Singers and Scientists

I was pleased to note that singer William Shatner was to make an appearance on BBC comedy show 'Have I Got News For You' on Friday 25 May 2012. The show normally takes on a guest to chair the show as well as to be on the panel with John Hislop and Paul Merton service as team leaders.

Then I took a second look at the announcement. I did read that right: the singer William Shatner! Was there more than one William Shatner, former Star Trek Captain of the Enterprise James T Kirk! I say former now that that role has gone to a much younger Chris Pine. I double checked and realised that was not mistaken. There is only one William Shatner. And he does release records. I dare anyone to look up Shatner's version of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and then to listen to the whole thing. I would reckon that Simon Cowell would probably not even allow Shatner to pass the first verse, never mind the first audition.

But saying that just because something is not popular does that make it not art? I wonder if many of us know who the previous winners of the X-Factor are, or who is number one in the charts these days? And would we listen to it all the way to the end? Hmmm. Bill, you're in good company. Keep going.

In other news Doctor Who fans received a boost as scientist claim to have invented the sonic screwdriver. Well, they say screwdriver, it looks like the whole device would be hard pressed to fit inside a room, never mind your top pocket. This project is part of something called the Sonotweezers; which sounds more a torture tool more likely to be used by one of the Doctors more notorious enemies than a science programme.

Nevertheless the principle appears to have been proven. What they have managed to do is in fact shape ultrasound waves into a vortex in order to manipulate objects. The shaped pressure wave exert force on the object and it moves accordingly. The aim of this invention is medical. With precise aiming of the ultrasound waves they intend to be able to manipulate objects inside the body without the need to cut, reducing a lot of trauma and pain.

So, unless you have big, BIG, pockets, and an even bigger wallet, you'll have to wait a long time before pocketing your very own sonic scredriver.

Fancy an Exile to Mars?

I’ve written about the warnings of commercial spaceflight before here. Is there now even more cause to worry? Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX, the company bringing cheap orbital access to the nations) is reported to have indicated that his Dragon capsule, by benefit of the planned crew evacuation module, could land people on Mars. What he did not indicate was the means by which to get the capsule to Mars in the first place. Fortunately, that problem is being worked on by both NASA and ESA. More is to be heard about that soon enough, we think.

The idea of doing an Apollo style trip to Mars is what is on most people’s minds when you mention putting man on Mars. But the cost and the logistics for such a mission is frighteningly expensive and scary in terms of the physiological effects on the crew. The list of obstacles is quite long: Radiation exposure, muscle and bone density deterioration in low/micro-gravity, carrying enough fuel to blast off of Mars, getting that fuel safely to the ground on Mars, having enough supplies to survive until Earth catches up with Mars again and the Astronauts can come home without spending an inordinate amount of time in space – a wait of something like 18 months.

All of these factors make the decision makers baulk. It is way too expensive. So how is man ever going to go to Mars? Well, he could go to stay. A crazy thought maybe? Not according to two scientists: Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies. They suggest sending people to Mars on a one way trip. This eliminates a lot of the expense of building massive ships carrying the fuel to make the expensive climb out of Mars’ gravity. Then there is the human cost of rehabilitation for the returning astronauts. The savings are offset by the need to resupply the fledgling colony until it has established a working eco-system, but the technology to do that is readily (and now, more cheaply) available.

So what would it be like to be one of the first to go to Mars? And who would be likely to be sent up there? What sort of society would emerge?

I’ve let my mind run on this and have written a Novella that is published as a Kindle eBook. It follows the story of a young man whose unfortunate choice of friends has led him to making the decision to go to Mars and to an uncertain life. The novella’s name is Exile and is available at a very low cost. If you like this idea, why not purchase it from Amazon?

Purchase Exile for the Kindle and Kindle-readers for Android, PC, Linux and Mac.

Received Text Ebook Directory

Commercial Space Flight

The one thing I love about Science Fiction is its aptitude for foresight. We get warnings from writers imagining into the future and considering the maybes and then putting up the warning signs to humanity – “there be dragons!”

Consider the most frightening or foreboding of science fiction stories, Blade Runner, Alien, for example, and compare that to the most hopeful, the likes of A Space Odyssey, Star Trek and Space 1999. (Okay, being on the moon and blasted into the cosmos by a space-bending electro-magnetic nuclear freak of nature caused by storage of nuclear waste under the moon’s surface is not exactly hopeful, but they always survive in the end don’t they?) What is the difference?

