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
Science and Science Fiction: Neutron Star by Larry Niven
April 6th, 2010
There are spoilers ahead concerning the story “Neutron Star” by Larry Niven. Be warned. If you want to download and read the story for under a dollar, check it out on fictionwise.com. If you’re not going to jump out and read the story any time soon, you can familiarize or remind yourself about it at the wikipedia entry for “Neutron Star.”
Here is Wiki’s plot summary:
Beowulf Shaeffer, a native of the planet We Made It and unemployed for the last eight months due to a stock market crash, is contracted by a Pierson’s Puppeteer, the Regional President of General Products on We Made It, to pilot a General Products-hulled starship, in a close approach about neutron star BVS-1. The Puppeteers want to determine why two previous researchers, Peter and Sonya Laskin, were killed during the previous attempt on a similar mission. Shaeffer has no intention of even attempting the dangerous mission, but agrees anyway – he has other plans. He has the Puppeteers construct what he dubs the Skydiver to his precise specifications, supposedly to ensure he survives to return with the relevant data: an advanced sensor package, a high-powered thruster – and a high-powered laser. It is thus the only warship ever constructed by the cowardly and paranoid alien race – a prize beyond value and a perfect means of escape. However, he is forced into compliance by an operative of the U.N.’s Bureau of Alien Affairs, Sigmund Ausfaller, who has had the Puppeteers install a bomb somewhere inside the Skydiver. Ausfaller informs Schaeffer that if he does not attempt the mission he will be sent to debtors prison, and that if he attempts to escape in the ship the bomb will be detonated within a week – well before he could even reach another planet, let alone find a buyer for the ship. Shaeffer, realizing he is trapped, agrees to fly the mission.
The Skydiver reaches the neutron star, and the ship’s autopilot puts the Skydiver into a hyperbolic orbit that will take 24 hours to reach periapsis with BVS-1, passing a mile above its surface. During the descent Schaeffer notices many unusual things: the stars ahead of him began to turn blue from Doppler shift as his speed increases enormously; the stars behind him, rather than being red-shifted, were blue too as their light accelerated with him into the gravity well of the neutron star. The nose of the ship is pulled towards the neutron star even when he tries to move the ship to view his surroundings.
As the mysterious pull exceeds one Earth gravity, Shaeffer accelerates the Skydiver to compensate for the unknown X-force until he is in free fall (though the accelerometer only registers 1.2 gees). Shaeffer eventually realizes what the X-force is: the tidal force. The strong tidal pull of the neutron star is trying to force the ends of the ship (and Shaeffer himself) into two separate orbits. Shaeffer programs the autopilot in a thrust pattern that allows him to reach the center of mass of the ship in effective freefall, though he nearly fails to do so. The ship reaches perigee where tidal forces nearly pull Shaeffer apart anyway, but he manages to hold himself in the access space at the ship’s center of mass and survives.
After returning to We Made It, Shaeffer is hospitalized (he has received a sunburn by starlight blue-shifted into the ultraviolet) for observation at the Puppeteer’s insistence. While explaining tidal forces to the Puppeteer, Schaeffer realizes the alien had no knowledge of tides, something that would be elementary for a sentient species living on a world with a moon. The Puppeteers are extremely cautious when dealing with other races, and keep all details about their homeworld secret. When Schaeffer mentions that he can tell reporters the fact that the Puppeteer’s world has no moon, the Puppeteer agrees to give Shaeffer a million stars (an incredible fortune in galactic currency) in return for his silence. Shaeffer asks the alien how he likes being blackmailed for a change.
