Just The Caffeine Talking

Happy Boxing Day!

The perfect day for a strong Yuletide Punch!

Hanson on Fermi

I've posted at great length on the Fermi Paradox — the simple question "Where are they?" in regard to extraterrestrial civilizations. One element of that paradox is simply that the time it would take for an expanding civilization to spread across the Galaxy is relatively short in geological terms. Or so we assume.

Now Robin Hanson has actually tackled the question in a pair of posts on his own blog, analyzing how long it would take for civilizations to bump into each other. It's not an easy read — the math is pretty rigorous, and Hanson uses graphics to show his results which aren't easy for non-specialists to understand. But it's worth the effort.

His analysis does seem to support the idea that we are a very early civilization in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is why we don't see any others. It doesn't really explain why we don't detect any traces of civilizations in other galaxies, unless life on Earth is so unlikely that we're not only the first intelligent species in the Milky Way but the first one in all the nearby galaxies. Which doesn't fit with what we know.

It's a paradox . . .  

My First Story

Back in the 1990s I wrote some adventures and sourcebook material for the legendary Star Wars Roleplaying Game published by West End Games. Some of the worlds and plot elements I put in those pieces actually worked their way into the "canon" of the Star Wars universe, and I got paid, so I was happy.

But sadly, West End's Star Wars license got snarled in some legal traps and eventually yanked. This caught everyone by surprise, and an issue of the Star Wars Adventure Journal in production had to be scrapped just before release. I was particularly disappointed because that issue was to contain an original Star Wars short story I'd written. If the issue had actually gotten out, that would have been my first published fiction. 

However, fandom never forgets. Some West End fans have put the lost issues of Star Wars Adventure Journal on the web, including my never-published story "A Servant of the Empire." You can read it here.

Looking over the story, I'm not disappointed. I was still learning the art, and I was aiming for the pulpy, action-packed style of the Star Wars stories, and what I wrote was a competent pulp story. But I think it works, and I'm not ashamed of it.

 

  

The Lost Manuscripts of Lemuel Gulliver, Part the First

Historians and students of literature were tremendously excited by the recent announcement by Oxford University that several volumes of unpublished notes by Lemuel Gulliver had been found in the Bodleian Library. 

Dr. Gulliver was a little-known 18th-century explorer, the first European to visit Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and other lands of the Pacific. His accounts of those voyages were edited and published by the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, and for many years were considered to be purely fictional, until those islands became important battlegrounds during the Second World War.

The notebooks discovered in the Bodelian Library contain much material which Swift elected to leave out of the popular edition of Gulliver's works. Evidently Swift, no scientist himself, thought the public would be bored by Dr. Gulliver's observations and theories on the biology of the peoples he encountered. These new discoveries restore Dr. Lemuel Gulliver to his proper place as a naturalist and early investigator of the field of biomechanics.

Here's the first deleted section, from his manuscript on Lilliput:

During my stay in Lilliput, I was continually astonished by a singular feature of the Architecture in that Kingdom, namely the utter Absence of stairs  or other means of climbing from one floor to another within a dwelling. Remarkably, this Absence did not discommode the Lilliputians in the slightest degree. To ascend, they simply leapt from one story to the next, without any sign of undue Exertion or loss of dignity. I even witnessed an elderly Lilliputian, his hair whitened and his back bent with age, vault up to his Chamber on the third floor of his house in a single bound!

In a like manner, the Lilliputians I observed did not trouble to climb downstairs — indeed, there were none to climb — but simply flung themselves out the nearest Window if they wished to alight upon the Ground.  Several times I witnessed Lilliputians in the Towns leaping across the Streets from one upper-storey window to another, showing no fear of falling, and if they did chance to miss their Aim and tumble to the ground, they showed no ill Effect of their misadventure.

Several Learned Gentlemen among the Lilliputians and Blefuscudians reported to me that none of their Race has any fear of a fall, as they can alight safely, no matter the height from which they have fallen. Indeed, they thought my natural Caution in going up and down to be unmanly, and I was occasionally the object of Ridicule for it.

