Category: Science of Stories

Worlds of Science Fiction

I’ve been study­ing the sci­ence behind the worlds of sci­ence fic­tion with the inten­tion of using it for world build­ing. I’ve writ­ten a series of arti­cles intro­duc­ing these sci­ence con­cepts.  My inten­tion as a sci­ence fic­tion writer was to build a set­ting where at first glance par­al­leled the real uni­verse. Con­se­quent­ly, I tried to use the results from SETI (Search for Extrater­res­tri­al Intel­li­gence) and relat­ed search­es to brack­et the extent and tech­nol­o­gy of alien civ­i­liza­tions that appear in my stories.

The worlds of sci­ence fic­tion are intro­duced in the arti­cle: World Build­ing for Sci­ence Fic­tion.

My approach mir­rors some of the dis­cus­sion pre­sent­ed in this Screen Craft arti­cle by Ken Miyam­a­to from 2021:  THE CRAFT AND RULES OF WORLDBUILDING IN SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY.  I start from a real world present approach by ask­ing: what does sci­ence tell me about X?  X in this case is alien civilizations.

As some addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion, it might be use­ful to look at the SETI Insti­tute web site: SETI Insti­tute

Anoth­er arti­cle reports about some lim­its estab­lished my astro­physics stud­ies: Forbes Arti­cle

The Fermi Paradox

The Fer­mi Para­dox is an impor­tant ques­tion for worlds of sci­ence fic­tion, pro­vid­ing esti­mates of the expan­sion of a civ­i­liza­tion. I have con­tin­ued the arti­cles with this on specif­i­cal­ly on this ques­tion: It Starts With A Para­dox.

Sci­ence­Time has pro­duced an inter­est­ing video about the Fer­mi Paradox.

The Kardashev Scale

The Kar­da­shev Scale is a mea­sure­ment for worlds of sci­ence fic­tion, pro­vid­ing esti­mates of tech­no­log­i­cal progress. I have con­tin­ued the arti­cles with this on specif­i­cal­ly on this mea­sure: It’s All About Pow­er.

InsaneCu­rios­i­ty has pro­duced an inter­est­ing video about the Kar­da­shev Scale.

Drake Equation

The Drake equa­tion is the foun­da­tion for worlds of sci­ence fic­tion, pro­vid­ing esti­mates of alien civ­i­liza­tions. I have con­tin­ued the arti­cles with this on specif­i­cal­ly on this equa­tion: The Drake Equation

Andrzej Dud­nik has pro­duced a nice video that pro­vides a nice sum­ma­ry of the Drake Equation.

 

The Third Data Point

Introduction

This sum­mer, we will wit­ness the begin­ning of a new era in space­flight with the launch of the Artemis 1 unmanned mis­sion to space. Like Apol­lo the Artemis pro­gram will enable human land­ing on the Moon.  More impor­tant­ly, the begin­ning of long term human activ­i­ties will cre­ate a new oppor­tu­ni­ty. It will enable us to com­plete the study of the human body and zero‑G.

 

Why do I say com­plete?  Admit­ted­ly, the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS) stud­ies of the human body and zero‑G have made a clear pic­ture of the effects on human phys­i­ol­o­gy. It is com­mon knowl­edge that decal­ci­fi­ca­tion of the bones is an issue that is off­set with exer­cise. Less well known is the defor­ma­tion of the eye­ball asso­ci­at­ed with the blood pool­ing in the upper body. Least wide­ly known is the fact that many genes shut down while oth­ers turn on in min­utes of the body reach­ing zero‑G.

 

These phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes could have even more pro­found impact over longer dura­tion mis­sions.  I wor­ry about the com­bined effects of these changes to the body for a mis­sion to solar sys­tem des­ti­na­tions. A crew that could arrive at their des­ti­na­tion crip­pled, blind, and fight­ing unknown dis­or­ders.  I won­der if that crew could be effec­tive.  So why is the ISS stud­ies incom­plete? The answer is: we don’t know how much grav­i­ty is enough.  Land­ing on the Moon will help us answer that question.