First, let me say I first read this story when I was in high school and loved it, and have read it a number of times since. It’s a classic Hugo winner that has a plot point turn on a knowledge and understanding of astrophysics, and also, unfortunately, the surprise murderer can also be ruined by too much knowledge of astrophysics. Conceptually, this is a great story to me. I got my first introduction to tidal forces from this story, which is cool. Gravitational force depends on distance, and tidal forces describe how an object pulls more strongly on one side of an object than the other. Tidal forces are a subtle thing to most readers who are not physics or astronomy majors, and neutron stars extreme objects that really exist and have large tidal forces. There’s a problem with the story that Niven acknowledges, however. Also from Wiki:
In the “Afterthoughts” section of the Tales of Known Space collection, Niven writes: “I keep meeting people who have done mathematical treatments of the problem raised in the short story ‘Neutron Star‘, …. Alas and dammit, Shaeffer can’t survive. It turns out that his ship leaves the star spinning, and keeps the spin.” If this is true, it does more than kill Shaeffer: it kills the entire story premise, for the Laskins’ ship also would have acquired and kept a similar spin, which the puppeteers could hardly have failed to notice. It is also unclear how the Laskins’ ship returned to its starting point; unless the puppeteers sent another ship to retrieve it, it would have had to do so through normal space, a journey of years.
So, some plot holes and holes in his physics. That seems to happen to Niven a lot, which isn’t a bad thing. It means he’s pushing some limits, and there’s always the opportunity to come back to a story and do it right one way or another. Niven’s famous creation Ringwold (AKA Halo to younger generations) isn’t instrinsically stable. Niven was able to come back and write a sequal to Ringworld, The Ringworld Engineers, in which the stability issue suddenly becomes a plot point for an entire novel. When I write a science fiction story and I come up with a problem with the basic physics, I know look to see if there’s an engineering solution to the issue that can become a plot element in my story. I did that with Spider Star. There was no way to make a human-breathable atmosphere for my dark matter planet over the range of alitutdes I wanted — not a natural way, in any event. Sufficiently advanced alien engineering could do it, however, and the reasons why aliens would do this became plot elements.
Now, Niven brings up the spin issue and the return flight issue. Something I always meant to do, and haven’t done until now, was just to quantitatively calculate the magnitude of the tidal forces, making some assumptions based on information in the story. OK, minimum alititude is only one mile above the surface, which is somewhat signficant compared to the radius of a neutron star. For modern values of a typical neutron star, and these are somewhat model dependent, I assume a raduis of about 10 kilometers and a mass of 2 solar masses (see wiki for some more information, although I’m going from one of my textbooks). 1 mile makes the distance above such a neutron star about 6.6 km. We can compute the tidal force exerted…it’s not as simple as this, but the primary thing to consider is just the axial component and its magnitude (there is also a transverse squeezing term in addition to this axial stretching term). This is not so hard to compute. And it’s more useful to compute the acceleration rather than the force, and put it in Earth gravities, which is something I have some intuitive feeling for.
(axial)
That’s from wiki. The direction is axial. The delta r term is the size of the body (a couple of meters for a tall human stretched out along the direction toward the neutron star, maybe half a meter curled up in a ball). Capital M is the mass of the neutron star, R is the distance from the center of the neutron star, and G is Newton’s gravitational constant. Watching the units, we can get an answer based on the values of M and R above. Uh oh…I’m getting an answer like 2 billion meters per second squared per meter of separation, or about 200 million Earth gravities. Even if you could lay perfectly flat, and assume a tenth of a meter between front and back, that’s still 20 million Earth gravities. That’s large. You don’t sruvive that kind of force. Niven, in the story, suggests that there are “hundreds of gravities” present in the ship, and he’s only off by a factor of a million or so. Still, it’s better than the surface gravity of a neutron star, which is about a hundred billion times that of Earth…
Now, I’m guessing that back in the 1960s, neutron star sizes were not well understood, but the mass should have been known to be on the order of a solar mass and a half or higher, and Niven gets the size right by saying it is “11 miles across”). I mean, a neutron star is about the size of a small town like Laramie, which is pretty far out. Anyway, any pilot this close to a neutron star gets pulped, with no hope for survival, regardless of ship spin issues. The only way to fix this would be to change the perigee altitude, or do something very science fictional like make the pilot microscopic or shield the tidal force somehow.
The story doesn’t stand up today, quantitatively, although the concept is cool and could perhaps be reworked. That might be a fun project, although today you’d have to assume that the audience had read “Neutron Star” and the new story would have to be a response in some clever way…I’m going to think about that.
