All posts by PETER

science fictioin, Technology

Faster than Light (FTL) or Bust

Milky way as seen from Earth. Our Milky Way is about 87,000 light years in diameter.
Image By Steve Jurvetson – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23906915		First novel to use an ansible, a fictitious device to communicate over light years within a ‘reasonable’ time. Image by http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n5/n29016.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8376317

Running your Interstellar Empire

What if future technology permitted blasting at Faster than Light (FTL) were possible? It has to be. Otherwise how could we suspend our disbelief when it comes to epics of galactic empires? Such as Asimov’s Foundation series, where a psychohistorian predicts a long dark period of about 30,000 years after the inevitable fall of an empire encompassing the entire milky way.

Or you enjoy the Star Trek series or maybe you are more of a Star Wars person. In all of these, one can communicate nearly instantly with settlements in distant star systems. One can physically travel amongst them multiple times within a person’s lifetime.  

Perhaps you wish to create a story set in a similar scenario. Alas, science says no communication or physical travel can exceed the speed of light. Is this a problem? Well, let’s see. Light travels at 300,000 kilometers per second. Mighty fast, right?

Depends. Light from our closest neighbor star takes over four years to reach us. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has 100-400 billion stars contained within a spiral cluster of 87,000 light years in diameter. Sending a message from one end to the opposite end takes 87,000 years. Physically travelling, according to science, must take longer. Only massless particles, such as photons, can travel at light speed.

Alas, the quartz mountain link misspeaks regarding massless particles having zero energy. The article should have stated zero ‘kinetic’ energy. Photons have ‘photon energy’ according to electromagnetic frequency (or wavelength).

Enough said about science. Seems light speed isn’t so fast. Does it?

What are the implications? If your hero must fight at the opposite end of our galaxy, she couldn’t. When your hero first hears about the fight, the fight began 87,000 years ago. The fight had probably ended by the time your hero first hears about it. But if FTL communications and travel were possible, your hero could join the fight.

What’s the answer to creating a story spanning a galaxy? Simple, permit FTL communications and travel. Many authors do.

“But hold on there, Mister Spoiler,” you might say, “I want to stick to the plausible.”

Could you?

Depends. Let’s find out.

Is FTL Possible?

Conventional science states the universe must have a speed limit and this happens to be the speed of light. Most accepted physics says so. To quote Why Is There a Maximum Speed Limit in the Universe?, “And so it is for the cosmic speed limit; we cannot make it speedier.”

But, wait. What about the expansion of space? Objects located 14 billion light-years away from us, recede from us at a speed of 300,000 km/s, or just about the speed of light. An object 33 billion light-years away recedes at a speed of 708,000 km/s, or more than double the speed of light. Wouldn’t this contradict the claim of light speed being the maximum possible?

The situation of our expanding universe is more subtle. The Big Think article states: “In reality, these objects aren’t moving through the Universe at that speed at all, but rather the space between bound objects is expanding. The effect on the light is equivalent — it gets stretched and redshifted by identical amounts — but the physical phenomenon causing the redshift is due to the expanding Universe, not from the object speeding away through space.”

We could interpret this to mean the speed limit only applies to moving relative to space.  There is more however.

Sabine Hossenfelder, a popular science communicator and YouTuber argues extensively why FTL is possible. Warning, the argument is quite extensive. I summarized the essence of her argument below.

According to Sabine Hossenfelder, Einstein’s theories do not imply that faster than light travel is forbidden. The problem is that one cannot accelerate from below the speed of light to above the speed of light. A second issue, she claims, is that mathematical infinity for something doesn’t imply an physical impossibity. This apparently applies for mathematics regarding black holes, which most scientists say do exist. Her third point is that there is a counterexample for an object with any mass requiring an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light.

Her third point concerns the nature of matter and the nuclear forces holding an atomic nucleus together. People, technically, are almost entirely made of pure energy. Particles have matter only if they get dragged while moving through the Higgs field. In the early universe none of the particles had mass and could move at the speed of light. Later, they could not. Perhaps something can be done about this Higgs field? Which Sabine does not recommend.

