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
I am such a nerd. There is no reasonable answer to my question, except for the obvious “he’s an alien, that’s why” or “shut up and stop being such a nerd!”
(Why Superman should look like a human at all is another question I won’t ask for now, as is why doesn’t anyone see through his clever Clark Kent disguise.)
Astronauts living in microgravity very rapidly lose muscle and can have problems walking when they return to Earth gravity. They have to work very hard, hours of exercise per day, to stave off the negative effects of floating around all day without having to move a muscle.
Superman, as strong as he is, should suffer the same effects here on Earth. He barely gets a workout doing anything short of juggling cars or moving mountains.
If comics made any sense at all, it should be Super Stickman.
WARNING: HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE Spoilers
A friend of mine picked up the new Harry Potter movie on DVD and I plan to watch it this week. I was thinking back to how much I enjoyed the book, but remembered something that nagged the hell out of me when the identity of the half-blood prince was revealed.
Snape, as a student, apparently used the same textbook that he is teaching with now. When he was a student, he figured out all sorts of small improvements to make better potions more easily. He KNOWS how to do this. He figured it out already. And yet he doesn’t teach what he learned. Harry, using Snape’s original copy with his notes, outperforms his peers and has success with potions like he never had before. As far as I can tell, potion-making can be taught like cooking, and having the right recipe matters.
Snape should either be teaching his students better recipes than the ones in the textbook — because he figured them out — or, and this is akin to the difference between engineering and science — teaching his students how to improve potion recipes. What fundamental principles did he use to figure out how to improve the potions? If he has potion engineers, do the former. If potion researchers, the latter.
But Snape does neither.
He is, apparently, a really awful and stupid teacher. Which seems inconsistent to me as he is portrayed as being very smart and competent. So, I have to believe that Snape is a lazy dick of a teacher who does not care for his profession. I’m not sure that’s what Rowling intended in the end, but without assuming she wrote him inconsistently to make an interesting plot point, that’s what I must conclude.
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.
The Science Fiction in Science: Accretion Disk Civilizations?
November 25th, 2009
My friend and fellow astronomer/science fiction writer Valentin Ivanov pointed me at these abstracts saying they reminded him of Star Dragon (which has creatures living in an accretion disk):
Title:
Accretion disk civilization 1: Habitable zone around accretion disks at galactic nuclei.
The space density of stars, and therefore, the possible number of planets are expected to be high in the central region of galaxies. While the galactic nuclei may be rather wild places due to the existence of the supermassive black holes and the surrounding accretion disks. As the first step to investigate the advanced civilizations in the galactic nuclei, the author examines the equilibrium temperature and related problems of possible planets in the vicinity of accretion disks.
Title:
Accretion disk civilization 2: From sunhook to photon floater.
An accretion disk surrounding a supermassive black hole at the active galactic nuclei radiates tremendous energy. In order to utilize energy of the accretion disk system, the author investigates the configuration and stability of a floating platform – photon floater – above the accretion disk, which is supported by the radiation pressure of the disk radiation. In the case of the far-floater, which is located far from the disk, there exists a critical floating angle, where the gravitational force of the central black hole is balanced with radiation pressure. In the case of the near-floater, which is located very close to the disk, there exists a critical floating height, where the gravity is balanced with radiation. It is demonstrated that this floating height is dynamical stable. Finally, in the case of the axis-floater, which is located on the axis of the disk, the photon floater is unstable.
Now, these papers are not available online, apparently, and I don’t know the author personally, or the journal, but they sound like a lot of fun and some hard science on which to base an advanced civilization at the (or a) galactic core.
This is just going to be a short post tonight on a topic I have discussed before and will likely continue to discuss.
Politics in the United States has become so polarized that few politicians cross party lines. It is one team vs. the other, rather than real issues with real solutions that are not solved by the mindless application of simple positions.
While politics is the most clearly visible example of false dichotomies plaguing us today, we have them in both science and science fiction and they are quite similar: style vs. substance.
Too many people on both sides see it as an either or. Scientists care about getting all the substance right, and getting it all in, with little care for the style of presentation or the reception. Too often they feel like the facts, no matter how boringly presented, should speak for themselves. On the flip side, writers and filmmakers and a lot of other folks don’t worry about getting the details all right, or even mostly right, but only seem to care if the final product is cool and well received by a large number of people.
In short, the science side cares only about substances. The Hollywood crowd and most of the public primarily care about style. Both sides seem to want to pick a side, and align with it. This is somewhat ludicrous.
Why can’t we start with the premise that BOTH ARE IMPORTANT?!
A scientifically accurate presentation is fatally flawed if it is correct but boring.
A gripping, entertaining bit of science or science fiction is flawed if it is fun but inaccurate.
It isn’t either/or.
