

Anyway: That article on galactic evolution was interesting.

Aliens, Facial Expressions, Fear and Diplomacy

Let's say you're in that classic science-fiction scenario: first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.

And, let's say that both you and the alien are (mostly) biological creatures. It's not the only option: (January 26, 2010)

Watching shows like the Star Trek series, you might get the impression that the first steps in communications shouldn't be too hard. Your Universal Translator might have some trouble with the language for the first minute or two, you could at least tell how the alien felt about you.

Not necessarily.

Long before Star Trek, R. A. Heinlein and others were writing about humanity's first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Robert Anson Heinlein had a reputation - deserved - for having done the math in his science fiction stories. He understood transfer orbits, and what rocket-driven spaceships can - and can't - do.

He also used his head, when depicting people who weren't human. For example, in one novel he'd set up a situation where representatives from three galaxies' worth of aliens were all in one room, conducting a trial. The novel's focus character was listening to someone who had anger management issues, and observing the other people.

"...I could not tell how the invective affected them. The girl creature was taking it quietly, but what can you say about a walrus thing with octopus arms? If he twitches, is he angry? Or laughing? Or itches where the twitch is?..."
("Have Space Suit - Will Travel" R. A. Heinlein (1958) Charles Scribner's Sons, chapter 10/page 238)

It might be hard to tell if an alien was laughing, or "itches where the twitch is" - until you learned which twitches meant what, and which were just twitches.

There isn't even a guarantee that your 'first contact' alien would use the face for most emotional communication. The human face can - and does - express a huge range of emotions. And the basic human expressions are the same, all around the world. (Apathetic Lemming of the North (January 28, 2010))

What, if Anything, Can We Expect From Aliens?

For starters, assuming that they move around, they'll most likely have something like a face. Sessile people, built along the lines of sea anemones, might not. And, there are starfish.

For the most part, though, animals that move have a fairly well-defined front end: with sense organs, mouth, and brain in front. Even some animals with radial symmetry, like squid and octopi, have their brain, eyes and mouth at one end.

So, if you meet E.T., the alien will probably have eyes (if any), ears (probably), and other sense organs like whiskers at the end that's facing you.

And, if the first thing the alien does after spotting you is open it's eyes, mouth and anything else at that end: I'd suggest that you make no sudden movements, and be quite gentle about any sounds you make.

The alien is, almost certainly, scared. And frightened people may act rashly.

Fear and Disgust May Look the Same on Everybody

"Why a scared expression brings a survival advantage"
New Scientist (June 15, 2008)

"You wrinkle your nose and squint when you see a dead rat in the road, but open your eyes, nose and mouth wide when you see a live one in your bedroom.

"Why? Common facial expressions like disgust and fear, new research suggests, do more than just convey how you are feeling - they alter your sensory relationship to the world around you...."

"...The open eyes allowed quicker detection of objects on the periphery, as well as faster eye movements back and forth, while an open nose took in more air with each breath without any extra effort. An MRI scan confirmed the difference in the space in the nasal cavity.

" 'These changes are consistent with the idea that fear, for example, is a posture towards vigilance,' says [University of Toronto, Canada's, Joshua] Susskind, 'and disgust a posture towards sensory rejection.'..."

(from New Scientist, used w/o permission)
No translation needed.

So, if the alien's mouth dropped open, and the eyes got a whole lot wider: the alien may be deciding, none too calmly, whether it's safer to run away - or incinerate you on the spot.

Note to inter-species diplomats - do not, no matter what, squint or wrinkle your nose. The alien most likely won't appreciate it. At all. Would you?

"Why a scared expression brings a survival advantage"

newscientistvideo, YouTube (June 13, 2008)

"...Research at the University of Toronto shows how facial expressions can affect our sensory capability"

Related posts:

• "Human Faces, Emotions, and Socialization (Caution! Geeky Content!)"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (January 28, 2010)
• "HAL 9000, Skynet, and C3PO"
  (January 26, 2010)
• "Earth May Not Be a 'Class M'" Planet"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 5, 2009)
• " 'All We Want is Peace and Quiet' - Another Look at the Mind of the Alien"
  (December 9, 2009)
• "Timing is Everything"
  (October 7, 2009)

Background:

• "Why a scared expression brings a survival advantage"
  New Scientist (June 15, 2008)
• "Facial Expression of Emotion as a Means of Socialization"
  David R. Heise, Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, Electronic Social Psychology (1985)

Creativity, Research, and Finding a Cool Name That's Not Been Used

I've been developing technobabble for a few stories. Set about 1,500 years from now, the characters will be using devices that definitely aren't off-the-shelf hardware today.

