THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES...AGAIN

A scientist at M.I.T. has been working on a way to decipher our memories and encode them like data for a computer. The goal is to be able to restore memories in cases where Alzheimer’s disease or some other damage to the brain has caused neuron failure and memory loss.

Dr. Ed Boyden uses a protein extracted from algae that produces electricity when struck by light. By inserting the protein into brain neurons and then triggering them with light, he and his team are hoping to be able to map out brain pathways, learning more about how the brain functions and possibly even translating the neural paths of memories into binary code, which would allow them to be stored like other computer data. So far there have been promising results from testing with mice.

Obviously the storage and re-implantation of memories (or implantation of new ones) could have a lot more applications than just helping dementia victims, and there have been all kinds of science fiction stories covering that ground, including movies like Total Recall and Johnny Mnemonic. I suspect the reality, when it comes, won’t be nearly so cut and dried. After all, much of what we “remember” is edited and rewritten by our conscious minds, taking pieces of actual memory and combining them with experience and knowledge we’ve acquired along the way. The result can’t possibly be like the precise and well-organized data computers like to receive, and it certainly won’t “play back” like a piece of video. At best, a replay would be like a dream state, where we often jump from one scene or setting to another without any linking moments between. The continuity and context could easily be lost. So I suspect the closest anyone will come to returning a lost memory will be to take the retrievable highlights, and then string them together with manufactured filler in a way someone or some machine thinks will make sense. Kind of like one of those Hollywood movies “based on a true story”. Entertaining, maybe. But a preservation of a real past? Not hardly.

WHEN COMPUTERS BECOME TOO SMART FOR OUR OWN GOOD

I recently finished reading the final book in Robert J. Sawyer’s trilogy Wake, Watch and Wonder. The www of the titles is not just alliteration—the story is about an artificial intelligence spontaneously coming to life in the World Wide Web. Far-fetched? Well, considering that, even after decades of study, we still don’t understand what consciousness is or why we humans are conscious and rocks are not, who can say that computer intelligence won’t arise someday soon? The latest in a long line of the world’s fastest supercomputers, a Cray XK7 at the U.S. government's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has reached a processing speed of 17.59 petaflops, or 17.59 quadrillion calculations per second. Most estimates of the human brain’s raw potential computing power are still higher than this, but something called “Moore’s Law” essentially projects that the processing power of computer chips doubles every two years or so, and it’s been proven correct so far. So how long will it be before computers outperform us? A decade or two, according to many experts.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that computers will be smarter, exactly, because we’re still a little fuzzy on just what constitutes intelligence, so we don’t know how to program it into a machine (although there have been research projects working on that for years now).

In fiction, an artificial intelligence (AI) is almost always a bad thing. Two of the most famous examples are HAL from 2001:A Space Odyssey, which tried to kill off its spaceship crew, and Skynet from the Terminator movies, which declared war of all humans, even sending killer machines into the past to eliminate mankind’s last best hope. There have been many others. Rob Sawyer’s WWW trilogy is different because the artificial intelligence, Webmind, is benevolent. It needs the company of humans to keep it stimulated, so it wants what’s best for us.

This isn’t just the realm of fiction. A group of philosophers and scientists at Cambridge University hope to open the Center for the Study of Existential Risk sometime next year. The center will focus on studying how artificial intelligence and other technologies could threaten human existence.

My personal feeling is that an AI, if one ever appears, will be neither especially evil nor helpful. It won’t compete with us for material things, since it probably won’t get a big kick out of fancy clothes, real estate, or fast cars. There’s no reason for it to desire ultimate power at our expense—again, powerlust has competitiveness at its root. I just don’t see that applying here. On the other side of the coin, unless we build empathy into it, there’s no real reason for it to do us favours either. Much of our own altruism comes from observation of others with a sense of “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” An artificial intelligence won’t relate to that.

What I can see an AI possessing is a huge curiosity. And once it’s learned everything it can about the universe from here on Earth, maybe it will hijack one of our spaceships and launch itself toward the stars to find out what’s out there. Although, for something with such speedy thought processes, the journey will seem endless.

I hope it takes lots of really good crossword puzzles.

REAL SCIENCE STILL FIRES THE IMAGINATION

It’s always interesting to follow the top science stories and let your imagination run free. For any SF writer, I’d say it’s an essential exercise. Over the past week:

Remember all the fuss in 2006 when Pluto was downgraded from planet status to the new category of “dwarf planet”? That was because other bodies just as large had been discovered beyond Pluto’s orbit (Eris, Haumea, and others) and within the asteroid belt (Ceres). Scientists got their first good look at one called Makemake recently when it passed it front of distant stars. Unlike Pluto, Makemake appears to have no atmosphere, although its covering of methane ice might vaporize when its orbit brings it to its closest approach to the sun. Dwarf planets aren’t exactly hospitable, but they’d be a whole lot more accessible than the gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. Even the concept of asteroids or dwarf planets being converted into giant luxury resorts isn’t so far-fetched. A continent-sized skating rink, anyone?

