Early one morning, I awoke to the sound of birdsong.  I’d left my window open, and a single bird was perched in the tree outside.  I’ve heard birds singing before, but perhaps morning grogginess changed my perception because for the first time I noticed the singing was more than pretty noise.

Some notes were higher, some lower.  Some lasted longer than others, and some mixed together legato.  I could almost believe this was a language, and each combination of sounds formed a distinct statement that other birds would understand.

Many of the greatest works of science fiction and fantasy include elaborate, well developed languages.  Klingon from Star Trek.  Elvish from The Lord of the Rings.  Na’vi from Avatar.  My challenge to myself and my fellow sci-fi writers is to create a language equally realistic without using spoken words.

While I doubt birds have a language as complicated as ours (particularly English), their singing is a form of communication.  Other animals here on Earth use other means.  Squid, for example, can change color, which could be a form of communication, and we’ve all heard about bees dancing to tell the rest of the hive where to find more honey.

So here’s an idea that I’m never going to use (fellow writers, feel free to steal this).  A sci-fi musical about our first contact with an alien species that, like bees, can only communicate through interpretive dance.  Earth may have to recruit ambassadors from the Juilliard School.

Links

Video of a squid changing color: click here.

The blog “Science in My Fiction” had a recent post about alien languages: click here.

As I continue to research science for my science fiction, I have found biochemistry is my worst subject.  I can’t believe aliens would work the same way we do, breathing oxygen, depending on carbon-based molecules, and so forth.  But since this is the only kind of life we know about, no one can really say what is or is not possible, and I don’t have nearly enough knowledge or experience to guess what aliens could use as substitutes.

Personally, I believe life will evolve anywhere it can using whatever resources nature gives it.  For example, we all know boiling water kills most bacteria, but there is a species called Methanococcus jannaschii (don’t worry, I can’t pronounce it either) which thrives in temperatures near 100 degrees Celsius.  Stranger still, they don’t need oxygen to survive but rely on hydrogen and carbon dioxide and produce methane as a waste product.

In 1996 scientists reclassified M. jannaschii as an Archae, part of a whole new kingdom of life, because of its radically different genetic structure.  Apparently these things are left over from the Archean Era, when life on Earth was just beginning and the atmosphere had not yet filled with oxygen.

Although I don’t have the details worked out for any new, alien biologies, my research on M. jannaschii gives me a little more confidence when taking oxygen away from an extra-terrestrial character.  An article in January’s Scientific American suggests that oxygen might not be as abundant on other planets as it is on Earth, but at least I know for a fact there is one life form that wouldn’t care.

Human explorers and diplomats of the future: remember to bring your breathing masks.

Sources

Appenzeller, Tim.  “Archae Tells All: Genetic testing reveals our long-lost cousins thriving in some of the most extreme environments on Earth.”  Discover Magazine January 1997.  <http://discovermagazine.com/1997/jan/archaetellsall1014>

“Methanogens.” Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia Eighth Edition.  Ed. Douglas M. Considine.  NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.  Page 2036.

Musser, George.  “A Large Lump of Coal: Other Earths may be made of graphite and diamond.”  Scientific American January 2010.  Page 26.

Wade, Nicholas.  “Deep Sea Yields Clue to Life’s Origin.”  New York Times August 23, 1996.  <http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/23/us/deep-sea-yields-a-clue-to-life-s-origin.html?pagewanted=1>

The point of this blog is not only to tell you about what I’m working on but to give helpful ideas to other science fiction writers.  Research is important to all kinds of writing, and we have an excellent opportunity in front of us right now: the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

I’m not going to pass judgment on who’s at fault.  Plenty of other people are doing that.  My job as a writer is to write believable characters in believable situations.  Someday, I might want to write about a manmade disaster, and when that day comes I can use my notes and memories of this oil spill as a starting point.

There is information all over the Internet on the science behind the spill.  I’ve watched videos and read articles about the quality and quantity of oil, on BP’s plans to build a dome over the leaks, and on relief workers’ efforts to save animals.  Some of these animals, which would normally run away from humans, are too tired and sick to escape.  Details like that help make the story feel real.

Below, I have included links to some of my sources.  The video from Al Jazeera is the clearest general overview of the accident I have yet seen.