She also discusses time paradoxes, in which she argues there’s nothing weird about you being able to deliver a message to your younger self. She states Einstein’s special relativity (where time paradoxes apply) doesn’t apply to reality because special relativity doesn’t contain gravity. Einstein’s general relativity includes gravity, however. Sabine goes on to argue why time-travel paradoxes do not apply to our universe, yet is consistent with general relativity.

Finally she argues that general relativity is incomplete because a theory of quantum gravity is yet to be developed.  Sabine isn’t alone in her assertions. Astrophysicist Erik Lentz argues FTL is possible for different reasons.

Although massed particles cannot travel at FTL, space-time can. He suggests the possibility of bending space-time into a bubble of negative energy. There are too certain theoretical ways to employ negative energy for FTL. Lentz also mentions a new class of hyper-fast solitons – a kind of wave that maintains its shape and energy while moving at a constant velocity (and in this case, a velocity faster than light).

Hypothetical Methods for FTL

Here, I will quote from a Wikipedia article about FTL to list possible methods. “Speculative faster-than-light concepts include the Alcubierre drive, Krasnikov tubes, traversable wormholes, and quantum tunneling. Some of these proposals find loopholes around general relativity, such as by expanding or contracting space to make the object appear to be travelling greater than c (symbol c means speed of light). Such proposals are still widely believed to be impossible as they still violate current understandings of causality, and they all require fanciful mechanisms to work (such as requiring exotic matter)” Italics are mine.

Because many have already offered much on the topic, I list some other links I’ve found informative because they are more recent.

https://www.sciencealert.com/faster-than-light-travel-is-possible-within-einstein-s-physics-astrophysicist-shows

https://sites.imsa.edu/hadron/2024/04/26/breaking-the-speed-limit-is-faster-than-light-travel-possible/

https://quartzmountain.org/article/could-ftl-travel-be-possible

https://quartzmountain.org/article/what-is-the-future-of-light-travel

World-Building Implications

Given that some scientists have offered the plausibility of FTL, writers, can justify using it. In my opinion, a serious writer, when choosing a particular method, must work out the implications in their particular world setting.

For instance, some paranoid cultures on Earth have been ramping up their defenses against possible alien invasion. They’ve even built in a pre-emptive strike capability. Hooray, feel safer already?

Our hero notices that a star system located 500 light years from us shows signs of civilization. “Aha,” he says, “we should launch a strike.” The fleet launches with its FTL capability and arrives at the exoplanet within a month.

When they arrive, a big surprise awaits them. No civilization exists but there are ruins of a technological civilization that must have collapsed, maybe 400 years ago. Because of the 500 light-year distance, Earth had been observing that exoplanet 500 years in the past–when the civilization used to exist.

But what if that civilization hadn’t collapsed? What if they too had already launched an invading fleet with similar FTL capability? Perhaps that fleet had already arrived? Or maybe they arrive before Earth manages to launch its fleet. In these scenarios, each party doesn’t know whether the other will attack but assumes they will. This doesn’t help with peaceful coexistence.

With FTL, one will always arrive at the destination’s past. If FTL communications became possible, there would be an odd disconnect with communicating near-present information while observing the other party’s past through astronomical observation. Strange scenarios indeed.

Peter Spasov. Last updated Thursday May 29, 2025

science fictioin, Technology, world building

Climbing the Highest Mountain in the Solar System by E Bike

Olympus Mons photo taken at unknown altitude above Mars. Mountain width of about 624 km, the size of Arizona or France. Image source WikipediaMount Everest on Earth. Mountain width is about 40 km. Image source Wikipedia

The Call to Adventure

What if you could ride a mountain bike on Mars? Why would you?

“For adventure,” I’d say. “Imagine riding to the top of the largest mountain in the solar system?”

“I know,” you might say. “That would be Olympus Mons.”