Another Nice Resources for Interstellar Worldbuilding
March 30th, 2010
Following up my recent post on this topic, I came across another really nice one, although a bit low-tech, very similar to a book I used to have and use back in the 1990s when the web wasn’t so dense.
Credits to Eric Nylund for this one, which he uses when writing Halo novels:
Atlas of the Universe Here, bookmarked specifically to the stars within 50 light years for HALO research, but the entire site is wickedly useful!
I like Atlas of the Universe, too, very much. Simple 2-d projections of star maps on a variety of scales, centered on the sun, with information about the stars. It goes on up to extragalactic scales, too. A nice place to start, I think, in the planning stages of a story.
A subset of a list from the stars with 12.5 light years:
Sun – Type=G2, Magnitude=-26.8, Distance=0.0000158 ly
A typical yellow dwarf star. It has eight planets orbiting it.
This dim red dwarf is the nearest star to the Sun, and it is a member of the Alpha Centauri system despite lying 0.24 light years from the main pair of stars, requiring over one million years to orbit them. Proxima was discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes and was at that time the least luminous star known. It is also a flare star – capable of brightening a magnitude or more in minutes.
Just slightly further from us than Proxima, lie the orange and yellow dwarf stars that make up Alpha Centauri. Orbiting each other in an 80 year period, together they make up one of the brightest objects in southern hemisphere skies. Seen from Alpha Centauri, the third member of the system, Proxima, is a dim (magnitude 4.8) star.
Barnard’s Star – Type=M5, Magnitude=9.6, Distance=5.94 ly
Famous for having the largest proper motion of any star, this dim red dwarf travels 0.29 degrees against the background sky in a century. Discovered by E Barnard in 1916, it was thought in the 1960’s to have a couple of unseen planets orbiting it, but later observations disproved this. In another 8000 years Barnard’s Star will become the closest star to us.
Wolf 359 – Type=M6, Magnitude=13.5, Distance=7.80 ly
An excessively dim red dwarf discovered by Max Wolf in 1918. For 25 years it was the least luminous star known.
Recorded in JJ Lalande’s star catalogue compiled in the 1790’s, this is one of the brightest red dwarfs in the sky, but it still needs binoculars to see it. G Gatewood reported in 1996 the possible indications of a couple of Jupiter sized planets orbiting it but this remains unconfirmed.
This brilliant white star is the brightest star in the night sky and the most luminous star within 25 light years. Its white dwarf companion was first seen in 1852, the first white dwarf ever seen. The orbital period is 50 years.
This is a dim binary system consisting of two red dwarfs. The system is perhaps more famously known as UV Ceti, the variable-star name of the second star in the system. It is a famous flare star and can visibly brighten by several magnitudes as it ejects flares from its surface similar to the ones seen on the surface of the Sun, but far more energetic. Both stars require about 200 years to orbit each other.
Ross 154 – Type=M4, Magnitude=10.4, Distance=9.69 ly
A dim red dwarf. It is one of a number of nearby stars catalogued by Frank Ross in the 1930’s. It is also a known flare star.
Ross 248 – Type=M6, Magnitude=12.3, Distance=10.33 ly
An orange dwarf star. This star was searched for signs of intelligent life with the Green Bank radio telescope in 1960. The results, predictably, were negative. The IRAS satellite detected a lot of dust orbiting this star indicating a possible forming solar system, and even more recently, (Aug 2000), a Jupiter sized planet has been detected orbiting this star at a distance of 3.2 AU (480 million km).
A fairly bright red dwarf which can easily be seen with binoculars, it was first recorded in Nicolas de Lacaille’s catalogue of southern hemisphere stars compiled around 1752.
Ross 128 – Type=M4, Magnitude=11.1, Distance=10.89 ly
A dim red dwarf, also known as FI Vir – its variable star designation.
There seems to be three red dwarfs in this system. The main pair orbiting each other in a 2 year period, and a dim third star orbiting the first at a very close range.