One of the technologies is a sort of warp drive. Not the Star Trek or Star Wars thing: more like what we might have, if Mexican/Welsh physicist Michael Alcubierre's equations describe something that would actually work. Which, the last I heard, is still a matter of debate.

My guess is that he's on to something. The specifics of his approach to moving a pocket of space-time through the rest of the continuum may not be quite on-target, but it's an idea that's good enough for a story.

A prediction, while I'm thinking of it. Not a particularly startling one, given the nature of humanity. If/when we get to the point where someone's building a prototype warp drive: we'll see a replay of the fuss that's surrounded CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The familiar old 'and we're all gonna die' stuff.

Cool Name: And, Confound it, it's been Used!

Assuming that Alcubierre's warp drive could be built, the thing would require unreasonable amounts of power. The energy requirements are literally astronomical.

For a story, I don't see that as a problem: except that I need to remember that whatever the power source is: it better not be anything that's even close to being developed now.

Think of a story where an airliner gets its power from a pair of oxen turning a wheel, and you see what I'm talking about. Oxen are great sources of energy: but strong as they are, their energy output isn't enough for air travel.

Although - no, I'm going to stay on-topic.

I came up with a dandy name for the power source of warp ships: "cascade generator." It sounds cool, and isn't something that's used now.

Strike that. I did a quick search, and - "cascade generators" are either in development or actually in use in accelerators. Today. ("Travelling wave cascade generator - A new high-voltage source for accelerators," letters to the editor, E M Balabanov et al 1962 J. Nucl. Energy, Part C Plasma Phys. 4 65-67)

The term is also used by a few people who either think they're inventing a sort of perpetual motion machine - or want others to think they are.

Now I have to decide whether to use the term "cascade generator" anyway - or think up something else.

Odds are pretty good that I'll look for an alternative. I really don't want to invoke 21st century technology.

Related post:

• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  (August 25, 2009)
• "Warp Drive Might Not Be Stable: Physcisists Take Another look at Alcubierre's Work"
  (June 12, 2009)
• "LHC Peril! Large Hadron Collider Black Hole Will Eat Earth!! - or, Not"
  (January 27, 2009)

---

Update (January 21, 2010)

Wikipedia isn't always the most reliable resource. The 'what do you want reality to be' encyclopedia is, though, cleaning up its act: quite a number of articles now have citations. In other words, people and organizations with reputations to lose are listed as sources for facts and opinions. It's an improvement.

Getting back on topic, I looked through the "Topology" page, and ended up with these interesting - and possibly useful for me - words and phrases:

• Hausdorff space
  • Hausdroff generators??
• Clopen set
  • "In topology, a clopen set (or closed-open set, a portmanteau word) in a topological space is a set which is both open and closed."
    (Wikipedia: Clopen set)
  • I like it

A Science Fiction Ghost Story?! Why Not?

I was born during the Truman administration, in America, and have spent the vast bulk of my life in that country. I learned that a few subcultures believe, firmly, that only the material world is real - and that everybody who doesn't agree with them is narrow-minded, intolerant, and stupid.

Quite a lot of science fiction/speculative fiction is written by people who fervently, vehemently, want materialism to be so. And some is written by people with an (occasionally odd) set of ideas about spirituality.

I'm not a particularly "spiritual" person - in one sense of the word. I don't go around seeing things that nobody else can see, or buttonholing people and asking, "ARE YOU SAVED?!" (More, about what I believe, in A Catholic Citizen in America - yeah, I'm one of those people)

On the other hand, I'm not affronted by some of the assumptions behind poems like this:

"Antigonish"
William Hughes Mearns (1899)

"Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away

"When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door

"Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away"
("Hughes Mearns," Boston University School of Theology)

I've read that the poem was: "Inspired by reports of a ghost of a man roaming the stairs of a haunted house in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada...." ("Antigonish (poem)")

I like some ghost stories, don't assume that every haunted house has some supernatural aspect, but don't assume that a haunted house can't be haunted, either.