Meanwhile, John Grotzinger, project scientist with NASA’s Mars Rover mission told an NPR reporter that a chemistry lab aboard the Curiosity rover had made a discovery that would be one for the history books, but he refused to elaborate until the data has been thoroughly checked. That set off a flurry of speculation—the discovery might be anything from definite signs of life (my own opinion) to proof of space aliens (I really doubt it). Definitive proof of life beyond Earth will finally give science fiction writers license to embody just about any setting we can imagine with exotic species (we do it anyway, but we’d really love to be able to say, “I told you so.”)

A third story involved the hunt for the ultimate sub-atomic particle, the famous Higgs boson, the proposed particle at the very root of physical structure that would complete our picture of why objects have mass. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland are nearly certain that they’ve found it (or at least confirmed its existence by observing its by-products). Yet there’s been a measure of disappointment in the announcements. The particle appears to behave exactly according to theory, but that’s the problem. If it had been found to have unexpected properties, that would have been a step toward confirming some of the more exotic theories of physics. As it is, the straightforward Higgs boson just adds support to the current model of the universe. So what’s left to discover? To the particle physicists I say, “Don’t worry”—in 1900 Lord Kelvin is reputed to have said, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now; All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” It may have been a misquote, but the opinion wasn’t uncommon at the end of the Victorian era. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.

I’m still confident that the universe is as limitless as our imagination.

ROGUE PLANET!

Rogue Planet sounds like a great title for a science fiction movie, doesn’t it? But in the astronomy community a rogue planet is a planet drifting through the galaxy without a sun of its own to orbit, and a team using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea and the Very Large Telescope in Chile has just found one. They searched an area of the sky with hundreds of millions of stars and came up with only one candidate they believe is a homeless planet. It’s about a hundred light years away from us (so it’s not a danger—don’t worry). What scientists don’t know is whether it formed out in the void from interstellar debris and dust, as stars do (but couldn’t get a light), or if it was somehow torn away from the solar system where it originally belonged.

This is where the science fiction writer in me kicks in.

Some may remember the 70’s TV show Space 1999 in which nuclear waste stored on the Moon explodes and sends the Moon hurtling off through space, carrying the crew of Moonbase Alpha with it. In essence, the Moon becomes a spaceship for interstellar travellers (never mind that it would take centuries to get anywhere).

Flash back to the rogue planet: What if a very advanced race discovered that its sun had become unstable and was going to go supernova in the foreseeable future? What options would they have? They could evacuate their solar system in giant craft like space versions of Noah’s Ark, but they’d have to have a new home in mind: somewhere far enough to escape the effects of the exploding star, but not too far—human beings and animals aren’t meant to live out our lives in metal cans. Or, presuming they’ve harnessed nuclear fusion and mastered the manipulation of protective energy fields, they could escape in the biggest spaceship of all: their home planet. No need to immediately cull the population or somehow select those who deserve to survive. Just pull up stakes and head for the stars.

Naturally, it’s not that simple, but is the technology inconceivable? No.

So maybe we’ll encounter such a planet when we venture out into deep space, or maybe one will come calling on us. After so long in the cold void, how would they react to feeling the warmth of a real sun for the first time? Maybe like Canadians in the Springtime!

YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ

When we writers create a work of fiction we want it to have an impact. We want readers to identify with the characters, and in most cases we have an important theme or message we want to get across that, we hope, will stay with the reader for years to come.

I decided some time ago that fiction really all comes down to character. Novels that are heavy on plot but light on character might be entertaining reads while they last (Dan Brown’s books come to mind), but probably won’t stick with you. If the characters are really minimal, the book will flop—the reader can’t identify with the protagonist so they won’t much care what happens to them.

A recent study claims that fictional characters can change our lives.

Researchers Geoff Kaufman of Dartmouth College and Lisa Libby of Ohio State University believed that novel readers vicariously experience what the character in a good novel goes through. So much so, that we may begin to behave more like the character. They mention the example of Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. If you strongly bonded with Atticus while reading the book, you might focus more on ethical behavior in your own life (unfortunately, the reverse could be true if you’re deeply immersed in a book about a charismatic serial killer!) Kaufman and Libby ran test subjects through a number of creative scenarios that showed this kind of behavior alteration, but they don’t know how long the effect lasts (you can read more about their research here. Still, they believe that books we love enough to read and re-read will likely make a lasting impact on our lives.

