Ray Jay Perreault's Blog, page 12

Transformers: Age of Extinction

Transformers: Age of Extinction

I saw the recent Transformers movie last night and it frustrated me. I’m not going into the engineering plausibility of cramming so much material into something the size of a car, that’s one of those points that an engineer has to look beyond.

I’m frustrated with Hollywood because I’m getting tired of their choice of ‘Bad Guys’. It is so easy for them to grab the stereotypical evil person from either some secret government agency or, in this case, a power hungry Aerospace Company.

I know ‘imagination’ costs money and they always take the ‘easy’ route, but it does get worn out after a while. I worked for a giant aerospace company and, at time or another, I was fortunate to work with every level of management in that company. Apparently I didn’t meet the one guy whose office door read ‘Power Hungry Aerospace Executive’.

Notice how you never see a movie about a power hungry studio executive that choses the stereotypical cop, or lawyer, or doctor, or black family, or oriental family, or gay person; based on their personal agenda, or sometimes their funding source. We never see the producer that says, ‘that’s not how it is in most of America.’

Unfortunately ‘it’s the easy way’ that propagates the stereotypes in the first place and a stereotype is the easiest way to portray anyone, so I guess Hollywood will continue doing it for a while.

Scientists may have just created the world’s strongest material from tiny diamonds

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20142309-26220.html

Forget carbon nanothreads, here is a great article about creating super strong nanothreads from diamonds.

So if you’re putting a space elevator in your story you may want to make it out of diamond. I might just drop this my follow-on to SIMPOC which is in work. This may also make a great super strong space suit or even bullet proof clothing.

Considering making super strong materials, I was talking with an expert in materials about this article and he mentioned work that is attempting to create hydrogen metal. We debated what the material properties could be for hydrogen metal and we presumed that it could be lighter and many times stronger than titanium or metal. Also give the abundance of hydrogen in the universe it would make an interesting material for space ship hulls.

We’ll move beyond the fact that current attempts at creating hydrogen metal have yielded very small amounts, and they are barely within the definition of metal. Aside from that little issue there are a couple of other ‘minor’ technical issues that need to be solved, but hey; that’s never slowed down a good Sci-Fi author.

Once again, if there is anything I write about that you’d like to use in your story; go for it.

 

Ray Jay Perreault

Scorpion Second Episode

After my less than enthusiastic comments about the technical quality of the CBS Series Scorpion, I watched the second episode to see how well it did.

Once again, I like the characters, and I do have to admit the second episode was less offensive then the first. I am not a microbiologist so I can’t comment too much on their plot line except from what little I’ve read they can’t tailor the flu virus in the way described. I did read a recent article saying that they were looking at the Anthrax Bacteria as a carrier for cancer treatment; which is interesting.

I did have one problem with the show. One of the characters is supposed to have an amazing mathematical mind along with a photographic memory. In one scene early in the story they showed him standing next to blackboard with VERY SIMPLE math and the obligatory plot with a stupid sine wave. I’m surprised they didn’t have E=MC*2 in the corner trying to impress the audience. Next time they put something in front of that genius I hope they hire someone with more than an Algebra background

Is the Ocean a Superorganism?

This is a link to one episode of the series “Through The Wormhole.” It was broadcast late in June and is available on a couple of sources. I’m mentioning this because it interesting from a Sci-Fi -author perspective; namely trying to communicate with a truly alien life form.

The show surmises that when you look at the oceans of the earth from a macro perspective it has many of the characteristics that could define it as a living organism. It has a pulse, a circulatory system and even perhaps, mental synapses occurring.

If we take a giant leap somewhere, and assume that it is an intelligent life form then communication becomes a very interesting challenge. If it does have mental processes then how long would it take for it to form a thought. Does it even know we are here yet? If it takes a thousand years to form a thought, then we might still just emerging in its consciousness. If it takes longer to form a thought then, we’re a long way from communicating with it. Given a life span of billions of years it might take at least thousands of years to form a thought and even longer to create the equivalent of a sentence.

Who knows maybe it’s getting ready to speak to us?

Maybe we won’t want to hear what it says?

This might come into play if we ever send a ship to Europa to explore its oceans. Maybe we will find that the ocean is a living creature on the planet and any smaller organisms living in the water might be just the remora of the planet.

If we meet an alien in real life or in a story and its lifespan is radically different than ours, its rate of forming thoughts will likely be different. We might have to ask it a question then come back next week for the answer. Or in the other direction it might fall asleep from boredom waiting for us to finish the sentence.

Ray Jay Perreault

http://rayjayperreault.wordpress.com

Scorpion (CBS) – What a crock of ….

I watched Scorpion on CBS last night and even though the actors did a good job, the show’s use of technology was so sad that it was fantasy.

Being an engineer, teacher and pilot I am so offended by Hollywood’s assumption that we are so technically ignorant that we could watch that without being offended. Unfortunately many people won’t have a clue how ridiculous their “brilliance” was. I can’t even begin to pick apart their efforts to save those stranded airplanes. Literally every technical statement they made was beyond being misleading they were stupid.