And I like some stories that I'll call 'anti-ghost' stories. The best-known examples are probably the old "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" cartoons, where 'those meddling kids' unmask the apparently-supernatural goings-on as the work of some scalawag. Hanna Barbera didn't create that sort of plot, though. A number of the John Dickson Carr (not John le Carré) mysteries were of this sort. And so, in a way, is part of Daniel 14.

Then, there's the sort of story where there's an apparently-supernatural event. Like a "locked room" problem with no apparent solution. The detective (or elderly spinster, teenage sleuths, whatever) finally arrives at a perfectly logical (read: secular, material) explanation. Sometimes with a sort of 'Whew! it looked like there was a real ghost/vampire/werewolf/whatever!' Then, on the last page of the last chapter, the ghost/vampire/werewolf/whatever appears. Or - in one case - wrote the closing comments.

'Obviously,' You Can't Write a Science Fiction Ghost Story

My guess is that you'd have trouble getting a science fiction ghost story published in any of the traditional sci-fi magazines. Not events that weren't part of the preferred reality of strict secular materialists as part of the plot.

"Obviously," that's not science fiction.

Well, if you define "science fiction" as being fiction with an exclusively materialistic, secular worldview that deals with science and society: yeah, then by definition there could be no science fiction ghost stories.

But, if "science fiction" were defined as a story "literary fantasy involving the imagined impact of science on society" (Princeton's WordNet), then there just might be room for a spook story or two.

It'd probably be pegged as "fantasy," though. (There's a pretty good discussion of fantasy, science fiction, and the vibrating gray line between them on the tvtropes.org website: "Science Fiction Versus Fantasy" - Don't be fooled, that 'versus' is used more in the 'compared with' sense)

How Could Anyone Possibly Write a Science Fiction Ghost Story, Anyway?

There's an old cartoon: some mechanics are standing a few paces away from a car, eyeing it tensely. The foreman's talking to the car's owner, saying something like, "the boys think there's an evil spirit in the clutch housing. We've called an exorcist."

Evil Spirit in the Clutch Housing?!

Science - technology, anyway - is there: the car. The impact of science/technology on society is there - the mechanics, the foreman: by implication, the whole socioeconomic impact the automobile had on American society in the 20th century. And who knows? Maybe there really is an evil spirit in the clutch housing.

I doubt it, though.

I think one problem that most Americans, anyway, have in taking anything supernatural seriously is that so many got their theological instruction from movies like "Ghost Rider" (2007). But that's another topic, for another blog.

That 'evil spirit in the clutch housing' cartoon was a joke - and intended to be that.

Let's look at some other possibilities.

Are Robots/Androids/Clones People?

There's the obvious, and old, 'are robots/androids people?' thing. Or, more immediately, 'do clones have souls?' I suspect that the American judicial system will decide they don't - otherwise, using clones for parts and research would be illegal. I'm one of those people - so I go with the Catholic Church's teaching: Yes, clones are people; and they have souls. (February 2, 2009, in another blog)

I'll admit that I'm not quite as "scientific" about the lofty ideals of humanity's best minds and the right they have to do pretty much what they want to with inferior classes. Being a survivor of a medical experiment may have something to do with that. ("Medical Ethics and Human Experimentation: Why I Take it Personally" A Catholic Citizen in America (February 3, 2009))

The Haunted Computer

This is pretty much the same approach as the "are robots/androids people?" story question: but it's a bit closer to home.

And, it's been done: "Colossus: The Forbin Project" (1970); "Terminator" movies' Skynet (1984 and following); Kôkaku kidôtai (1995) (that's rōmaji for "Ghost in the Shell"). Those are the ones that are, in my opinion, a cut or two above the 'mad scientist invents berserk robot which is blown up by handsome scientist' things.

Colossus and Skynet are (barely) plausible speculations of what might happen if a massively networked computer system 'woke up.' "Ghost in the Shell"? I've only encountered that as an English-dubbed animation. That series was, again in my opinion, well-done and technically plausible. And, a great deal more thoughtful about the inner workings of the mind than most "serious" science fiction.

