Christopher McKitterick's Blog, page 42
January 29, 2011
RIP Fetish kitty, Oct 1995 - Jan 28, 2011.
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Thank you all for your kind words on yesterday's post.
January 28, 2011
Fetish's last day
Today is Fetish-Kitty's last day, and her vet was not only kind enough to make a house-call appointment to put her to sleep, but also is not charging for the service. I guess she's been such a good customer, especially over the past year....
I'm having a hard time with this. Until a few minutes ago, she was sitting on my lap, and she seems so lovey and cuddly, even though she can't use her back legs very well and she can't control her waste very well, and the diabetes and rare muscle-degenration disease and all that. Especially her loss of interest in "kitty TV," the congregation of birds and squirrels on the back porch, gobbling seeds and whatnot.
Even so, because Fetish can still be so lovey, it's hard to think about her not being alive anymore in two hours.
Since Lydia made the decision to euthenize Fetish last week, we've been giving her as much attention as we can. Reading with her on our laps, watching shows with her on my lap, especially when I get home late from teaching in Kansas City; helping her up and down the stairs when she wants to explore; giving her as much food as she wants, even people food, because - what, it's going to kill her? When one of us is home, we're also letting her roam freely about the house, though keeping a keen eye on her because of her incontinence. Right now she's napping in the cupboard under the upstairs bathroom sink; I rearranged in there and put down a fluffy towel. Soon she'll want to be carried back downstairs for another meal, I'm sure.
I'm just so blue about this! She's not even my cat, and I've only known her for 8 years, lived with her for fewer still. But except for my beloved Helen, I've never met such a lovey cat as Fetish.
It's going to be so strange without her here. The house will feel so empty without her affectionate presence.
Lydia's coming home now, and the vet will be here in an hour or so. My heart is heavy.
Edit: She's had her acepromazine tablet to relax her for the vet's visit, and it seems to have also relieved some of her pain. She's stretching out longer than she has in a while, even wagging a bit.
Chris
I'm having a hard time with this. Until a few minutes ago, she was sitting on my lap, and she seems so lovey and cuddly, even though she can't use her back legs very well and she can't control her waste very well, and the diabetes and rare muscle-degenration disease and all that. Especially her loss of interest in "kitty TV," the congregation of birds and squirrels on the back porch, gobbling seeds and whatnot.
Even so, because Fetish can still be so lovey, it's hard to think about her not being alive anymore in two hours.
Since Lydia made the decision to euthenize Fetish last week, we've been giving her as much attention as we can. Reading with her on our laps, watching shows with her on my lap, especially when I get home late from teaching in Kansas City; helping her up and down the stairs when she wants to explore; giving her as much food as she wants, even people food, because - what, it's going to kill her? When one of us is home, we're also letting her roam freely about the house, though keeping a keen eye on her because of her incontinence. Right now she's napping in the cupboard under the upstairs bathroom sink; I rearranged in there and put down a fluffy towel. Soon she'll want to be carried back downstairs for another meal, I'm sure.
I'm just so blue about this! She's not even my cat, and I've only known her for 8 years, lived with her for fewer still. But except for my beloved Helen, I've never met such a lovey cat as Fetish.
It's going to be so strange without her here. The house will feel so empty without her affectionate presence.
Lydia's coming home now, and the vet will be here in an hour or so. My heart is heavy.
Edit: She's had her acepromazine tablet to relax her for the vet's visit, and it seems to have also relieved some of her pain. She's stretching out longer than she has in a while, even wagging a bit.
Chris
Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster: 25 Years Ago Today
Anyone alive and sentient 25 years ago to the minute cannot forget this:
Click the image to see Space.com's memorial of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster.
Everyone in the world, it seemed, witnessed the disaster live. This was a special launch because Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher from New Hampshire - a regular person - was going into space for the first time as part of the "Teacher in Space" program. Teachers around the world tuned in during class, their students watching live, learning about everything related to planning and launching a Space Shuttle and its mission.
At the time, I was studying astronomy at the University of Minnesota, a freshman. For the launch, I was in the student union, having lunch with my friend Krista McCallum as was our routine almost every day. We were both particularly excited about the near-coincidence of names, and both of us hoped to be teachers one day; I'd even gotten a scholarship from our hometown school teacher's association. And of course we dreamed of one day being astronauts, as well. Christa McAuliffe carried our dreams with her - she was us! This moment belonged to us as much as to anyone else not directly involved in the flight or related to the crew members. Golly, I can't tell you how excited we were!
This was an important launch because the Space Shuttle had come to be considered merely a semi-truck ferrying cargo to low orbit. Partly to address dwindling popular interest in their flagship Shuttle program, NASA had instituted the Teacher in Space Program. The Space Shuttle had become mundane, its launches routine. No one had been tuning in any longer, and visitors to see live launches had dwindled to small groups of enthusiasts.
But not today. At 11:38AM (Florida time) on January 28, 1986, we all cheered as the flight narrator announced, "We have lift-off of the Space Shuttle Challenger." We watched the ungainly cluster of fat spaceship, external solid-rocket boosters, and external hydrogen tank rise and rotate, trailing its signature three-plume exhaust: two yellow pillars so bright that photographic equipment must stop down apertures, and in the center the gorgeous blue exhaust of the liquid-fuel engines, almost invisible against the solid-rocket's glare.
Seventy-two seconds into the flight, those infamous O-rings had seeped enough solid-rocket exhaust to destroy the skeleton that held everything together. Most importantly, the errant exhaust burned a hole through the external fuel tank and intertank, venting hydrogen and oxygen gases which ignited in a ball of flame.
The seven-astronaut crew of Challenger's STS-51L mission: commander Dick Scobee, pilot Mike Smith; mission specialists Judy Resnik; Ellison Onizuka, and Ron McNair; and payload specialists Greg Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe:
Click the image to see Space.com's description of the Challenger Space Shuttle's final crew and an analysis of what went wrong.
The televisions in the dining area were tuned live to the launch, of course, like most every television in the nation. Everyone gradually grew quiet as this new streamer of flame appeared. We'd all seen dozens of flights before, and this wasn't how it was supposed to go. Almost exactly one minute later, a horrible ball of fire erupted and all the pieces flew apart, trailing plumes of exhaust off at crazy angles.
In the dining area, everyone's faces bore confusion. Some students and teachers had their hands over their mouths. I don't remember much detail about this time except feelings: It couldn't be what it seemed to be; surely this was just another solid-rocket-booster and external-tank separation, right? But why so early? What had gone wrong? What's going on? Surveys later revealed that more than 85% of Americans knew about the disaster within the hour.
We listened in silence as the TV announcer tried to relay information, but he didn't have much to say. No, the astronauts weren't responding. Was the Challenger in aerodynamic flight? It was unclear. We were in denial: It can't have been destroyed. If it had indeed exploded as the video seemed to have shown, surely the Shuttle had made it clear. Surely the astronauts could eject if the Shuttle was too damaged to land. Right?
Reports began filtering in, dashing hopes. Scorched fragments of Challenger on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. It wasn't until later that we learned of the pieces of spacesuit also discovered. That's when we knew it was safe to mourn. The whole nation mourned, indeed space enthusiasts the world over felt this as a personal blow. Not only because we had lost seven brave astronaut-scientists, but because of what this might mean in the long run: Would manned spaceflight recover? Modern society had lost its grit, and any loss of life was unacceptable. Would the American people resume the program after such a public tragedy?
In fact, almost three years passed before another Shuttle launch lit up the skies over Cape Canaveral. In the mean time, the Rogers Commission reported that NASA had been aware - since 1977 - of a design flaw in the external boosters' O-rings that could create a serious problem in low temperatures - as the Cape experienced on that fateful morning. The Rogers Commission offered NASA nine recommendations that had to be implemented before Space Shuttle flights could resume. Of course, since then we discovered another fatal flaw when the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas on February 1, 2003, a flaw which has since been addressed.
Even though I was not involved with NASA in any way, this was a moment that changed my life. I felt as if the door to a future in astronautics had closed off. Not because I was afraid of experiencing a similar disaster and dying at launch - every time you climb aboard a mountain of explosives, that's a possibility. But because I feared our nation would lose its will to explore. Even if I were never to become an astronaut, myself - and I was realistic enough to grudgingly accept this - I feared that we would never again have astronauts at all. My earliest dreams were to explore, and after reading my first science-fiction stories, those dreams of exploration pointed to the stars. When I became more educated about things astronomical, I knew that one day I would explore the moons of Jupiter. At least, someone would do the exploring for me, and I could bask in the glory of exploring by proxy as a fellow human being once more walked on the surface of another world.
