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 don’t think so…but it’s a classic lesson in how not to get into grad school.
I recently had an exchange with a student who queried me about why they had not been admitted into our graduate program. I won’t name names, or say where they were from, or their gender, and I won’t quote this person verbatim, but I do want to share the story.
The application was okay but not great in terms of the usual things like grades and standardized test scores. Some strengths, some weaknesses, but probably admittable. Compared with other applicants, the research experience was somewhat lacking. No published papers, even as a co-author, and not much evidence for promise in research. What there was sounded potentially problematic: a statement about problems with the foundations in the big bang theory and an ensuing review of steady state models, tired light theories, the plasma universe, etc.
I teach cosmology and my colleague on the admissions committee this year is an observational cosmologist. To us, the foundations of the big bang are compelling, especially compared to the alternatives that are ruled out by many observations. The microwave background radiation and the abundances of light elements, in particular, are immediate and clear predictions of the big bang that other models struggle mightily with. Also huge problems for some alternatives, but natural for the big bang, are the Lyman alpha forest, quasar host galaxies, time dilation of supernova light curves…etc., etc., etc.
There are other elements of cosmology, not foundational to whether the general big bang picture (that of a universe finite in time and hotter and denser in the past) is correct, which may be problematic or speculative. That’s good! Those are areas for continued research! But none of them rise to anything close to a level of “crisis” for the big bang framework, or have driven any significant number of cosmologists to the infinitely more problematic alternatives.
I don’t mind a few people working on alternatives or poking at the big bang. Scientists do that, and it’s usually a good thing, but when they lose perspective it can be bad. It’s worse when they drag young impressionable students into it. Chances are way against anyone overturning a paradigm as solid as the big bang, evolution, relativity, quantum mechanics… Those endeavors are probably best suited to more senior people who have a lot of experience with the theory and observations and who can really see if things add up to a crisis. Yeah, there are stories of young geniuses doing this sort of thing, but science is ultra specialized now with so much to learn, and even before that was the case, most hot shots did not overturn paradigms.
Anyway, I’m making a short story long here. I let the student know that their research background was weaker than that of other applicants, and that in particular we didn’t feel that the big bang was in crisis, implicitly suggesting that there were better areas of inquiry. I’m probably too honest for my own good.
Paraphrasing the reply, the student thanked me for the rejection (!), as they were not interested in working with simple scientists who could not think outside the box, especially when the crisis was obvious to them and so many cosmologists in the world. Who? Halton Arp and his couple of buddies who haven’t died yet? The obvious crisis was never spelled out, or even suggested, so I don’t know if it is something I’d recognize as an issue or something I’m already aware of and dismissed as unsupported.
In any event, an undergraduate student who thinks like this is either a budding young crank already primed to tilt at windmills or a genius who can publish papers pointing out the crisis without taking a cosmology class from me. In fact, I shudder to think of having a student like this in class, not because I’m afraid of controversy, but because the vast majority of information in my class is extremely not controversial, and it would likely disrupt the experience of my other students. I’m guessing. When I get to inflation, I point it out as an excellent solution to some concerns but as still somewhat speculative. Is that a crisis? I don’t think so. It’s sure not a reason to jump to tired light or steady state models, which are either disproven or so modified as to be contrived and useless.
The student’s reply on its own sounds like an obnoxious crank reply mixed with some classic sour grapes. At face value, it’s funny, thanking us for the rejection and accusing us of being simple-minded for something that is very well supported with decades of arguments and observations far from simple. On the other hand, it did sound like the student had a iconoclastic crank advisor who did them no favors by setting them on this path. Save the way out of the box stuff for after you have tenure, and when you do, take the risks on yourself and don’t foist them on your students. Most likely you’re wrong and in the worst case you also ruin a promising young career. The equivalents in the arts and humanities would be having your student research Holocaust denial, or teaching them to write in some obscure vernacular before they’ve mastered grammar and elements of good style. I think I originally meant this post to be amusing, which it is in a way, but it’s sad, too.
In light of yesterday’s positive post about “I can” and shedding limitting beliefs, let me propose that we can go back to the moon, on to Mars, the asteroids, and any other destinations in space that we want to. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s expensive. But also yes, we can be the first species to intentionally move beyond our cradle and colonize the solar system. If we want to. It should be obvious that we can do it, I hope, and that not wanting to or it being hard and expensive is not the same thing as saying “we can’t.”
Let me amplify that with some comments about recent news stories. First, North Korea and their “failure to launch.” I’m not a fan of North Korea, but I do know how hard it was for the USA and the USSR to get rockets into space without blowing up. It was very hard. And you learn something from every effort, and that new knowledge is not failure. It’s only failure when you give up.
Now, I recently read an article NASA Scientist to Star Trek: You’re Not Helping. Shades of Buzz Aldrin here from a few years ago when he blamed science fiction for lack of public support for the space program. They contend that Star Trek and other science fiction makes it look easy to go to space, when in reality it’s very, very hard to do. They think that lack of support comes from this mismatch.
I disagree strongly.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Star Trek and science fiction teach us to long for the endless immensity of space. Without that longing, we’ll never go.
Now, maybe we do need more economic (asteroid mining) or political incentives (space race vs. China) to get broader public support, or something startling like finding Earth 2.0 among Kepler exoplanets, or detecting alien signals with SETI, or life on Mars. The government is only out of money and will because it’s been hijacked by too many interests that want it to be small and not supporting of science or NASA. I’m happy if commerical efforts open space, but commercial efforts are unlikely to do great things without a clear profit waiting, and that may not materialize any time soon, or ever, beyond low-earth orbit. Still, the leaders of some commercial efforts are talking like they’re in it for more than the money as well.
“I think it’s important that humanity become a multiplanet species,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an interview that aired on CBS’ “60 Minutes” last month. “I think most people would agree that a future where we are a spacefaring civilization is inspiring and exciting compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event. That’s really why I started SpaceX.”
I asked Lewicki specifically about how this will make money. Some asteroids may be rich in precious metals — some may hold tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars in platinum-group metals — but it will cost billions and take many years, most likely, to mine them before any samples can be returned. Why not just do it here on Earth? In other words, what’s the incentive for profit for the investors? This is probably the idea over which most people are skeptical, including several people I know active in the asteroid science community.
I have to admit, Lewicki’s answer surprised me. “The investors aren’t making decisions based on a business plan or a return on investment,” he told me. “They’re basing their decisions on our vision.”