A brilliant yellow-white star, and the eighth brightest star in the sky. With twice the diameter of the Sun, Procyon is also the largest star within 25 light years. Procyon is orbited by a white dwarf companion first seen optically in 1896. The orbital period is 41 years.
This binary system of two orange dwarf stars is famous for being the first star ever to have its distance measured by F Bessel in 1838. Both stars are very similar but are widely separated (86 AU) requiring about 700 years to orbit each other.
A binary system of two red dwarfs named Struve 2398 from a catalogue of double stars published in 1827. This system is also known by the rather more boring name of BD+59 °1915. The two stars are quite widely separated (50 AU) and orbit each other in a 450 year period.
Another pair of red dwarfs, this system is usually called Groombridge 34 from an 1838 catalogue of northern stars or sometimes BD+43 °44. Both stars are variable in brightness and have the variable star names of GX And and GQ And. Both stars lie far apart from each other (150 AU) and orbit each other in a 2500 year period.
This excessively dim red dwarf is the least luminous star within 14 light years. It shines with just 0.01% of the Sun’s luminosity.
Epsilon Indi A,B,C – Type=K5+T1+T6, Magnitude=4.7, Distance=11.83 ly
An orange dwarf. It is a similar star to Epsilon Eridani, although a little bit smaller and dimmer. Epsilon Indi is orbited by a pair of brown dwarfs – failed stars that are too small to burn. They were discovered in 2003 and they orbit each other in a 16 year period, and they are 1500 AU (220 billion km) from the main star and they require about 70 000 years to orbit it.
Tau Ceti – Type=G8, Magnitude=3.5, Distance=11.90 ly
The nearest, single, sun-like star. It was searched (unsuccessfully) for any signs of intelligent life in 1960, along with Epsilon Eridani.
I’ve discussed some world building before, and this has traditionally been an important topic in science fiction and fantasy. I want to get a little more specific where it comes to space-based interstellar science fiction.
These days I think it’s becoming necessary to be very specific in any human-based, Earth-oriented future to use real astronomy and real star maps and real stars. You should know how far apart stars are, their stellar types and lifetimes and other assorted details, the life zones of these stars, if there are things known about planets, etc. This is an intimidating amount of knowledge for anyone other than a professional astronomer, although that’s changing. It’s getting much easier for non-scientists to get a hold of star maps and build an interstellar empire based on the local solar neighborhood.
One tool I use, besides an enormous Excel spreadsheet, is a program called ChView, which is a fascinating– if slightly frustrating– program. For a piece of free-on-the-internet software, it’s really good at visualizing interstellar maps. But it isn’t quite everything I’d want it to be. That’s all right, the person who wrote the program wasn’t doing it for me, and I think it’s great. Check it out.
There are others out there. There’s Celestia and its add-ons. There’s Sol Station. Anyone use these? Comments or criticisms? Recommendations for others?
I can do this stuff the old-fashioned way, but I’m more than game to make it easy on myself, too!
NASA Looking for Innovative Educational Ideas — About Video Games Among Other Things!
March 12th, 2010
Here’s the letter below asking for input (until March 19th). I am particularly thrilled about NASA’s questions and especially the only about video game development (question six). This is a potentially very powerful way of getting at the younger generation before college level. I wish I’d seen this sooner and had more time to participate. Things like Launch Pad and Diamonds in the Sky have been my attempts at innovative education, but I’m sure I can think bigger.
My talks out at Rock Springs went well. I had great audiences and a great time. My own attempts to educate, traditional ones. Anyway, how about some more innovative approaches?
From: NASA Education [mailto:education@nasa.gov] Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 10:19 AM Subject: NASA Needs Your Ideas
NASA Education welcomes your ideas! For a limited time, visit opennasa.ideascale.com to provide feedback on any of the following questions, as well as general ideas you may have about the way NASA does business. The feedback that you provide will be used in important planning and development at NASA, and you may have a say in our next exciting breakthrough in education, technology, science and exploration. Hurry — this unique opportunity ends March 19, 2010.
OpenNASA Education Questions:
EDQ1: How can NASA innovate in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education?
EDQ2: How can NASA improve its services in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education?