January 28, 1986, nearly evaporated those dreams.
Since then, dreams of exploring other worlds myself faded in the glare of time, of course, but it's still possible that I will one day go to space. It's possible because I was wrong about the American people: We did not lose our will. We retained our spirit of exploration. We will one day not only explore our Solar System, but the stars themselves.
This I believe. And we must honor the sacrifices of those who paved the way to the stars. Thank you, Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. And thank you to the other astronauts who gave the ultimate sacrifice, and to all the Soviet cosmonauts, as well.
Where were you on this fateful day?
Chris
Click the image to see Space.com's memorial of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster.
Everyone in the world, it seemed, witnessed the disaster live. This was a special launch because Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher from New Hampshire - a regular person - was going into space for the first time as part of the "Teacher in Space" program. Teachers around the world tuned in during class, their students watching live, learning about everything related to planning and launching a Space Shuttle and its mission.
At the time, I was studying astronomy at the University of Minnesota, a freshman. For the launch, I was in the student union, having lunch with my friend Krista McCallum as was our routine almost every day. We were both particularly excited about the near-coincidence of names, and both of us hoped to be teachers one day; I'd even gotten a scholarship from our hometown school teacher's association. And of course we dreamed of one day being astronauts, as well. Christa McAuliffe carried our dreams with her - she was us! This moment belonged to us as much as to anyone else not directly involved in the flight or related to the crew members. Golly, I can't tell you how excited we were!
This was an important launch because the Space Shuttle had come to be considered merely a semi-truck ferrying cargo to low orbit. Partly to address dwindling popular interest in their flagship Shuttle program, NASA had instituted the Teacher in Space Program. The Space Shuttle had become mundane, its launches routine. No one had been tuning in any longer, and visitors to see live launches had dwindled to small groups of enthusiasts.
But not today. At 11:38AM (Florida time) on January 28, 1986, we all cheered as the flight narrator announced, "We have lift-off of the Space Shuttle Challenger." We watched the ungainly cluster of fat spaceship, external solid-rocket boosters, and external hydrogen tank rise and rotate, trailing its signature three-plume exhaust: two yellow pillars so bright that photographic equipment must stop down apertures, and in the center the gorgeous blue exhaust of the liquid-fuel engines, almost invisible against the solid-rocket's glare.
Seventy-two seconds into the flight, those infamous O-rings had seeped enough solid-rocket exhaust to destroy the skeleton that held everything together. Most importantly, the errant exhaust burned a hole through the external fuel tank and intertank, venting hydrogen and oxygen gases which ignited in a ball of flame.
The seven-astronaut crew of Challenger's STS-51L mission: commander Dick Scobee, pilot Mike Smith; mission specialists Judy Resnik; Ellison Onizuka, and Ron McNair; and payload specialists Greg Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe:
Click the image to see Space.com's description of the Challenger Space Shuttle's final crew and an analysis of what went wrong.
The televisions in the dining area were tuned live to the launch, of course, like most every television in the nation. Everyone gradually grew quiet as this new streamer of flame appeared. We'd all seen dozens of flights before, and this wasn't how it was supposed to go. Almost exactly one minute later, a horrible ball of fire erupted and all the pieces flew apart, trailing plumes of exhaust off at crazy angles.
In the dining area, everyone's faces bore confusion. Some students and teachers had their hands over their mouths. I don't remember much detail about this time except feelings: It couldn't be what it seemed to be; surely this was just another solid-rocket-booster and external-tank separation, right? But why so early? What had gone wrong? What's going on? Surveys later revealed that more than 85% of Americans knew about the disaster within the hour.
We listened in silence as the TV announcer tried to relay information, but he didn't have much to say. No, the astronauts weren't responding. Was the Challenger in aerodynamic flight? It was unclear. We were in denial: It can't have been destroyed. If it had indeed exploded as the video seemed to have shown, surely the Shuttle had made it clear. Surely the astronauts could eject if the Shuttle was too damaged to land. Right?
Reports began filtering in, dashing hopes. Scorched fragments of Challenger on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. It wasn't until later that we learned of the pieces of spacesuit also discovered. That's when we knew it was safe to mourn. The whole nation mourned, indeed space enthusiasts the world over felt this as a personal blow. Not only because we had lost seven brave astronaut-scientists, but because of what this might mean in the long run: Would manned spaceflight recover? Modern society had lost its grit, and any loss of life was unacceptable. Would the American people resume the program after such a public tragedy?
In fact, almost three years passed before another Shuttle launch lit up the skies over Cape Canaveral. In the mean time, the Rogers Commission reported that NASA had been aware - since 1977 - of a design flaw in the external boosters' O-rings that could create a serious problem in low temperatures - as the Cape experienced on that fateful morning. The Rogers Commission offered NASA nine recommendations that had to be implemented before Space Shuttle flights could resume. Of course, since then we discovered another fatal flaw when the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas on February 1, 2003, a flaw which has since been addressed.
Even though I was not involved with NASA in any way, this was a moment that changed my life. I felt as if the door to a future in astronautics had closed off. Not because I was afraid of experiencing a similar disaster and dying at launch - every time you climb aboard a mountain of explosives, that's a possibility. But because I feared our nation would lose its will to explore. Even if I were never to become an astronaut, myself - and I was realistic enough to grudgingly accept this - I feared that we would never again have astronauts at all. My earliest dreams were to explore, and after reading my first science-fiction stories, those dreams of exploration pointed to the stars. When I became more educated about things astronomical, I knew that one day I would explore the moons of Jupiter. At least, someone would do the exploring for me, and I could bask in the glory of exploring by proxy as a fellow human being once more walked on the surface of another world.
January 28, 1986, nearly evaporated those dreams.
Since then, dreams of exploring other worlds myself faded in the glare of time, of course, but it's still possible that I will one day go to space. It's possible because I was wrong about the American people: We did not lose our will. We retained our spirit of exploration. We will one day not only explore our Solar System, but the stars themselves.
This I believe. And we must honor the sacrifices of those who paved the way to the stars. Thank you, Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. And thank you to the other astronauts who gave the ultimate sacrifice, and to all the Soviet cosmonauts, as well.
Where were you on this fateful day?
Chris
January 26, 2011
Astro-Porn of the Day: Spiral galaxies are full of stars... and dust.
Check out this amazing pair of Hubble Space Telescope photos of M51, aka the Whirlpool Galaxy:
Click the image to see the Hubble site with lots of information.
The left photo shows the galaxy as we normally view it - in visible light - revealing the spiral arms, red star-forming regions, and blue star clusters.
The right image - taken in near-infrared light - removes most starlight to reveal the Whirlpool Galaxy's sweeping dust lanes.
If you have a telescope of 8" aperture or greater and can take it out into dark skies, you, too, can easily see this galaxy's spiralling arms and its companion galaxy (see my icon). Bring a nice astro-camera and you'll be able to take gorgous photos, yourself, as long as you can do long exposures. If you have an infrared filter for your camera, you can capture the underlying dust structure, as well.
I loves me a big galaxy facing us flat-on like this!
Best,
Chris
Click the image to see the Hubble site with lots of information.
The left photo shows the galaxy as we normally view it - in visible light - revealing the spiral arms, red star-forming regions, and blue star clusters.
The right image - taken in near-infrared light - removes most starlight to reveal the Whirlpool Galaxy's sweeping dust lanes.
If you have a telescope of 8" aperture or greater and can take it out into dark skies, you, too, can easily see this galaxy's spiralling arms and its companion galaxy (see my icon). Bring a nice astro-camera and you'll be able to take gorgous photos, yourself, as long as you can do long exposures. If you have an infrared filter for your camera, you can capture the underlying dust structure, as well.
I loves me a big galaxy facing us flat-on like this!
Best,
Chris
January 19, 2011
Health Update, or How You Can Still Drink Chocolate While Avoiding Sugar.
I've reported how I've changed my diet over the past year and the health progress that followed, right? About this time last year, I weighed 25-30 pounds more, had way less stamina, was weaker, and endured sore joints like you wouldn't believe - especially the injured shoulder. After assurance from my doctor that I could resume full-on exercise "as long as it doesn't hurt; sore is okay," I shifted from recuperation and maintenance to a strengthening program. At the same time, I cut out sugar from my diet - something that I had been eating far too often and in far too much volume. Hence the weight and blood-sugar swings. It also was doing me no good in the feeling-sorry-for-myself category.