On further reflection, I realized this made sense. Not every wealthy investor pumps money into a project in order to make more… at least right away. Elon Musk, for example, has spent hundreds of millions of his own fortune on his company Space X. Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos is doing likewise for his own space company, Blue Origin. Examples abound. And it’ll be years before either turns a respectable profit, but that’s not what motivates Musk and Bezos to do this. They want to explore space.
The vision of Planetary Resources is in their name: they want to make sure there are available resources in place to ensure a permanent future in space. And it’s not just physical resources with which they’re concerned. Their missions will support not just mining asteroids for volatiles and metals, but also to extend our understanding of asteroids and hopefully increase our ability to deflect one should it be headed our way.
NASA or private companies, space is big enough for everyone.
Anyway, let me conclude with another quote from someone who supported space exploration and who understood that it was not easy:
“We choose to go…not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to measure and organize the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
— John Fitzgerald Kennedy
I was watching Stephen Colbert interview Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works. He said something that was very powerful for me, that everyone is creative. It’s one of our species’ better qualities. Lehrer amplified this statement by describing how nearly all second graders describe themselves as creative, but this fraction drops dramatically with a few more years of school, and only some 10% of adults think of themselves as creative.
Here’s the thing. I don’t think this trend applies to just creativity.
Everyone can learn to write, do math, understand science, and the like. So many of us learn that we’re not as good as others, which is not a remarkable statement given that the average person is only average at anything. We extrapolate incorrectly from that to a state where we don’t think we’re good at all, or even that we lack the ability altogether. That’s unfortunate.
Everyone can improve their abilities at almost anything with determination, practice, and coaching. Maybe not to superstar levels, or even to superior levels, but certainly to some level of ability.
When you say “I can’t do that” about something that is a birthright of being a human being, you’re lying to yourself. Those lies become self-fulfilling prophecies too often:
I can’t do math.
I can’t write well.
I can’t draw.
I can’t understand complicated things.
I can’t sing.
I can’t speak in public.
I can’t travel.
I can’t talk to the opposite sex.
I can’t…you name it.
If other people can do it, chances are excellent that you can, too, if you just stop lying to yourself. Next time you start saying this about something challenging, try to change the “I can’t…” to an “I can…” and see if that opens up some possibilities. Doing something hard starts with believing that it’s possible. I have no doubt much of my own personal success lies in simply not holding on to limiting beliefs. If I had, I would not have gotten a PhD, become a professor, written novels, run marathons, lived abroad, or be happily married to my wife. Give it a shot. Say it.
A Vile, Anti-Science Tactic to be Aware of and Repudiate
April 11th, 2012
There’s a letter being widely posted on conservative blogs:
March 28, 2012
The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001
Dear Charlie,
We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.
The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.
As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.
For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.
Thank you for considering this request.
Sincerely,
(Attached signatures)
CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science
CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center
Ref: Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, dated 3-26-12, regarding a request for NASA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that human produced CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on climate change.
/s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack – JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years
/s/ Larry Bell – JSC, Mgr. Crew Systems Div., Engineering Directorate, 32 years
/s/ Dr. Donald Bogard – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 41 years
/s/ Jerry C. Bostick – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 23 years
/s/ Dr. Phillip K. Chapman – JSC, Scientist – astronaut, 5 years
/s/ Michael F. Collins, JSC, Chief, Flight Design and Dynamics Division, MOD, 41 years
/s/ Dr. Kenneth Cox – JSC, Chief Flight Dynamics Div., Engr. Directorate, 40 years
/s/ Walter Cunningham – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 7, 8 years
/s/ Dr. Donald M. Curry – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Leading Edge, Thermal Protection Sys., Engr. Dir., 44 years
/s/ Leroy Day – Hdq. Deputy Director, Space Shuttle Program, 19 years
/s/ Dr. Henry P. Decell, Jr. – JSC, Chief, Theory & Analysis Office, 5 years
/s/Charles F. Deiterich – JSC, Mgr., Flight Operations Integration, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Harold Doiron – JSC, Chairman, Shuttle Pogo Prevention Panel, 16 years
/s/ Charles Duke – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 16, 10 years
/s/ Anita Gale
/s/ Grace Germany – JSC, Program Analyst, 35 years
/s/ Ed Gibson – JSC, Astronaut Skylab 4, 14 years
/s/ Richard Gordon – JSC, Astronaut, Gemini Xi, Apollo 12, 9 years
/s/ Gerald C. Griffin – JSC, Apollo Flight Director, and Director of Johnson Space Center, 22 years
/s/ Thomas M. Grubbs – JSC, Chief, Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Branch, 31 years
/s/ Thomas J. Harmon
/s/ David W. Heath – JSC, Reentry Specialist, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Miguel A. Hernandez, Jr. – JSC, Flight crew training and operations, 3 years
/s/ James R. Roundtree – JSC Branch Chief, 26 years
/s/ Enoch Jones – JSC, Mgr. SE&I, Shuttle Program Office, 26 years
/s/ Dr. Joseph Kerwin – JSC, Astronaut, Skylab 2, Director of Space and Life Sciences, 22 years
/s/ Jack Knight – JSC, Chief, Advanced Operations and Development Division, MOD, 40 years
/s/ Dr. Christopher C. Kraft – JSC, Apollo Flight Director and Director of Johnson Space Center, 24 years
/s/ Paul C. Kramer – JSC, Ass.t for Planning Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Div., Egr. Dir., 34 years
/s/ Alex (Skip) Larsen
/s/ Dr. Lubert Leger – JSC, Ass’t. Chief Materials Division, Engr. Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Humbolt C. Mandell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Program Control and Advance Programs, 40 years
/s/ Donald K. McCutchen – JSC, Project Engineer – Space Shuttle and ISS Program Offices, 33 years
/s/ Thomas L. (Tom) Moser – Hdq. Dep. Assoc. Admin. & Director, Space Station Program, 28 years
/s/ Dr. George Mueller – Hdq., Assoc. Adm., Office of Space Flight, 6 years
/s/ Tom Ohesorge
/s/ James Peacock – JSC, Apollo and Shuttle Program Office, 21 years
/s/ Richard McFarland – JSC, Mgr. Motion Simulators, 28 years
/s/ Joseph E. Rogers – JSC, Chief, Structures and Dynamics Branch, Engr. Directorate,40 years
/s/ Bernard J. Rosenbaum – JSC, Chief Engineer, Propulsion and Power Division, Engr. Dir., 48 years
/s/ Dr. Harrison (Jack) Schmitt – JSC, Astronaut Apollo 17, 10 years
/s/ Gerard C. Shows – JSC, Asst. Manager, Quality Assurance, 30 years
/s/ Kenneth Suit – JSC, Ass’t Mgr., Systems Integration, Space Shuttle, 37 years
/s/ Robert F. Thompson – JSC, Program Manager, Space Shuttle, 44 years/s/ Frank Van Renesselaer – Hdq., Mgr. Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, 15 years
/s/ Dr. James Visentine – JSC Materials Branch, Engineering Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Manfred (Dutch) von Ehrenfried – JSC, Flight Controller; Mercury, Gemini & Apollo, MOD, 10 years
/s/ George Weisskopf – JSC, Avionics Systems Division, Engineering Dir., 40 years
/s/ Al Worden – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 15, 9 years
/s/ Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller – JSC, Meteorologist, 5 years
So this is an argument from (false) authority. A bunch of NASA astronauts and engineers aren’t exactly qualified to criticize a bunch of NASA climatologists in the subject area of climatology, and it’s kind of shocking that they should do that. I mean, what if some NASA climatologists wrote a letter suggesting that the astronauts should stop claiming that they went to the moon? I mean, how would the astronauts actually “prove” that they did?
