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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is going on on-line and will produce the most energetic man-made collisions ever created. There have been concerns that this will produce various doomsday scenarios, but as Dennis Overbye writes in the New York Times citing a recent safety report, the particle accelerator isn’t going to create a runaway black hole that could eat the Earth.
The proof is pretty trivial to high-energy particle physicists.
Cosmic rays from space already hit our atmosphere with far greater energies than the LHC can produce, and we study these air shower events with facilities like the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory. If collisions like the ones that will take place in the LHC produced black holes that had planet-eating capabilities, all the planets and stars would have been destroyed long ago.
Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest responded to the question “If you could live forever, would you and why?” with ‘I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.’
My version for the LHC threat: Collisions made by the LHC will not destroy us, because we should not be destroyed, because if we were supposed to be destroyed, we would have already been destroyed, but we haven’t been destroyed, which is why the collisions won’t destroy us.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: science, science fiction
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From Discoverychannel.ca, in various stages from just completed, to underway, to on the drawing board:
1. Large Hadron collider at CERN
2. Next-stop, cold fusion?: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)
3. The finished International Space Station, circa 2011
4. A 3,000-foot-tall “Solar tower” in the Australian outback
5. The largest-scale climate-change simulator on Earth
6. James Webb Space Telescope
7. The Svalbard “Doomsday” Seed Vault
8. Space elevator
9. The ANTARES underwater neutrino detecting array
My own research is feeling small and insignificant, even though I deal with galaxies hundreds of thousands of light years across hosting black holes of billions of solar masses, outshining stars by billions of times, billions of light years away.
Oh, wait. My research feels big and impressive again!
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: education, popular events, science
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Space.com reports on searches for axions, a so-far hypothetical particle that could account for the so-called non-baryonic dark matter.
According to one idea, axions are produced in the core of the sun, like neutrinos, and like neutrinos, can change fly straight out of the sun and also change their form into photons. The new research reports results studying X-rays from the magnetic fields around the sun, X-rays that might be the result of axions interacting with the magnetic fields and being converted into photons.
But like so much in the dark matter search, the results have been negative so far.
We’re a long way from being done search for and detecting dark matter. While we’re pretty certain it’s there and can see its effects in many different ways (keep that in mind when proposing a simple alternative like modifying Newtonian gravity, which fails to account for some observations), we need an experimental detection to give us a clue to what the stuff actually is.
In Spider Star, I postulated seventeen distinct types of dark matter, only naming a couple (e.g., “aetherons” that were WIMPs pushed around by a stardrive named “Bully” for interstellar propulsion). We already know one type of dark matter, the neutrino, although its mass is too small to be much of the dark matter in the universe. When the neutrino, again like the axion, was proposed to balance out some nuclear equations, it wasn’t clear that it would be detectable.
It’s possible that astrophysics is facing a real life example of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, in which there are truths that cannot be proven from first principles.
Don’t hold your breath yet, though. We haven’t been at this long in the grand scheme of things. A century ago physicists were still arguing about whether or not atoms were real and you couldn’t really say that quantum mechanics even existed.
We could perhaps use a new name for dark matter, however. It gives people the wrong impression, especially if we look for it in the bright light of the sun. I have a similar problem with my quasar work — the most luminous objects in the universe are powered by their hearts of darkness, super massive black holes.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: science
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First, I am providing my own personal list in response to yesterday’s American Film Institute list. I’m going to overlook some questionable science in a few movies, and not overweight the science. I am going to leave out fantasy, including superhero movies and Star Wars – mitochlorians or whatever they were called does not make Star Wars science fiction. Unless I specify otherwise, I’m talking about director’s cuts, which makes a substantial difference for a couple of movies on my list.
1. Blade Runner
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Contact
4. Aliens
5. Alien
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
8. Terminator
9. The Abyss
10. Gattaca
Guess I like films by quality directors, with four of these by James Cameron, two by Ridley Scott, and two by Stanley Kubrick. I think the sequels are worthy, too, as both Aliens and T2 moved beyond the originals and broke new ground.
