Alien aliens (more or less)

For no obvious reason, I got to thinking about my long-concluded "Alien aliens" series of posts. And decided that it wasn't -- concluded, that is. I'd omitted a key category: human-derived aliens. Hybrids, in a word. Some prefer the term transhumans.

For example: uploads. That's what you get by transferring a brain's content into a computer. Why would anyone, assuming they could? To cheat  death, perhaps -- at least till medical science can achieve immortality or transfer minds from failing bodies into new ones.

Imagine: all one's thought patterns, learned behaviors, and memories transcribed into a new form and format. However human that mind began, it has taken residence in an environment utterly alien to us Mark I humans.

The implications go far beyond the speed difference between synapses and transistors. Imagine speed-of-thought access to vast libraries. Imagine adding radar views of the world while losing some of the more familiar senses (say, smell). Imagine real-time access -- sometimes authorized, sometimes hacked -- to the net's many peripherals, from Earth remote-sensing satellites to power meters (to weaponized aerial drones?).

Surely the uploaded mind's temperament, attitudes, and interests will diverge from those of meat minds. And so: surely also its behavior.

Intrigued? Wikipedia offers s a very long list of uploads in fiction.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a ... butterfly?

A metaphorical butterfly, that is.

In Ray Bradbury's classic (1954) "A Sound of Thunder," time traveling big-game hunters shoot dinosaurs that -- as known from previous viewing of the past -- are within moments of their deaths. The hunters must stay on and shoot from levitating metal walkways, lest their footsteps do anything to alter the past. Of course, one hunter does stray from the path (speaking of metaphors). The hunting party returns to its  own time to find the outcome of a presidential election changed and a fascist coming to power.

A crushed prehistoric butterfly is found in the mud beneath the straying hunter's boot ...

Never a dull moment

Eclectic tech-related articles are once again overflowing my virtual file cabinet. You can't say I don't share ...

While the world waits to see if conventional war breaks out in the Mideast to keep Iran from going nuclear, the amateurs are having at it over the net.  See "Latest Arab-Israeli Conflict Is Growing Cyberwar."

States of the hydrogen atom

Electrons don't orbit nuclei like little planets, the Bohr model having been only an early step toward quantum mechanics. Unless it's a really big atom.  Imagine pumping up an atom (using a laser) to the size of a bacterium. At that size, it turns out, electrons do orbit like planets.  And this may offer just the trick to create a new digital storage mechanism. See "Jupiter’s orbital mechanics inspires mesoscopic physicists."

Getting physical

I haven't posted recently on matters of physics and space travel. In hindsight ... I surprise myself. Because these are (related) topics of great personal interest.

In view of recent do-they-or-don't-they reports of neutrinos slightly outpacing photons -- i.e., a possible chink in the century-old edifice that is Einsteinian relativity -- here's another reminder that Einstein tended to get things right. To wit: It's been shown (again) that the rotation of a massive object produces frame dragging of space-time, as predicted by general relativity.

GP-B

After the very elaborate Gravity Probe B (GP-B) experiment, decades in the making, this subtle effect has been independently remeasured. (Decades: That puts my few months delay in commenting into perspective.) From the American Physical Society, see "Viewpoint: Finally, results from Gravity Probe B." Fascinating stuff.

But wait! There's more!

Of the Ringworld (and much smaller things)

Lots of Known Space aficionados frequent this blog.

Especially if you're one of them, here's a stunning short video I happened upon, inspired by early portions of -- by my colleague, Larry Niven -- the novel Ringworld.  Seriously cool. (And if you haven't read Ringworld ... you should. It's won about every SF award there is.)



I hope there will be a Part 2.

Viruses: not just for PCs anymore

As microprocessors become ever more ubiquitous, so, too, do opportunities for malware. Be afraid: some gadgets are far more personal than your personal computer ...

Let's start with malware that's been crafted to seize control of your smart phone. From Reuters, "GSM phones vulnerable to hijack scams": 

"Flaws in a widely used wireless technology could allow hackers to gain remote control of phones and instruct them to send text messages or make calls, according to an expert on mobile phone security."

Why would anyone target smart phones?

"... hackers are paying unprecedented attention to the devices as smartphone sales have outpaced sales of PCs."

Much idiocy, the occasional triumph of common sense, and a look ahead

So: a virologist decided to investigate how to make the avian flu (aka, H5N1) more contagious.

It apparently wasn't enough to know that the disease -- transmitted through contact with the feces of infected birds -- has killed 600 people and has a 60% human fatality rate. Now there's an airborne strain. Pleased at punch with his accomplishments, said virologist wanted to get the details published. Because, you know, no one could possibly abuse this research.

Madness.

Tell, don't show?

A standard bit of advice to aspiring authors is to show action, not talk about it. It's often good advice: showing a world explode (for example) is more dramatic than saying that it did.

Like all rules, "show, don't tell" has its exceptions. Telling can be an effective technique, too.

Following my recent trip to England I felt the urge to reread the various cases of Sherlock Holmes. My hotel in London was in walking distance of 221b Baker Street (and indeed, my wife and I did visit the Holmes Museum at that address.) But keener is having seen many of the locales in which the beloved stories take place, on land and on the Thames.

The connection with today's topic? Holmes called himself a consulting detective -- clients come to his flat and describe their cases. We don't hear the recitations from the point of view of the client (generally the one with first-hand experience), nor even of Holmes. We aren't privy to the client's thoughts at having witnessed the invariably odd events, nor to Holmes's thoughts on having heard the recitation.

What readers know of the cases generally comes from the notes of of his faithful (and often clueless) biographer, Watson. Or from the reports of the Baker Street Irregulars: street urchins dispatched by Holmes to watch things for him. Or from newspaper excerpts.