And that’s the real vile tactic, one which climate change deniers having been using for years. They try to dress themselves up as skeptics and suggest that climate change isn’t “proven” or that if it’s happening, it hasn’t been “proven” that humans are causing it, and even if humans are causing it, it isn’t “proven” that it’s going to be so bad or as expensive as taking action now.
NASA scientists, and NASA-funded scientists like myself, have been making “unproven remarks” about black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and similar, for years without objections from astronauts. We have a lot of evidence that black holes are real, but we haven’t proven that they’re real. We often make very qualified statements where we bend over backwards to talk about the evidence in support of the existence of black holes as we speak or write about them, rather than assuming they’re real. In some contexts, we assume they’re real because the evidence is really strong.
But we could be wrong. There could be some unknown force that prevents collapse into singularities. If so, NASA scientists have a good chance to be the ones to discover it and rewrite science. Or maybe scientists from somewhere else. And that would be a triumph of science, not something that would ruin the “reputation of science itself.”
Only anti-science types would see it this way.
And it’s not like NASA scientists are the only ones coming up with what isn’t actually a controversial position at all among experts in the field. It will be a failure of climatology generally if they have human-caused climate change so wrong, and there’s little evidence that they’re wrong. There’s a pile of evidence that they’re right in general, and have remaining work to do on the details. There could be an as yet unidentified feedback effect that mitigates the warming. And if there is, climatologists are going to be the ones to find it. Not a bunch of old astronauts and engineers.
What these vile, biased signatories need to do is to make specific complaints about false remarks, or remarks that are not sufficiently qualified or explained, and ask for those to be changed or corrected. I suspect that there are few of these, unless they’re taken completely out of context. Unfortunately biased or unscrupulous people do that all the time.
Here’s NASA’s webpage on the topic of climate change. Can some one point me to an “unproven remark?” I don’t see any. It’s full of clear statements of fact and clearly qualified statements of a less factual nature, with citations.
And that’s what we’re looking at here. These people are suggesting that the climatologists have barked way up the wrong tree and should shut up about it. Look, scientists don’t talk enough about their work or conclusions, and the media barely covers science enough as it is. When a bunch of scientists, a huge bunch of scientists, put together a strong case for something they think is important enough to concern the public, we get folks climbing out of the woodwork to try to shut them up. Some are being paid to shut them up, or throw around lies about their work to get people to doubt it (some of the same people once paid by tobacco companies to cast doubt the link between cigarettes and cancer are now employed to do the same about climate change).
This reminds me of Galileo being asked to refrain from talking about his heliocentric theory of the solar system. He had good evidence, but not proof. The powers that be had their own biased reasons for keeping the status quo, which to them was more important than the free expression of scientific ideas (and good ideas at that!). Now, Galileo is used as an analogy too often by cranks. We’re not talking about cranks. We’re talking about the majority of climatologists and suppression through the use of authority and political power. Not a bad analogy, in this case, in my opinion.
Anyway, next time you see someone suggesting that “proof” is required to make qualified claims about reality, check to see what kind of science they’re trying to cast doubt upon. Science builds a case based on evidence, and it can change with time. That’s a strength of science.
OK, had to get that off my chest. Smart but biased people love this kind of argument because they’d like to believe themselves to be skeptics rather than deniers, but this is an anti-science tactic full of denial, not skepticism.
Finally, let me add this tidbit. The most outspoken NASA climatologist the letter is probably targeting is James Hansen, who wrote a paper in 1981 with the following summary:
Summary. The global temperature rose by 0.20C between the middle 1960’s and 1980, yielding a warming of 0.4°C in the past century. This temperature increase is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect due to measured increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Variations of volcanic aerosols and possibly solar luminosity appear to be primary causes of observed fluctuations about the mean trend of increasing temperature. It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980’s. Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.
Um, that was 30 years ago. He’s been correct. He published more detailed models in the late 1980s that haven’t been too far off in the following 25 years. This is about as good as it gets in science. The guy predicted everything that’s happened to within reasonable uncertainties and has to deal with arrogant, biased non-experts who want him to shut up because while nature followed his predictions pretty well, his hypothesis is not “proven.” Vile.
I’ve been thinking more about some practical problems we’ve been developing in science. Now, they aren’t as bad in my field of astronomy, since we’re relatively small, don’t involve huge sums of money, and rarely have results that are politically problematic. But we still have the same problem: null results don’t get published very often.
What I mean is that I have an idea, go do an observation or study, and find out that the effect I thought might be there isn’t. And I don’t publish that null result because it isn’t very interesting usually, won’t get me a lot of citations, will take a lot of time, and may have a problem getting through a referee/editor who doesn’t feel that it’s very important.
But it is to the field!
I imagine that some of the things I’ve looked for, others have looked for. Maybe a lot of them. Maybe every quasar expert out there has had the same hypothesis and looked for a correlation of x vs. y to support a particular idea, and not found it. Maybe if the first expert had published, it would have saved a lot of people a lot of time.