Let’s get started, a high and mighty adventure. You imagine craggy rocks stretching high to the sky, adrenaline pumping while peddling your Salsa Horsethief Deore over shear granite. You’d push your way beyond the snow line. Except Martian mountains have no snow line or granite.

“Well, isn’t that swell,” you say, “but riding it could still be thrilling.”

For now, we’ll consider a near future scenario when people are exploring Mars in a manner similar to contemporary Antarctica. What if riding the mountain wouldn’t quite be the thrill you might expect?

To Peddle or not to Peddle

You say. “But isn’t Mars a cold and oxygen-less hell? Wouldn’t riding while wearing a bulky spacesuit make peddling overly exerting? Wouldn’t I quickly run out of air?”

I reply. “Yes.”

“Then why peddle?”

“You’ve got a point. I’d suggest an e-bike.”

You ponder. “Wouldn’t that be cheating?”

I grin. “Consider cheating as a necessary Martian survival trait.”

Geography of Climbing Olympus Mons

Recently I wrote a story about astronauts climbing Olympus Mons. Leaving aside story merit, let’s look at how near-future technology might be employed for this venture. First, we need to look at the setting. One can virtually explore Olympus Mons by downloading the free Google Earth desktop program or app. In addition to exploring Earth the program allows one to explore parts of outer space including planet Mars. With the program, I could trace various paths and see cross-sectional elevation changes. The data used for modeling is taken mostly from NASA sources.

Olympus Mons rises to an altitude above 21 km (13 miles or 69,000 feet). Its highest point is at 21,287.4 meters, as measured by the MGS laser to a precision of 10 centimeters. Mount Everest, by comparison, peaks at an elevation of 8,848.86 meters.

With a summit the size of France, riding at the top would be boringly flat, unlike the daunting slopes of Mount Everest. The easy path is to follow the flatter path shown starting at Archive Cache and ending at the summit. Along
that path, the steepest slope is eleven degrees.  This is comparable to a two over twelve roof pitch.

For a more challenging path let’s try riding up the daunting cliff, beginning at Olympus Mons Cache. Crazy eh? Let’s zoom in and take a closer look.

Google Earth view of Olympus Mons at an altitude of 1302.71 km
Google Earth view of cliff face of Olympus Mons at an elevation of 179.47 km. Image source is a screen snip of the Google Earth program taken by the author.Mount Everest as shown by Google Earth at an altitude of 179 km. Mountain width is about 40 km. Image source is a screen snip of the Google Earth program taken by the author.

When we zoom in to the cliff face, we can see the view as illustrated to the right, showing a portion of the cliff if we were looking from an altitude of 15.25 km.  The red lines are ‘paths’ which one can create with Google Earth program (but remember we’ve set Google Earth to show Mars!).
 
We’ll use the second line from the right to represent our adventure climb. Appropriately, I labeled this path as SteepClimb.
 
What would be its elevation profile?
 
Shall we take a look?

Here, I’ve use the Google Earth elevation profile feature. I’ve marked a steep point with a grade of 45.6%, meaning the slope of climbing 45.6 vertical meters over 100 meters of horizontal travel. As an angle this would be 24.5 degrees. (For the math, take the inverse tangent of the fraction of 0.456).  Doesn’t look like 24.5 degrees, does it? That’s because maps and globes generally exaggerate the vertical dimensions. If one shrunk Earth to the size of a billiard ball, it would be very smooth, but would still make a poor billiard ball.

This is Google Earth’s elevation profile for the ‘steep climb.’ Doesn’t look quite as steep does it? Still, this would be tough slog with a mountain bike or an e bike. For comparison, below is a cross cut for a section of the Grand Canyon on Earth.  The steepest grade here is about 90% or 42 degrees. By zooming in and exploring more, one could probably find steeper sections in the Grand Canyon. Notice the Grand Canyon profile shows a horizontal length of 718 m compared to the horizontal 14 km for the steep climb for Olympus Mons.