EDQ3: What innovative ideas do you have for the NASA Education website, www.nasa.gov/education ?
EDQ4: What innovative new education/mission products and materials would you like to see from NASA?
EDQ5: What innovative ideas do you have for using NASA content and materials in your classroom?
EDQ6: What types of online or massively multiplayer online (MMO) games would you like to see NASA create?
EDQ7: If you could design a NASA prize competition, similar to the Centennial Challenges and the X Prize, for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, what would it be and how would you measure the success of the competitors?
EDQ8: What can NASA do to connect you (student, educator or parent) with our missions, discoveries and education programs?
NOTE: Please enter your question code in the TAGS field of your submission at opennasa.ideascale.com. For example, “EDQ1†should be entered by those answering the first question.
Maybe this is in bad taste. I don’t know. I don’t care too much. There are some weird looking actors out there who have gotten a lot of work over the years. They’re not ugly. They’re “Hollywood Ugly” which means you don’t scream when you see them and there’s something about the way they look that makes you keep looking. Not sure what I mean?
Let’s start with Ron Perlman, who has done a lot of great work. Quest for Fire, Hellboy, and on TV Beauty and the Beast. Notice a pattern? He’s playing cavemen, monsters, and demons, with minimal makeup. Here he is being honored for his work portraying a beast:
Then there’s Steve Buscemi, who in the movie Fargo keeps being described as “funny looking.” Yeah. How about in other movies:
Reminds me of Marty Feldman (EYE-Gor in Young Frankenstein):
Then there’s Vincent Schiavelli who played alien John O’Conner in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and the crazy ghost in Ghost:
Willem Dafoe, oh yes, a natural for vampires and green goblins:
Oh, one of my faves! Michael Berryman…
Richard Kiel, Jaws from the old James Bond movies:
Rowan Atkinson, of Black Adder and Mr. Bean fame:
How about women? How about alien Shelly Duvall? Or maybe she’s from the future, or an elf, or something in the eyes, like Buscemi and Feldman…see her in a kafkaesque moment:
And finally, Tilda Swinton, that androgynous angel in Constantine:
In physics, the two-body problem, two objects moving under mutual gravitational attraction, is solved analytically and completely. No uncertainties. Simple. Undergraduates in upper-level mechanics do it all the time.
In pursuing a career in academia, and going on my experiences in astronomy, the two-body problem that is much more challenging is having a relationship or marriage that can survive the experience despite strong mutual attraction.
Let’s imagine a young couple in love that meets in college.
First comes the challenge of graduate school. Not every university has a good program in your field of interest, and it’s probably worse if your partner is in the same field. Plenty of programs are too small to admit couples easily, even if they’re both strong candidates. But let’s skip this part for now. Plenty of college relationships don’t last long, and are already complicated by different graduation dates and other issues.
Much more common is for graduate students to meet and get married. A large fraction of female astronomy grad students meet and marry other astronomy grad students. This is where it gets tough.
Even if graduation dates are coordinated, there are usually 2-3 postdocs to go through before landing a permanent position (if that is even achieved). The jobs are not easy to get, especially if you put any restrictions on location. Apply for all 30-40 worldwide you might be qualified for. Land one or two. Is it in the same city as the job your spouse landed?
Didn’t think so.
Maybe you both keep on with your career aspirations and compromise on jobs within a long drive away from each other, and spend a few weekends a month together. Skype and other technology makes it easier to spend semi-quality time together these days.
How about the second post-doc?
How about when one lands a faculty job, and the other doesn’t?
And what if that faculty job is in a small college town without many, or any, options in the spouses expertise?
Most people who can make careers in science can make a lot more money in industry or some sort of more commercial jobs, so sticking with science (or academia in general) is already a sacrifice. Then there’s the social life issue. And having kids? Already hell on a woman’s career prospects to get and hold a permanent job and plenty of stress on a man’s.
There are solutions, but they all involve sacrifice, save for a lucky few.
