Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
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The Science Fiction in Science: Dark Matter Ramjets and Black Hole Powered Spacecraft
December 1st, 2009
New Scientist has an interesting article about novel methods for interstellar travel, which includes links to recent scientific articles:
In August, physicist Jia Liu at New York University outlined his design for a spacecraft powered by dark matter (arxiv.org/abs/0908.1429v1). Soon afterward, mathematicians Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland at Kansas State University in Manhattan proposed plans for a craft powered by an artificial black hole (arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803).
Liu claims to have his inspiration come from Bussard and the interstellar ramjet concept, but maybe he just read my novel Spider Star that has a very similar idea, at least in the sense that dark matter is used as fuel. My idea is very direct, with a “beater” that pushes around WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles). Liu’s idea is based on a theory involving how dark matter may annihilate to release energy.
I’m not the first to use black holes to drive space ships (as I did in Star Dragon using a variation on an idea that first appeared in a physics paper in the 1950s), not by a longshot, but it is always welcome to see serious efforts to develop new ideas about how to do this thing.
Also recently, Charlie Stross has made a very thoughtful post getting a lot of attention about how interstellar travel is really hard and doesn’t even fit into the spaceship paradigm, barring some series developments in physics. Well, a dark matter drive could potentially be such a development.
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Interesting idea you describe. I don’t know much about the finer technical aspects of propulsion drives, or the speed/time dilation ratio myself. However, the fundamental problems with travelling to the nearest likely inhabitable planet i can’t see being overcome with any sublight drive, that is if the crew want to reach it in their lifetime. Perhaps the only solution is some kind of cryogenic suspension, but who would risk the possibility of not being revived due to some malfunction … or alien boarding? Ok, I guess some would, just as soldiers are prepared to enter a war zone.
What I’m considering is some way of manipulating space itself (never mind the huge amount of power involved) that somehow warps it, compressess it. I’ll have to do more research.
One idea that seems a non-starter is sending uploaded versions of mindstates, not so much because of the technical limitations but for philosophical and ethical reasons. What kind of sentience is being sent, humans or simulated humans? What they will be are copies, even if they can be reintegrated with bodies. Still, if it can be done…
Yes, Adrian, these are the kind of issues being discussed in the comments over at Charlie’s blog.
my idea for a space drive comes from the philedelphia experiment where the government tried to cloak a warship using magnetic fields. i dont know if the government really tried this it is rumor but apparently the magnets compressed space around the ship increasing lightspeed so that the ship reached its destination much sooner than anticipated even sooner than is possible by modern physics.