Zoom ahead a month, and ten pounds fall away. This encouraged me to continue this process, and avoiding sugar was now easy because it no longer tastes good. I'd dropped my sugar addiction in a month and grew physically stronger, too, from upping the workouts. No longer do I experience any knee pain, either, despite a diversity of prior damage: Paleo-diet proponents suggest that eating grains contributes to joint and other inflammation. I suspect losing weight is a part of it, too.
Positive results reinforce good behavior, so I started dropping more processed carbs from my diet and adding more strengthening exercises, until over-doing things without assistance from a physical therapist derailed the strengthening part a couple of months ago (working on that now - almost done with Physical Therapy: The Sequel). Oh, and I've also stopped taking the 800mg x2 of ibuprofen daily that my doctor prescribed last year, because it was damaging my mucous membranes (noticeable as a sore mouth and stomach); I've also dropped sodium lauryl sulfate (in most toothpaste, for Pete's sake!), and since then no more irritated mouth or tum. If you'd like to stop putting SLS into your mouth, I suggest either the old-fashioned route of baking soda or, if you want to keep fluoride (as I do), the only toothpaste I could find that doesn't use SLS (or sweeteners) in an extensive search is Jason (with macron over the A and umlaut over the O), and only Sea Fresh is available in Lawrence (at the Merc, natch). Good stuff, dumb name.
Other benefits: I need less sleep, I'm hungry much less, I have steady energy during the day, and I'm a cheap drunk - re: the last, it seems I can only consume about two drinks before feeling tipsy. Not sure if the latter is necessarily a benefit, but you get the idea.
Drawbacks of this diet? Well, good luck finding ANY pre-packaged or restaurant food that doesn't include sugar. I was at the grocery store recently and decided to do a survey: Not a single packaged "food" that I examined was free of sugar, mostly high fructose corn syrup. Seriously? Stove Top Stuffing needs corn syrup? Unless you're looking at single-ingredient tins (canned carrots or something), you'll find a long list of not-food in the ingredients - and often, even canned veggies are loaded with sugar. WTF?
So that's one drawback. Another is not being able to have chocolate. Now we get around to the point of this entry. I was a true addict, like so many, but last time I tried conventional chocolate since altering my taste, chocolate just tasted bitterly sweet, sickeningly sweet. So I figured I was done for in this arena.
Then along comes Dutch process cocoa.
OMG yum. In case you haven't yet explored the wonderfulness that is Dutch process cocoa in milk, let me just say: DO IT. This concoction is pure delight. DPC is just cocoa and nothing but cocoa, ground fine. Mine comes from Penzy's, who describes it thus:
"Dutch cocoa is processed to temper the natural acidity of the cocoa bean, yielding a smooth, rich, and slightly less strong cocoa that mixes more freely with liquid. Dutch cocoa has long been the cocoa of choice for hot chocolate and flavored coffee. Cocoa can easily replace unsweetened baking chocolate."
Milk adds all the mildness needed to make the unsweetened cocoa drinkable, and the concoction tastes like fine hot cocoa. Well, I guess it is, really, isn't it? Think hybrid milk chocolate and dark chocolate in beverage form, but without the tooth-coating aftertaste or sugary tongue-burn. Yum.
Sugar-free yet retains all the joy of chocolate. That's what I'm talking about.
Chris
Zoom ahead a month, and ten pounds fall away. This encouraged me to continue this process, and avoiding sugar was now easy because it no longer tastes good. I'd dropped my sugar addiction in a month and grew physically stronger, too, from upping the workouts. No longer do I experience any knee pain, either, despite a diversity of prior damage: Paleo-diet proponents suggest that eating grains contributes to joint and other inflammation. I suspect losing weight is a part of it, too.
Positive results reinforce good behavior, so I started dropping more processed carbs from my diet and adding more strengthening exercises, until over-doing things without assistance from a physical therapist derailed the strengthening part a couple of months ago (working on that now - almost done with Physical Therapy: The Sequel). Oh, and I've also stopped taking the 800mg x2 of ibuprofen daily that my doctor prescribed last year, because it was damaging my mucous membranes (noticeable as a sore mouth and stomach); I've also dropped sodium lauryl sulfate (in most toothpaste, for Pete's sake!), and since then no more irritated mouth or tum. If you'd like to stop putting SLS into your mouth, I suggest either the old-fashioned route of baking soda or, if you want to keep fluoride (as I do), the only toothpaste I could find that doesn't use SLS (or sweeteners) in an extensive search is Jason (with macron over the A and umlaut over the O), and only Sea Fresh is available in Lawrence (at the Merc, natch). Good stuff, dumb name.
Other benefits: I need less sleep, I'm hungry much less, I have steady energy during the day, and I'm a cheap drunk - re: the last, it seems I can only consume about two drinks before feeling tipsy. Not sure if the latter is necessarily a benefit, but you get the idea.
Drawbacks of this diet? Well, good luck finding ANY pre-packaged or restaurant food that doesn't include sugar. I was at the grocery store recently and decided to do a survey: Not a single packaged "food" that I examined was free of sugar, mostly high fructose corn syrup. Seriously? Stove Top Stuffing needs corn syrup? Unless you're looking at single-ingredient tins (canned carrots or something), you'll find a long list of not-food in the ingredients - and often, even canned veggies are loaded with sugar. WTF?
So that's one drawback. Another is not being able to have chocolate. Now we get around to the point of this entry. I was a true addict, like so many, but last time I tried conventional chocolate since altering my taste, chocolate just tasted bitterly sweet, sickeningly sweet. So I figured I was done for in this arena.
Then along comes Dutch process cocoa.OMG yum. In case you haven't yet explored the wonderfulness that is Dutch process cocoa in milk, let me just say: DO IT. This concoction is pure delight. DPC is just cocoa and nothing but cocoa, ground fine. Mine comes from Penzy's, who describes it thus:
"Dutch cocoa is processed to temper the natural acidity of the cocoa bean, yielding a smooth, rich, and slightly less strong cocoa that mixes more freely with liquid. Dutch cocoa has long been the cocoa of choice for hot chocolate and flavored coffee. Cocoa can easily replace unsweetened baking chocolate."
Unsweetened Hot Cocoa recipe:
4-5 shakes Dutch process cocoa (use a shaker bottle to get just the right amount, way less than a teaspoon).
1/2 cup hot water.
1/2 cup whole milk (hot or cold, to taste; use quality, local, non-homogenized milk if possible).
Shake the cocoa into hot water, stir, top off with milk, and stir again.
Milk adds all the mildness needed to make the unsweetened cocoa drinkable, and the concoction tastes like fine hot cocoa. Well, I guess it is, really, isn't it? Think hybrid milk chocolate and dark chocolate in beverage form, but without the tooth-coating aftertaste or sugary tongue-burn. Yum.
Sugar-free yet retains all the joy of chocolate. That's what I'm talking about.
Chris
January 12, 2011
Astro-Porn of the Day: Kepler 10b
Calling all science-fiction writers: Think you've created a Hell World? Check out this place!
Yes, that's right: The planet is so close to its parent star that it creates a comet-like tail of rock particles because its surface is BOILING MAGMA ablating in the solar wind.
How could it ever have formed so near the star? Well, it didn't. See, this place is the relic of an ancient interstallar war. Its crust was once a few hundred kilometers thicker, carpeted with cities of glass and hydroformed steel, before they pissed off their stellar neighbors.
Here, let me share their story:
The Kebians meant no harm when they launched the exploration mission to Malpas. The ship's payload was less than a liter in volume, merely some software and a few million self-replicating nanos tasked to build an automated rover. Unfortunately, the spacecraft carrying the little rover flew through the wash of a nova-star's flaring plasma along the way, and the software was corrupted. So when it landed and the nanos busily began executing their mission, they didn't know when to stop. Unfortunately, the locals didn't realize what was happening until they had lost nearly a full province in a lightly populated northern province. Within days, the Malpassians deduced where the attack had originated and mounted a full-scale counterattack.
The defensive technology of the Malpassians, as the locals called themselves, was much more advanced than that of the Kebians - and honed for destruction. Whereas Kebian technology arose from scientific inquiry, Malpassian tech was hard-earned in the forges of war, as they had repelled an invasion once before.