There’s long-term commuting, which I think sucks. No one likes that. Then there are universities, like my own, that try very, very hard to hire spouses. That’s ideal, as long as everyone is happy. One partner not getting tenure is doom to that otherwise happy scenario. Then there’s one partner giving up their primary career and making due somehow doing something else. That happens a lot, and is the most common solution. Of course the resentment of the sacrifice by one partner puts a stress on the marriage and can destroy it.
Still, there are a lot of academic couples. Smart curious people like each other and are bored or uninterested in people who just like to watch tv, play sports, and not engage in intellectual discourse.
I’ve had several friends go through this in recent years, and it’s hard as hell. I feel for them. I hope they’re together this weekend for Valentine’s Day at least.
There’s an article about artificial limbs with a picture of an attractive woman, a double-amputee, running along the beach. The premise of the article is that some artificial limbs are starting to outperform original limbs, in at least some ways. This trend will continue into the future, no doubt, until we have the capability to make impressive cyborgs. I’m just wondering how many people, if anyone, even among science fiction loving folks who are the most common readers here, would cut off a healthy limb in favor of a mechanical limb that worked better. (I understand “better” is a relative term here, probably.) If I had a permanently injured limb, for sure, probably. But a normal healthy limb?
I’m not big on poetry as a rule. It’s a taste I think. I like rock and roll, but not country. I like colas, but not coffee. And I prefer novels to short stories, and short stories to poetry. I think I’ve always been more enamored of the idea of something than its presentation, although I do prefer a nice presentation. Still, I think as a writer, developing skill with poetry is valuable and I have written poems. I’ll read the poetry in science fiction magazines when I see it, and usually like it, although rarely love it (could be me, or the quality, not sure).
Haikus I’ve always liked pretty well. They’re short, usually grasped in a moment’s reflection, and sometimes surprisingly profound or memorable. From Wiki, a very short definition:
Haiku (俳å¥,haikai verse?)listen (help ·info), plural haiku, is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 moras (or on), in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 moras respectively.[1]
I’m about science and science fiction, and it’s fun to insert these into old, traditional forms. A lot of haikus are about nature, but why not technology? Or other science fictional concepts?
There is a lot of science fiction poetry out there already, of course, and, as it turns out, a lot of haiku in particular. There is in fact, a whole webpage and wike about SciFaiku. I love it! Check some out here and here, and a list of links here.
I thought I’d share a few efforts.
Never questioning,
Always working, the robot
Saves us time for what?
A big universe
too giant to comprehend
makes me feel little
My greatest nightmare
An evil robot monkey
Eating at my face
Teleport our team
To the blue planet below…
Wait! Wore my red shirt!
An ugly spaceship
Manufactured for vaccuum
Not for atmosphere
Quantum mechanics
Makes many worlds in my mind
And reality
A ray gun is fun —
until the alien pulls
out a bigger one
Have a favorite one to share yourself? Write it in the comments or send a link.
I missed our astronomy journal club today, so I thought I could take some of that time I “saved” and invest it here in talking about what is journal club.
In the sciences, you generally finish classes in your second year of graduate school, and are not likely to take more. Teach more yes, but not take more.
Additionally, this is when a scientist focuses on their thesis topic. Focuses deep. Becomes the world expert on some little tiny niche in some sub-sub-field. After getting the PhD, there are post-doc positions and perhaps eventually a faculty job, with each career step predicated upon ample publication. Those who publish most tend to be those who stay in their subfield, for better or worse. Not so much new to learn to write each paper as someone who does very different things.
Still, a scientist should keep up with the broader field, at least the important results. There are not a lot of formal ways of doing this, and most scientists I know can’t keep up with reading papers in their subfield let alone outside it.
One way astronomical culture has evolved to deal with this problem is to invent the “Journal Club.” In most departments, and not all have a journal club, people meet once a week to discuss a new or relatively new paper of special interest, with one person leading the discussion. Most of these papers are preprints available online from the astrophysics preprint server.
There are different philosophies about what Journal Club is for and how to run it. I’ve outlined some of my personal thoughts above. Others sometimes feel it’s for educating grad students, and giving them a chance to give more informal presentations before needing to give high-pressure seminars like dissertation defenses.