Or, also importantly, a lot of people look for an effect. Say, 100 researchers. One of them finds a significant result at the 3 sigma level, which would only happen a little less often than 1 time in 100 tries. And that one “lucky” researcher publishes the result, misguiding an entire subfield, perhaps, who doesn’t know about the other 99 results that didn’t find a significance level so high. I suspect this thing can be very important in difficult drug studies where companies testing their drugs only publish and submit the studies that show a positive effect and ignore them ones that don’t.
What I’m suggesting is a journal, or venue such as an on-line clearinghouse, where scientists can write abstracts or non-refereed papers describing their null results. Right now they end up in personal journals and ignored or forgotten, doomed to be repeated or their absence to contribute to a misleading view.
I’ve got one null result that has set on my desk for about five years, following a referee who missed the point and wanted a lot of work concerning an unimportant side issue (really, I’ve had enough time to look past my biases on the project). It should be out there. It isn’t. It hasn’t gotten back to the top of the list in five years because I have other more promising projects to do. It’s a shame. Maybe I could have worked harder, but I literally have 30 projects on my to do list now (not just things to do, but projects that could all end up as papers).
If we need a Journal of Null Results in astronomy, we for sure need one in about every other field of science you can imagine!
I basically got the gig to write a non-fiction article about “The Cold Equations” because the editor of Lightspeed, John Joseph Adams, knew of my interest based on the blog post. He was running Jake Kerr’s new story and the original Godwin story, and wanted another article to go with them. When I got the assignment, I asked to see Jake’s story so I could link my article between the old and the new (or the original and the “old,” depending how you look at it).
They sent it to me and I started reading it and stopped…cold. (Couldn’t resist.)
The relativity in the story was WRONG.
I wasn’t totally surprised. Relativity isn’t well understood, even by many physics students, and one common example used in special relativity is the twin paradox. Basically one twin making a relativistically fast round trip to a nearby star ages less quickly than his brother remaining on Earth. It isn’t quite special relativity because there are accelerations involved. On the outward journey, EITHER twin communicating with the other would think that the other was experience time dilation, a slowing down.
That wasn’t how Jake wanted things to go.
The story was good, moving, and I liked it. I didn’t immediately see a fix, but I was concerned it would be a fundamentally flawed story if published as it was. So I let the editors know my issues with the science, and they put me in touch with Jake. He was concerned, and really cared about getting things right.
Jake describes his side of things in this article.
Here was my email to him:
> This is a case of the well-known “twin paradox” of relativity. BOTH twins should see the other’s clock moving slower. There is no preferred frame of reference. The traveler does become special, however, because he winds up accelerating and changing reference frames. I studied this as a physics major, and nearly had to teach it as a professor (avoided it!), but did have to work with it for my science fiction. Here’s my take.
>
> The instantaneous communication is dangerous and can be used to make a time machine of sorts. Sticking with just radio communications both Earth and the traveler (let’s call him James) will see time dilation and everything slowing down. It will be a factor of 3 for 94% lightspeed as measured by Earth. In James’s frame of reference, the distance to his destination is essentially contracted and from his point of view he can indeed travel to his destination effectively faster than the speed of light. Traveling at the speed of light you could travel any place in no time, effectively (see e.g., Poul Anderson’s novel Tau Zero). There’s a change to a new frame of reference for James coming back and he would receive messages from Earth at an accelerated rate, rapid fire. He returns to Earth younger. This is verified by experiment in various ways.
>
> For the astronaut, it is indeed effectively faster than light travel, although it is also time travel into the future as the price.
>
> G. David Nordley has a couple of old articles on his website about these issues if you want a free source of followup. There’s a long and detailed wiki article, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox
>
> I admit, it’s still a bit hard to understand, especially at first, but that’s how it works.
>
> OK, working within that limitation…I think there are a couple of possible ways to go.
>
> If this alternate universe didn’t develop relativity, maybe they don’t understand lightspeed as the limit. I strongly suspect that many tests would have led to it if Einstein had been ignored, but that can still be a premise. Maybe there’s a fuel source based on something they’ve learned about that we don’t know that can provide constant acceleration. (There’s a relativistic rocket equation you can find to calculate speeds/times based on this idea.) But they can only use it once. And they don’t understand that there’s a speed limit, so James never gets up to the speed intended, but only some fraction. He personally won’t suffer so much time passing, but a lot more time will pass on Earth. We can run some numbers to find a scenario that works if you like. Magnetic fields could be used to turn the ship around at Alpha Centauri. This is probably the way to go to get something similar to your intended story, but the timescales will have to be altered somewhat. I think this can work.
>
> There’s another possibility that I think can work, although this may be harder to do, and more the story I imagined reading than your intended one. Basically, James and the scientists have to discover and solve the twin paradox! BOTH frames suffer time dilation on the outbound trip, much to everyone’s concern, and the asymmetry is not so clear. With Einstein being ignored and dying early I thought maybe only special relativity was known and issues of acceleration and general relativity were unknown. This is more of a puzzle story solution. James is always going to end up younger than his round-trip time as experienced on Earth, but it can be fun and surprising.
>
> Anyway, maybe do some more thinking and we can chat on the phone soon if you like.
>
> As I wrote to John, the theme of losing communications and the trip feeling like an eternity may work well:
>
> “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.” — Einstein
>
> OK, those are some of my thoughts and ideas. I think there are ways to rework this to keep your nice ideas, themes, and emotions, without violating relativity. I don’t think you want to change the rules of physics for this story, but just envision a world where this one branch was neglected but not wrong.
>
So we went back and forth a bit after that. Jake was open to my suggestions and game to make them work. I went on:
> OK, I think you can make this work. A comparison of the classical and relativistic rocket equations will give you the time difference for a trip of different distances/times. James and his wife think they’ll age at the same rate and he’ll be gone for a particular length of time. In truth, it will be a much longer time, and he’ll come back aged less than her. Maybe they can be played by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutchner. 😉
>
> Radio communications will work fine, I think, as the problem can be discovered and worked out on the journey out. BOTH sides will see time dilation.
>
> One suggestion for your constant acceleration drive is zero point energy, which has been used before, but really we’re clueless about it. Maybe scientists in an alternate universe can get it better than us Einsteinians. Some other areas of speculation would be fine, too, I think. The premise is really an ignorance of Einstein, and knowledge of other branches of science. It just has to be good enough to sound plausible, I think.
>
> The return trip is constant deceleration.
>
> You could also do it with something that just makes everything move really fast, right away. Simpler math.
>
> Well, your story. I’ll let you sweat the details, and be happy to help with making the relativity work out.