A roving race that had no official name for itself - besides the universal designation, "The People" - had drifted near the Malpassian homeworld two hundred years prior to the ill-fated rover's mission. The invaders thrived on the remains of fallen civilizations; they were a bestial race of billions of individuals who lived aboard mobile asteroids their forebears had stolen from a now-extinct civilization tens of thousands of years before. The invasion lasted decades - not because the invaders had organized a war of attrition but because they had no plan; they simply continued to ferry down to the surface as their ungainly asteroids could be maneuvered into orbit within range of their armed landing craft. They also carried powerful energy weapons, and should those weapons fail - and they often did, poorly maintained as they were - the invaders attacked with tooth and claw, a match even for the planet's massive predatory animals, and outmatching the Malpassians ten to one in hand-to-hand combat. The asteroids were formidable weapons, themselves, when the exhaust of their dark-energy engines were focused on the planet below, devastating wide swathes of surface like so many F5 tornadoes that never ran out of power.
But when all seemed lost, when most major cities were devastated and the invaders spread across the land like a plague swarm, the Malpassians gained the upper hand. One of their premier physicists had been studying the dark-energy engines, as his area of expertise was dark matter and related hypotheticals. He often felt guilty for the pleasure he experienced, witnessing his theories come to practical life. The method of his civilization's destruction proved not only that dark matter and dark energy existed, but also that it could be harnessed as limitless power - enough to bear a primitive people across the stars, people who surely did not understand the principles that powered their transportation, who surely could not gather the matter necessary to run those fierce engines! So he refined his theories and worked with government engineers in a secret underground facility until they were ready for the ultimate mission: to invade one of the asteroid bases! The physicist didn't fly aboard the precious orbital-assault vehicle, of course, though several of the elite soldiers who did were respectable scientists in their own rights. Of the 20 who launched in the boarding craft (it was accompanied by several screening fighters), 12 made it to the engine room. Of those, only four returned to the surface in condition to continue working with the hero-physicist. But, most importantly, they brought back volumes of 3D schematic imagery and other data - enough that the Malpassians were able to complete work on their own dark-energy weapon.
Within the year, the first dark-energy base became operational. The Malpassians designed it so that they could not only focus the beam, as the invaders focused their engines, but also to swivel and target it. Critically, however, because they understood the underlying principles, they were able to make it into a true weapon. So rather than emitting a crude destructive exhaust cone, their dark-energy weapon fired a coherent beam. When he observed his weapon blasting a hole through its first asteroid, the physicist made his greatest discovery: The coherent beam appeared to strike the target shortly before it was fired. He was astounded. Soon, he mocked himself for missing the obvious: relativistic effects made it appear to strike before it was fired, when in reality the beam struck the target at the precise moment that it was fired. This matched his notion of how dark matter existed not in four dimensions but in many at once, and by harnessing it and making it exist as coherent wave-forms, they had found a way to teleport information!
The second dark-energy base began operation days later, bringing down another asteroid within hours. But the third base was all they needed to truly turn the tide of war, because it need not have a clear shot at its target; all it needed was galactic-positioning data. This is a great understatement, of course, because such data requires full mapping of gravitational slopes as well as matter and motion maps. This weapon missed its target by several kilometers on first firing... but the target asteroid orbited on the other side of the planet! The miss provided a great deal of data, and within hours they fired a second beam, which appeared in full force as dark energy concentrated into a point - the entire beam's energy winked on like a star whose diameter spanned less than a nanometer. This point remained still relative to the asteroid as it arced through its orbit, manufacturing antimatter wherever the point encountered matter, rupturing the rock like so much tissue paper tossed into a blazing inferno.
The weapon's programmers grew more accurate with each operation, soon able to target the invaders' landing craft, and eventually able to target individual invaders, themselves, thousands of kilometers away. Some of the asteroids' pilots managed to break orbit before they were targeted and surely felt safe once they passed beyond the system's cometary cloud. But their escape was only illusory: The Malpassians were busy eliminating the invaders on their world. Within a year, they had eradicated the immediate threat and turned their attentions to the retreating asteroid-craft. These they dispatched one after another over the course of a few days; though they had learned a great deal about targeting on nearby targets, relativistic effects played havoc on targeting distant, high-speed objects.
So two hundred years later, after they rebuffed what seemed to be a new attack - and stopping a grey-goo scenario required a great deal more invention! - the patient and methodical Malpassians turned their attention toward preventing a second wave of attack by targeting their new, moon-based dark-energy weapon against the Kebian homeworld. By eroding the ever-rotating dark side of the planet, they hoped to not only eradicate the offending civilization which dwelled on the surface but also drive the world into its sun for good measure. Over a few days they did manage to turn billions of megatons of crust into energy, killing all but a few million of the Kebians who lived on colony worlds, but they switched off their weapon before they had quite driven it into the sun.
No matter, though, because life could never again survive on the now-molten surface of Kebe, the world now known to humans as Kepler 10b. Even if the Kebians who survived the attack wished to return vengeance upon the Malpassians, the would forever lack the capacity to do so. The Malpassans held a great celebration when they learned of their victory, and to this day they commemorate not only the day they rid their world of the actual invaders, but also the day they stopped "The Second Invasion." Perhaps the only hopeful note in this second tragedy is that no Malpassan will ever learn that they extinguished the flame of what could have become one of the galaxy's greatest centers of learning - and perhaps their greatest allies in the wars to come.
Now, hundreds of years later, all that remains of the peaceful and beautiful Kebian culture are a few crystal domes on rocky worlds far from the place they once called home. That and the sun-bleached bones within. The Malpassans, as well, have been forever erased from the galaxy, their only surviving monument this world that they burned from afar. But that is another story.
I hope you enjoyed this little tale of galactic history!
Best,
Chris
Yes, that's right: The planet is so close to its parent star that it creates a comet-like tail of rock particles because its surface is BOILING MAGMA ablating in the solar wind.
How could it ever have formed so near the star? Well, it didn't. See, this place is the relic of an ancient interstallar war. Its crust was once a few hundred kilometers thicker, carpeted with cities of glass and hydroformed steel, before they pissed off their stellar neighbors.
Here, let me share their story:
The Kebians meant no harm when they launched the exploration mission to Malpas. The ship's payload was less than a liter in volume, merely some software and a few million self-replicating nanos tasked to build an automated rover. Unfortunately, the spacecraft carrying the little rover flew through the wash of a nova-star's flaring plasma along the way, and the software was corrupted. So when it landed and the nanos busily began executing their mission, they didn't know when to stop. Unfortunately, the locals didn't realize what was happening until they had lost nearly a full province in a lightly populated northern province. Within days, the Malpassians deduced where the attack had originated and mounted a full-scale counterattack.
The defensive technology of the Malpassians, as the locals called themselves, was much more advanced than that of the Kebians - and honed for destruction. Whereas Kebian technology arose from scientific inquiry, Malpassian tech was hard-earned in the forges of war, as they had repelled an invasion once before.
A roving race that had no official name for itself - besides the universal designation, "The People" - had drifted near the Malpassian homeworld two hundred years prior to the ill-fated rover's mission. The invaders thrived on the remains of fallen civilizations; they were a bestial race of billions of individuals who lived aboard mobile asteroids their forebears had stolen from a now-extinct civilization tens of thousands of years before. The invasion lasted decades - not because the invaders had organized a war of attrition but because they had no plan; they simply continued to ferry down to the surface as their ungainly asteroids could be maneuvered into orbit within range of their armed landing craft. They also carried powerful energy weapons, and should those weapons fail - and they often did, poorly maintained as they were - the invaders attacked with tooth and claw, a match even for the planet's massive predatory animals, and outmatching the Malpassians ten to one in hand-to-hand combat. The asteroids were formidable weapons, themselves, when the exhaust of their dark-energy engines were focused on the planet below, devastating wide swathes of surface like so many F5 tornadoes that never ran out of power.
But when all seemed lost, when most major cities were devastated and the invaders spread across the land like a plague swarm, the Malpassians gained the upper hand. One of their premier physicists had been studying the dark-energy engines, as his area of expertise was dark matter and related hypotheticals. He often felt guilty for the pleasure he experienced, witnessing his theories come to practical life. The method of his civilization's destruction proved not only that dark matter and dark energy existed, but also that it could be harnessed as limitless power - enough to bear a primitive people across the stars, people who surely did not understand the principles that powered their transportation, who surely could not gather the matter necessary to run those fierce engines! So he refined his theories and worked with government engineers in a secret underground facility until they were ready for the ultimate mission: to invade one of the asteroid bases! The physicist didn't fly aboard the precious orbital-assault vehicle, of course, though several of the elite soldiers who did were respectable scientists in their own rights. Of the 20 who launched in the boarding craft (it was accompanied by several screening fighters), 12 made it to the engine room. Of those, only four returned to the surface in condition to continue working with the hero-physicist. But, most importantly, they brought back volumes of 3D schematic imagery and other data - enough that the Malpassians were able to complete work on their own dark-energy weapon.