I don’t know if journal clubs are common in all fields, but I’ve seen them in most astronomy departments I’ve been in or visited for any length of time.
It’s tough sometimes, with teaching, students, faculty meetings, administrative work, and your own research to even pay attention to the latest cool planet discovered or a new record-holder for most distant object. Journal Club helps a lot. When you find the time to attend.
I was just thinking of, or trying to think of, video games with good science that teach a little science. As usual, I tend to think of physics and astronomy, and the things that occur to me first are usually down this line of thinking. I know that I’ve missed a lot of PC games and console games and thought I’d ask for help. What games have good science, particularly in terms of physics or astronomy? I’ll throw out two from my childhood that I was a big fan of.
Space War. Ships moving in space with impulse and gravity. You learn right away a lot of rules of celestial mechanics, or the star/black hole eats your ship. There is also the issue of 2-dimensional thinking that did in Kahn.
Lunar Lander. Fuel. Action and reaction. Gravity. Good old Newtonian physics:
What else? I know there have been some PC-based space exploration games that use real stars and things, but I can’t remember any specifically by name. Games that get space battles, inertia, mechanics right? Games that depend on evolution? Help me out. I’d like to make a list. A lot of the older games can be found online these days, in some version or another.
All of writing hinges on knowing your audience. This is true of fiction and non fiction, and applies not only to writing, but communication of all kinds from entertainment to education.
Randy Olson has really made me think about audience in a deeper way, and I’ve always been very aware of audience and made adjustments accordingly (for the most part). Still, I think he’s missed a few tricks along the way, and Mooney and Kirshenbaum definitely have.
First, Olson is right about one thing. A sizable fraction of scientists (he says 1/3), are curmudgeons who only want information and want it with as few frills as possible. Anyone adding frills is right out. And these scientists are too narrow-minded to have a broader perspective. Case in point. Passive voice sucks in writing, and nearly everyone would agree. But not that fraction of scientists. I was refereeing a paper last year, written by someone junior to me, and I made some stylistic suggestions about changing some passive sentences to the active voice (not even involving “I” or “we” — just stuff like “Table 1 shows the data…” instead of “The data are given in Table 1…”). The author told me that she preferred the passive voice in scientific articles and rejected my suggestions. You can lead a horse to water, but…
So where I am I going with this?
Well, I have been really struggling with the issue of calling a spade a spade (e.g., creationists, science deniers of other strips) or being less confrontational.
I think the answer depends on the audience and goals.
Here, my readership is a particular niche of science and science fiction fans, primarily. I am preaching to the choir most days, I suspect. A good, angry, and righteous rant can be inspirational to like-minded people. That’s a good thing, but it would be a bad thing if I was writing for a general audience. I would come across as mean, arrogant, etc., even though I would likely be totally right, and people would ignore me or even harden against me. No good.
The general audience cares less for facts and what’s right. That’s hard for the non-expert to be sure about, so they look for other clues. They look for likability, and get turned off by arrogance. They need a subtle touch, and do not weigh debates rationally. Which SUCKS. But until I can change our entire educational system, culture, and species demographics, isn’t going to change much.
Olson gets some things wrong, I think. I doesn’t like the rants and negativity on scienceblogs, for instance, but he doesn’t appreciate their niche audiences. At the same time, he admits that peer pressure, his friends in college laughing at him for believing everything he read in Reader’s Digest, changed his mind. That was not his friends being nice and understanding. That was his friends ridiculing his ridiculous position. Being negative can sway in the right context.
So, what are the issues?
Well, If your audience is anti-science, you have to be conciliatory, likable, reasonable. Unless it is the hardcore fundie who isn’t going to change, but that isn’t the target audience in most cases. In most cases it is the reasonable but uninformed person watching such a debate who will decide who “wins” based on something other than the facts they don’t yet fully appreciate. And when you’re preaching to the choir, a little bit of being an ass is okay. But for the special choir of hardcore scientists, they just want the facts and any enhancement is a negative to them.