Here's an idea I don't take all that seriously - but it could make a seriously spooky story.

A team of programmers and information technology specialists produce a system that exhibits artificial intelligence. Their brainchild is even able to pass the Turing Test: responding to input in a way that's indistinguishable from a human's responses.

Impressive, to say the least. The team becomes famous.

The system is even developing a personality - a very obliging one. It's ever so eager to solve problems, give advice, and fulfill the deepest desires of the team members.

Think 'Colossus meets Faust.'

Pleasant dreams.

Related posts:

• " 'If you must see ghosts ...' Materialism, Being Spiritual, and Uncle Deadly"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (December 18, 2009)
• "Fear, Assumptions, Facts and Ghosts"
  (October 22, 2009)
• "The Observed Laws of Nature"
  (October 22, 2009)

More:

• "Faust"
  Wikiepdia
  • Fairly well-referenced

Move the Planet - or - Safety First

I've been reading Olaf Stapleton's "Star Maker" (1937). I don't buy into the author's philosophy, which seems to be a secularly sanitized version of 19th century spiritualism. On the other hand, Stapleton in this one book displayed more imaginative (or crazy) ideas than many science/speculative fiction authors do in their writing careers.

A little over halfway through the book, I ran into a short description of how an inhabited planet could be used as an interstellar vehicle. Essentially, strap a rocket on, and let 'er rip. Light? Heat? No problem. Snag an uninhabited planet, orbit the two around each other, and convert the uninhabited one to energy, a bit at a time - making an artificial sun.

I know: There are a few details of the idea that are dicey at best. Starting with the idea of applying thrust to a planet.

But it might work.

And, arguably, it may have been tried.

I think that people could be more risk-averse than human beings are.

Look at it this way:

• We started making tools out of flint, quite possibly without any thought of the dire consequences that would transpire when we ran out of flint.
  • Which we haven't, yet.
• Reckless of the danger, we used horses and other animals as energy sources for vehicles and industrial sites such as mills, and cobbled together methods of dealing with waste products as they piled up.
  • Cities in America have completely abandoned large-scale efforts to rid the urban environment of manure.
• We converted to coal power without carefully mapping out the effect on air quality.
  • Which arguably wasn't the safest, most prudent decision.
• Now we've got nuclear power plants dotted over the planet, at least in places that can afford them, and we still don't have a really good method worked out for what to do with the waste.
  • You get the idea.

As if to demonstrate the human willingness to take insane risks, not too long ago someone decided to find out what happens when you shut down the pumps in a nuclear reactor's cooling system. Remember Chernobyl?

The Gill Theory of Human Evolution

I'm not terribly serious about it, but I think this is as plausible as some other ideas that've been run up the flagpole:

Millions of years ago there was a species of primate that was slower and weaker than the rest. They were about as smart as any other primate, with one distinction.

They were crazy.

Every other primate had something - common sense, survival instinct, call it what you will - that kept it from climbing out on branches that didn't look thick enough, and inhibited the creature's curiosity when intellectual inquiries would involve getting close to carnivores or other known hazards.

Not these primates. Many of them found out, first-hand, why they were the first to attempt some mad experiment. Like walking up to a lion and slapping it on the nose.¹ A few were quick-witted enough to survive.

Perhaps they left the forest willingly, perhaps they were driven out by their more sensible and responsible cousins. The point is, they spent the next uncounted toll of generations in the savanna, slapping quite a few lions along the way. Also hyenas, cheetahs and baboons.

The survivors were really good at solving problems, quickly: literally, sometimes, on the run.

Many cut and crushed hands later, they learned how to make stone tools. Without inflicting near-lethal injuries on themselves.

By this time, they were recognizably human, and working out ways of keeping a fire going without igniting their surroundings - and, occasionally, themselves.

The crazier of them/us left the only place on Earth where they could be comfortable, and eventually populated every continent, except the interior of Greenland and Antarctica. So far, we haven't figured out how to settle the top of a continental glacier - but I wouldn't put it past humans. Remember, we're arguably insane.