Within the year, the first dark-energy base became operational. The Malpassians designed it so that they could not only focus the beam, as the invaders focused their engines, but also to swivel and target it. Critically, however, because they understood the underlying principles, they were able to make it into a true weapon. So rather than emitting a crude destructive exhaust cone, their dark-energy weapon fired a coherent beam. When he observed his weapon blasting a hole through its first asteroid, the physicist made his greatest discovery: The coherent beam appeared to strike the target shortly before it was fired. He was astounded. Soon, he mocked himself for missing the obvious: relativistic effects made it appear to strike before it was fired, when in reality the beam struck the target at the precise moment that it was fired. This matched his notion of how dark matter existed not in four dimensions but in many at once, and by harnessing it and making it exist as coherent wave-forms, they had found a way to teleport information!
The second dark-energy base began operation days later, bringing down another asteroid within hours. But the third base was all they needed to truly turn the tide of war, because it need not have a clear shot at its target; all it needed was galactic-positioning data. This is a great understatement, of course, because such data requires full mapping of gravitational slopes as well as matter and motion maps. This weapon missed its target by several kilometers on first firing... but the target asteroid orbited on the other side of the planet! The miss provided a great deal of data, and within hours they fired a second beam, which appeared in full force as dark energy concentrated into a point - the entire beam's energy winked on like a star whose diameter spanned less than a nanometer. This point remained still relative to the asteroid as it arced through its orbit, manufacturing antimatter wherever the point encountered matter, rupturing the rock like so much tissue paper tossed into a blazing inferno.
The weapon's programmers grew more accurate with each operation, soon able to target the invaders' landing craft, and eventually able to target individual invaders, themselves, thousands of kilometers away. Some of the asteroids' pilots managed to break orbit before they were targeted and surely felt safe once they passed beyond the system's cometary cloud. But their escape was only illusory: The Malpassians were busy eliminating the invaders on their world. Within a year, they had eradicated the immediate threat and turned their attentions to the retreating asteroid-craft. These they dispatched one after another over the course of a few days; though they had learned a great deal about targeting on nearby targets, relativistic effects played havoc on targeting distant, high-speed objects.
So two hundred years later, after they rebuffed what seemed to be a new attack - and stopping a grey-goo scenario required a great deal more invention! - the patient and methodical Malpassians turned their attention toward preventing a second wave of attack by targeting their new, moon-based dark-energy weapon against the Kebian homeworld. By eroding the ever-rotating dark side of the planet, they hoped to not only eradicate the offending civilization which dwelled on the surface but also drive the world into its sun for good measure. Over a few days they did manage to turn billions of megatons of crust into energy, killing all but a few million of the Kebians who lived on colony worlds, but they switched off their weapon before they had quite driven it into the sun.
No matter, though, because life could never again survive on the now-molten surface of Kebe, the world now known to humans as Kepler 10b. Even if the Kebians who survived the attack wished to return vengeance upon the Malpassians, the would forever lack the capacity to do so. The Malpassans held a great celebration when they learned of their victory, and to this day they commemorate not only the day they rid their world of the actual invaders, but also the day they stopped "The Second Invasion." Perhaps the only hopeful note in this second tragedy is that no Malpassan will ever learn that they extinguished the flame of what could have become one of the galaxy's greatest centers of learning - and perhaps their greatest allies in the wars to come.
Now, hundreds of years later, all that remains of the peaceful and beautiful Kebian culture are a few crystal domes on rocky worlds far from the place they once called home. That and the sun-bleached bones within. The Malpassans, as well, have been forever erased from the galaxy, their only surviving monument this world that they burned from afar. But that is another story.
I hope you enjoyed this little tale of galactic history!
Best,
Chris
Astro-Porn of the Day
Calling all science-fiction writers: Think you've created a Hell World? Check out this place!
Yes, that's right: The planet is so close to its parent star that it creates a comet-like tail of rock particles because its surface is BOILING MAGMA ablating in the solar wind.
How could it ever have formed so near the star? Well, it didn't. See, this place is the relic of an ancient interstallar war. Its crust was once a few hundred kilometers thicker, carpeted with cities of glass and hydroformed steel, before they pissed off their stellar neighbors.
Here, let me share their story:
The Kebians meant no harm when they launched the exploration mission to Malpas. The ship's payload was less than a liter in volume, merely some software and a few million self-replicating nanos tasked to build an automated rover. Unfortunately, the spacecraft carrying the little rover flew through the wash of a nova-star's flaring plasma along the way, and the software was corrupted. So when it landed and the nanos busily began executing their mission, they didn't know when to stop. Unfortunately, the locals didn't realize what was happening until they had lost nearly a full province in a lightly populated northern province. Within days, the Malpassians deduced where the attack had originated and mounted a full-scale counterattack.
The defensive technology of the Malpassians, as the locals called themselves, was much more advanced than that of the Kebians - and honed for destruction. Whereas Kebian technology arose from scientific inquiry, Malpassian tech was hard-earned in the forges of war, as they had repelled an invasion once before.
A roving race that had no official name for itself - besides the universal designation, "The People" - had drifted near the Malpassian homeworld two hundred years prior to the ill-fated rover's mission. The invaders thrived on the remains of fallen civilizations; they were a bestial race of billions of individuals who lived aboard mobile asteroids their forebears had stolen from a now-extinct civilization tens of thousands of years before. The invasion lasted decades - not because the invaders had organized a war of attrition but because they had no plan; they simply continued to ferry down to the surface as their ungainly asteroids could be maneuvered into orbit within range of their armed landing craft. They also carried powerful energy weapons, and should those weapons fail - and they often did, poorly maintained as they were - the invaders attacked with tooth and claw, a match even for the planet's massive predatory animals, and outmatching the Malpassians ten to one in hand-to-hand combat. The asteroids were formidable weapons, themselves, when the exhaust of their dark-energy engines were focused on the planet below, devastating wide swathes of surface like so many F5 tornadoes that never ran out of power.
But when all seemed lost, when most major cities were devastated and the invaders spread across the land like a plague swarm, the Malpassians gained the upper hand. One of their premier physicists had been studying the dark-energy engines, as his area of expertise was dark matter and related hypotheticals. He often felt guilty for the pleasure he experienced, witnessing his theories come to practical life. The method of his civilization's destruction proved not only that dark matter and dark energy existed, but also that it could be harnessed as limitless power - enough to bear a primitive people across the stars, people who surely did not understand the principles that powered their transportation, who surely could not gather the matter necessary to run those fierce engines! So he refined his theories and worked with government engineers in a secret underground facility until they were ready for the ultimate mission: to invade one of the asteroid bases! The physicist didn't fly aboard the precious orbital-assault vehicle, of course, though several of the elite soldiers who did were respectable scientists in their own rights. Of the 20 who launched in the boarding craft (it was accompanied by several screening fighters), 12 made it to the engine room. Of those, only four returned to the surface in condition to continue working with the hero-physicist. But, most importantly, they brought back volumes of 3D schematic imagery and other data - enough that the Malpassians were able to complete work on their own dark-energy weapon.
Within the year, the first dark-energy base became operational. The Malpassians designed it so that they could not only focus the beam, as the invaders focused their engines, but also to swivel and target it. Critically, however, because they understood the underlying principles, they were able to make it into a true weapon. So rather than emitting a crude destructive exhaust cone, their dark-energy weapon fired a coherent beam. When he observed his weapon blasting a hole through its first asteroid, the physicist made his greatest discovery: The coherent beam appeared to strike the target shortly before it was fired. He was astounded. Soon, he mocked himself for missing the obvious: relativistic effects made it appear to strike before it was fired, when in reality the beam struck the target at the precise moment that it was fired. This matched his notion of how dark matter existed not in four dimensions but in many at once, and by harnessing it and making it exist as coherent wave-forms, they had found a way to teleport information!