In summary: Whereas the central part of the Olympus Mons exhibits slope angles of less than 1 to 5°, the periphery of the edifice terminates with steep cliffs sloping 12–15° up to 28°. 

There is another factor making the climb on Mars easier than on Earth. Mars gravity is one third of Earth’s and the air is very thin. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is one hundredth that of Earth’s. This means lower weight and less air drag for the e bike to handle.

By further zooming in, I found a steeper section on the Olympus Mons steep climb path to be 27 degrees. Hence I used this as my steepest slope for my story.

About the Mars-Climbing E Bike

Confession. When I cycle, I generally cycle on flatter terrain. Hence I examined some specifications for commercially available mountain bikes or e bikes. I would use these as a baseline to define some possible specifications for a Martian bike that could exist in the near future.  Perchance I could world-build an e-bike with improved capabilities.

One electric motorcycle caught my attention, the Sanya UF-X(SY4000D). This electric bike’s general specifications are 4000 W brushless motor, 72V52V lithium battery, Max speed: 92km/h, Max range:120 km based on 45km/h speed. Its climbing ability on Earth is claimed to be 17 degrees. Could it handle 27 degrees on Mars? Anyone want to give this a try?

However, another manufacturer claimed the ability to climb slopes of 45 degrees. Shall we trust their claim?

And here is another from Build Your Bike.

Bike Specifications

I visualized what the bike might look like and gave it a (backstory) product name of Roughneck Mangala, where Mangala is Sanskrit for Mars. During my research, the most suitable role models appeared to be bikes used by hunters. I don’t hunt for sport but I do admire the bush-suitable technology which hunters use for dragging out the big game they may have downed. Here is a one commercial photo. I would extrapolate the bike appearance for a Mars scenario, one where the rider would be wearing a space suit. As for the archery equipment, I didn’t use arrows for my story.

The Mangala bike would use a motor for each wheel for improved traction and control. The cargo trailer would be essential for carrying required supplies.

Here are the bike characteristics I chose. I believe these would be feasible for a Mars capable bike in the near future. The cruise speed and range would apply for flat ground.

Bike Cruise50km/hr
Range150km
Bike+trailer+battery75kg
Mass loaded w rider295kg

And its battery. A rider would need to swap or recharge batteries as required.

Battery72V
75Ah
Energy5200Whr
Mass15kg

The specifications would set restraints for the trip to the summit and back.

Tires

Pneumatic tires provide more comfort, more stability, better suspension, better climbing, faster speeds, more traction, and better control. The only advantages of solid tires are not getting flat tires and less maintenance. Only choose solid tires if you live in a place with poor roads, where you may get a lot of flats.

Yet I chose solid, surmising high-tech material to give traction and pliability. Check out Bridgestone’s and Michelin’s concepts for solid tires.

The Journey

I selected a mass of 295 kg for each suited astronaut riding a bike with 50 kg of cargo. In my story, two astronauts with cargo undertake the trip from a cache location near the cliff face of Olympus Mons.  Here are some packing requirements and trip logistics as pasted from my spreadsheet. I used the spreadsheet for calculating time durations and battery swapping events.

Astronaut daily water4L  or kg
Astronaut daily food1kg
Design expedition length5days
An EVA suit is good for 1.5 days. 
Normal ops is that each overnight stay is at a cache, where air tank replaced next morning
But only one overnight req’d
During outbound, each person brings 3 additional batteries to swap along the way
Leave at all used batteries at summit along with solar charger (that was air dropped)

A third astronaut flew a shuttle vehicle to air drop supplies to a cache point near the mountain summit. In the story, the trip required only one and a half days, including a side trip to the caldera of Olympus Mons. The calculations involved energy consumption of the batteries, taking into account the average slope of various segments of the trip. Generally I used grade 12 high-school level physics.  Similarly I worked out oxygen consumption needs as required for the trip. The space suits are designed to provide up to one and half days worth of oxygen. For a design expedition, one need additional oxygen tanks for the EVA suits (EVA is a fancy way of saying spacesuit, an acronym for Extra Vehicular Activity)

After this trip other travelers could reuse the batteries left at the summit. They could recharge them by using the solar charger.