A couple generations ago we briefly visited the moon, and our avatars have been scouting out other planets in the Solar system.

And we're still, arguably, crazy.

Moving Out of a Dangerous Neighborhood

Our sun is in one of the more interesting and active parts of the Milky Way galaxy: a spur of one of the great spiral arms.

This is the sort of region where things are happening: Great clouds of gas and dust coalesce to form new star clusters; titanic stars race through their lifespan and explode as supernovae. We may at just the right distance from Betelgeuse to watch it explode - close enough to see the show, not so close that we get fried. (Apathetic Lemming of the North (June 10, 2009))

It's been argued that the distinctly unserene and quite eventful geological and paleontological history of Earth has something to do with its passages through this galaxy's more dangerous neighborhoods.

People who aren't human - and who are more risk-averse than we frequently are - might decide to move to a nicer, quieter neighborhood.

Given time, they might work out a way of moving their planet in a comparatively risk-free way. If a nearby star was threatening to explode, that could be a very serious incentive.

Then, after a very long trip, they could settle down - still on their home world - in the nice, quiet, uneventful region between spiral arms.

It's not as crazy an idea as it sounds: a fair number of Americans moved to the suburbs for about the same reasons.

Related post:

• "The Story of Mankind in 79 Words"
  (June 30, 2009)

---

¹ Think about it. You're at the edge of the forest. There, not 20 paces away, a lion is sleeping. Wouldn't you wonder how it would react to a slap on the nose?

---

Updated (December 10, 2009)

I added subsections to the bulleted list that starts with the dangers of dependence on flint, and ends with the problem of nuclear waste.

Beautiful Space Princesses, Almost Certainly Not: Flying Whales, Maybe

Well, that's interesting:

"Flying Whales, Other Aliens Theorized by Scientists"
National Geographic News (June 3, 2005)

"One side of the planet is draped in eternal freezing darkness, the other side is bathed in permanent starlight.

"Fields of 'stinger fans'—animals that look like tall plants—cover the floodplains. Other strange species abound, from giraffe-like predators called gulphogs to tiny flesh-dissolving tadpoles known as hysteria.

"Welcome to the planet Aurelia.

"No, we haven't discovered life on another world—yet. But this could be what life on the fringes of our galaxy looks like, according to a group of scientists that contributed to the National Geographic Channel's special Extraterrestrial, which aired Monday, May 30.

"Alien life is not just possible but probable, according to many scientists. And thanks to new technology, we may not be too far from finding it.

"The question is: What can we expect to find?..."

I've seen the video: and it shows that some researchers are allowing themselves to think - if not outside the box, at least very close to the walls.

Whatever is out there - assuming that life isn't limited to this 8,000-mile-wide ball of rock and metal we stand on - I think the one thing we can be reasonably certain of is that it won't be what we're familiar with. And, if there are people who aren't human, odds are pretty good that they won't

• Thrive on the the atmosphere we have at this point in Earth's history:
  • 79% nitrogen
  • 20% oxygen
  • 1% other
  • At just under 15 pounds per square inch pressure
• Be comfortable at about 57 degrees Fahrenheit
• Think that 32 feet per second per second is "normal" gravity
• Have biological cycles based on a
  • 24 hour day
  • 365-something day year

They may be astonished to learn that we are comfortable under those conditions - or that we can survive at all.

Bottom line for a science fiction/speculative fiction writer: outside space opera, space aliens who look like human actors in 'alien' suits may be rare birds, indeed.


(From National Geographic, used w/o permission.)

More:

• "Extraterrestrial"
  National Geographic website

It's Just a Comic Book? Yes: But the Science Behind it is Stranger

---

Update (March 18, 2010)

• "Dark Flow: This Universe on the Move?"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 18, 2010)

---

Noted and recorded:

"The Science Behind Marvel Comics' New Cosmic Tale"
Space.com (December 4, 2009)

"Marvel Comics - where Spider-man and Wolverine hail from — has a long history of injecting science fiction into stories, especially within their line of comic books that take place in the far reaches of space.

"In Marvel's latest creation 'Realm of Kings,' a hero composed purely of energy ventures through a tear in space-time to another reality. But what are the science facts behind this epic cosmic storyline?

