Science fiction writers should always try to expand their vocabulary.  Actually, writers of all kinds should do that.  Actually, everyone should, but science fiction writers should pay special attention to scientific terms.  I for one want to have as many sciency words at my disposal as possible.

A while back, I stumbled upon an interesting word: intron.  It’s a DNA segment that does not translate into a protein, and some people call it “junk DNA.”  I immediately thought of genetic engineering.  Why would the mad scientists of tomorrow waste their time on junk DNA?  Wouldn’t they just remove it?

The answer, I have determined, is no.

Based on further reading and notes given to me by a real scientist, I’ve learned that introns do serve some purposes.  For example, if a gene is like a sentence giving instructions, introns are the white spaces separating one word from another.  Taking them out would make things very hard to read.  They act as a control mechanism, and the size and position of an intron is very important (Rae, 366).

During my research, I learned another interesting word: aberrant.  It’s an adjective for something that deviates from the normal type.  An aberrant intron wouldn’t translate into a protein any more than a regular intron, but it might follow some unnatural pattern that could only be man made.  In the future, genetic engineers won’t waste time on junk DNA if they can avoid it.  Especially the lazy ones.  Perhaps large amounts of aberrant introns could indicate poor craftsmanship.

Sources

Rae, Peter M.M.  “Intron.”  McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology.  Eighth Edition, volume 9.  NY: McGraw-Hill 1997.  Pages 366-367.

Special thanks to Blanche O’Neill, the scientist who helped with my research for this post.

Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its various sequels set out to address one of the biggest and most important issues we humans have to deal with.  The ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.  It turns out the answer is 42.  The question itself is the real mystery.

In the third book, we meet a character named Prax who can only tell the truth.  When asked about the mysterious question, Prax explains that “the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive.  Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other” (Adams, 465).

Last week, I told you about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which says that you cannot know the exact position AND momentum of a subatomic particle at the same time.  Measuring one characteristic changes the other, and no matter how advanced our technology becomes this is a problem that cannot be solved.  In other words the knowledge of one precludes knowledge of the other.

The Adams Uncertainty Principle (as I like to call it) is one of the best things I’ve ever seen in a science fiction book.  Not only does it make a clever use of real science, but in my opinion it accurately captures a fact of life.  The meaning of life cannot be predicted, measured, or understood any more than particles of matter under the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

As a science fiction writer, I’m not just interested in getting my facts straight for some techno-babble.  Maybe my research will help me get the details right for a faster-than-light engine, but I have more important things to think about as well.  My greatest ambition is to find a way to use scientific language to say something profound about love, death, God… whatever… the way Adams did.

Science has become a big part of our everyday lives, and writers today should find ways to use that.  In the right hands, chemistry and calculus could turn into poetry.  Probably not in my hands, but I can at least try.  I believe this is the true potential of science fiction: to take scientific language and apply it to real life.  To questions bigger than science itself.

Sources

Adams, Douglas.  Life, the Universe and Everything.  The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story.  NY: Random House, 2005.  Pages 311-470.

Cassidy, David C.  “Heisenberg, Uncertainty and the Quantum Revolution.”  Scientific American May 1992.  Pages 106-112.

Captain Kirk is in serious trouble, and he needs Scotty to beam him up, disassembling him atom by atom and then putting him back together again.  Sadly, this is impossible.  A guy named Warner Heisenberg figured out a long time ago that you can’t get all the information you need about Captain Kirk’s atoms to put them back together in the right order.

Heisenberg’s theory originally talked only about electrons, but it can apply to any subatomic particle.  The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says that you cannot measure a particle’s exact position AND momentum.  The act of measuring one would change the other.  Even the most delicate touch by a beam of light or any other method of detection would change something about your particle, making your measurements useless (at least for beaming anybody up).

The only option, then, is to rely on probability to get something close to a correct answer.  Einstein never liked this idea.  He wanted certainty, not probability, in our universe, and he used every argument he could think of to show that somehow, with better technology, we could solve this problem and save Captain Kirk’s life.  But Heisenberg and his friends had a counterargument for everything Einstein said (Clark, 415-420).

I suppose once you’ve measured an electron’s position, there are a limited number of momentums it could have, and some of those momentums might be more likely than others, but there’s still a lot of guesswork for Scotty to do.  It’s a good thing the writers of Star Trek gave him those Heisenberg Compensators (Krauss, 80-81).

I don’t have any specific plans to use the Uncertainty Principle in my stories, but I’m glad I’m aware of it.  For one thing, I’m going to be very careful about taking anyone apart atom by atom.  If Einstein is right and there is a way around Heisenberg, it will require physics well beyond current human understanding.  I’ll tell you the other reason in my next post: it involves one of the most beautiful and profound things I’ve ever read in a science fiction book.

Sources

Cassidy, David C.  “Heisenberg, Uncertainty and the Quantum Revolution.”  Scientific American May 1992.  Pages 106-112.

Clark, Ronald W.  Einstein: The Life and Times.  NY: Harper Collins, 1971.

Krauss, Lawrence M.  The Physics of Star Trek.  NY: Harper Collins, 1995.

“Probability.” Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia Eighth Edition.  Ed. Douglas M. Considine.  NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.  Pages 2547-2548.

“Quantum Mechanics.” Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia Eighth Edition.  Ed. Douglas M. Considine.  NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.  Pages 2601-2603.

“Uncertainty Principle.” Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia Eighth Edition.  Ed. Douglas M. Considine.  NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.  Page 3171.

In the past, my research has mainly involved reading Scientific American and finding some random, useful fact for a story (see the previous post for an example).  Sometimes I’ve gone looking for specific things I needed to know, but recently I’ve decided I’d benefit from a broader awareness of all the sciences.

Therefore, I have begun compiling a list of notable scientists and their accomplishments, starting with ancient Greece and moving forward to modern times.  I think the historical approach makes sense.  It lays the foundation for more detailed research in the future and helps me see how one discovery led to another.

At the moment, I’m in the 18^th Century with Sir Isaac Newton.  He’s an interesting man, and something of a personal hero.  I won’t go into his whole life story, with the apples and prisms and moons falling from the sky; you can read about that elsewhere.  I like him so much because he knew he was right and didn’t care that other scientists disagreed with him.

Although my overview of scientific history is far from complete, I’ve noticed an interesting trend.  Take Galen, the ancient Greek physician, as an example.  He’s the one who figured out that sicknesses are caused by imbalances of the body’s four vital humors and that bleeding the patient can help correct the problem.  I’m sure Galen deserves a lot of credit for the things he got right, but this error wasn’t corrected for over a thousand years because people trusted the wisdom of the ancients.

Although I haven’t started reading about the 20^th and 21^st Centuries yet, I suspect that new ideas are still met with skepticism because of our established body of knowledge.  And, as a science fiction writer, I’m guessing the same problem will continue into the distant future.

Sources

Tiner, John Hudson.  100 Scientists Who Shaped World History.  San Mateo: Bluewood Books, 2000.

“Galen.”  Wikepedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen#Downfall_of_Galenism

Gleick, James.  Isaac Newton.  NY: Random House 2004.