Other top science fiction movie lists
AFI:
1. 2001
2. Star Wars
3. E. T.
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. The Day the Earth Stood Still
6. Blade Runner
7. Alien
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
10. Back to the Future
Rotten Tomatoes:
1. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Metropolis
4. Alien
5. Minority Report
6. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Children of Men
8. The Host
9. Star Wars
10. Aliens
IMBD:
1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars
3. The Matrix
4. Alien
5. Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyu (1973)
6. Metropolis
7. Aliens
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
10. The Prestige
The Online Film Critics Society:
1 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2 Blade Runner (1982)
3 Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
4 Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
5 E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982)
6 Metropolis (1927)
7 Brazil (1985)
8 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
9 Clockwork Orange, A (1971)
10 Alien (1979)
The Guardian, cheating a little bit by combining some originals and sequels:
1. Blade Runner
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back
4. Alien
5. Solaris (1972)
6. Terminator/Terminator 2
7. The Day the Earth Stood Still
8. War of the Worlds (1953)
9. The Matrix
10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
An online internet-voting based list: http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_film.html
1. Blade Runner
2. Star Wars Trilogy (IV-VI)
3. The Matrix
4. Alien
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey
6. Aliens
7. Terminator
8. The Fifth Element
9. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
10. The Day the Earth Stood Still
Wired.com:
1. Blade Runner
2. Gattaca
3. The Matrix
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey
5. Brazil
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Alien
8. The Boys from Brazil
9. Jurassic Park
10. Star Wars
The Best?
Blade Runner tops four of the lists, but doesn’t appear on two of them. 2001 tops two of the lists, but doesn’t make the top 10 at all on one. I think that the strengths of these movies also make them turn off some audiences, unfortunately, as they also top my list.
It’s interesting to note that the only movie that makes all the lists, the highest, including mine, is Alien. By some form of meta-analysis, that would make this the top science fiction movie of all time. I’m the only one who left off Star Wars (the internet voting list technically lumps together the first trilogy and the Guardian combines it with Empire, leaving out the Ewoks), but come on, it isn’t science fiction, it’s a fantasy getting too much credit for having robots, spaceships, and rayguns. It’s my blog and Star Wars doesn’t get to be the top science fiction film here.
So, in space no one can hear you scream, but on Earth we all did and loved Alien.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: popular events, science, science fiction
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Between having a leaky water heater replaced yesterday, costing me a lot of sleep and money, and running a two-hour “Writing Science Fiction” session for middle school kids attending our Wyoming Astrocamp, it’s been pretty busy for being summertime without travel. As usual when this happens, I still get in some surfing time and friends forward links of interest. I think I’ll start posting these under the heading of “Starlinks” the way Jay Lake does his “link salad” posts. I’ll make some comments, but usually won’t do an extended response.
So what’s been going on in the world and heavens above?
Science
Cracked lists five superpowers you can have in this lifetime. Either great minds think alike, or it’s a ripoff of my list of ten superpowers you can have now. Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
A solar system is discovered with “a trio of super-Earths.” Krypton? Nah…
Nucleobases confirmed from space.
We have the summer solstice coming up next week, and a full moon tomorrow, which will make for an exceptionally good optical moon illusion Wednesday evening at dusk.
A thoughtful Atlantic article with the provocative title asking “Is Google making us stupid?” discussing how the internet is changing our reading habits, turning people into shallow skimmers, and changing the way we think.
An idea to build an evolution museum across from the Creationist museum. I’m of a mixed opinion about the wisdom of this. Isn’t every Natural History museum already an “evolution museum?”
Stephen Hawking speaks out against Britain cutting science budgets. Also, for what it’s worth, it’s revealed that Hawking has turned down a knighthood because he “doesn’t like titles.”
Science Fiction
Should the Hulk be the villian in the upcoming Avengers movie?
Entertainment Weekly writer defends himself after calling Blade Runner and Jurrasic Park “Sci-fi misfires.”
An 1881 science fiction novel rediscovered that anticipates space travel, space suits, and more.
Some image lists of Old School Toys and Bad Movies. Some nostalgia there. I’m miffed that the second list starts with Barbarella, however, which is marvelous for what it is and has perfect 1960s charm. Several science fiction movies on the list, some of which (e.g., Ed Wood’s Robot Monster with its “Billion Bubble Machine”) are much better choices than Barbarella. I’m a little offended that Soylent Green is on the list at all though.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: education, personal, popular events, science, science fiction
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I missed my day to blog at www.sfnovelists.com yesterday, but did jump in today with “Getting Things Write.” I’m reproducing it here below. If you’d like to comment, I suggest doing it over there.
I’m primarily a writer of what’s referred to “hard sf,” which of course means what I write is really difficult science fiction.
That’s baloney. Ok, something a little harder than baloney. Salami, or a nice summer sausage.
What I write is science fiction with plausible science. I try to get all the science right, and while I certainly speculate plenty in my work, I won’t put something in that violates science as we understand it. We’ll certainly learn more in the future, but everything that happens shouldn’t violate the laws we know already. Einstein, when developing relativity, made sure it agreed with Newton in cases where Newton was known to apply.
I have bachelor’s degrees in physics, electrical engineering, and a doctorate in astronomy. That makes it easier for me, at least when it comes to getting the physical science right, but I include a lot of other science in my work and I have to get that right, too. I have more than a few bookshelves for the writing hard sf.