It can be both. There’s a solution in essentially every case. Flawed movies can be fixed. Boring documentaries can be enlivened.
More on the details of this coming soon as time permits, but the first step is setting aside the limiting beliefs that style and substance are mutually exclusive. That’s small-minded thinking on exhibit.
We’ll keep with the “S” theme as this post today is related to yesterday’s.
Apparently a group is trying to start up a “Carl Sagan Day” on Saturday, November 7th, which would have been his 75th anniversary. Sagan was a good scientist and top-rate popularizer of science, through books and TV. In light of yesterday’s post, I was thinking about why he was so effective, and it must be his heart. The guy reeked of sincerity, consistently pushing a consistent agenda of science, reason, and reality. He reached people in large numbers, and didn’t need to resort to intuition, humor, or sex appeal to get them to listen.
Even though he reached larger audiences with a science message, he was still a specialized taste and never quite a superstar to the public at large, in my opinion.
I am amazed at some of the comparisons made with Sagan today. Sagan was an atheist and not at all superstitious, and was not circumspect about this. Yet somehow Richard Dawkins today is “militant” and “strident” in a way good old Carl wasn’t. Except Sagan said things like this:
“A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.”
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
“The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can’t all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It’s a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I’m not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they’re called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation.”
“In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
I think Sagan’s heartfelt sincerity kept his clear and harsh criticisms of religion, despite writing an entire book on the topic, more socially acceptable than Dawkins who, generally speaking, only appeals at the intellectual level. Science is so counter-intuitive sometimes, and intrinsically beyond humor and sex appeal for the unitiated (see The Big Bang Theory for the best attempt to date), that maybe heartfelt sincerity is the best and most consistent way of penetrating larger audiences. I’ve heard people look at some of the current would-be replacements for Sagan (Dawkins, Neil de Grasse Tyson, etc.) and find them lacking in comparison.
Is Sagan the model? Sincerity? It seems to dampen the arrogance that much of the public associates with scientists, which ridiculously makes them throw out science just because they dislike arrogance. For instance: Yes, Scientists do much Good, but a World Run by these Arrogant Gods would be Hell on Earth. WTF? It really irritates some people that science often comes up with ideas that challenge their intuition and don’t want to sugarcoat the news or accept that a knee-jerk reaction should be given equal time in comparison to a serious scientific study.
So, is Sagan the best model? Can you get away with speaking the truth more easily if you’re friendly, serious, and obviously consistently sincere about it? Or do people need to be shaken up? And is it fair to call a guy who merely writes words and speaks the truth like he sees it, without using violent langage, be called “militant” or “strident?” Does it matter if people are turned off the message by the messenger? Or is it the message?
Or do we need to delve more deeply into humor like Brian Malow, the science comedian? Or develop more sexy spokespeople for science and reason like Kari Byron of Mythbusters?
I’m wondering about the best methods myself. Maybe I should start asking for jokes and bikini shots with Launch Pad applications. Hmmm…maybe I can pull that off if I am very, very sincere.
Sometimes synchronicty strikes, and you see a bunch of things related to each other by chance. Well, usually not exactly by chance, but it seems that way. For today, let’s just say that I’m always interested in why smart people do dumb things, what it means to be smart, and how we decide to operate and use — or ignore — our smarts has positive and negative effects on the world around us.
First, I’m reading Don’t Be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson, scientist turned Hollywood filmmaker. It is subtitled “Talking Substance in an Age of Style” and some science types may be intrinsically horrified by the premise of the book. It’s about how to reach mass audiences with the science message (not controversial) by employing techniques that loosen the reins of scientific accuracy (more controversial). I have to say, I’m really enjoying it so far and some points resonate with my own experiences teaching. When I learned to loosen up, trust that I knew the material, and interact spontaneously with my classes and audiences, I became a much better speaker. And similarly, I have suffered through many a talk or lecture from a scientist that was factually accurate and full of good information, but left me bored to tears. Generally speaking, the goodness and badness of the speaker didn’t even depend on the material or presentation technique. It’s something deeper.
Then I came across this article yesterday, about “clever fools” and why having a high IQ doesn’t make you smart. It’s so true. I’ve been fascinated by what I call smart stupid people a long time. It’s about how some people use intution to make all their decisions, which may not be rational ones. Now, intuition is very important, and Olson’s book does a great job of showing examples of scientists using intuitive leaps. The difference between being a smart person and a stupid smart person, I think, is whether you then turn your smarts and reason to test the intuition. Nothing wrong with following your intution when you can’t apply science or reasoned arguments (e.g. what’s your favorite color and what method did you use to select it), but lots of time you can.