I’m surprised the ending didn’t entail writing out the code and passing it to a low flying plane so the pilot could ‘program’ the computers.

Don’t get me wrong, I realize that we have to ‘suspend’ reality a little when we are entertained. I don’t mind the occasional actor that wires his wristwatch into a giant computer to save the world, but when the entire show is based on technical statements that are ludicrous, I loose any interest in watching stupid garbage.

But then again, I’ve never seen Hollywood show any technical knowledge. Truth always loses to entertainment and aiming at the assumed lowest level of intelligence. I hope our education system starts producing more technical people so we tell Hollywood what to do with this insulting entertainment.

Ray Jay Perreault “Engineer, pilot and proud of it”

SIMPOC – Parallel Stories

Here is a new twist on writing that I’d love some feedback on. In my two novellas in my SIMPOC series I focused on the computers and the characters that had a direct impact on that story line. The characters from the space station Oasis, the moon colony Desert Beach and the President and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs entered the story at the appropriate points but their stories dealing with the virus attack was mentioned only briefly.

I got feedback from many readers that they would like those stories expanded because of the drama of loosing almost the entire human population to a mysterious virus. Instead of re-writing those two novellas to include these expanded story lines I’m thinking about writing them in an expanded separate book which will take those characters to the same point in time where “SIMPOC – Human Remnants” ends.

With this approach the people who read “SIMPOC – The Thinking Computer” and “SIMPOC – Human Remnants” won’t need to read book 3, which is paralleling that story, unless they’re interested in the parallel story lines. Those that have read the first two books can read book 3 without too much shared story.

What are your comments, should I combine them into one story and re-issue or create this parallel story line?

Let me know.

Ray Jay Perreault

Experts Tackle Question of How Humans Will Evolve

Here is another interesting article from Scientific American. In summary it considers whether human evolution has stopped, which is an interesting topic. All of us Sci-Fi writers imagine future worlds and many of our stories are about humanity in the distant future. Of course there are the stories about us developing huge brains or becoming ethereal in some sense. But what can it mean to the Sci-Fi community if we stop evolving?

The article talks about the historical mechanisms of evolution where populations that are separated will develop different characteristics and those that provide advantages are eventually spread to the other isolated populations.

In our modern world where we account for (and hopefully accept) people with differences and because of the travel and general homogeneous mix of the world population the pressures and mechanisms for evolution are less effective.

The article did mention that the greatest likely impact is the growth of the African population and over time it will spread and integrate with the world which will likely cause future generation’s skin to darken. Wow; that should shake up some people.

If someone writes about humanity 5,000 years from now they may want to think about what they will look like.  Or they might take the path described by neuroscientist Joe. Z. Tsien.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/predictions-experts-tackle-question-of-how-humans-will-evolve /

“Could it be that 5,000 years from now, we will be able to download our minds onto computers, travel to distant worlds and live forever in the network?” ––neuroscientist Joe. Z. Tsien of Georgia Regents University in “The Memory Code” [Scientific American, July 2007]

Ray Jay Perreault

http://rayjayperreault.wordpress.com

 

Alcubierre Drive Practical Application

Here is an interesting article on the Alcubierre Warp Drive which a number of Sci-Fi writers use as their method of FTL.

http://www.andersoninstitute.com/alcubierre-warp-drive.html

Simply stated the Alcubierre or Albcubierre metric hypothesizes that by creating a warp in the time/space fabric before and after a vehicle, faster than light or FTL travel can occur.

Not being a physicist, astrophysicist but a plain dumb aeronautical engineer, I’m intrigued by the subject. After doing some basic research there is an abundance of debate on its practicality or feasibility. Putting all of that reality aside is the nice part of being a Sci-Fi author; damn the facts – full speed ahead – “warp factor 10 Scotty.”

All I can do is attempt to put some ‘reality engineering’ to the subject. I’m going to ignore the following issues.

Power requirements-some say power required is almost infinite; some say it can be reduced dramatically
Based on negative mass – I won’t even dare to go there!
If it can be initiated onboard or if it needed to initiated at the destination 2,000 years ago! -Another point I don’t dare go into.
Find a way to navigate en route.

Assuming that the alignment of the forward and rearward distortions determines the direction of travel, then their alignment is absolutely critical. Let me show an example. If the traveler is planning on jumping 1 light year which is about 5.87E+12 miles (really big number) and the alignment is off 100th of a degree then you would miss your target by about one billion miles. Not too bad? If you were trying to jump 10 light years or more; your miss would be considerably larger.

For argument sake let’s assume that we could align the distortion to within 1000th of a degree; (much better but a major engineering accomplishment on its own) – we’d miss by approximately 100 million miles (only a little more than the distance from Earth to the Sun) From a practical engineering perspective I’d presume that the length of jump is somewhat limited.