Making progress. Jake replied with:
> Okay, Mike, here’s my takeaway:
>
> They use a newly discovered (fictional) power source that can fire him to the destination at constant acceleration. The speed goal is FTL travel, but they discover that the speed of light is a constant upper limit they hadn’t considered. As a result, the trip will take MUCH longer than they expected (I can use the 30 year/10 year scenario here, I’m thinking, so I don’t need to change much). Because of this, the underlying tension is the same (he arrives home in 10 years as expected, she seems him in 30), but the underlying problem is made a bit more complicated—it’s not just time dilation; it’s the discovery of the speed of light constant cap on speed along with time dilation.
>
> I’m thinking that’s some pretty freaking cool science juju to layer on top of what is an emotional story.
>
> Things that would make my life easier, so let me know if this works in your head: He is anticipated to surpass the speed of light in his first month. This way his first sail calibration (from Earth’s pov the THIRD month—which is to say the month when there is two way communication) throws off a major speed error that can be used to create a pretty neat dramatic irony, as the reader can see what’s going on while the characters are scrambling to figure it out.
>
> Does the above make sense to you?
It mostly did…
> That sounds plausible, except the combination of speeds, times, and distances are not arbitrary and must be self-consistent.
>
> I can run some numbers tomorrow and see if I can get something close to your desired parameters, ok?
I did after Jake gave me a green light:
> OK, so I looked at the classical and relativistic cases of constant acceleration.
>
> Let me propose the simplest, easiest scenario that’s not too different from what you’d like, but not quite what you’d like either. Maybe it will work.
>
> First, classic Newtonian physics:
>
> At one Earth gravity (9.8 m/s^2) acceleration, accelerating to halfway to alpha centauri then slowing down the second half to arrive there at low velocity (to drop probes there, etc.), classically the trip would take about 4.1 years each way, or 8.2 years total. The maximum speed halfway would be 2.25 times lightspeed.
>
> Now, relativistically:
>
> Constantly accelerating to the halfway point would leave the spaceship at 97% lightspeed, with time slowing down by a factor of 4 at that point. From the perspective of our spaceship, that would take 3.6 lightyears years and total roundtrip time of 7.2 years. Close to your ten, again. Now, from the perspective of Earth, the roundtrip will be 16 years.
>
> Spending 1-2 years at the destination will make the totals 9 years subjective time for the voyager and about twice as long, 18 years on Earth, compared to the original plan of 10 years total mission time. This isn’t so far of 10/30 (10/18).
>
> If we speed up the ship, the ratio gets larger and closer to 10/30, but the overall trip gets shorter and the times are quicker. If we slow down the ship, the ratio gets farther away from 10/30, although the overall times increase.
>
> (The relativistic equations are not simple, and you need to use inverse hyperbolic trig functions. One good reference online for these can be found at: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rocket.html if you want to look for yourself.)
>
> Anyway, I don’t think this is a bad solution. Trip takes twice as long as originally planned from Earth’s perspective, a little quicker from our voyager’s. Time dilation peaks at a factor of four 1/4 the way through the trip. (If you go beyond that be careful because the frames changes, but up until that point everything slows down from both perspectives, starting from nothing and building up gradually.) Maybe our voyager made promises to kids to be back in time for graduations, etc, and an extra 8-10 years is a big deal.
>
> Hope this is all clear. I can do some other scenarios, but we’re not going to do a lot better than this.
Jake liked this, but the solution wasn’t perfect yet.
> So I did extensive edits with the Glies planet timeline. The editors at Lightspeed felt that a 20 year mission was unrealistic for a couple, which in hindsight I have to agree with. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
>
> So I’m going back to the scenario you outlined below. What I’d like to do is have the following goal:
>
> The age spread between the ship and earth be about 20 years when it returns. I can’t lose the tragic image of an old woman and a young man on the return when they were both young when he left.
>
> With that in mind, this could be 5 years for the ship, 25 for earth, or something similar. Below you mention that if we speed the ship up the ratio get’s larger. So, my question for you: can you give me a speed and ratio that puts them roughly 20 years apart for a trip to alpha centauri?
>
> (Note: We can actually change the destination if it makes the math easier).
Yeah, headed that way!
> Hmmm, I gave you a scenario that provided 10 years RT using classical mechanics. Let me restate it just in case there has been a miscommunication:
>
> Original plan: 3.3 gee acceleration for 2.5 years, deceleration at 3.3 gee for 2.5 years, arrival at Gliese 581 — 5 years to get there, and the same thing and 5 years back, using non-relativistic equations. Classically that’s 10 years round-trip flight time plus some time at the destination. Classically, that’s a 10 year mission from Earth’s perspective, too.
>
> Relativistically, only a little over 5 years will pass on the ship, with 41 on Earth, give the acceleration, times, and distances.
>
> Before I spend more time on this, let’s confirm why this doesn’t work for you. 41 years is a little longer than you originally wanted, but works as well as 25 or 30 to my mind.
>
> Was there a misunderstanding, that it was 10 years to get to Gliese 581, and 10 years to get back, at an acceleration of 3.3 gee? It’s only 10 years round trip, classically. I set the time as 2.5 years to get halfway there, breaking the trip into quarters, accelerating and then decelerating after the halfway point. Same thing coming back.
>
> OK, please confirm. I think the original Gliese scenario is good.
If you’ve read Jake’s story, you might notice that we’re getting longer messages, not shorter ones, as the communications continue! 😉 From Jake:
>
> Yes! That may end up working. The goal is for the the round trip planning be for a ten year mission (or slightly shorter) with the assumption that they’ll surpass lightspeed on the trip, with ignorance of relativistic effects.
>
> So that works perfectly from what you’re describing. If that’s what you said before, then I just screwed up and assumed it was a 20 year classical round trip mission. Mea culpa.
>
> Relativistically, 5 years for the round trip from James’ perspective and 41 from Kate’s is freakin’ harsh, but I don’t think that’s bad. If they’re both 30 years old when he departs, he’ll be 35 and she’ll be 71 on his return. Ouch. Double ouch.
>
> If we agree on that, then I have to do only very minor edits at this point.
A bit more back and forth, some more details, and from me:
> For each month of subjective time on the ship, you want the equivalent time interval on Earth?
Yes, that’s what he wanted. We worked up some stuff with some detailed timestamps, and decided to ignore some issues with instantaneous communication that is very tricky and confusing to handle (leads to time travel/causality issues).
