Of moons, clouds, and the state of the art(s)

Flexing moons, by Jove!

New cameras keep coming to market with more pixels than I can imagine any earthly use for -- but here comes astronomy to the rescue. See (from Space.com) "Alien Moons May Be Easier to Photograph Than Planets." The basic concept: tidal flexing of a moon by its primary generates heat, and that heat is in addition to all solar heating. And heat shows up in infrared imaging ...

That's one more way to search for Jm'ho, the Gw'oth world ;-)

How will you get to distant worlds? Odds are, not by beaming there à là Star Trek. For a mathematical look at the (im)probability of human teleportation, see (from Slate) "Bad News, These Physicists Say That Teleportation is Unworkable." Assuming you want to arrive wherever knowing what you knew when you set out, the trillions of tiny synapses in your head are a big challenge. 

Alien aliens (group minds)

Hive minds have fascinated people since before SF began.

I refer, of course, to that prototypical hive: that of bees. It's long been noted that many types of insects -- individually far from intelligent -- exhibit complex group behaviors and build complex structures. Complexity within groups emerges from the seemingly simple behavior of the individual units.

It's not only insects. Flocks, for example, exhibit behaviors that result from the unsophisticated reflexes of individual birds. ("Bird brain" isn't an insult for nothing, nor "silly goose.")

The overall phenomenon is called emergence. If you are of a computer-oriented frame of mind, you may prefer the term cellular automata. Either way, the fascinating thing is complexity arising out of simplicity and large numbers. One theory of human intelligence is that it emerges from the 100 billion neurons (and 100s of trillions of synapses) in each of our brains.

The natural emergence of complexity -- and perhaps, intelligence -- from large numbers of simple units is so attractive it may be the leading fictional premise for the emergence of an artificial intelligence. Certainly I've introduced AIs that way (in only some of my AI-centric stories.)

The SFnal (and sociological) question becomes: if sophistication emerges from collectives of simple creatures, what might arise from collectives of intelligent creatures?

We have plenty of good SF to choose from. To name a few personal favorites:

• the dog/wolf pack-like Tines of A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)
• the multi-species Borg of the Star Trek franchise.
• the hive humans of Hellstrom's Hive (Frank Herbert).
• the group ensembles of the starfish-like Gw'oth (with the individual Gw'o in turn descended from a colony of carnivorous worms) of Fleet of Worlds (Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner).

Collectives and emergence -- hive minds -- are a great way to make alien aliens, even with humans as building blocks.

Hollow (er, holo) episodes

Fair warning: today's post is a bit of a rant (and perhaps a bit of heresy).

I've mentioned revisiting the Star Trek universe. At this point, I'm well into Star Trek Voyager. Overall, I'm enjoying myself -- but I can fairly predictably spot episodes that'll make me sputter: anything holodeck-intensive.

To name just a few gripes:

1. Could the safety provisions be any less reliable, or the safety protocols any easier to disable? And after, say, the tenth incident, why has no one thought to fix things? It's lazy writing, pure and simple.

2. Holo matter is magical stuff that people can touch -- or that can strangle them -- when it is convenient, and is ephemeral at other times. It's limited to the holodeck, except (and I'm not referring to the "mobile holo-emitter") when it's not. More lazy writing.

3. Why, exactly, does the holographic doctor use a terminal to interact with a computer? Isn't he already a two-way, real-time program within the ship's computer network?

(And as to the shipboard network, a non-holo gripe: Why hand-carry little computers to deliver crew reports? Is email too advanced?)

4. Holo matter is projected and/or maintained by force fields. The illusion of a space much larger than the physical holodeck comes from a sort of virtual treadmill -- more force fields. And still no force fields to keep people in their chairs on the bridge during battle.

Virtual reality -- good. Holodeck -- faugh. I won't even dignify the latter as a respectable SF trope.