The most hopeful visions of the future show mankind pulling themselves together and reaching into the galaxy in an effort to better themselves. I had to sit down and think about this one. They are all government organisations! My most beloved Star Trek characters are all military, sponsored by government (The Federation Council, for example.) Everyone they meet (Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans) are the same. Even the Ferengi, those lovers of commerce and profit, come under the control of the Grand Nagus. Almost nothing in Star Trek’s grand united vision seems to concern commercial enterprise.

By contrast, Blade Runner’s contenders for baddie-ness are robots created by a commercial company (The Nexus Corporation.) The whole story takes place in a world that is used and ruined and everyone is leaving like rats on a sinking ship. Alien is located on the Nostromo, a tug ship for ‘The Company’ hauling a mobile refinery that turns raw material picked up at the planet of origin and is refined by the time they reach Earth. As the story unfolds it turns out that the crew are expendable, and what really matters is the recovery of the alien for the sake of weapons research. As following sequels reveal, even the military is in the pay of the company. Redeeming features are hard to find as humanity swallows itself in greed and is redeemed only by the few.

So we could take from this that the road signs up ahead are saying Togetherness – Good, let’s take this road, Commercial – Bad, lets avoid this one. Now which road are we going to go down?

Well, let me just report that December 2010 saw the issuing of the first ‘license for re-entry into the atmosphere from orbit’ to a commercial company - SpaceX. Not only did they achieve the license, but they actually flew a successful mission to do just that – and at a fraction of the cost of Nasa’s endeavours. (Did you think I was going to say Virgin Galactic? Sorry, nil point there. Virgin Galactic’s Enterprise does not even make it to orbit, it barely skims the edge of space.)

Of course all of this effort by Elon Musk’s company is so that they can get the contract from NASA to deliver humans to Low Earth Orbit, initially, of course, to the International Space Station. SpaceX are well on their way to delivering the goods in that respect. It is one thing to deliver people into space, but after safe delivery and preservation of life in space, not an easy thing to start with of course, is safe re-entry. What goes up…

And SpaceX aren’t the only ones in on this venture. The following list of companies have all received multi-million pound grants from NASA to develop crew systems:

·         Blue Origin – founded by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon

·         Boeing – Americas long-time favourite Aerospace industry, involved in the Apollo missions

·         Paragon Space Development Corporation – building life support systems

·         Sierra Nevada Corporation – Top Woman Owned Federal Contractor in the US (No really! Check out the web site home page!)

·         United Launch Alliance – delivering the Delta series of launchers

And of course Bigalow Aerospace’s commercial space stations, producing blow-up (okay – expandable) fabric space stations, two of which have already flown. With the NASA led Orion spacecraft abandoned, America’s last hope of independently getting people into space rests with the private venture.

So is the future bright? Is the future orange? Do we need to look out for face hugging, acid-for-blood monsters imported in by shareholder-devoted companies looking to make a bigger buck; because developing weapons is more lucrative than advancing the well-being of the human race? Only the future will tell, but let me tell you this…

There be dragons!

Antimatter Presents

Now is the time for considering presents. For me, I like to build things, you know, anything from Airfix kits upwards. I have thought carefully about kit cars and even kit planes. But how about building your own kit Enterprise? Hmm, now there’s a challenge. A few million tons of titanium: check! Phasers? Well, we will just have to do with lasers for the moment: Check! Transporters? Well, someone has managed to transport photons, that’s a start: Check! Engines. Hmm, now that’s a tricky one. Hydrogen thrusters are fine enough. But an anti-matter power core?

Anti-matter has been around for a while now. Scientists have been making antimatter particles for years. Unfortunately, once a particle is created, it tends to very quickly bump into matter, annihilating both itself and the matter it bumped into with a flash of that energy that I would like to power my kit Enterprise with. (Yes, it is true, scientists are eating away at the matter of this planet with Antimatter for years!) What I would like to do is have that antimatter stored so that I can use it on demand. There is no point in having a one hundred mile particle accelerator loop to provide the antimatter needed to power my four hundred meter long ship. (Note that the latest Enterprise to be seen on screen carries a thousand crew members and is nearly a kilometre long, compared to the original 408 crew and just over 400 meters long.)

So back to the original Enterprise plans and what do I find, magnetic bottles storing antimatter! Now where am I going to find some of those? Why, Aarhus university in Denmark, of course! Where else? Professor Jeff Hangst is a collaborator on the Alpha antihydrogen project. Not only are they trapping antimatter, but they are trapping it long enough for positrons and antiprotons to come together, all of this in a strong magnetic bottle. Fantastic! My kit Enterprise building guide says that the engines are powered by Deuterium and Anti-Deuterium, perfect! They are already making my fuel for me!