Al Jazeera Video

Saving Birds

Scientists Check the Waters

Bill Nye the Science Guy

Oil Spill Calculator

Often times in sci-fi books and movies, this kind of crisis has a simple solution.  I wish we could just reverse the polarity of something and make the whole problem go away.  In the near future, we’ll see many books and documentaries about the BP oil spill. I’ll use those resources when they come, but again it is not my job to pass judgment.  My job as a writer is to tell a believable story based on research and life experiences and let the readers judge for themselves.

Don’t forget to check out the oil spill calculator.

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.

I’ve worked with little green men, killer robots, and inter-dimensional terrorists, and they all carry guns.  Sometimes they fire bullets, sometimes lasers, or sometimes bursts of plasma, but ultimately they’re all using guns.  Personally, I don’t approve of guns, which is why I let the bad guys have them, but I’d like more variety in my methods for killing.

A few months ago, I read an interesting fact in Scientific American: certain proteins in our blood, albumin and fetuin-A, prevent the calcification of body tissues (Young, 56).  It seems all the calcium in our bodies would naturally bond together, forming lumps of solid, stone-like material, if these proteins didn’t bond with the calcium first.

I have also discovered that a rare genetic disorder called Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (F.O.P.) causes muscles to turn into bone.  Scientists have determined that the problem is associated with genes that control the repair of bones, but more research needs to be done before they can find a cure.

For the purposes of science fiction, I can use this information to develop a new weapon for my villains.  Imagine some energy field that neutralizes fetuin-A or a virus that triggers F.O.P.-like symptoms.  Of course, calcification takes time, and people can live with F.O.P. for many years.  For dramatic reasons, I’d need this to take effect rapidly.  Within a few minutes at most.  I doubt my fictional weapon could have the instant effect of Medusa’s stare.

Turning people into stone is not a new idea, but I can’t remember anyone presenting it in scientific language.  In fact, taking things so impossible they can only be myths and turning them into the weapons of the future could be more terrifying than any re-imagined ray gun.

Sources

Young, John D. and Jan Martel.  “The Rise and Fall of Nanobacteria.”  Scientific American January 2010.  Pages 52-59.

“Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva.”  WebMD. http://children.webmd.com/fibrodysplasia-ossificans-progressiva-fop

Let’s say I’m writing a story about a time traveler who goes back to the beginning of the universe (actually, I really am writing a story like that).  I’d need to know a lot about what the universe was like shortly after the big bang.  This is a subject that science is a little uncertain about, which is perfect for a science fiction writer like me because I can make up whatever I want.

But I’ve discovered certain facts in my research that my story will have to address.  For one thing, my time traveler needs to know the age of the universe.  Otherwise how would he know what date to set in his time machine?

We know galaxies are traveling away from each other and that the universe is growing, and it appears to grow at a rate somewhere between 50 and 100 kilometers per second per Megaparsec (Pasachoff, 835).  By inverting this constant rate, known as Hubble’s constant, scientists have calculated the age of the universe to be somewhere between 13 and 20 billion years.  That’s a huge margin of error for my time traveler, but maybe he can find a more accurate measurement of Hubble’s constant and use that to determine the exact date of the big bang (I’m guessing it was a Tuesday).

Like any good vacation spot, the beginning of the universe is very hot, something like 10 octillion degrees Celsius.  Also, the explosions caused by matter and anti-matter collisions should provide some entertainment, if you don’t mind high levels of radiation.  As a science fiction writer, I’ll have to think of some amazing technology from the future to keep my time traveler alive so he can enjoy himself.

After a few seconds of cosmic inflation and the establishment of the various physical forces, subatomic particles will start joining together to form Hydrogen and Helium nuclei, but because of the intense heat they won’t be able to capture elections and form full atoms for a several hundred thousand years.

The biggest problem of all is that there’s nothing to do.  The universe is tiny, and aside from the massive explosion itself, all the action is at a subatomic level.  This may not sound like the most interesting setting for a story, but think of the consequences for my time traveler.  One mistake, one small ripple in a cloud of super-hot Hydrogen, and the cosmos is changed forever.  Many of the stars and galaxies we know and love today would be different or wouldn’t form at all.

Sources

“Big Bang.”  Concise Dictionary of Science & Computers.  NY: Random House, 2004.  Page 69.

Jenkins, Alejandro and Gilad Perez.  “Looking for Life in the Multiverse.”  Scientific American January 2010.  Pages 42-49.

Hawking, Steven W.  A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes.  NY: Bantam Books, 1998.

Pasachoff, Jay M.  “Cosmology (Intorductory).”  Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia Eighth Edition.  Ed. Douglas M. Considine.  NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.  Pages 834-837.