Ok, how do we fix that? If we can find a way to navigate during the jump it would solve the problem. Unfortunately that is on the ‘too tuff today’ list so let’s make some assumptions. Given a wave pattern where it is distorted in a positive direction in the front and a negative direction in the rear then it must pass through zero at the sides. Ok if that is true then we ‘might’ have windows to the sides where we could get a fix while traveling and adjust our course. I don’t know if this will work too well because have you ever tried to drive a car while looking out of the side windows. Not the best way to navigate, but it might be the only option.

So a viable option might be to make relatively small jumps 1 or two light years at a time, navigate a little while jumping. Then as soon as we come out, we update our position quickly and then jump again. I suppose that could work; if we could make it any reasonable distance – say 2,000 light years then we would have to jump about 1,000 to 2,000 times.

I’m planning on using this concept in a follow-on book to my series SIMPOC which I’m hoping for release this fall, I’m assuming that it can work as long as I use small jumps and quickly update my trajectory between jumps. Incidentally I’m ignoring the little things like Hawking Radiation which might cook everyone inside.

Food for thought, if any of you want to use this in your work – go for it.

Ray Jay Perreault

http://rayjayperreault.wordpress.com

Gemini – Just Released

Order

The Raog are a successful race of aliens who have a good life. Their planet is bountiful, their families are growing and they have peace. Some of them ask questions about their solar system and Doctor Wong finds clues that another planet is orbiting opposite to them on the other side of their sun.

Like any species would, they send a satellite to see if there is another planet. The good news is, ‘there is another planet’, and the bad news is ‘there is another planet’. Once the satellite finds the other planet, the situation changes rapidly and the peaceful Roag are forced to defend themselves, their civilization, their religion, and their very existence.

Along the way, they must endure violent acts against them. New leaders are forced to emerge and they are forced to change in order to survive. They must adapt, learn new technologies, learn to fight and learn to survive. And most of all they find that their beliefs must grow to reflect the new realities they face.

Multiverse & Infinity & Sci-Fi

Multiverse & Infinity & Sci-Fi

I just read an interesting article in Scientific American. Here is the link:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-multiverse-may-be-the-most-dangerous-idea-in-physics/

After I read this and participated in a couple of discussions on some web-sites my imagination kicked into high gear and I decided to capture some random thoughts and comments on how the concept of multiverses could be applied within a sci-fi story.

First off, and simply explained, a multiverse is a physics theory that isn’t precluded by any current information including Einstein’s theories. The concept is that there are an infinite number of dimensions as well as an infinite number of Universes. The concept of infinity is hard for any of us to understand, after all unlimited or limitless is a big concept.

As it relates to Sci-Fi I tried to imagine how we could interact with such a concept. First off I’m not using infinity and randomness in the same concept. I’m assuming some order or set of patterns within the term infinity. After all just because it is infinite, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some order to it.

Ok working with my thought of order within infinity, I tried to imagine how it would work. First off I doubt any physical terms can be used to describe a dimension ‘next to you’. That concept won’t work. But I think that we could assume that an infinite universe might have a pattern. A group of dimensions that share some common element and might be associated in some way so you might be able to move within a set of dimensions that have similarities.

Those ‘families’ of dimension might be related through energy level, or ME? Wow, maybe I am connected to each of the dimensions that I’m in. Maybe each of us are connected to a set of dimensions that each of us populate. So I might not be able to go to one of your dimensions if you’re not in mine…hummmm food for thought.

Now how does all of this relate to something like time travel? Maybe the difficulty isn’t travelling through time, maybe the difficulty is finding your way back? Again if you travel from one dimension to another; which incidentally allows you to solve the grandfather problem, maybe it’s too difficult to find your way back to your dimension. By going back in time and killing your grandfather, maybe you’ll be trapped trying to find your dimension. After all if there are an infinite number of dimensions than how do you find your way back to where you started?

The answer here is mapping. If we are able to move into another dimension, then we have to find a way to map them and hope their addresses don’t change. Ok if we can map them, then we only have an infinite number of addresses to check out so we can find someplace interesting; ya right! Most likely a large number of the infinite set of dimensions are pretty ugly for us weak humans. If we assume 1% of the dimensions are suitable for us (Which is an absurd assumption)? Waite a minute we can’t assume 1% of infinity; so we have to assume a ratio. A percentage of a large number doesn’t change when you use a larger number and after all infinity is the largest number possible. Said in another way if we assume that 1 out of X dimensions is a dimension that we might be interested in then we still have a long way to go.

If we had enough time to search through dimensions then at some point we might a family of dimensions that we find suitable. Then we just explore that small sub-set of the possible dimensions. And as I suggested before; perhaps I can only explore those dimensions that I exist in and likewise you might be able to explore only those that you exist in? Maybe we can find a sub-set of dimensions that we both exist in?

Enough of this; I’m getting a headache. Let’s break this down to something simple. In my opinion the concept of multiverse could allow time travel. If so the problem becomes tracking, following and finding suitable dimensions; which might be the ultimate challenge.

 

In summary; if there are an infinite number of Ray Jay Perreault’s writing this article about infinity then I can guarantee that there is an infinity +1 number of people trying to understand it.