Hope I haven’t missed any key exchanges above and it makes sense. JJA did step in at one point to suggest the destination star system, since the discovery of an Earth-like planet had been announced recently (although its existence is still in dispute).
I spent more time helping Jake with the science than I spent on writing “The Cold Legacies” article to accompany the story.
If you’re hardcore enough to have read this far, let me wrap up. The above, with only minor editing, are the actual exchanges Jake and I had. I was really impressed with his desire to get the science right, and if you’ve read his side of things, you know it’s true. It’s “science” fiction and the science should be taken seriously. It’s a good, touching story, “The Old Equations.” Ignorance of the rules of physics creates a tragedy as the frontier is explored.
It’s a nice follow up to “The Cold Equations” and I’m pleased to have been part of its creation. Let me encourage you to take a look at it and consider voting for Jake’s story if you’re eligible.
Recently I highlighted an astronomical blunder by literary giant Ernest Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea.
He is far from unique.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Edgar Allen Poe, and others of similar literary greatness, have all similarly blundered. A lot of the mistakes involve the moon:
“Till clomb above the eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip”
— Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Now, as fun as it might be to some to bash literary types for poor scientific literacy, I want to point this stuff out and highlight it as an educational opportunity.
I’m going to keep saying it until it happens, but a single werewolf-centric book series in the same ballpark as Harry Potter or Twilight (or just outside the ballpark) could do the world a huge favor and educate millions about basic astronomy. I’d think any traditional werewolf character would know all about how the moon worked and be obsessed about it. Obsessed fans would know, too.
There are a lot of misunderstandings of how the stars, Moon, planets, and Sun move and behave in the sky. Another example.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s A Descent into the Maelstrom, a captain notes the time on his watch, which he can see under the light of a full Moon “nearly overhead.” Six hours later it is noted to be setting in the west? Did I mention that this is on July 10 off the coast of Norway? (About 68 degrees north latitude.) That far north the Moon is never seen “nearly overhead.” It would barely be over the horizon. And any object “nearly overhead” that far north never sets. Also bad is the fact that you’ve got almost continuous daylight this close to the arctic circle, and the light of moon isn’t needed and probably wouldn’t be noted.
There’s a couple of errors, and I’ll point you at a bunch more.
I read a lot, and have a fairly strong background in the classics, but I needed reminding and just doing the collecting is time consuming. I want to point you at my source for this post: The Wayward Heavens in Literature by Louis Berman. This is a paper from 1970 where these issues are highlighted. I came across it trying to track down the Coleridge error, which I remembered correctly but thought was from T.S. Eliot. My apologies to Eliot. The paper is free to download, so please check it out. Regularly scheduled starlinks coming soon, including more Moon talk.
There’s a fun, literary homework problem in the textbook I’m using this semester (Foundations of Astrophysics by Ryden and Peterson). It’s a pretty good textbook overall, although it’s a bit calculus heavy for when some of our students take my course and it’s short on example problems. One thing I do like is that the authors are well educated outside of science, and have some culturally interesting asides and work in literary references into the text and homework. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is a favorite of mine, but I don’t recalling catching this howler when I read it, and I should have:
“It was dark now as it becomes dark quickly after the Sun sets in September. He lay against the worn wood of the bow and rested all that he could. The first stars were out. He did not know the name of Rigel but he saw it and knew soon they would all be out and he would have all his distant friends.”
One way of checking the accuracy of this passage is to look up the coordinates of Rigel and go use a planetarium program and set it for Cuba, 6pm, September 15th. A bit easier to get the same answer is to determine the local sidereal time at that time and time of the year and comparing the coordinates of Rigel (local sidereal time or LST is basically the same as the right ascension coordinate of stars passing directly overhead).
The easiest way for myself, and I imagine most people reading here, is to realize that Rigel is a very bright star and part of the best recognized constellation: Orion. Rigel is the knee opposite the bright red shoulder of Betelguese.
Now, knowing which star is Rigel, Betelguese, Sirius, Deneb, Vega, or whatever, is not something the average person knows. I do think the average person, even those living in larger cities, knows Orion. They also might be able to recall that it’s a constellation easily seen in the early evening in…the winter. Like now. In September, at sunset, it is not in the sky. It hasn’t yet risen, and won’t be up until very late in the night.
Don’t let Hemingway’s poor astronomy knowledge stop you from reading The Old Man in the Sea. It’s a really good read otherwise, and one of the inspirations for my novel Star Dragon.
(T.S. Eliot has an even worse howler that I’ll dig up and discuss at a later date.)
The Science in Science Fiction: Batman Gotham Knight
December 30th, 2011
Yesterday I watched the animated Batman movie, Gotham Knight:
It’s a collection of interrelated short pieces by different creative teams, which isn’t bad, but the different styles is a little jarring. I mean, Bruce Wayne looks different in different sequences and it was a little hard to follow. I can recommend the movie, but not strongly (see Batman: Year One instead.)
One of the segments called “Crossfire” featured an electromagnet that could repulse bullets. Bullet proof Batman! (Let’s ignore the other stories in the same movie where Batman’s outfit is bulletproof except for at short range, ouch!). Now, it’s perhaps plausible to have a technology that could repel bullets, although we don’t know how to make a small portable version. The complications of this idea is not the focus of my scientific criticism today, however.
Batman and Fox couldn’t run the device continuously due to power issues and/or issues of disruption of the environment, so they came up with the clever idea to trigger it when there’s a loud noise, like a gun shot. Ignoring the problem that Batman’s weakness would then become silencers, which criminals would figure out sooner or later, this is a ludicrously stupid idea and Batman should be DEAD due to his poor scientific understanding! Well, his writers, anyway.
Sound travels at the speed of sound, or about 340 meters per second in air (give or take a little, depending on the altitude, temperature, etc.).
So, the point of this is that under most circumstances, the bullet will reach its target before the sound of the gunshot! The superduper bullet shield, even if infinitely fast to turn on, won’t activate in time! Dead Batman.
So, the moral of the story is train in physics as well as martial arts. Failure on either side will get the Batman killed. Or at least the writer of Batman’s exploits teased for bad science.
Ten Tips for Communicating Science to General Audiences
December 8th, 2011
I think about communicating science to a wide variety of audiences, both as a professor who does research and teaches, but also as a science fiction author. Knowing your audience is key, and knowing how to reach them better helps tremendously. A lot of what I say will apply to both non-fiction and fiction, speaking and writing.