"Quantum energy

"The one-time Avenger known as Quasar has become one with the quantum bands, which transformed him into 'pure quantum energy.'

"As Einstein discovered more than a century ago...."

As the fellow said: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." (Sir Arthur Eddington English astronomer (1882 - 1944)) (cited November 1, 2009)

Hard Science Fiction, Cultural Blinders and Laban's Sheep

Reading an anthology of hard sf - science fiction which the author and readers perceive as involving known science and rational extrapolations of what's known - I've come to the tentative conclusion that hard sf is written by and for city folks.

Beware Cultural Blinders

The collection is "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF", edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (1994). I'm up to page 166 of 990, so what I've read can't reasonably be taken as representative of the entire volume - let alone the entire 'hard sf' sub-genre.

On the other hand, what I've read contains two examples of 'hard sf' writers who may not be aware of one of the most important practical applications of science to date. "Science," at any rate, as defined as a conscious, deliberate effort to observe phenomena and draw conclusions from the observations.

The two examples come from the 19th and 20th centuries:

• Rappaccini's Daughter
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844)
• Davy Jone's Ambassador
  • Raymond Z. Gallun (1935)

The first seems like a foretaste of today's ruckus over genetically engineered food products:

"...an appearance of artificialness, indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were, adultery of various vegetable species, that the production was no longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty...."

And

"...'My father created it,' answered she, with simplicity.

" 'Created it! created it!' repeated Giovanni. 'What mean you, Beatrice?'

" 'He is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of nature,'..."
(Rappicini's Daughter, Hawthorne, page 83 in "Ascent of Wonder")

Hawthorne raises worthwhile ideas in this short story, like whether or not an altered human being is a person. The story is also written in the 19th century style: giant economy-size paragraphs; rococo linguistic ornamentation; and all.

What I'm concerned with in this post is the idea that Rappaccini "created" a plant and "...that the production was no longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy...."

In the case of Rappaccini's shrub, "depraved" is a pretty good term. Some of the implications, though, of the author's description of the plant aren't, I think, quite so good a match with reality.

I Think Humanity's Pretty Hot Stuff - But Not That Hot

Take "create" for example. For several decades now, I've read articles about scientists "creating" life in the laboratory. "Mars jars" are still around - and being fine-tuned, as we discover more about what early Mars (probably) was like.

I'm impressed - and very interested - in research into how life, and the cosmos, got started. I'm not so impressed by scientists "creating" life, though. It's like the fellow in a story who had a talk with God, about humanity getting close to being as powerful as God. They were walking next to a stream. God pointed out that He'd created the first man from clay, and asked the man if he could do that.¹ The man said, "sure," leaned over and scooped up some clay. "Oh, no," God said: "You have to make your own clay."

The point is that people work with what we find. We're creative, certainly,² but we have to start with something. Everything we "create" is made by re-arranging existing parts. We've come a long way, since someone got the idea of setting fire to wood, or weaving string out of plant fibers: but we're still using stuff we find already in existence, made of atoms, subatomic particles, photons, or whatever - all sitting on that spacetime turbulence we call quantum foam.³

Incredible! Colossal! Controlled Evolution!

About 74 years ago Raymond Z. Gallun wrote a story about an explorer who encountered a sophisticated undersea civilization on the floor of the Atlantic. This was no "Atlantis:" the people who lived there were at home under two and a half miles of water, and regarded what they'd learned about the near-vacuum and radiation above them with something between horror and repugnance.

The sea-floor people had technology, but didn't use metal. Their 'robots' were animals they'd bred for specific purposes. As described, the seafloor civilization was impressive. And, of course, portrayed as a triumph of science.

"...Handicapped by the impossibility of fire in their normal environment, the sea folk's advancement had followed another path. Controlled evolution was what it amounted to...."
(Davy Jone's Ambassador, Gallun, page 155 in "Ascent of Wonder")

Remember, that was written in 1935. "The Abyss" wouldn't be written for another 54 years. My hat's off to the author, for imagining a plausible - and quite alien - civilization only a few miles below the shipping lanes.

On the other hand, I got the idea that "controlled evolution" was supposed to be exotic, alien, unfamiliar.