The second dark-energy base began operation days later, bringing down another asteroid within hours. But the third base was all they needed to truly turn the tide of war, because it need not have a clear shot at its target; all it needed was galactic-positioning data. This is a great understatement, of course, because such data requires full mapping of gravitational slopes as well as matter and motion maps. This weapon missed its target by several kilometers on first firing... but the target asteroid orbited on the other side of the planet! The miss provided a great deal of data, and within hours they fired a second beam, which appeared in full force as dark energy concentrated into a point - the entire beam's energy winked on like a star whose diameter spanned less than a nanometer. This point remained still relative to the asteroid as it arced through its orbit, manufacturing antimatter wherever the point encountered matter, rupturing the rock like so much tissue paper tossed into a blazing inferno.
The weapon's programmers grew more accurate with each operation, soon able to target the invaders' landing craft, and eventually able to target individual invaders, themselves, thousands of kilometers away. Some of the asteroids' pilots managed to break orbit before they were targeted and surely felt safe once they passed beyond the system's cometary cloud. But their escape was only illusory: The Malpassians were busy eliminating the invaders on their world. Within a year, they had eradicated the immediate threat and turned their attentions to the retreating asteroid-craft. These they dispatched one after another over the course of a few days; though they had learned a great deal about targeting on nearby targets, relativistic effects played havoc on targeting distant, high-speed objects.
So two hundred years later, after they rebuffed what seemed to be a new attack - and stopping a grey-goo scenario required a great deal more invention! - the patient and methodical Malpassians turned their attention toward preventing a second wave of attack by targeting their new, moon-based dark-energy weapon against the Kebian homeworld. By eroding the ever-rotating dark side of the planet, they hoped to not only eradicate the offending civilization which dwelled on the surface but also drive the world into its sun for good measure. Over a few days they did manage to turn billions of megatons of crust into energy, killing all but a few million of the Kebians who lived on colony worlds, but they switched off their weapon before they had quite driven it into the sun.
No matter, though, because life could never again survive on the now-molten surface of Kebe, the world now known to humans as Kepler 10b. Even if the Kebians who survived the attack wished to return vengeance upon the Malpassians, the would forever lack the capacity to do so. The Malpassans held a great celebration when they learned of their victory, and to this day they commemorate not only the day they rid their world of the actual invaders, but also the day they stopped "The Second Invasion." Perhaps the only hopeful note in this second tragedy is that no Malpassan will ever learn that they extinguished the flame of what could have become one of the galaxy's greatest centers of learning - and perhaps their greatest allies in the wars to come.
Now, hundreds of years later, all that remains of the peaceful and beautiful Kebian culture are a few crystal domes on rocky worlds far from the place they once called home. That and the sun-bleached bones within. The Malpassans, as well, have been forever erased from the galaxy, their only surviving monument this world that they burned from afar. But that is another story.
I hope you enjoyed this little tale of galactic history!
Best,
Chris
Yes, that's right: The planet is so close to its parent star that it creates a comet-like tail of rock particles because its surface is BOILING MAGMA ablating in the solar wind.
How could it ever have formed so near the star? Well, it didn't. See, this place is the relic of an ancient interstallar war. Its crust was once a few hundred kilometers thicker, carpeted with cities of glass and hydroformed steel, before they pissed off their stellar neighbors.
Here, let me share their story:
The Kebians meant no harm when they launched the exploration mission to Malpas. The ship's payload was less than a liter in volume, merely some software and a few million self-replicating nanos tasked to build an automated rover. Unfortunately, the spacecraft carrying the little rover flew through the wash of a nova-star's flaring plasma along the way, and the software was corrupted. So when it landed and the nanos busily began executing their mission, they didn't know when to stop. Unfortunately, the locals didn't realize what was happening until they had lost nearly a full province in a lightly populated northern province. Within days, the Malpassians deduced where the attack had originated and mounted a full-scale counterattack.
The defensive technology of the Malpassians, as the locals called themselves, was much more advanced than that of the Kebians - and honed for destruction. Whereas Kebian technology arose from scientific inquiry, Malpassian tech was hard-earned in the forges of war, as they had repelled an invasion once before.
A roving race that had no official name for itself - besides the universal designation, "The People" - had drifted near the Malpassian homeworld two hundred years prior to the ill-fated rover's mission. The invaders thrived on the remains of fallen civilizations; they were a bestial race of billions of individuals who lived aboard mobile asteroids their forebears had stolen from a now-extinct civilization tens of thousands of years before. The invasion lasted decades - not because the invaders had organized a war of attrition but because they had no plan; they simply continued to ferry down to the surface as their ungainly asteroids could be maneuvered into orbit within range of their armed landing craft. They also carried powerful energy weapons, and should those weapons fail - and they often did, poorly maintained as they were - the invaders attacked with tooth and claw, a match even for the planet's massive predatory animals, and outmatching the Malpassians ten to one in hand-to-hand combat. The asteroids were formidable weapons, themselves, when the exhaust of their dark-energy engines were focused on the planet below, devastating wide swathes of surface like so many F5 tornadoes that never ran out of power.
But when all seemed lost, when most major cities were devastated and the invaders spread across the land like a plague swarm, the Malpassians gained the upper hand. One of their premier physicists had been studying the dark-energy engines, as his area of expertise was dark matter and related hypotheticals. He often felt guilty for the pleasure he experienced, witnessing his theories come to practical life. The method of his civilization's destruction proved not only that dark matter and dark energy existed, but also that it could be harnessed as limitless power - enough to bear a primitive people across the stars, people who surely did not understand the principles that powered their transportation, who surely could not gather the matter necessary to run those fierce engines! So he refined his theories and worked with government engineers in a secret underground facility until they were ready for the ultimate mission: to invade one of the asteroid bases! The physicist didn't fly aboard the precious orbital-assault vehicle, of course, though several of the elite soldiers who did were respectable scientists in their own rights. Of the 20 who launched in the boarding craft (it was accompanied by several screening fighters), 12 made it to the engine room. Of those, only four returned to the surface in condition to continue working with the hero-physicist. But, most importantly, they brought back volumes of 3D schematic imagery and other data - enough that the Malpassians were able to complete work on their own dark-energy weapon.
Within the year, the first dark-energy base became operational. The Malpassians designed it so that they could not only focus the beam, as the invaders focused their engines, but also to swivel and target it. Critically, however, because they understood the underlying principles, they were able to make it into a true weapon. So rather than emitting a crude destructive exhaust cone, their dark-energy weapon fired a coherent beam. When he observed his weapon blasting a hole through its first asteroid, the physicist made his greatest discovery: The coherent beam appeared to strike the target shortly before it was fired. He was astounded. Soon, he mocked himself for missing the obvious: relativistic effects made it appear to strike before it was fired, when in reality the beam struck the target at the precise moment that it was fired. This matched his notion of how dark matter existed not in four dimensions but in many at once, and by harnessing it and making it exist as coherent wave-forms, they had found a way to teleport information!
The second dark-energy base began operation days later, bringing down another asteroid within hours. But the third base was all they needed to truly turn the tide of war, because it need not have a clear shot at its target; all it needed was galactic-positioning data. This is a great understatement, of course, because such data requires full mapping of gravitational slopes as well as matter and motion maps. This weapon missed its target by several kilometers on first firing... but the target asteroid orbited on the other side of the planet! The miss provided a great deal of data, and within hours they fired a second beam, which appeared in full force as dark energy concentrated into a point - the entire beam's energy winked on like a star whose diameter spanned less than a nanometer. This point remained still relative to the asteroid as it arced through its orbit, manufacturing antimatter wherever the point encountered matter, rupturing the rock like so much tissue paper tossed into a blazing inferno.
The weapon's programmers grew more accurate with each operation, soon able to target the invaders' landing craft, and eventually able to target individual invaders, themselves, thousands of kilometers away. Some of the asteroids' pilots managed to break orbit before they were targeted and surely felt safe once they passed beyond the system's cometary cloud. But their escape was only illusory: The Malpassians were busy eliminating the invaders on their world. Within a year, they had eradicated the immediate threat and turned their attentions to the retreating asteroid-craft. These they dispatched one after another over the course of a few days; though they had learned a great deal about targeting on nearby targets, relativistic effects played havoc on targeting distant, high-speed objects.
So two hundred years later, after they rebuffed what seemed to be a new attack - and stopping a grey-goo scenario required a great deal more invention! - the patient and methodical Malpassians turned their attention toward preventing a second wave of attack by targeting their new, moon-based dark-energy weapon against the Kebian homeworld. By eroding the ever-rotating dark side of the planet, they hoped to not only eradicate the offending civilization which dwelled on the surface but also drive the world into its sun for good measure. Over a few days they did manage to turn billions of megatons of crust into energy, killing all but a few million of the Kebians who lived on colony worlds, but they switched off their weapon before they had quite driven it into the sun.
