Sci Friday – Heavenly Palace

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 1 Comment

Advancements in space tend to take a lot longer than planned, so China’s rapid progress building a new space station (known as the “Heavenly Palace”) is quite a surprise.  About a month ago, they launched the first test segment; this week, they launched the second and connected them together.  Seems they’re well on their way to having it finished on schedule by 2020.  I can’t remember the last time NASA finished anything on schedule.

Anyway, here are this week’s sciency links, starting with China’s space station and NASA’s ongoing problems.

Surfing Gravity Waves

~ J.S. Pailly ~ Leave a comment

Science is full of long-shot experiments, like SETI’s search for extra-terrestrial life or CERN’s search for the Higg’s Boson (an experiment which should wrap up soon).  There’s also the search for gravity waves, and research instillations all over the world are trying find them even though they’re supposed to be next to impossible to detect.

Albert Einstein first predicted gravity waves as part of his theory of relativity.  If you drop a large stone into still water, the water ripples.  In the same way, when something big happens in the universe, such as the collision of two black holes, it should cause space itself to ripple.  Using sensitive equipment spread across the world, scientists hope to detect these ripples in space.

There are currently three gravity wave detectors in the United States and others scattered all over the world.  Officials recently announced plans for a new one in India.  The more detectors the better because while an earthquake might accidentally set off a few only a gravity wave would trigger them all.

If researchers do detect a gravity wave, it will give them an opportunity to study gravity in a whole new way.  I have no idea what kinds of things they could learn, but as a science fiction writer I can always make stuff up.  They might discover a way to create artificial gravity or maybe even antigravity.  Or perhaps, if it’s possible to generate artificial gravity waves, we could ride them like surfers and travel all over the galaxy.

For more on gravity waves, click here.  For more on the plans for the new gravity wave detector in India, click here.

Quantum Mechanics Gets Big

~ J.S. Pailly ~ Leave a comment

If you’re into science or science fiction, you need to see this video.

I am not a scientist and have never claimed to be.  I’m just a science enthusiast, so I can’t explain why this works.  It has something to do with quantum mechanics, the science of very small things, like atoms and mesons and other unbelievably tiny particles.  The behavior of these particles has always been a bit weird, but that’s okay because this weirdness is on such a small scale.

Lately, however, scientists have found more and more examples of quantum weirdness on the scale of objects we can see and touch.  They’ve built a quantum microphone which can vibrate and not vibrate at the same time, they’ve found quantum entanglement among the atoms of magnetic salts, and they’ve even found evidence of quantum physics at work in the human brain.

Click here for more on those stories.

Somehow liquid nitrogen, superconductors, and sponges have combined to create quantum levitation.  I’m not sure if there’s any practical purpose to this yet, but it would surely explain those hovering mountains from Avatar.

If you’re willing to watch a slightly longer video, this one gives a more detailed explanation of how quantum levitation works.

Better Writing Through Chemistry

~ J.S. Pailly ~ Leave a comment

Publishing guru Noah Lukeman advises writers to be specific in their descriptions.  In his book The First Five Pages, he says, “Instead of saying ‘bugs hit the windshield,’ name the bugs; instead of saying ‘birds flew overhead,’ name the birds.”  For science fiction writers, there is no greater tool for being specific than the periodic table of the elements.

Every material thing in the universe is made from atoms.  The periodic table lists these atoms, a.k.a. elements, so that all the elements in a column or row share similar chemical properties.  Carbon and silicon, for example, are in the same column, which means silicon can serve some of the same functions as carbon (like maybe carbon’s function in the creation of life).

Titanium is an element.  Rather than describe some futuristic gizmo made of metal, why not say it’s made of titanium?  Being specific makes the gizmo tangible.  Most people know what titanium is, have held products made from titanium in their hands, and recognize the term even if they don’t have degrees in chemistry.  Elements like osmium or technetium are a little less recognizable, but they’re still better than plain, generic metal.

I’m not saying you need to memorize the periodic table, but it’s a good idea to learn what the various numbers and symbols mean and do research on some of the elements’ special properties.  My own customized periodic table (still a work in progress) includes bullet point notes on what each element is commonly used for.  I also included pictures—just for fun.

Here are some examples.  Click on them for better resolution.

While creating my own periodic table, I learned a lot even about elements I thought I knew well.  I had no idea uranium has so many uses besides nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors.

Even if you don’t write science fiction, the periodic table is a useful resource.  We’re living in an increasingly scientific world, and readers are increasingly familiar with science.  Whatever kind of fiction you write, it’s still set in a world made of atoms.