Upon my return to England, I had the occasion to mention this remarkable Circumstance to my neighbor Dr. Erasmus Darwin.  He informed me that this Conduct of the Lilliputians is perfectly natural, and is a necessary Consequence of their extraordinary Diminution.

"Consider, Dr. Gulliver," (said Dr. Darwin to me) "that the weight of a man is in proportion to his volume,  if we assume that there be no material difference between the Lilliputians and ourselves but only one of scale. Therefore a Gentleman of Lilliput, proportioned like yourself but having a height of only six inches, would weigh but 1/1728 of what you do, or slightly less than two Ounces, that being the cubic power of 1/12."

I replied that this Weight was precisely that of such Gentlemen of Lilliput as I had occasion to place upon the Scales.

"But consider, Dr. Gulliver: the active Power of the Muscles is in proportion to their Area in cross-section. Our Lilliputian Gentleman's leg muscles would be 1/144th the size of yours in Area, and thus in Strength, as that is the square of 1/12." As he spoke he made some rapid calculations with a lead pencil upon a sheet of foolscap.

"Surely that cannot be right," I interjected.  "For that would mean he would be twelve times as strong as I, in proportion to his size."

"That is exactly right, Dr. Gulliver. He would indeed be stronger — in proportion. If you yourself are able to leap to a height of (let us say) three feet, that is, a height equal to one-half your own, then a Lilliputian would be capable of leaping twelve times as far in proportion, or six times his own height. In fact, the proportions cancel themselves out, so we are faced with the startling conclusion that a Lilliputian can leap as high as you yourself, Dr. Gulliver! The people of Lilliput have no need of stairs, for to jump up a Storey requires no greater effort for them than for you to ascend a single step."

Son of Great Filters

Robin Hanson, who invented the term "Great Filter" in the first place, comes back to the topic in his own blog for a look at a couple of neglected aspects of the topic. You can read his whole post here.

One of the key issues he raises is whether or not a given planet (for some reason he uses the term "oasis" in his post) gets more than one try at passing through a given filter, or whether it's all or nothing. This matters because, obviously, if you have enough time and can make enough attempts, eventually you succeed. So, most relevantly, if a planet has the right conditions for life to evolve, complex molecules in its oceans (or on shoreline clay beds, or wherever) can keep bumping into each other and reforming until finally something becomes self-replicating and we're off to the races. That's what he calls a "Try-Try" filter. Failure doesn't prevent you from trying again.

Whereas if a star system doesn't have enough metals to form rocky planets, it doesn't matter how long one waits, it still won't have rocky planets. That one's all or nothing.

The question of trying again until you succeed relates to his second major point, which is that for any given world there is a certain window of time during which life might form. There was a time when Earth was getting pounded by large impacts, when liquid water on the surface was scarce and life impossible. There will be a time when the Sun is too hot and Earth's oceans will boil away. The time between those points is the window during which life can evolve on Earth. So even though life evolving is a "Try-Try" filter, no world gets unlimited tries.

A note on teleology: needless to say, no star system is "trying" to form planets, no planet is "trying" to spawn life, and no life forms are "trying" to become intelligent tool users. Conversational English is a terrible medium for discussing scientific concepts some times.

Safety Last

I was recently reading about the legendary silent comedy star Harold Lloyd, and learned the interesting fact that he did his famous comedy stunts despite having lost the index finger and thumb of his right hand (he used a glove with prosthetic digits to hide the injury).

Here is Wikipedia's account of how Lloyd lost those fingers:

"On Sunday, August 24, 1919, while posing for some promotional still photographs in the Los Angeles Witzel Photography Studio, he picked up what he thought was a prop bomb and lit it with a cigarette. It exploded and mangled his right hand, causing him to lose a thumb and forefinger."

What is not explained — and what really should be explained — is why did the photo studio have a real bomb lying around in the first place?

This is going to keep me up at nights.