The trip required one overnight stay close at the summit. The summit (highest point) of Olympus Mons is about 29 km distant from the caldera. Because the top part of Olympus Mons has a very shallow slope, the peak would appear to the astronauts as a flat expanse. They would see a desert of rock resembling the flat of a prairie in the Canadian or American mid west. With the top part of Olympus Mons as large as France, they would see only flat (and maybe some boulders) to as far as the horizon. The mountain’s edge would lie far beyond the horizon. Compared to Everest, riding the top portion of Olympus Mons could be boring.

For an exciting story, one needs other dramatic elements.

A Word about Martian Camping

With one overnight stay, I imagined an inflatable tent. One issue for Martian exploration is perchlorates on the surface. Perchlorates can be highly toxic, hence one wouldn’t want to bring perchlorates inside a tent. 

Generally, I envision a tent similar to those used Antarctica.

One key difference for Martian exploration is to pressurize the tent for air and to keep out the damn perchlorates. A compressor, regulators and air tank can handle the former. As for keeping out the perchlorates, keep the spacesuit outside and use the suit as an airlock. The basic idea is the suitport concept. Getting such a concept to work for a tent is more challenging than I could envision for the more solid structures as shown in the Wikipedia article, which apparently involved an airlock chamber.

EVA Access procedures using the Suitport, as pasted from ‘The Suitports_Progress.pdf’

Instead, I envisioned a spacesuit that is vertically stretchable such as a bellows at the waist and connector at the chest. Generally the astronaut connects their suit’s chest connector to the tent’s connector. By knee bending and other contortions an astronaut crawls out of their suit to enter the tent. To exit the tent and re-enter the spacesuit, the astronaut needs to enter feet first, an athletic feat indeed. That said; should faint-hearted non-athletic people go camping on Mars?

There are other bodily needs for eating, drinking, and waste disposal which need addressing for the trip and are part of the back story, if not addressed directly in the story.

More about the Camping Suitport

This section is part of my notes, and reading it would be a long slog. The notes are a result of pure imagination. Of course, one would need to fine tune it or dramatically modify to get the system to work. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Disclaimer: I cannot draw very well.

Entry Procedure

The tent has two access points at chest height. Each suited astronaut approaches their access point facing forward. The spacesuit has a mating ring located below the chest and above the waist that protrudes out. The astronaut positions ring to align with the tent’s access port and locks both together using suit gloves. Open access door. Such as; by pressing external button with gloved hand, permitting free airway passage between suit and tent interior. For the suit, tongue-in-groove matched surfaces slide apart to protrude beyond the sides. The tent’s access port door operates similarly. Air pressure inside tent would equalize with air inside suit.

Astronaut stretches hands and arms straight up vertical as shown in figure 1.

[ Fig. 1 ]

Astronaut bends knees akin to a squat or a Tai Chi Danyu, to extend bellows in order to drop upper body while suit’s top portion held in position by the access port. Squats downwards until head level with the access port as shown in figure 2. Also, astronaut can clear arms and hands from the sleeves and squeeze them into position to grab within the access port.

(With bent knees and bellows extension, drop in head height likely to be 30 inches or more.)

[ Fig. 2 ]  PLSS = Portable Life Support System

(Hu is my invented gender-free pronoun to replace she/her or he/his)

Hu bends to begin crawling through tube with hands and arms first followed by head. There may be handholds to assist. While crawling into tube, Hu raises self up with knees. As knees straighten, Hu’s upper body will have stretched out past the tent wall. Hu bends down towards floor, stretches out the hands towards the floor and proceeds such that hands contact the floor. With knees again straightened, walk the hands forward to pull feet and legs upwards to clear the suit and into the tube. Proceed until feet clear the tube and drop them onto the floor. Suit exoskeleton controls may lock joints into a parked position (or not) so as to resemble figure 1.