 

Human Body and Zero‑G and One-sixth G

The Artemis 3 mis­sion enables a very use­ful data set. The day before launch and with­in the first day after launch, a blood sam­ple can be tak­en. This has been done in the past for Shut­tle and ISS mis­sions. They use the blood to per­form a genet­ic test to deter­mine the genes that have been acti­vat­ed and deac­ti­vat­ed as a result of enter­ing zero‑G.  The only thing dif­fer­ent with Artemis 3 is that a third con­di­tion can be test­ed.  With­in the first day after land­ing on the Moon, a third blood sam­ple can be tak­en. Also, this will enable know­ing the genes acti­vat­ed and deac­ti­vat­ed as a result of enter­ing one-sixth G.

 

Hav­ing the third data point, a curve will begin to appear.  The shape of the curve will give insight into the effects of grav­i­ty on the human body.  It could be either that the body requires near­ly one‑G to be healthy. Or at the oth­er extreme, a very lit­tle grav­i­ty could be enough to counter the neg­a­tive effects. Either way, we’ll be get­ting some of that insight with real data.

 

After longer mis­sions to the lunar sur­face have been done, the effects of bone loss and blurred vision will be char­ac­ter­ized.  Ulti­mate­ly, we’ll have a means to inter­po­late between Earth­’s one G and the grav­i­ty of any des­ti­na­tion. It will also give sense of the engi­neer­ing chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with inter­plan­e­tary trav­el. If the Moon’s grav­i­ty is suf­fi­cient to off­set much of the effects asso­ci­at­ed with the human body and zero‑G, a spin grav­i­ty of one-sixth G is suf­fi­cient to off­set these effects. Engi­neer­ing such a sys­tem is left for anoth­er discussion.

The Farthest Star

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

It is fan­tas­tic that the far­thest star detect­ed is so far away: 12.9 bil­lion light years.  As a result, it is not the first star born in the Uni­verse but it does pre­date the Sun by 7.9 bil­lion years.  Though this star is too short lived for life to evolve, but a dim­mer star formed at the same time might have been the loca­tion of the first life in the uni­verse.  If that life evolved into intel­li­gent civ­i­liza­tion with­in 5 bil­lion years (as it did here on Earth), that civ­i­liza­tion would be 2.9 bil­lion years old.  What kind of civ­i­liza­tion might it be?

Check out my arti­cle on the Kar­da­shev  scale to imag­ine the civ­i­liza­tion that might be so incred­i­bly old and asso­ci­at­ed with the far­thest star.  Could this end up being a class III galac­tic civ­i­liza­tion?  Maybe its only a class II stel­lar civ­i­liza­tion?  Or the civ­i­liza­tion might have died out before it reached class I.  The ques­tions abound regard­ing such a civilization.

Sci­ence and sci­ence fic­tion are inter­twined.  Sci­ence does not rule out the fan­tas­tic.  The uni­verse we live in works accord­ing to sci­ence, but I find it fantastic.

 

 

Apollo 14

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Pho­to by Bri­an McGowan on Unsplash

 

 

Did you know that Apol­lo 14 land­ed at the planned land­ing site for Apol­lo 13? The place is called the Fra Mau­ro High­lands. The Apol­lo 14 lan­der, Antares, land­ed at Fra Mau­ro near the Cone crater. Part of the mis­sion required an EVA to the rim of Cone crater to col­lect sam­ples from inside the crater’s rim. The hope was to col­lect sam­ples from under the Frau Mau­ro for­ma­tion as ejec­ta from the deep cone crater. Lack­ing nav­i­ga­tion aids such as mod­ern GPS, Shep­ard and Mitchell missed the rim of the crater as they walked up the hill. After a time, Shep­ard decid­ed they were close enough and col­lect­ed the samples.