Artificial Life Forms - Like Macaroni Wheat

8,000 - or maybe 10,000 - years ago, someone 'doomed' humanity by planting seeds, protecting the plants that grew, harvesting the next-generation seeds, planting seeds from the best-yielding plants, and eating the rest.

From one point of view, it took us thousands of years to recover.⁴

My guess is that most people don't think of domesticated plants and animals as "artificial." Wheat, domestic chickens, and big, juicy apples have been around for so long that it's easy to assume that they've 'always been there.'

Besides, "technology" is something new and cool, right? Not the sort of thing that those serfs and peasants do. Or, these days, those farmers.

I think I see this sort of mindset, even among people involved in agribusiness. "Subconscious plant selection" is what a short history of wheat's (controlled) evolution called the process of selective breeding about ten thousand years back.

Jacob, Laban, and Applied Genetics

Me? I don't think we're all that much more stupid than people were a dozen millennia back. But I'm not convinced that we're that much smarter, either. Better informed, in some ways: particularly since writing has made it easier for us to preserve large volumes of precise information.

And I don't entirely buy the idea that Jacob's deal with Laban (Genesis 30:31) was based on "simple" people's ideas about animal husbandry. Whatever century Jacob was born in, it was thousands of years after people had started breeding animals. Jacob and Laban (who doesn't come across as the brightest bulb in the bin) lived in a society that had been breeding sheep for a very long time.

When Jacob suggested that he be given sheep with an unusual coat - and the birth rate of that rare breed goes up right after Jacob takes over management of the flock - I have to consider the possibility that Jacob knew more about applied genetics than a 'simple' person might.

Something to Beware of, Something to Use

This may be easier for me, than for many city folks, but I think it's a good idea for a science fiction writer to be aware of the last ten thousand or so years of technological development - including the artificial species we've developed. Make that 'over ten thousand years.' Someone apparently decided that wolves would make good hunting companions around the last time glaciers started retreating.

Remember: just because we've been using it since time out of mind, technology is technology.

The flip side is that there's an enormous pool of tech innovations - and the problems they caused - to draw story ideas from. Or interesting settings.

Related posts:

• "Mars Jars Don't Work - But Zinc Might"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (September 3, 2009)
• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  (August 25, 2009)
• "Four Millennia of Human Nature: I Think Qoheleth is Right"
  (August 3, 2009)
• "Hard Science: It's Not Necessarily a Limitation"
  (July 25, 2009)
• "- - - 'And We're All Gonna Die!' "
  (June 30, 2009)

Background:

• "The Evolution of Wheat - Introduction"
  New Hall Mill
• "Genetics And Evolution Of The Dog"
  NPR (February 13, 2004)
• "Lesson Plans - The Human Role in Dog Evolution"
  National Geographic

---

¹ Or mud. And, yes: I know that Genesis has two creation narratives. (Starting at Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 2:4)

² It's written that we were made "...in the likeness of God...." (Genesis 5:1-2) I think it'd be a bit surprising, taking that as a starting assumption, if we didn't share - however imperfectly - some of God's attributes, including creativity. That creative nature is expressed physically. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2366) I don't think it's such a stretch to think that our reflection of "creativity" can't include economic and artistic pursuits, too. ("Economic Justice for All:" Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (November 13, 1986) (From www.usccb.org/upload/economic_justice_for_all.pdf), particularly paragraph 15 - on page 3)

³ Humanity may have unlocked the last secret of the cosmos in the mid-20th century: but I doubt it. "Quantum foam" still seems to be a pretty good way of describing what happens at the smallest scale we can observe - currently - but I wouldn't be very surprised if someone fine-tuned that model, just as Einstein and company described phenomena that get observable under conditions that Newton didn't know about.

⁴See "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come " (August 25, 2009), footnote 1.

The Observed Laws of Nature

About the 'laws of Nature' -

" 'Your mistake is to think that the little regularities we have observed on one planet for a few hundred years are the real unbreakable laws....' "

Grace Ironwood, Chapter 17.4, "That Hideous Strength," C. S. Lewis (1946)

First posted in another blog:

• ""Little Regularities" - A Thought for the Day"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (September 23, 2009)