I remember reviewing a grant proposal once that was very nicely written with some great analogies, enthusiasm, and style. And I bumped it up in my grade for that. Once of my fellow panel members, however, commented on the “extreme” writing style and wanted to put something in the comments to admonish the proposer. God, I thought this person was ridiculous with that review, but it reflected his opinion, and probably that of 1/3 of the panel.
Well, I can’t change THAT much. I’m going to write effectively as best I know how and can’t make myself do things that suck just to satisfy some of my clueless peers. I understand them, but I won’t compromise that much. They’re only 1/3, so I can still win…sometimes. But I do worry less about the presentation for scientist-only audiences. A single factual error, however…
So, I am still learning how to do this, and feel like no one knows the exact formula. Olson’s formula is to be like Carl Sagan, except only Sagan was Sagan. I will be me, trying to be Sagan-like when addressing broad audiences. He wrote science fiction, too, and I feel something kindred with him. He was also here in Wyoming for the dedication of our local observatory (with a racy story to boot, which I approve of). He somehow avoided the label of being arrogant that Dawkins has stamped on his forehead now. Personally I don’t think it’s arrogant to be right and frustrated with stupid people, but I’m in a minority on that one.
Know thyself, and know thy audience.
Randy Olson’s book, Unscientific America, scienceblogs, inspiring the choir, audience, and converting the masses when style is substance…
Science is the antithesis of style over substance, so not self-consistent in practice
Five Reasons Why People Think They Hate Science (and what to do about it!)
December 20th, 2009
Now, I don’t expect everyone to love everything that I love, but I do know that everyone loves the results of science even if they don’t readily acknowledge it. I mean, people love using the internet, driving cars, being warm in the winter, getting medicine when they are sick, all that good stuff. But even if they don’t readilly acknowledge this love for the roots of science, I do understand the hate. Or I think I do, part of it.
I’ve taught science to non-major students a number of years and also spend my time watching science wars on the internet (e.g., deniers of global warming, evolution, etc.).
I think that countering biases means figuring out misconceptions, confronting them, and knocking them down first thing. If you don’t hit the misconception, you don’t actually teach anyone anything. The misconceptions run strong and reassert themselves over time. So, I want to try to list the issues people have with science, rational and irrational, and want to think about how to respond to and perhaps counter these.
1. Scientists are arrogant, so I don’t like science.
Bush and Clinton are arrogant, so does that mean you don’t like politics? Simon Cowell on American Idol is arrogant, but he is popular and tens of millions of peolple like that show. Astronomers Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan don’t come across as arrogant on their TV shows, so maybe everyone can like some science.
2. Science is full of math. I’m not good at math, so I don’t like science.
Not all sciences have a lot of math (e.g., biology). Moreover, science concepts are more fundamental than the math. The science is all in setting up the equations. The math is in solving them, so you can understand the science without the math. (P.S. Math isn’t so bad, really!)
3. Science is full of negativity. Scientists are always doubting things. It isn’t just arrogance, it’s being pessimistic, skeptical doubters. So I don’t like science.
This is true, but necessary. Sometimes it’s better to have a dose of honesty, and not take everything on authority. Besides, not every idea is right out there, so let’s make a virtue out of honesty, ok?
4. My beliefs are strong, and I have faith. Science says some things contradictory to my beliefs (e.g. evolution, global warming, autism, etc.), so I don’t like science.
Well, this one is harder I think. Reality is reality. Science doesn’t care. We can be understanding about people in the past, with a different culture and educational background interpreting things as they saw them. We know better now. And science, ultimately, is less beholden to any particular belief system or ideology. Eventually it gets to the right answer, like it or not, and there’s always someone one your side and on the other side who both get bitten by science. Science is not a belief system. It reflects reality. We all have to deal with reality, don’t we?
5. Science is mechanistic and cold, so I don’t like it.
Think of your favorite robot. The Iron Giant. Bender. Data. Robby. R2-D2. HAL. Okay, maybe not HAL. But there’s at least one robot out there you like, isn’t there? Make that the face of cold, mechanical science, if you must.
(axial) 
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