The mechanisms will have sufficient flex to facilitate entry into the tube (and vice versa for exit). The diagrams are only illustrative. The bellows portion would probably be at an outward lean. There might also be swivel ability with the mated ports to permit leaning upper portion of suit as required.

To re-enter Suit from inside Tent: (one astronaut at a time)

Tent has a pre-packed collapsible tripod which is multifunctional to hold stove etc. Position assistive tripod and face away from access point. Place hands on tripod and kick feet up to land within access point. Alternatively, walk feet upwards along a ‘fabric’ ladder while holding onto tripod. While holding onto tripod, walk/hop tripod towards access-point wall while shimmying feet and legs further into access point and work feet and legs down into spacesuit waist and legs until it will be necessary to let go of the tripod. (At this point the last astronaut to exit would collapse the tripod prior to letting go and leaving it on the floor.) 

Alternatively, have a scaffold system to lie upon. But this would require a self-collapsing mechanism for the final exiting astronaut to trigger.

Proceed to shimmy feet further into suit with assistance of pushing with hands when possible. Exoskeleton controls might assist to orient lower suit torso and operate bellows as required. Shimmy until feed have landed inside the boots so as to be in position with bent knees as per figure 2. Astronaut positions hands to enter sleeves and straightens knees to place hands through suit arms and into gloves to be position as per figure 1.

Astronaut can drop arms to press external button to seal the doors again and then unlock the mated connections.

Other Notes

Note the tent has already pre-packed with items such as sleeping gear, compost bag, electric heater-stove combo, pre-filled ice containers (to melt into liquid water and boil for cooking), lighting, sanitary wipes, multipurpose tool (akin to Swiss Army knife), radio remote and other stuff. There is an electrical connection to batteries (or other power source) located external to the tent.  Similarly there is a connection to an external air supply system compressor/deflator combo. The unit circulates the air so as to scrub CO2. The radio remote is used for remote manual control of external items including a longer-range radio sufficient for Mars-wide communication including near-Mars orbit.

Peter Spasov. Last updated Thursday May 01, 2025

Uncategorized

Nanites – or – There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom

Nanite Attacking Cancer CellNanite Heart Surgery

What if ultra-small robots could crawl into your skin? Literally. Like crawling into the space between your cells? What if they can grab some atoms and rearrange them? What if each robot had the smarts of a contemporary smart phone and could replicate? Your hero gets ripped apart by laser fire, arteries torn and gaping wounds.

How could your hero save herself? Simple. Grab a tube and squirt. Out come the nanites, propelling themselves within the hero’s body. Repairing the damage.

Such is the stuff of seeming magic. Remember Clarke’s Law?

So-oh. How real can this be? Could it?

Hold on. Let’s first check out how science fiction already uses nanites.

Nanites in Science Fiction

If your hero needs a wonder of technology to get out a scrape, she or he (or it) could use nanites. (Or the hero could use magic.) These little beasties can spread around and do all sorts of stuff. Heal the injuries as mentioned before. They could infiltrate the impenetrable.

Let’s say the locks of the castle gate are made of tougher-than-diamond graphene and your hero doesn’t have the key. She needs to sneak in to save Mr. Lucy. The hero whips out a thimbleful of power, and behold, the nanites get to work. She flings the powder onto the lock.

The beasties grab on the carbon lattice which makes up graphene and tear the sucker apart. Atomic bond by atomic bond. Invisible to the naked eye they crawl from link to link of the carbon atomic lattice. Voilà, the lock disintegrates. Mr. Lucy is saved.

For more: see Nanotechnology in Fiction. Fiction writers tend to use the nanite word rather than nanotechnology, nano-robots or whatever. In the link, nanite appeared fifteen times, the last time I looked.

Let’s hear from the pioneer of nanotechnology.