1. Avoid jargon. Sometimes you just have to use a technical word, and then it should be clearly defined, but jargon makes a general audience transform into a horde of zombies. I even think it’s a good idea to avoid jargon for more expert audiences, since so much of science has become super specialized.
2.Beware of more subtle vocabulary issues. There’s a nice table you can check out that has some examples. One common one is the word “theory” that means “guess” in everyday use, but means a well tested and likely right explanation in science. More subtle ones are things like the word “trick,” which means something clever in math and science, but means something devious to the public. There are lots more examples. A “positive trend” in science is when the line goes up on the plot, a “negative trend” is when it goes down. To the public, a “positive trend” is something favorable, and it can be confusing when scientists talk about a negative trend concerning pollution and seem pleased with it.
3. Avoid arrogance and the appeal to authority when possible. Taking out unnecessary jargon helps. It sounds pretentious to stay that you or your character studies “stellar proper motions.” Just say, “how stars move.” Also in science you never have to justify something with “because so-and-so said so.” It’s always possible to discuss observations or experiment that support a conclusion. Now, if your goal is to be pretentious and off-putting, as in the character Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, take the reverse of my advice here.
4. Use appropriate units. General American audiences want feet and miles, gallons and teaspoons, and pounds and tons. Give it to them unless there’s a good reason not to. Using the metric system may sound pretentious, and be harder to understand. Also try to use units appropriate for the scale being discussed. A light-year isn’t a common everyday unit, but the concept isn’t too complicated if you remind people that it’s not a unit of time, and it’s a lot more easily grasped that Alpha Centauri is a little over four light years away rather than 25 trillion miles. Million, billion, trillion, brazillion…it’s hard to meaningfully conceive of those orders of magnitude.
5. Relate concepts to everyday experience. Static and kinetic friction can be discussed in the abstract, but the concepts are a lot more comprehensible when talking about slipping on the ice — if your audience is from a cold climate, which is not always the case. Finding truly universal experiences can be a challenge, but worth it.
6. Use metaphors and analogies when available. Trying to describe a star moving through a density wave in its orbit through the galaxy isn’t the easiest thing to do. It’s easier to describe, and easier to understand for most of us, driving through regions of heavier traffic on a moderately busy highway.
7. Humor can be a good idea! Humor is engaging, and takes the edge off of anything that might come across as pretentious. When I talk about Issac Newton’s thought experiment to illustrate escape velocity and orbits, I often use the phrase Newton’s “big-ass” cannon just because it would have to be a giant cannon and the phrase “big-ass” sounds funny to me and a lot of audiences. Sometimes going into left field is amusing, and you could replace Newton’s “big-ass” cannon with a pissed-off Hulk throwing “puny humans.”
8. Historical approaches benefit from the strengths of narrative. People like story. Narrative makes ideas stick by putting them in a familiar context. Sometimes an abstract discussion of the concepts, or even a nice description related to everyday experience, just doesn’t do the job as well as a story. You can tell people that gravity bends light, but if you’ve got the time, the idea will stick better if you relate how there was an expedition to observe a total eclipse in South America to test this claim.
9. Engage multiple senses. Some people are visual, some auditory, and some tactile. When you’re giving a talk, you can use words and pictures easily enough. In a classroom or laboratory setting, you can involve students directly in demonstrations. It’s harder in fiction, but still possible. You can describe not only what it looks like through a telescope, but what it’s like to listen to someone giving instructions about how to operate it and make sense of the image, and what it feels like to touch the device and manipulate it. Those extra details will help with some segments of the audience.
10. Use multiple techniques. Finally, don’t just pick one or two of the above rules. Mix and match often. Different techniques work better for connecting with different audience members. Some of the techniques work better in one situation but not another. An individual’s use of these is a matter of personal style, just as a writer can choose between exposition, dialogue, point of view, tense, etc., to convey a scene.
Academia and writing are two systems where mentors are still common, something like the old system of Apprentice/Journeyman/Master.
I think in nearly every field of individual excellence that requires serious expertise, you’ll find mentors. Tiger Wood’s had his dad teaching him golf. The Polgar sisters had rigorous chess coaching. Every scientist these days has or had a PhD advisor. Writers have mentors, if only informally in the form of writing groups.
Sure, there are lone geniuses, but despite the stereotype, I believe they’re quite rare. And to the extent they’re actually loners, they still read books written by masters no doubt. Einstein is one case that might qualify as lone genius (if we discount the assistance of his first wife and sounding boards he used), but he read the great minds of his age and discussed their ideas in great detail, and as a boy had mentors who pushed his intellectual development.
With my own students, I try to draw a fine line between telling them how to do things and letting them figure it out on their own. The struggle is good, but too much is frustrating, and there’s no sense in reinventing the wheel. Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. We can stand on Newton and Einstein now — no one is going to go beyond them starting on their own from first principles.
Let me be general first and think about what makes a good mentor. Then I’ll consider how to choose one. Finally, I will be specific about the practical issue of finding mentoring in academic and writing environments.
First, a good mentor puts your development as primary. There are some mentors who use people to feed their own egos, or for free labor.
A good mentor is an expert on their subject. They need not be a master themself (although they often are and it can help), but they need to recognize mastership and know the path to get there.
A good mentor has a good reputation and contacts. Reference letters and introductions to the right people at the right time can be as important as having the right skills, unfortunately. If we’re talking a career, you need to get paid and recognized. In some fields merit is enough, but in others having contacts is also vital.
A good mentor shares your basic values. There are fields where you can cheat to get ahead, but I’d never accept a mentor who advised me to cheat.
A good mentor applies the right balance between control and freedom. Some students need more of one or the other. There are mentors who are flexible on that front, and ones who are too controlling or too hands off for students at the extremes.
So, how do you choose?
First, recognize that you do get to choose. A lot of people fall into a relationship with a mentor by circumstances outside their control or awareness, and just accept it. That can be fine, but if the mentor is a bad one, it can be worse than having no mentor at all. So choose or accept a mentor consciously!
Learn about your mentor before making an official commitment. Talk with others about them, especially their current and past students. Find out what is their reputation in the community at large. Prestige is important, for better or worse.
Learn about alternatives! Remember, this is choice. Now, you may be in a small department, or live in a small town, or otherwise have a restricted range of choices, but with the internet, email, and skype, there are myriad possibilities for anyone with computer access. Don’t settle because of the limited options. If you want to study exoplanets, don’t pick an advisor (or department) that has no one interested in that topic. If you want to write science fiction, don’t go to a writing group exclusively for romance authors just because that’s the only one available. There are always more options.