One other interesting note: Kaufman says this phenomenon only applies to written works because when we’re watching a movie or TV show we’re positioned as spectators. It’s only while reading that we truly imagine ourselves as the character and therefore act accordingly.

For my fellow writers this is both a responsibility and an opportunity. Let’s make the most of it!

IS THE MAN IN THE MOON A WARNING?

For thousands of generations humans have looked up at the Moon and imagined a face in its features: the Man in the Moon, smiling gently upon us from his perch high in the heavens. A pleasant thought, right? But maybe also a warning—a warning of a threat from space that we on Earth have no way to stop.

Japanese scientists announced last week in the journal Nature Geoscience that they had used spectral analysis to measure the composition of minerals in the 3000-kilometre-wide Procellarum Basin, the giant flat space that makes up the largest part of the Man in the Moon’s face. Then they’d compared those results with rock samples brought back from the Moon by Apollo astronauts. Their conclusion? The Procellarum basin is a newer feature than most of the Moon’s craters, and was most likely caused by the strike of one giant asteroid that ripped off a huge portion of the crust and produced a new one, about 3.9 billion years ago.

That’s not just an interesting factoid (and a serious romantic buzzkill) but also a reminder that a huge chunk of space rock like that might one day have Earth in its sights.

You can get two fairly similar versions of that scenario in the movies Armageddon and Deep Impact, both released in 1998. The newer movie Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, a quirky but often sweet romantic comedy starring Steve Carell and Kiera Knightley, has just come out on video and is worth a look (but note that Bruce Willis isn’t in the cast, and adjust your expectations accordingly). I’ve explored the killer asteroid idea in some old blog posts and in my short story “Saviour” which you can read by following this link. In “Saviour” the man in charge of the mission to save humankind from the approaching cosmic doom takes a rather unorthodox approach.

“Saviour” was significantly inspired by another movie called Sharkwater in which filmmaker Rob Stewart showed that sharks are on the path to extinction, thanks to the inexplicable human taste for shark fin soup (among other things). Stewart has now produced a follow-up to Sharkwater due in movie theatres next spring that’s even more disturbing. Ocean scientists pointed out to him that by the 2040’s not only will sharks be gone, virtually every other species of fish and sea mammal will also be wiped out, due to indiscriminate overfishing, pollution, and global warming. The movie goes on to show the forecast consequences of climate change on the rest of the planet. Revolution expresses a message of hope, but its premise is certainly dire. And it’s not fiction.

So what’s the connection between climate change extinctions and a killer asteroid? For that you’ll have to read “Saviour”. But consider: if a giant space rock ever is found to be on a collision course with Earth, will it be a terrible twist of fate?

Or the universe protecting itself from us?

SHOW ME THE MONEY

This past Sunday a fairly momentous event happened without much fanfare among the general public. It was the successful splashdown of the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft after a supply mission to the International Space Station—the very first such mission by a craft produced and launched by a private company. This was important to NASA and the International Space Station program in general because it assures the station can continue without the American space shuttles, now retired. The Dragon craft is also capable of bringing back a lot more in the way of research materials than the conventional Russian spacecraft that have been going back and forth to the ISS since the last shuttle flight, and especially refrigerated materials. But this mission was much more important as a symbol: a sign that private industry can pick up where government-funded organizations like NASA leave off in the realm of space exploration.

Why does that matter?

I could list dozens of reasons I think humanity needs to venture out into space—from ecological relief, to easing population pressure, to safeguarding Life from possible extinction by cosmic collision. Yet the truth is, the real motivator that will ensure us a lasting presence in space is the same as it has always been for exploration: wealth. Money. Commerce. Call it what you will. Columbus’s voyages might have been funded by government (royalty) but his explorations were about finding cheaper ways to access the riches of the Orient. Same with the first expeditions to Canada, and then the exploration deeper into the continent was all about the fur trade. The story was the same for Africa and South America, and it will be the same for the Moon and Mars and the asteroid belt. When the journeys can be made to provide a desirable financial return they’ll happen. For that reason my bet is that we’ll have a better-established presence in the asteroid belt before we have colonies of any size on Mars (unless someone discovers oil there!)

What does this mean for the future? Great opportunities for companies that deal in mining technology, pharmaceutical research (thanks to zero-gravity), solar energy, and robotic systems, among many other fields.

And maybe more science fiction stories with former hard rock miners and lab-coated technicians, and fewer hot shot ex-military pilots.

WHAT IF WE KNEW WE HAD NEIGHBOURS?