No matter, though, because life could never again survive on the now-molten surface of Kebe, the world now known to humans as Kepler 10b. Even if the Kebians who survived the attack wished to return vengeance upon the Malpassians, the would forever lack the capacity to do so. The Malpassans held a great celebration when they learned of their victory, and to this day they commemorate not only the day they rid their world of the actual invaders, but also the day they stopped "The Second Invasion." Perhaps the only hopeful note in this second tragedy is that no Malpassan will ever learn that they extinguished the flame of what could have become one of the galaxy's greatest centers of learning - and perhaps their greatest allies in the wars to come.
Now, hundreds of years later, all that remains of the peaceful and beautiful Kebian culture are a few crystal domes on rocky worlds far from the place they once called home. That and the sun-bleached bones within. The Malpassans, as well, have been forever erased from the galaxy, their only surviving monument this world that they burned from afar. But that is another story.
I hope you enjoyed this little tale of galactic history!
Best,
Chris
Astro-Porn of the Day (with a little flashfic)
Calling all science-fiction writers: Think you've created a Hell World? Check out this place!
Yes, that's right: The planet is so close to its parent star that it creates a comet-like tail of rock particles because its surface is BOILING MAGMA ablating in the solar wind.
How could it ever have formed so near the star? Well, it didn't. See, this place is the relic of an ancient interstallar war. Its crust was once a few hundred kilometers thicker, carpeted with cities of glass and hydroformed steel, before they pissed off their stellar neighbors.
Here, let me share their story:
The Kebians meant no harm when they launched the exploration mission to Malpas. The ship's payload was less than a liter in volume, merely some software and a few million self-replicating nanos tasked to build an automated rover. Unfortunately, the spacecraft carrying the little rover flew through the wash of a nova-star's flaring plasma along the way, and the software was corrupted. So when it landed and the nanos busily began executing their mission, they didn't know when to stop. Unfortunately, the locals didn't realize what was happening until they had lost nearly a full province in a lightly populated northern province. Within days, the Malpassians deduced where the attack had originated and mounted a full-scale counterattack.
The defensive technology of the Malpassians, as the locals called themselves, was much more advanced than that of the Kebians - and honed for destruction. Whereas Kebian technology arose from scientific inquiry, Malpassian tech was hard-earned in the forges of war, as they had repelled an invasion once before.
A roving race that had no official name for itself - besides the universal designation, "The People" - had drifted near the Malpassian homeworld two hundred years prior to the ill-fated rover's mission. The invaders thrived on the remains of fallen civilizations; they were a bestial race of billions of individuals who lived aboard mobile asteroids their forebears had stolen from a now-extinct civilization tens of thousands of years before. The invasion lasted decades - not because the invaders had organized a war of attrition but because they had no plan; they simply continued to ferry down to the surface as their ungainly asteroids could be maneuvered into orbit within range of their armed landing craft. They also carried powerful energy weapons, and should those weapons fail - and they often did, poorly maintained as they were - the invaders attacked with tooth and claw, a match even for the planet's massive predatory animals, and outmatching the Malpassians ten to one in hand-to-hand combat. The asteroids were formidable weapons, themselves, when the exhaust of their dark-energy engines were focused on the planet below, devastating wide swathes of surface like so many F5 tornadoes that never ran out of power.
But when all seemed lost, when most major cities were devastated and the invaders spread across the land like a plague swarm, the Malpassians gained the upper hand. One of their premier physicists had been studying the dark-energy engines, as his area of expertise was dark matter and related hypotheticals. He often felt guilty for the pleasure he experienced, witnessing his theories come to practical life. The method of his civilization's destruction proved not only that dark matter and dark energy existed, but also that it could be harnessed as limitless power - enough to bear a primitive people across the stars, people who surely did not understand the principles that powered their transportation, who surely could not gather the matter necessary to run those fierce engines! So he refined his theories and worked with government engineers in a secret underground facility until they were ready for the ultimate mission: to invade one of the asteroid bases! The physicist didn't fly aboard the precious orbital-assault vehicle, of course, though several of the elite soldiers who did were respectable scientists in their own rights. Of the 20 who launched in the boarding craft (it was accompanied by several screening fighters), 12 made it to the engine room. Of those, only four returned to the surface in condition to continue working with the hero-physicist. But, most importantly, they brought back volumes of 3D schematic imagery and other data - enough that the Malpassians were able to complete work on their own dark-energy weapon.
Within the year, the first dark-energy base became operational. The Malpassians designed it so that they could not only focus the beam, as the invaders focused their engines, but also to swivel and target it. Critically, however, because they understood the underlying principles, they were able to make it into a true weapon. So rather than emitting a crude destructive exhaust cone, their dark-energy weapon fired a coherent beam. When he observed his weapon blasting a hole through its first asteroid, the physicist made his greatest discovery: The coherent beam appeared to strike the target shortly before it was fired. He was astounded. Soon, he mocked himself for missing the obvious: relativistic effects made it appear to strike before it was fired, when in reality the beam struck the target at the precise moment that it was fired. This matched his notion of how dark matter existed not in four dimensions but in many at once, and by harnessing it and making it exist as coherent wave-forms, they had found a way to teleport information!
The second dark-energy base began operation days later, bringing down another asteroid within hours. But the third base was all they needed to truly turn the tide of war, because it need not have a clear shot at its target; all it needed was galactic-positioning data. This is a great understatement, of course, because such data requires full mapping of gravitational slopes as well as matter and motion maps. This weapon missed its target by several kilometers on first firing... but the target asteroid orbited on the other side of the planet! The miss provided a great deal of data, and within hours they fired a second beam, which appeared in full force as dark energy concentrated into a point - the entire beam's energy winked on like a star whose diameter spanned less than a nanometer. This point remained still relative to the asteroid as it arced through its orbit, manufacturing antimatter wherever the point encountered matter, rupturing the rock like so much tissue paper tossed into a blazing inferno.
The weapon's programmers grew more accurate with each operation, soon able to target the invaders' landing craft, and eventually able to target individual invaders, themselves, thousands of kilometers away. Some of the asteroids' pilots managed to break orbit before they were targeted and surely felt safe once they passed beyond the system's cometary cloud. But their escape was only illusory: The Malpassians were busy eliminating the invaders on their world. Within a year, they had eradicated the immediate threat and turned their attentions to the retreating asteroid-craft. These they dispatched one after another over the course of a few days; though they had learned a great deal about targeting on nearby targets, relativistic effects played havoc on targeting distant, high-speed objects.
So two hundred years later, after they rebuffed what seemed to be a new attack - and stopping a grey-goo scenario required a great deal more invention! - the patient and methodical Malpassians turned their attention toward preventing a second wave of attack by targeting their new, moon-based dark-energy weapon against the Kebian homeworld. By eroding the ever-rotating dark side of the planet, they hoped to not only eradicate the offending civilization which dwelled on the surface but also drive the world into its sun for good measure. Over a few days they did manage to turn billions of megatons of crust into energy, killing all but a few million of the Kebians who lived on colony worlds, but they switched off their weapon before they had quite driven it into the sun.
No matter, though, because life could never again survive on the now-molten surface of Kebe, the world now known to humans as Kepler 10b. Even if the Kebians who survived the attack wished to return vengeance upon the Malpassians, the would forever lack the capacity to do so. The Malpassans held a great celebration when they learned of their victory, and to this day they commemorate not only the day they rid their world of the actual invaders, but also the day they stopped "The Second Invasion." Perhaps the only hopeful note in this second tragedy is that no Malpassan will ever learn that they extinguished the flame of what could have become one of the galaxy's greatest centers of learning - and perhaps their greatest allies in the wars to come.
Now, hundreds of years later, all that remains of the peaceful and beautiful Kebian culture are a few crystal domes on rocky worlds far from the place they once called home. That and the sun-bleached bones within. The Malpassans, as well, have been forever erased from the galaxy, their only surviving monument this world that they burned from afar. But that is another story.
I hope you enjoyed this little tale of galactic history!
Chris
Yes, that's right: The planet is so close to its parent star that it creates a comet-like tail of rock particles because its surface is BOILING MAGMA ablating in the solar wind.
How could it ever have formed so near the star? Well, it didn't. See, this place is the relic of an ancient interstallar war. Its crust was once a few hundred kilometers thicker, carpeted with cities of glass and hydroformed steel, before they pissed off their stellar neighbors.