One inter­est­ing addi­tion­al find from the mis­sion sam­ples is a big rock nick­named ‘Big Bertha’. It turns out that ‘Big Bertha’ is a piece of gran­ite. It is a mete­orite eject­ed from the Earth in the dis­tant past. Gran­ite, unlike basalt, can­not form with­out sig­nif­i­cant amounts of water being present.

Anoth­er inter­est­ing instru­ment from the Apol­lo 14 Lunar Sur­face Exper­i­ments Pack­age is the SIDE (Suprather­mal Ion Detec­tor Exper­i­ment). It mea­sured the mass and ener­gy of pos­i­tive­ly charged ions. These result from the solar wind hit­ting the Moon’s surface.

Read More about Apol­lo 14 here: Sci­ence of Golf and Outgassing

 

 

 

Video of Mis­sion by Home­made Doc­u­men­taries:

Science of Golf and Outgassing

Science and Technology in Morgan’s Road

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Being a sci­en­tist and engi­neer, I enjoy adding as real­is­tic ele­ments as pos­si­ble to my sto­ries.  For exam­ple, I wrote this arti­cle to dis­cuss the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy that I ref­er­enced in writ­ing the sto­ry Mor­gan’s Road.

Sci­ence of Mor­gan’s Road.

There are cer­tain­ly some spoil­ers in that arti­cle. If you haven’t read Mor­gan’s Road, now is the time:

Mor­gan’s Road by Torn MacAlester.

 

The Mor­gan’s Road Cov­er Graph­ics are by Shan­nan Albright.

 

Mor­gan’s Road is relat­ed to the sci-fi nov­el Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester , avail­able at amazon.com in Kin­dle unlim­it­ed, Kin­dle, and paperback.

The science and technology of Morgan's Road

The Science of Golf and Outgassing

Science of Golf and Outgassing

If you haven’t read the sto­ry Golf and Out­gassing, you might want to look at it before check­ing out the arti­cle Sci­ence of Golf and Out­gassing.  I’ve pro­vid­ed a brief descrip­tion of the sci­ence that inspired the sto­ry.  This sto­ry also draws from my per­son­al mem­o­ries of watch­ing the Apol­lo 14 Moon walk.  EVA num­ber two took place in the ear­ly morn­ing hours.  I stayed up all night for the very first time in my life.  I wait­ed, hop­ing to get a glimpse into Cone crater, only to be dis­ap­point­ed like every­one else at the time.

World Building for Science Fiction

Image by Snap­wire on pex­els

Part 1 — Introduction

I want­ed to share some insight into the world build­ing process that I am using in my sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries. First off, most would call my sci­ence fic­tion as ‘Hard’ sci­ence fic­tion because of my use of sci­en­tif­ic rig­or when devel­op­ing my sto­ries. For myself, it’s part of the rea­son for sto­ry­telling. The sit­u­a­tions I like to con­sid­er an inter­est­ing sci­ence or engi­neer­ing prob­lem as part of my sto­ry. As part of that effort, I try to keep the sci­ence as cor­rect as possible.

The ques­tion that every sci­ence fic­tion author faces at some point is how to han­dle aliens with­in the sto­ries. Their exis­tence con­sid­ered and the impli­ca­tions eval­u­at­ed. To eval­u­ate the exis­tence and impli­ca­tions, I rely on three con­cepts used by astronomers to dis­cuss alien life. They are: The Drake equa­tion, the Kar­da­shev scale, and the Fer­mi para­dox (DKF). The DKF con­cepts imply a lot for world build­ing in sci­ence fic­tion. They relate to the num­ber of civ­i­liza­tions, their tech­nol­o­gy, and the con­se­quences for the first emer­gent civ­i­liza­tion. It turns out that these three have inter­play with each other.