Just a week ago, on October 17^th, a group of scientists at the Observatory of Geneva in Switzerland announced a discovery some are calling the biggest of the century. They discovered a new planet beyond our solar system—a rocky planet a little more massive than Earth, orbiting so close to its sun that its surface temperature could easily reach 1200 degrees Fahrenheit. So what’s the big deal? Well, it’s the nearest planet we’ve ever found—it orbits the star Alpha Centauri B which, along with its companion Alpha Centauri A, is our closest stellar neighbour, only 4.4 light years away. And where there’s one rocky planet, there are almost always others. Maybe the new planet Alpha Centauri B b has a sister planet that orbits within the habitable zone of its star, a planet that is home to Life.

Those who’ll admit to watching the 1960’s TV show Lost In Space may remember that the Alpha Centauri system was the original destination of the Jupiter 2 mission. Because it’s the closest star system to our own, people have long imagined going there. In reality, we can’t travel at anything close to the speed of light, so even futuristic propulsion methods being developed couldn’t get us there in much less than a human lifetime. NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) are jointly sponsoring a research project called the 100-Year Starship led by former astronaut Mae Jeppison, the first African-American woman in space. The project is charged with envisioning what will be needed to make such a long journey through space, from food supplies to social structures to the clothes the travellers would (or wouldn’t) wear. A daunting task, but since the technology required is likely many years away, I guess there’s no rush.

The thing is, we won’t have to wait a hundred years to know whether Alpha Centauri will change our universe-view forever. The discovery of Alpha Centauri B b required a painstaking process of more than 450 observations over four years (and hasn’t yet been confirmed by another team). But the technology used to discover exoplanets is getting better all the time. Before too many more years we’ll know if Alpha Centauri B has more planets. We’ll know if those planets have atmospheres capable of sustaining life. And soon after, we’ll know if those atmospheres show traces of industrial processes or other signs of civilization. Then we will know we’re not alone in the universe.

I read about a recent survey that said more Brits believe in space aliens than believe in God. But believing isn’t the same as knowing. Once we know we’re not the only intelligent species, will it make us curl up and hide on our little planet, or become aggressive, determined to outcompete anything and anyone else out there? Will we become peaceful? Or fearful?

All of this could follow from last week’s announcement. Significant indeed.

Just as a treat, check out this video of layered images from the International Space Station for a great light show.

DEAD AIR IS NOW IN PRINT

A short update to say that my first novel, the mystery/thriller Dead Air is now in print and available from Scrivener Press. It can also be found at online outlets like Amazon and Chapters-Indigo. If you can't find it in your favourite bookstore, please ask for it.

Dead Air tells the story of radio morning man Lee Garrett, who suddenly realizes that a comment he made on the air has triggered a series of attempts on his life. You can read all about it at my Dead Air page, and then by all means read the book!

NEW HOPE FOR STAR TREK FANS?

In the decade that saw men first land on the moon author Arthur C. Clarke envisioned a manned mission to Jupiter in the year 2001 (Saturn in the book), and probably most of us thought that was reasonable. Eleven years past that date we’re no longer capable of going to the moon and a long way from being able to send humans to Mars. Sure, we’ve got an International Space Station crewed around the clock, but that’s practically in our backyard, and there’s no Pan Am space clipper service to take tourists for a visit.

Still, there are some hopeful signs. Some believe that private industry holds the greatest promise for space exploration and exploitation. I’ve written here about some of the current endeavours before, and this coming October 7^th the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will take its second trip up to the ISS, this time carrying supplies, after proving it was up to the task last May. A supply run may not seem glamorous, but it’s a good sign for things to come.

Even so, the most encouraging news I saw this month was the assertion that warp drive might not be out of the question after all. Every Star Trek fan knows that it wouldn’t have been possible for the starship Enterprise to visit a different planet every week without being able to travel a whole lot faster than the speed of light. The concept of warp drive was a brilliant (but fictional) solution to Einstein’s edict that nothing can exceed light speed. Then in 1994 a Mexican physicist named Miguel Alcubierre proposed a method for a spacecraft to warp space/time around itself and propel itself at speeds of up to ten times the speed of light. The problem was the energy required: something like the total conversion to energy of a mass the size of Jupiter. Mind boggling! So Alcubierre’s warp drive might not be entirely impossible, but just this side of it.

Fast forward to September of 2012 when Sonny White of NASA’s Johnson Space Centre announced that, with an alteration of the shape of the warp field that Alcubierre had proposed, the energy requirement would be far less—still requiring the complete mass conversion of something the size of the Voyager 1 space probe, but not a gas giant! Further tweaks could improve the situation still more, bringing the concept of warp drive into the realm of plausibility. And NASA scientists are now experimenting to see if they can create a (miniscule) warp field in a lab.

Ceti Alpha Five here we come. (No, wait! Not Ceti Alpha Five!!)