Olson talks about “the four organs” that can be used to reach people, starting with the head. Reason. This is the realm of science, and he claims it is not very accessible to general audiences. Lower down is your heart, sincerity, and you can reach more with heartfelt appeals. Below that is the gut, home of intuition and humor. Don’t try to reason out why a joke is funny, because it won’t be by the time you’re done. Finally, the lowest, with the broadest appeal, is the sex organs. Sex sells. It works. And it has nothing to do with reason. You know in an instant if something or someone is sexually appealing without applying any conscious thought at all.
Also home of intuition, immediate reaction, is the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which I also read last month. It’s about “the power of thinking without thinking.” All of us, including scientists, use immediate reactions to judge things. Scientists, however, get trained to verify those reactions, to distrust the immediate. At least in our areas of expertise. Without a lot of work, we’re not much better in other areas, although we do get pretty literal minded and boring, staying in our heads too much, thinking.
I do this way too much. I sit and think and live in my head. I’m a good scientist. I also have an artistic side, a feeling side, but I’ve learned to suppress it a lot and not to trust it over the years of training and seeing people do ridiculous things because of it. But I also now feel like I need to re-engage with it a lot more, that I’ve missed out on its power. I need to realize when the head is not where I should be, and how to move into my other organs, if you will.
So while there are some obvious advantages in the realm of teaching, understanding how to reach broader audiences and engage them, it is also true of science fiction and is probably one big reason why we’re in a ghetto. Most people don’t use their heads a lot on a day to day basis, and will shy away from science fiction. I’ve been wondering about how to make my own work more accessible without giving up the thoughtful, science-related part of it. This line of reasoning is giving me some ideas, and makes me better understand why some people (like my handyman) can’t get into my work at all. Some others have still loved my novels, but admitted that they skim over the science parts.
I feel like with the explosion of the internet and other technologies, the market place is much more competitive and books — especially science fiction — as well as science do need to adopt more effective methods of appealing to mass audiences. This is not to say that I think Mooney in Unscientific America is right to blame scientists for the public’s misunderstanding and lack of science literacy, or that the recommendation to teach all our “failed scientists” communication skills to go reach the public is the solution to the problem. I still think he’s full of it for a variety of reasons I have previously discussed, but do give credence to the notion that scientists can and should learn to communicate more effective with audiences of all types.
I want to finish up and tie this together with the idea that stupid smart people have a flash of intuition, and if they choose to apply their head to the issue, they do so in a biased way, looking for ways to support the intution, not to test it. This is not a smart thing to do, and they are stupid for doing it. Even if they have high IQs. This makes them “clever fools.” There’s a place for both kids of thinking, and smart people know it. And there are stupid smart people on the science side, with their own biases, lack of insight, lack of style, who need to also open their eyes.
What Would Galileo Teach Today? from Galileo’s Classroom Now Available
October 16th, 2009
Passing on some news about an educational project I contributed to:
Science educators Stephanie Slater (University of Wyoming), Janelle Bailey (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), and Michael Gibbs (Capitol College) have compiled and edited a coherent set of IYA2009 educational materials that provide both content knowledge for classroom teachers and classroom-ready materials suitable for use, with or without a telescope, in a variety of formal and informal settings. It’s called Galileo’s Classroom: A Teacher Workshop in Celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, and it is the international and national nodes of IYA2009. Galileo’s Classroom is now available at no charge for educators worldwide, online from the CAPER Team website at the University of Wyoming.
The activities in Galileo’s Classroom have been selected from among thousands of available astronomy-related activities, based upon their utility in modeling Galileo’s findings and on our current understanding of exemplary classroom practices. Each activity has been rewritten into the natural language of classroom teachers and has been field tested in schools.
Galileo’s Classroom is a collaborative effort of individuals at more than a dozen institutions, representing several nations from three continents. Efforts are currently underway to translate Galileo’s Classroom for non-English speakers. Please direct your inquiries to Stephanie Slater at sslater3@uwyo.edu.
My particular contribution is a short essay about updating Galileo for the 21st century, What Would Galileo Teach Today?, in terms of how astronomers continue to use improvements in telescope technology to make fundamental discoveries about our universe.
The Best Movie Villains of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
October 14th, 2009
I’m participating in another Mind-Meld over at sfsignal.com, this time on the best movie villains of sf/f/h. Many common choices (e.g., Heath Ledger’s Joker) yet still a lot of diversity. Here was my entry: Science Fiction
Terminator
Alien
Predator
Darth Vader (in the original 3 films, not the prequels)
The Borg (Queen)
Martians from War of the Worlds
Governmental Bureaucracy in Brazil
Roy Batty in Blade Runner
Fantasy
Sauron
Queen from Narnia
You Know Who!