Here, let me share their story:
The Kebians meant no harm when they launched the exploration mission to Malpas. The ship's payload was less than a liter in volume, merely some software and a few million self-replicating nanos tasked to build an automated rover. Unfortunately, the spacecraft carrying the little rover flew through the wash of a nova-star's flaring plasma along the way, and the software was corrupted. So when it landed and the nanos busily began executing their mission, they didn't know when to stop. Unfortunately, the locals didn't realize what was happening until they had lost nearly a full province in a lightly populated northern province. Within days, the Malpassians deduced where the attack had originated and mounted a full-scale counterattack.
The defensive technology of the Malpassians, as the locals called themselves, was much more advanced than that of the Kebians - and honed for destruction. Whereas Kebian technology arose from scientific inquiry, Malpassian tech was hard-earned in the forges of war, as they had repelled an invasion once before.
A roving race that had no official name for itself - besides the universal designation, "The People" - had drifted near the Malpassian homeworld two hundred years prior to the ill-fated rover's mission. The invaders thrived on the remains of fallen civilizations; they were a bestial race of billions of individuals who lived aboard mobile asteroids their forebears had stolen from a now-extinct civilization tens of thousands of years before. The invasion lasted decades - not because the invaders had organized a war of attrition but because they had no plan; they simply continued to ferry down to the surface as their ungainly asteroids could be maneuvered into orbit within range of their armed landing craft. They also carried powerful energy weapons, and should those weapons fail - and they often did, poorly maintained as they were - the invaders attacked with tooth and claw, a match even for the planet's massive predatory animals, and outmatching the Malpassians ten to one in hand-to-hand combat. The asteroids were formidable weapons, themselves, when the exhaust of their dark-energy engines were focused on the planet below, devastating wide swathes of surface like so many F5 tornadoes that never ran out of power.
But when all seemed lost, when most major cities were devastated and the invaders spread across the land like a plague swarm, the Malpassians gained the upper hand. One of their premier physicists had been studying the dark-energy engines, as his area of expertise was dark matter and related hypotheticals. He often felt guilty for the pleasure he experienced, witnessing his theories come to practical life. The method of his civilization's destruction proved not only that dark matter and dark energy existed, but also that it could be harnessed as limitless power - enough to bear a primitive people across the stars, people who surely did not understand the principles that powered their transportation, who surely could not gather the matter necessary to run those fierce engines! So he refined his theories and worked with government engineers in a secret underground facility until they were ready for the ultimate mission: to invade one of the asteroid bases! The physicist didn't fly aboard the precious orbital-assault vehicle, of course, though several of the elite soldiers who did were respectable scientists in their own rights. Of the 20 who launched in the boarding craft (it was accompanied by several screening fighters), 12 made it to the engine room. Of those, only four returned to the surface in condition to continue working with the hero-physicist. But, most importantly, they brought back volumes of 3D schematic imagery and other data - enough that the Malpassians were able to complete work on their own dark-energy weapon.
Within the year, the first dark-energy base became operational. The Malpassians designed it so that they could not only focus the beam, as the invaders focused their engines, but also to swivel and target it. Critically, however, because they understood the underlying principles, they were able to make it into a true weapon. So rather than emitting a crude destructive exhaust cone, their dark-energy weapon fired a coherent beam. When he observed his weapon blasting a hole through its first asteroid, the physicist made his greatest discovery: The coherent beam appeared to strike the target shortly before it was fired. He was astounded. Soon, he mocked himself for missing the obvious: relativistic effects made it appear to strike before it was fired, when in reality the beam struck the target at the precise moment that it was fired. This matched his notion of how dark matter existed not in four dimensions but in many at once, and by harnessing it and making it exist as coherent wave-forms, they had found a way to teleport information!
The second dark-energy base began operation days later, bringing down another asteroid within hours. But the third base was all they needed to truly turn the tide of war, because it need not have a clear shot at its target; all it needed was galactic-positioning data. This is a great understatement, of course, because such data requires full mapping of gravitational slopes as well as matter and motion maps. This weapon missed its target by several kilometers on first firing... but the target asteroid orbited on the other side of the planet! The miss provided a great deal of data, and within hours they fired a second beam, which appeared in full force as dark energy concentrated into a point - the entire beam's energy winked on like a star whose diameter spanned less than a nanometer. This point remained still relative to the asteroid as it arced through its orbit, manufacturing antimatter wherever the point encountered matter, rupturing the rock like so much tissue paper tossed into a blazing inferno.
The weapon's programmers grew more accurate with each operation, soon able to target the invaders' landing craft, and eventually able to target individual invaders, themselves, thousands of kilometers away. Some of the asteroids' pilots managed to break orbit before they were targeted and surely felt safe once they passed beyond the system's cometary cloud. But their escape was only illusory: The Malpassians were busy eliminating the invaders on their world. Within a year, they had eradicated the immediate threat and turned their attentions to the retreating asteroid-craft. These they dispatched one after another over the course of a few days; though they had learned a great deal about targeting on nearby targets, relativistic effects played havoc on targeting distant, high-speed objects.
So two hundred years later, after they rebuffed what seemed to be a new attack - and stopping a grey-goo scenario required a great deal more invention! - the patient and methodical Malpassians turned their attention toward preventing a second wave of attack by targeting their new, moon-based dark-energy weapon against the Kebian homeworld. By eroding the ever-rotating dark side of the planet, they hoped to not only eradicate the offending civilization which dwelled on the surface but also drive the world into its sun for good measure. Over a few days they did manage to turn billions of megatons of crust into energy, killing all but a few million of the Kebians who lived on colony worlds, but they switched off their weapon before they had quite driven it into the sun.
No matter, though, because life could never again survive on the now-molten surface of Kebe, the world now known to humans as Kepler 10b. Even if the Kebians who survived the attack wished to return vengeance upon the Malpassians, the would forever lack the capacity to do so. The Malpassans held a great celebration when they learned of their victory, and to this day they commemorate not only the day they rid their world of the actual invaders, but also the day they stopped "The Second Invasion." Perhaps the only hopeful note in this second tragedy is that no Malpassan will ever learn that they extinguished the flame of what could have become one of the galaxy's greatest centers of learning - and perhaps their greatest allies in the wars to come.
Now, hundreds of years later, all that remains of the peaceful and beautiful Kebian culture are a few crystal domes on rocky worlds far from the place they once called home. That and the sun-bleached bones within. The Malpassans, as well, have been forever erased from the galaxy, their only surviving monument this world that they burned from afar. But that is another story.
I hope you enjoyed this little tale of galactic history!
Chris
January 11, 2011
Astro-Porn of the Day: 10-year-old girl discovers supernova!
The headline says it all: Just last week, a 10-year-old Canadian girl discovered an extremely dim supernova in the galaxy UGC 3378 - also extremely dim - in the constellation Camelopardalis. Here it is:
Click the image to see the story on the Abbey Ridge Observatory website.
Very few people ever get to see a supernova, much less discover one. And now a young child has found one! Here's a charming BBC interview with Kathryn Gray, Supernova Girl:
Move over, Clyde Tombaugh,
discoverer of the planet Pluto! (That's him to the right with his home-made telescope.)
Beautiful, clear day outside here in Lawrence, Kansas. Also frakkin' cold, with actual temps below zero Fahrenheit tonight, with wind chills in the negative teens. Oh, and half a foot of snow on the ground. Methinks I shall do no astronomy tonight.
Clear skies,
Chris
Click the image to see the story on the Abbey Ridge Observatory website.
Very few people ever get to see a supernova, much less discover one. And now a young child has found one! Here's a charming BBC interview with Kathryn Gray, Supernova Girl:
Move over, Clyde Tombaugh,
discoverer of the planet Pluto! (That's him to the right with his home-made telescope.)
Beautiful, clear day outside here in Lawrence, Kansas. Also frakkin' cold, with actual temps below zero Fahrenheit tonight, with wind chills in the negative teens. Oh, and half a foot of snow on the ground. Methinks I shall do no astronomy tonight.
Clear skies,
Chris
January 10, 2011
Snowstorm in Kansas!
So far, Lawrence, KS, has gotten 8" with at least 3" more to come! Looking out from my home-office window at the snowfall:
On the plus side, my dentist canceled my appointment today; in the negative column, I rescheduled for Friday.
But look, SNOW!
Chris
On the plus side, my dentist canceled my appointment today; in the negative column, I rescheduled for Friday.
But look, SNOW!
Chris
Christopher McKitterick's Blog
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