Introducing Doctor Feynman

“Hi folks, I’m Richard Feynman. I used to work on the Manhattan Project. I had a blip role in the Oppenheimer movie. For a second or so, I played the bongos while all us scientists were watching Oppie’s first atomic bomb explosion. Later, I wrote ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,’ suggesting folks directly manipulate atoms mechanically. Imagine swallowing the surgeon. I tell you, the surgeon will be a swarm of tiny-tiny bots healing you of injuries or disease. Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?”

“Eh,” you may say. “Sounds too good to be true.”

“Hold on there, buckette or buckaroo. We’re just getting started. Wait until you hear what Drexler’s got to say.”

Drexler and the Engines of Creation

“Thank you for that introduction, Richard. Guilty as charged. I wrote ‘Engines of Creation.’ Hey, this work spun out the nanotechnolog gig. For instance:

  • Use carbon nanotubes to make smaller microchips.
  • Build better solar panels.
  • Attack cancer cells without harming the healthy.
  • Use nanofiltration to remove heavy metals from polluted water.
  • Make textiles that don’t stain or wrinkle.

“Sounds like the cat’s meow.”

“But beware the gray goo, … and the grey goo.”

“Eh, what’s that?”

“Click the links, Luke.”

“Fine, what next?”

Could Nanites actually exist?

Good question.

A Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry has questioned the practical feasibility of molecular assemblers as proposed by Drexler, leading to a big spat between the two parties. More a more in depth view, see https://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/10-2/bueno.htm. The argument generally pits mechanical robotic manipulation at the molecular scale versus chemical. Smalley states: “you don’t make a girl and a boy fall in love by pushing them together.” Alright, the secret to love is good chemistry.

This doesn’t mean molecular scale manipulation is impossible. Nature already does this by using biochemical reactions in living organisms. The question is whether mechanical systems can do so.

There appear to be limits to how much smaller can mechanical type systems can be miniaturized. Some suggest the solution lies in emulating portions of living beings. In nature, miniature organisms already operate effectively.

As far as I can tell, the debate is not yet settled. The Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM) begs to differ. IMM argues that molecular assemblers and nanorobots are theoretically feasible.

The IMM refers also to another of Clarke’s Laws [internal link] (Italics are mine).

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, the scientist is almost certainly right. When the scientist states that something is impossible, the scientist is very probably wrong.

Shall we conclude that Nanites are possible, but may require (natural and/or synthetic) biological mechanisms as well? Or are purely electromechanical nanites handwavium and unobtainium?

For more, dive into the following … https://philosophy.institute/philosophy-of-technology/perspectives-on-nanotechnology-debate/ https://peterallenlab.com/2022/05/28/distractions-drexler-smalley/

And finally, what does nano mean?

A nanometer is tiny-tiny small. Line up three water molecules side and side and the length approaches one nanometer. Line up four, the length exceeds one nanometer. A nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter. Nano derives from the Greek nanos for dwarf. Nano means billionth, more precisely, a billionth of a meter. Nana, on the other hand, may refer to grandmother.

Peter Spasov. Last updated Tuesday April 01, 2025

Technology, world building

Ancient Batteries

What if an apocalypse wiped out modern infrastructure? What if hostile aliens dropped the mother of electromagnetic pulse bombs to wipe out all electronics? If so, could you charge your phone? Or could you build your own batteries with whatever is at hand?  If an ancient society could have constructed batteries, then in an apocalypse, we too could build our batteries. Sounds like a possible like a potential story set when modern infrastructure has broken down.

“Hey,” someone might say, “You mean Grog the cave dweller had built a flashlight?”

“Could have,” I would say, “but whether Grog would have, um, is debatable.”