But wait a minute, something’s wrong here. Professor Gerald Gabrielse of Harvard University claims to be the first to propose the “magnetic bottle.” I am not so sure. As early as the Original Series episode “Errand of Mercy” there was talk of antimatter pods. The Next Generation Technical Manual fleshes out these pods, describing them as Magnetic Confinement Pods. So you see, Star Trek writers first proposed the method of antimatter storage long before this so called 2002 breakthrough.

But I guess we ought to be grateful that science is finally starting to catch up. There may even be an admission of inspiration in Professor Gabrielse’s closing words on the subject "It shows that the dream from many years ago is not completely crazy." Why, thank you, professor. Glad to know you think so highly of us dreamers! Now, where did I put that epoxy resin…

Many thanks to the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11773791) for alerting me to this story and to Memory Alpha (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Antimatter_pod) for helping me to remember the dream from many years ago. “Star Trek” is Copyright CDB Paramount Television.

The age of the Offensive Laser

Blasters, Phasers, Laser Canons. Every Sci-fi series has some sort of directed energy weapon. Imagine Star Trek without Phasers or Han Solo toting an Uzi. It just does not work. At this point I must congratulate the Sci-Fi Channel’s (when it used to be called that) Battlestar Galactica and its use of real ammunition and more realistic physics. Until then, I don’t think that anyone would even consider a futuristic show without putting in a ‘Ray Gun’ of some sort into the mix.

Real science’s best attempt at such a device includes mounting it on a Boeing 747 and using such dangerous chemicals to power it, you were as likely to kill the operator as hit the target. (Try getting that in your holster, Han.) Well, that is until now! Solid State Lasers have finally reached the same power levels as Chemical Lasers. The latest Arms Show at Farnborough (Yes, we thought it was an air show as well!) shows off this new weaponry shooting down UAVs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10682693

Of course, the laser is invisible until it comes into contact with something. You can’t sell something that is invisible, so you either dress it up with a half-naked female (like car manufacturers selling 80mpg in the city) or you get an artist in to draw the ‘ray gun’ line. Trust me, once they get this thing down to hand-held size, there will be a female in the wings ready and waiting to hold it for the camera!

Venus and the Higgs Boson

The Register (That bastion of IT and Science reporting professionalism, almost on par with such tomes as Private Eye) published a story on the 25 June entitled “Venus home to lost cities left by long-dead aliens, says ESA” with the by-line “Well, it was strongly implied.” The summary of the story was that ESA have published an article to declare one time there was an abundance of water on Venus. The register invites us to spin our own Friday afternoon notions from there. Their idea such a notion involves long uninhabited Venusian cities with nuclear bunkers containing DNA ready to be cloned in to fully fledged Aliens. I am willing to bet that David Clegg (our two headed beast at the head of Government) didn’t see that one coming when they put together their latest immigration policy.

What caught my interest was the report on a theory by Eric Chassefiere that the water on Venus existed only as a mist in the air. This reminded me of the description of the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis (Chapter 2 and verse 6 if you must know) where most decent translations recognise that a mist (fog or vapour) came up from the ground to water everything. Now could it possibly be that Venus was once our Garden of Eden? That would mean that our ancestors were then banished to Earth as a living Hell and the fires of the sun are the flaming sword that prevents us from ever returning to paradise. (Not that this stops NASA’s robots and the cast and crew of Defying Gravity from going there. Maybe we should consider sending them there as punishment for making such a dismal first season as to get such a wonderful idea cancelled before the season even finished!)

Consequently, could we really all be Venusians, all illegal aliens and possibly all delusional.

Moving on swiftly! Douglas Adams postulated in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe that “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.” Well, the Higgs Boson has been discovered to have spilt personalities. This is of course a disaster. Physicists were hoping that this so called God particle would be this fat bloke in the sky that gives everything else meaning (or was it mass? It’s all getting rather spiritual.) Now that there are more parts to it than they originally reckoned, are they going to call the new boson family “Mount Olympus?”

Anyway, the Higgs Boson discovery would not be so bad if it were not for the discovery of Neutrinos’ ability to transform themselves into other types of neutrino in a harmonic kind of way. What starts out as one type of neutrino can end up oscillating between types as it travels. And if that was not bad enough, what is really getting physicists’ goat is the fact that an anti-neutrino is not in fact the opposite of a neutrino. So the Standard Model of physics is not so much back to the drawing board as in the trash can. Can anyone remember when it used to be Protons, Neutrons and Electrons?

“There is another theory which states that this has already happened!”