Now, not everyone agrees with me on the topic of getting the science right. Over at sfsignal.com, there was a recent discussion about this, which I have previously responded to. Now, I agree with the dissenters in this sense: a writer should know what’s right and what’s wrong in their work. There are entire branches of fiction about intentionally getting things wrong to great purpose, e.g., fantasy, alternate history, etc. Still, I’ll make these admonitions. If you’re writing science fiction, get the science right. If you’re writing historical fiction, get the history right. If you’re writing crime drama, get the police procedurals right. Get everything right you possibly can, from the spelling to the quantum physics, because the writer is the only one responsible in the end.
If you don’t, you risk the greatest threat to fiction writers, a threat greater than poor characterization or limp prose or anything else. You risk losing the suspension of disbelief. The suspension of disbelief is critical to the entire enterprise of fiction, and when it’s gone, you’ve lost the reader, perhaps forever. Bad writing or weak characters risk this too, of course, but having a reader stop and think, with regard to an important plot point, “I thought penguins were at the south pole, not the north,” and then wait for a payoff that never comes…well, that’s a crime against readers.
I have a couple of authors I won’t read again because of errors not much more subtle than this. Now, it doesn’t have to be a crisis. Larry Niven got to write entire sequels to books based on subtle problems with the original (see Ringworld and the Ringworld Engineers). Still, my guess is that he would have preferred to have gotten things right the first time.
You have to have authority in the reader’s mind, based on the words on the page, in order to keep that disbelief in suspension. The best and easiest way to get that authority, much easier than writing sterling power-infused prose, is to be an authority. Know your world and know how things work in it. Do the research.
Research can be fun, and it doesn’t have to come from books (although most writers I know love any excuse to read an interesting book). If you’re writing a story set an observatory, go visit the place and set up interviews with real astronomers who work there. The internet and email makes this sort of research incredibly easy today, and websites like google make it trivial to get maps or see what an area looks like. I’ve met few astronomers who minded taking a little time from their day to answer questions. Likewise for world-experts in all sorts of fields who rarely have the audiences they (think they) deserve.
For one of Michael Swanwick’s award-winning stories (I think it was “Radio Waves”), he researched what it was like to die in a parking lot. He went out and laid down and took note of the things around him. In two minutes he got details he wouldn’t have imagined given hours to think about it.
That’s a bit subtle. Not so subtle is a reading exercise I developed while I was really working on the craft and realizing the importance of this issue of research. I started reading books of the type that I wanted to write, and as I read each page I asked myself if I could have written that page without doing any research. Sometimes I could, when it was a passage involving the characters and internal monologues, but more often I realized that I’d need to look at a map, or a website that provided annual temperatures or local wildlife, or pull out a calculator to get an orbital velocity right.
Nobody knows close to everything about everything. All you really have to know is when you’re not sure about something, and go check it.
For Spider Star, I went hang gliding, even though I didn’t really want to. I really wasn’t as relaxed as I looked. I didn’t wind up changing much if anything in the book as a result of the experience, but I also knew for sure I hadn’t made any major mistakes. I could have gotten someone else who had hang glided to read what I’d written, but the first-hand experience is sometimes critical.
One of the best one-sentence pieces of advice about writing professionalism I got from Octavia Butler. She said that you shouldn’t ever send something out that had mistakes in it that you knew of. You were ultimately responsible and a professional didn’t send out something with errors.
Perhaps your editor will forgive you, and your audience too, if the error makes it into print. But perhaps not, and that may be the only chance you ever get with them.
If you’re going to be a serious writer, you need to get things write. I mean right. You know what I mean, but a writer shouldn’t count on it.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: personal, science, science fiction
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Apparently the Hulk move is “an action-packed pleasure” according to CNN.com. That’s good, because we wouldn’t want to make anyone angry with a bad review, would we? I’m afraid of spoilers so I’m not reading reviews closely, but the reviews seem to be good.
John Scalzi, on the other hand, slams the original Godzilla movie and other sci-fi classics. His main point is that a lot of these older movies are awful (a debatable point in some cases, very true in others — I have to concede), but that the ideas are valued more than the delivery system.
William Gibson, however, is a fan of Godzilla. It isn’t clear if he’s more of a fan of the idea of Godzilla or the movies themselves.
The Hulk is big, Godzilla is bigger, but both would get wiped out by an asteroid impact. Calculate your own here. [Thanks, badastronomy.com.] This looks really, really handy for science fiction writers, by the way.
Finally, what’s bigger than the universe? And now it can be yours for vacation. An “Astro Retreat” will be opening in Switzerland soon, a place with a suite and your own personal observatory to play with.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: general, popular events, science, science fiction
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