Joker in the new Batman
Horror
Jason
Freddy Kruger
Michael Meyers
Hannibal Lecter
Dracula
Shark from Jaws
Not unsurprisingly, horror films and sf/f with strong elements of horror lead to the most memorable villains. There are plenty of fine films that lack explicit villains and are more complex than simple good vs. evil stories, but a great villain can really steal the show. Hannibal Lecter was an important subplot of Red Dragon, but eventually emerged as his own franchise. Some are complex like Lecter, some mindless like the shark in Jaws, but there is a wide spectrum of possibilities to explore.
All the jobs take a lot of education and training, and that makes sense. And College Professor? Number 3? Okay, most days I do love it, and I know there are worse jobs out there. Here is their reasoning:
Median salary (experienced): $70,400
Top pay: $115,000
Job growth (10-year forecast): 23%
Sector: Education
What they do: Teach and grade papers, of course. But profs also spend about half their time doing research and writing articles and books about their field.
Why it’s great: For starters, major scheduling freedom. “Besides teaching and office hours, I get to decide where, when, and how I get my work done,” says Daniel Beckman, a biology professor at Missouri State University. And that doesn’t even take into account ample time off for holidays and a reduced workload in the summer. Competition for tenuretrack positions at four-year institutions is intense, but you’ll find lots of available positions at community colleges and professional programs, where you can enter the professoriate as an adjunct faculty member or non-tenure track instructor without a doctorate degree. That’s particularly true during economic downturns, when laid-off workers often head back to school for additional training. More valuable perks: reduced or free tuition for family members and free access to college gyms and libraries.
Drawbacks: Low starting pay and a big 50% salary gap between faculty at universities and community colleges. If the position is at a four-year university, you’ll probably have to relocate, and you’ll be under pressure to constantly publish new work to sustain career momentum.
How to get it: For a tenure track position, you’ll need a Ph.D. But all colleges want at least a master’s degree and prefer plenty of teaching experience.
Well, I’m at a Research Ia University with tenure, making more than the median in a part of the country with a low cost of living. Schedule freedom is a nice part of the job, but that cuts both ways. When I assign homework, I am assigning myself homework (grading) and there are deadlines and high stress. Still, this is worth blogging about because I have to point out something.
College Professor is a terrible job for some people. I’ve written before about all the sorts of things an astronomy professor has to do, and some of the negative issues about careers in academia. While it may seem cool not to have an immediate boss, that is a lot of responsibility. No one tells you how to do your job, or even what to do, exactly. They just want to see success with teaching, research, and related activities as measured in concrete terms (grants, papers, teaching evaluations, etc.). It can be stressful, and there are many chances to make major mistakes. Your decisions can affect the lives of others, although unlike medicine mistakes rarely cost lives, although they may cost jobs and even careers.
I took one of those interest inventory exams back in high school and college professor did score high for me. It is a good job. For me.
Still, there are those days where a 9-5 job with regular hours, a job and not a career, sounds nice. Learning to take real vacations a few times a year has helped. A personal assistant would be nice, too…but I’m too responsible to lean on my students that way.
Any other suggestions for top jobs in America today? For those interested in science and science fiction? And perhaps without requiring years and years in school? At the horror convention I met quite a few make-up artists, which was cool, and zombie movies ought to keep them busy. Any equivalent for sf types? Video games and cgi?
I’m not looking for a job — I have tenure — but I have friends looking.
I used to think I didn’t have heroes. Not in the sense that most people mean, and not being allowed to count superheroes.
But I realized I did, and had had a lot of them growing up through college.
Mine are biased toward physics and astronomy. Here they are, in no particular order.
Einstein. Sort of goes without saying. Even growing up in the 1970s, 20 years after his death, Einstein was quite visible with books and TV shows about his theories. I didn’t see a lot of live footage of him that I can remember. Here is some.
Carl Sagan. Cosmos was a big event in my life. He was an inspirational guy.
Stephen Hawking. After Einstein, Hawking seemed the heir apparent when it came to things like black holes. Here he asks some big questions in a TED lecture.
Roger Penrose. Hawking’s partner on a lot of work. I got to see him speak in person at Rice University where I went to college in the 1980s. I don’t know that I agree with his ideas of consciousness, but he’s wicked smart and interesting.
Richard Feynmann. His books, both academic and anecdotal, were cool, brainy fun. He also seemed like a great guy who lived a great life.
Mr. Spock. Yeah, he’s fictional, but he was the guy on TV that kept pushing logic and science as ways of solving problems.
Isaac Asimov. Did anyone avoid reading at least one of his 400+ books on some subject or other? And his monthly essays in his science fiction magazine were quite special.
Encyclopedia Brown. Okay, final entry on the list and another fictional character. I loved how he used keen observation and an understanding of how things worked — science — to solve crimes. I just loved these. I never saw any TV versions, but was interested to see that there were some. For example…
Take a few of these out of the mix and I’d still have become a scientist. Take all of them away, and perhaps not. Art, engineering, computer programming, and writing could all have been my primary career.