Prioritize passion and enthusiasm. The mentor ought to care about their subject deeply and never tire of talking about it, teaching it, and learning more about it themselves. Passion will keep them committed, if not to you, to what you do together.
Now, you don’t have to fall in love with your mentor, figuratively or literally, because an adversarial relationship works for some people. On the other hand, I always had a hard time being around assholes, bullies, snobs, and the insecure, and I couldn’t see it working out for me.
Let me get more specific and tell a few stories from my own experience, and from what I saw go on with my friends. First, academia, specifically astronomy:
I’ve seen a very prestigious chaired professor hang on to a weak student for a decade because he made a good “data slave.”
I’ve seen busy self-involved vain professors put their names first on all their students’ papers (not common in astronomy), and in one case take a year to provide feedback on a draft of a paper — at which point the result was obsolete and the project had to be redone from scratch with new code.
I’ve seen professors who felt that anything but a research career was failure, and who therefore failed to properly mentor their students who had different plans (sometimes by choice, sometimes by a job market that had changed since the professor’s day).
I’ve seen professors who consistently alienated every student they ever had, even when they were very friendly to start with. A certain kind of student takes that as fuel to succeed, and I’ve seen them produce successful students. I’ve also seen students quit on them.
It’s not all bad.
I’ve seen professors who, while not widely known in their fields, have long track records for consistently producing many successful students.
I’ve seen professors bend over backwards to help their students, sometimes behind closed doors where they’ll never get recognition for it, getting them jobs, funding, you name it, sometimes making personal sacrifices to have it happen.
The sad truth, however, is that there are a lot of ways to be bad and those ways create juicy stories. When someone has a great advisor, often all you’ll here is “Oh, my advisor was great!”
In order to choose an advisor in astronomy, here’s what I would do:
Don’t wait until you’re in graduate school! Have a choice or a slate of choices before you’re stuck someplace with limited options. Know your own interests, or a range of interests, and make sure the grad schools you apply to have people working in those subfields. Then research those people, particularly what they or their group have been publishing (and that they’re currently publishing and not has-beens). Find out if they regularly get grant funding. Find out if they accept all students who approach them, or are picky about who they take (which could depend on how many students they currently have). Finally, and most importantly, talk with their past and current students to get a more direct idea about how they are to work with.
Yeah, that’s a lot of work to do, perhaps even before you’ve applied to a graduate program, but it can be the difference between success and failure. I personally applied to a large department to ensure I had a lot of options, and tried to do a lot of this my first semester as a grad student. It’s easier these days with the internet. Don’t let yourself wind up working with the local crackpot, who has no funding, has never had a student get a job, keeps them around for a decade as a data slave, and is a pain in the ass to be around, just because he’s the one in the department who once upon a time studied quasars.
I also want to say a few works about writing mentors. The game is a little different there. It tends to be more informal and personal, and often a single mentor is replaced by a writing group. I’ve been a member of at least four writing groups, and enjoyed their strengths, and suffered their weaknesses as well. Ego is probably the biggest danger in my experience, given the lack of financial issues in the setting of an informal group. For some, jealousy is a problem if you get too good. For others, it manifests as destructive criticism — tearing down people who don’t write the things the group likes, the way the group likes. I ran my first novel through two writing groups simultaneously, and quit one group before the process was over. Find a group that helps your writing improve and maintains enthusiasm and professionalism; if that isn’t the case, it’s more harm than good and time to quit. There’s another group on the internet.
OK, this was too long, but I’m feeling good about having a little time finally to articulate some things that have been on my mind for years. I’m now in the mentoring role and want to make sure I do it well, for myself as much as for my students. On the writing side, I’ve graduated to editors and trusted beta readers, and am unlikely to subject myself to diving into a writing group at random every again — but that’s still a common way to start.
Science Fiction and the Scientifically Inclined Hero
October 10th, 2011
When I was about six or so, I realized that what separated humans from other animals was our intelligence rather than our physical capabilities. Sure, there are other differences, such as the degree of tool use, or the social aspects of our species and how we employ culture and altruism to lead to ever increasing success, but ultimately we’re smart critters. We figure out how to do really complicated things both as individuals and as groups working together.
So, I logically decided to focus on intellectual achievement. Silly me, at least until later in life.
Little did I know that being tall leads to advantages in society, or that athletic scholarships are much bigger than academic scholarships. In some meta context, it really does seem crazy to reward freaks of physical achievement when there are animals faster, stronger, and much more physically capable than humans. A guy I knew once put it this way: you can measure someone’s athleticism by how many seconds they last before a tiger could kill them.
Despite this, our popular stories often feature heroes who are stronger, faster, and braver than other normal people. Even though they would last only a few seconds longer than a tiger, or less for the bravely stupid ones. The tiger doesn’t care how determined you are.
As a 1980s supercomputer might learn, the only way to win is not to play. The smart person doesn’t get into the arena with the tiger.
So where are the smart heroes? The ones who think first, fight second, or not at all?
Science fiction has them. At least more than other genres.
I remember being impressed with Star Trek’s Captain Kirk as a kid. Not because he could karate chop unsuspecting alien guards into unconsciousness with one blow, but because he could think his way to victory as often as not. To wit, Kirk vs. the Gorn.
It wasn’t a very good fight scene, I grant. And if the Gorn was a tenth the speed of a tiger, Kirk would have been toast. What I loved, however, was that physical prowess could not defeat the alien, but intelligence could. Kirk recognized the components of a weapon in his environment and used his smarts to triumph. That was a message that made sense to me then, and still does.
When dealing with other humans in contemporary settings, sometimes being stronger or faster is plenty to carry the day. When your rivals are enhanced humans, robots, aliens, or other beings with physical capabilities beyond those of normal people, only superior scientific knowledge, technology, or cleverness can prevail.
So let’s celebrate our smart heroes, from science fiction and any other field. Let’s hear it for Kirk, Spock, Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter, the Professor, Walter Bishop, Sherlock Holmes, Dana Scully, House, McGuyver, the Antonio Banderas character in the 13th Warrior, Reed Richards, Jadzia Dax, Tony Stark, Willow, and others who show that scientists are not only mad villains, but heroes and role models to anyone who wants to avoid fighting the tiger, or to kill it if you have to.
