Tag: science and technology

Worldbuilding 4: Articles by Torn MacAlester

The Drake Equation
Intro­duc­tion: Drake equa­tion devel­oped the equa­tion:   where is the rate of star for­ma­tion,  is the frac­tion of stars that have plan­ets, aver­age num­ber of plan­ets per star that could sup­port life,  is the frac­tion of plan­ets that have life, is the frac­tion hav­ing intel­li­gent life,  is the frac­tion that devel­ops suf­fi­cient tech­nol­o­gy, and is the life­time for the civ­i­liza­tion. The para­me­ter  is the num­ber of civ­i­liza­tions in the galaxy. This equa­tion is a series of para­me­ters when mul­ti­plied togeth­er account for all the fac­tors lead­ing to a civ­i­liza­tion capa­ble of inter­stel­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Despite a lot of tan­ta­liz­ing clues, we have […]

 

Pansper­mia
Fea­tured Pansper­mia Some­thing inter­est­ing occurred in the late 1960’s as part of the Apol­lo pro­gram.  The uncrewed probe Sur­vey­or 3 was land­ed in the Ocean of storms in 1967. Part of the Apol­lo 12 mis­sion, the sec­ond crewed land­ing in 1969, was to retrieve engi­neer­ing sam­ples from Sur­vey­or 3. That mis­sion was a suc­cess, but that is only the begin­ning of the sto­ry. For two years, Sur­vey­or had unin­tend­ed pas­sen­gers wait­ing on the sur­face of the Moon for 31 months. They were bac­te­ria spores that man­aged to sur­vive in the vac­u­um of space.  The very fact of their sur­vival begs […]

 

Sci­ence Fic­tion and the Drake Equation
Fea­tured Sci­ence Fic­tion and the Drake Equa­tion I start­ed think­ing about one of the clas­sic authors of sci­ence fic­tion, and the set­ting he cre­at­ed for some of his sto­ries.  I often won­dered what the impli­ca­tions for the Drake equa­tion would be in that par­tic­u­lar set­ting. I’ve tak­en a sub­set of the sto­ries for this set­ting, since not all of the sto­ry set­tings are self-con­sis­tent.  Let me review the three con­di­tions from four books: Human­i­ty dis­cov­ers that there are ancient alien civ­i­liza­tions on both Mars and Venus. Life is found on Ganymede. The first two inter­stel­lar loca­tions vis­it­ed by human­i­ty have […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Worldbuilding 3: Articles by Torn MacAlester

It’s All About Power
Part 3 of World Build­ing for Sci­ence fic­tion: This is the def­i­n­i­tion of the Kar­da­shev Scale.  Since it is a mea­sure of the pow­er gen­er­at­ed by a civ­i­liza­tion, it is titled: All about Pow­er. In case you’ve missed the pre­vi­ous posts in the thread, Part 1 begins here. The pre­vi­ous post in this thread, Part 2 is here.   Image by Pix­abay avail­able on Pex­els The Kar­da­shev Scale The Kar­da­shev scale mea­sures the tech­nol­o­gy of a civ­i­liza­tion.  It express­es the details in one para­me­ter: the pow­er gen­er­at­ed by the civ­i­liza­tion. The pow­er deliv­ered to the Earth from the Sun (approx­i­mate­ly […]

 

Math­e­mat­ics of the Kar­da­shev Scale
The Kar­da­shev scale is a mea­sure of the tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ment of a civ­i­liza­tion.  Tra­di­tion­al­ly, there have been three lev­els on the Kar­da­shev scale: Type 1 – cor­re­spond­ing to a plan­e­tary civ­i­liza­tion, Type 2 – cor­re­spond­ing to a stel­lar civ­i­liza­tion, and Type 3 – cor­re­spond­ing to a galac­tic civ­i­liza­tion. The types of civ­i­liza­tion cor­re­spond to the amount of pow­er the civ­i­liza­tion wields.  Here is the math­e­mat­ics of the Kar­da­shev scale. The Kar­da­shev scale is defined by the expres­sion: K℗=(log P – 6)/10 where P is the pow­er gen­er­at­ed by the civ­i­liza­tion expressed in Watts. For plan­e­tary civ­i­liza­tions P=1016 W, K℗=1 (e.g. […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