The first of the DKF con­cepts is the Drake Equa­tion, named for Dr Frank Drake who devel­oped it as a talk­ing point for the first sci­en­tif­ic meet­ing on the search for extrater­res­tri­al intel­li­gence in 1961. The equa­tion com­putes an esti­mate of the num­ber of civ­i­liza­tions in the galaxy at a time. It depends on 3 types of terms: astro­phys­i­cal terms, bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion terms, and civ­i­liza­tion tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment terms. We can con­nect the terms to phys­i­cal process­es. These terms were spec­u­la­tive. How­ev­er, recent obser­va­tion­al results, specif­i­cal­ly about Earth-like plan­ets in the life zones of stars, have made the astro­phys­i­cal terms spe­cif­ic and mean­ing­ful. In future arti­cles, I will take each term and illus­trate the cur­rent esti­mates and how a sci­ence fic­tion assump­tion may alter the estimates.

The next DKF con­cept is the Kar­da­shev scale that estab­lish­es the lev­els of civ­i­liza­tion based upon their tech­nol­o­gy, named for the Russ­ian astro­physi­cist Niko­lai Kar­da­shev who pos­tu­lat­ed it in 1964. How­ev­er, the mea­sure of the lev­el depends upon the ener­gy usage of the civ­i­liza­tion. Typ­i­cal­ly, we talk about 3 lev­els: type 1 or plan­e­tary, type 2 or stel­lar, and type 3 or galac­tic. A plan­e­tary civ­i­liza­tion uses a pow­er of 1016 Watts (about the solar ener­gy land­ing on the sur­face of the Earth every sec­ond), a stel­lar civ­i­liza­tion uses the pow­er of 1026 Watts (the pow­er out­put of the sun), and the galac­tic civ­i­liza­tion uses the pow­er of 1036 Watts (the pow­er out­put of the milky way galaxy). We note that type 0 are sub plan­e­tary (1012 Watts the cur­rent lev­el of earth) and we could have a galac­tic clus­ter (Type 4 civ­i­liza­tion). Each of these kinds of civ­i­liza­tion can affect the terms of the Drake equa­tion, as the tech­nolo­gies can affect the envi­ron­ment. Even a class 0 civ­i­liza­tion can affect the envi­ron­ment either to their ben­e­fit or detriment.

The last DKF con­cept, the Fer­mi para­dox, gives a scale of activ­i­ty and the time it takes for their influ­ence to spread over a dis­tance. Enri­co Fer­mi pos­tu­lat­ed the para­dox in 1950 as a way of show­ing that the prob­a­bil­i­ty of extrater­res­tri­al intel­li­gence seemed high though there had been no detec­tion of its exis­tence. It bases the exam­i­na­tion of the prob­a­bil­i­ty of how quick­ly civ­i­liza­tions will come in con­tact with each oth­er, e.g. an expan­sion rate. Sup­pose that a tech­nol­o­gy makes it pos­si­ble to trav­el at 1 tenth of the speed of light, then the galaxy cross­ing time reduces to 1 mil­lion years. The scal­ing gives a trav­el time, then a time nec­es­sary to repli­cate the tech­nol­o­gy and trav­el to 100 bil­lion suns to find the oth­er civ­i­liza­tions. Or by exten­sion for a Type 4 civ­i­liza­tion, the time to explore the observ­able uni­verse. A sub-top­ic of the Fer­mi Para­dox is the galac­tic census—what have we observed and to what dis­tance. How long does an all-sky sur­vey take, and how much infor­ma­tion will they know?

Through these, they tie the whole ques­tion of an alien civ­i­liza­tion to the laws of nature. DKF are a sci­en­tif­ic way of enabling the dis­cus­sion of an alien civ­i­liza­tion in a math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el. Though we will keep the dis­cus­sion as sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous as pos­si­ble, the rea­son for the arti­cles is for sci­ence fic­tion. We’ll look at past sci­ence fic­tion and impli­ca­tions for sci­ence fic­tion world build­ing for writ­ers and games. My plan is to explain the DKF, so expect mul­ti­ple arti­cles on this sub­ject. In some arti­cles, there will be some equa­tions. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this is unavoid­able. How­ev­er I’ll try to warn the read­er to skip those sec­tions and go to the summary.

Next, we’ll take a look at the Fer­mi para­dox in detail. I expect a rate of about one arti­cle every two to three weeks.

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