Sci Friday – Solar System Monopoly

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 1 Comment

Space entrepreneurs have a lot of big dreams.  There’s money for space tourism and contracts with NASA, now that the space shuttle program has ended.  There are also valuable resources in space.

One entrepreneur predicts that the 21st Century will become a game of “Solar System Monopoly”—something already envisioned by writers like Ben Bova and Arthur C. Clarke—and warns that the Chinese government is ready to make the first move.  See “China Will Own the Moon” for more on that.

Here are this week’s sciency links.

Also, the world is ending today.

Light Speed Vision

~ J.S. Pailly ~ Leave a comment

The video game Mass Effect goes into great detail on how the Doppler Effect changes what you see when traveling faster than light.  Wavelengths of light are stretched or compressed, altering the color of stars, even shifting your vision into infrared or ultraviolet.  But the Doppler Effect is not the only thing that distorts what you see at such ridiculous speeds.

I recently found this video on Astronomy Picture of the Day which demonstrates what you would see if you traveled near the speed of light, taking into account the Doppler Effect, relativistic aberration, and the so-called headlight effect.  The world becomes increasingly distorted from that point of view, mainly because you are no longer seeing the world as it is but as it was.

For the purposes of the video, light travels at one meter per second (as opposed to 300 million meters per second).  Thanks to the Theory of Relativity, it’s not the speed of light that really matters here but your speed relative to it, so the demonstration is still accurate.

Traveling faster than light is not possible except in science fiction (and maybe for neutrinos) and in the video the car or spaceship or whatever never travels faster than light.  But we SF fans and SF writers can imagine, based on this video, how much stranger the universe would really look at warp 9.

Wow… That’s a Big Virus

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 2 Comments

Scientists say they’ve discovered a new virus, one that is bigger than any other.  It’s so big it can be seen with a regular microscope, rather than an electron microscope.  Fortunately it is not as big as the Macrovirus from Star Trek: Voyager (pictured above).

The newly discovered “Megavirus” is only a little bit bigger than the previous record holder, “Mimivirus.”  It has a ridiculously long DNA chain with special enzymes to repair any damage caused by UV light or radiation.  Some elements of its genetic code are similar to single celled organisms, leading researchers to believe this virus evolved from cellular life.

Don’t worry.  Megavirus does not infect humans.  It only attacks single celled organisms like amoebas.  Whereas Voyager’s Macrovirus tended to assault people in corridors, stabbing them with it’s giant DNA injector thingie.

For more information about Megavirus and Mimivirus, click here.

Sci Friday – Send James Cameron into Space

~ J.S. Pailly ~ Leave a comment

I enjoyed the movie Avatar and I look forward to seeing the sequel, but until reading the first article for this week’s Sci Friday links I had no idea James Cameron was such an interesting man.  He’s done a great deal more than direct movies.  He’s helped invent new cameras, new submarines, and new spacecraft.  At one time, he tried to get 3D cameras into space and expressed interest in going to space himself to make a movie.  That’s one movie I’d definitely go see.

Are You Safe from the Plague?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 2 Comments

According to researchers, the infamous Black Death is still out there and it hasn’t changed since the Middle Ages.  Using the skeletal remains of people who died from the Plague, scientists were able to reconstruct the DNA of the bacteria that killed them.  Aside from a few minor mutations, the genetic structure of the Medieval Plague is nearly identical to that of its modern descendant.

However, since the 14th Century human beings have changed.  Our immune systems have adapted to fight this and others diseases, and we’re much more conscious of hygiene than our ancestors in 14th Century Europe.  We’ve developed better medicine and better methods of containing dangerous outbreaks when they happen, and we don’t tolerate rats running around our homes spreading infections like we once did.

The Bubonic Plague may be stalking the streets of Europe right now, searching for some unsuspecting merchant or cobbler to infect, but this time we’re ready with wonderful, new technologies like soap.  The Black Death doesn’t stand a chance.

The return of the Black Death could be a good science fiction story, but the bacteria would have to evolve—something it apparently hasn’t done for a while.  We’re only safe until it develops a resistance to antibiotics or our economy gets so bad our standard of living drops back to Midieval levels (both are plausible).

For a disease to really have the impact of the original Plague, it would probably have to be completely new, something our immune systems wouldn’t know how to deal with, something our medicine has never had to fight before and our society doesn’t know how to contain.  Maybe something from space, like the Andromeda Strain.  The next round of Swine Flu could be pretty bad too.

For more on the reconstruction of Plague DNA, click here.  Experts say the ability to reconstruct the DNA of historical diseases, including the Black Death, could help us understand how modern infections begin and spread.