World Building 2: Articles by Torn MacAlester

It Starts With A Paradox
Part 2 of World Build­ing for Sci­ence Fic­tion Part 2—It Starts With A Para­dox   by Torn MacAlester     Pho­to by Rakice­vic Nenad from Pex­els The Fer­mi Para­dox The Fer­mi para­dox tries to answer: Where are they (the aliens)? It looks at how fast trav­el is across the galaxy.  It says by infer­ence the time to explore the 100 bil­lion solar sys­tems with­in the galaxy. The para­dox assumes that the first civ­i­liza­tion to emerge will find itself alone the cos­mos.  Because they find them­selves alone, the civ­i­liza­tion will try to fig­ure out the answer to the ques­tion: Where are they? […]

 

The Great Filter
Fea­tured The Fer­mi Para­dox cre­ates an inter­est­ing dilem­ma from sci­ence.  What is the fil­ter that seems to be pre­vent­ing con­clu­sive evi­dence of alien civ­i­liza­tions? In oth­er words, what is the ‘Great Fil­ter’? We have sev­er­al options: Plan­ets capa­ble of sup­port­ing life:  That might be a decep­tive descrip­tion.  What is a plan­et capa­ble of sup­port­ing life. The first indi­ca­tion is that it must have liq­uid water present.  This is cer­tain­ly nec­es­sary but it isn’t suf­fi­cient. A bet­ter cri­te­ria would be the world hav­ing suf­fi­cient­ly long time to sup­port life for life to evolve far enough to have intel­li­gent life. Such examples […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Worldbuilding 1: Articles by Torn MacAlester

World Build­ing for Sci­ence Fiction
Image by Snap­wire on pex­els 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 […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

The Drake Equation: An Article by Torn MacAlester

The Drake Equation
Intro­duc­tion: Drake equa­tion devel­oped the equa­tion:   where is the rate of star for­ma­tion,  is the frac­tion of stars that have plan­ets, aver­age num­ber of plan­ets per star that could sup­port life,  is the frac­tion of plan­ets that have life, is the frac­tion hav­ing intel­li­gent life,  is the frac­tion that devel­ops suf­fi­cient tech­nol­o­gy, and is the […]

 

Civilization and Power

It’s All About Power
Part 3 of World Build­ing for Sci­ence fic­tion: This is the def­i­n­i­tion of the Kar­da­shev Scale.  Since it is a mea­sure of the pow­er gen­er­at­ed by a civ­i­liza­tion, it is titled: All about Pow­er. In case you’ve missed the pre­vi­ous posts in the thread, Part 1 begins here. The pre­vi­ous post in this thread, Part […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

An Exercise in World Building

World Build­ing for Sci­ence Fiction
Image by Snap­wire on pex­els 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 […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Yellowstone and Timeline of Events

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

The key back­ground event of the sto­ry­line that includes Thun­der Moon Tus­sle is the erup­tion of the Yel­low­stone super-vol­cano.  This erup­tion forms the basis for the cal­en­dar where the year of the erup­tion is des­ig­nat­ed Y+0.

The Yel­low­stone erup­tion plays into some of the moti­va­tion or emo­tion­al state of the char­ac­ters.  It serves as a focal point event where almost every­one relates to it.  It has the same affect as the attack on Pearl Har­bor or 9/11 had on their respec­tive gen­er­a­tions.  I recall a lot of the old­er gen­er­a­tions when I was young refer­ring to the attack on Pearl Har­bor as a turn­ing point in many of their lives.  I’ve also noticed that many of my peers refer to 9/11 the same way.  It may be we are liv­ing through anoth­er such event with the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this case, you can find ref­er­ences to the Yel­low­stone super-vol­cano erup­tion through­out Thun­der Moon Tus­sle.  Nils Carmike and Deputy Miller both refer to Yel­low­stone as a piv­otal event.  In his the review of Thun­der Moon Tus­sle, Nathaniel Owolabi makes note of this.

I try to set each of my sto­ries or vignettes on this time­line, though there are some excep­tions.  The vignette Cold Con­tact is not on the time­line.  The short sto­ry Mor­gan’s Road is on the time­line to indi­cate the year in which Nils Carmike tells the sto­ry for the first time.  The time­line pre­sent­ed will con­tin­u­ous­ly update with vignettes that give a taste of the back­ground with­out pro­vid­ing spoil­ers for any one story.

Time­line of Events

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