What if a Paleolithic shaman hollowed out a tree trunk with stone tools and filled it fermented fruit to act as an electrolyte? She may have chipped some graphite from rocks, using, you guessed it, harder rocks, with which she could make the battery terminals. Alas our shaman wouldn’t have metal. Perhaps if an unusual flower had an electrically conductive stem, she could make a functional battery. For science fiction, a writer could ‘world build’ such a flower into existence. I’ll leave alternative possibilities to your imagination. Would this be plausible? Why not?  No rules of science are broken. Would this be likely? Okay, only if a writer puts more effort into the world building. We’ll set aside the Paleolithic scenario, and consider the era of ancient civilizations, such as the Parthian Empire which existed from 150 BC to 223 AD. Unlike the Paleolithic shaman, they were already using steel, for their armor and weaponry at least.

By Ironie – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2091669

https://archive.org/details/walfas-baghdad-battery

Interestingly, evidence points to ancient peoples coming close to making batteries. Granted, the evidence is controversial, whether the ancients used batteries. More interesting, for fantasy or science fiction writers, is whether they could have.  Or could you, in the event of an apocalypse?

An internet search of “Build your own battery” will reveal options. One can use household items such as a soda can and lemon.

Or, also as a kid’s activity, search “fruit battery experiment.” You could even use potatoes.

These, however, are only baby steps. As well, since soda cans and voltmeters wouldn’t be available to the ancients. Instead, could they have built equivalents and how far could they have conceivably proceeded with battery technology?

Maybe they could build clay jars and fill them with salt water, vinegar/wine or juice. If they had progressed past the Stone Age, metals would be available. Whether they would stumble upon how to put all these items together is another matter. Calls for creative world building. People may have stored juices in the jars, could have had ceremonies whereby acolytes place metal rods within and coincidentally connected wires to the rods.

And why would ancients have wires in the first place? For instance, ancient Egyptians made wires to use for jewelry. Perhaps a priestess placed two wires on her tongue and received a (hopefully mild) jolt. From there, the priestess caste could upscale the system for produce bigger jolts. Connecting the system to a ball of fine wire, such as steel wool, could act as a fire starter.

How could scaling up the technology have proceeded? Would they connect the jars in series to boost the voltage and in parallel to boost the current? How would they have come across this technique? We’ll assume no Däniken style aliens dropped in to tell them how.  Perhaps celebrants invented a ceremony to tell a hero’s journey by connecting the jars in series. This is plausible. Connecting batteries in series is easy peasy, even if each battery supplies a (preferably only slightly) different voltage. The voltages simply add up. In practice, it’s best to match voltages for other reasons. If the ancients built each jar battery similarly, the system could conceivably work.

Less plausible is the parallel part—which requires caution. Maybe the priest caste suggested that other characters could join in the journey by connecting ‘identical length’ jar chains in parallel. This is a big stretch. A mistake by using different-length jar chains would cause a short circuit. Besides, this assumes each jar generates exactly the same voltage. For the ancients to have quality control for their batteries would be problematic, unless they developed other technology.

What else would ancients use their batteries for? How about a light bulb? All they would require would be something to use as a filament, such as graphite akin to the type found in pencil, iron or something else similarly conductive to iron or graphite. Connect the filament to the batteries in series, and the filament should glow. There is a fine balance regarding the filament. If the filament is too conductive, it will burn out, if not sufficiently conductive the filament will not sufficiently glow. The ancients would be seeking the Goldilocks filament for their ceremonial lights.

The inventive world-builder would also need to conjure the back story as to how the ancients stumbled upon the filament technique, or ‘cheat’ with an all-wise wizard, shaman or vision-quest hallucination. Actually, in my opinion, the vision quest wouldn’t be a cheat but might be highly fortuitous. Can dreams inspire discoveries in real life? The most iconic example that I am aware of, is August Kekulé’s dream of a dancing snake swallowing its own tail. Lesson? Fear not to dream.

If the ancients wished to make practical lighting to banish the darkness during the night, they would need to build more advanced bulbs. To replicate something akin to our older style incandescent bulbs they would need to make a transparent glass container, and make a vacuum.

The glass container is plausible depending on the level of a society’s technology. Ancient Egyptians made glass beads, among other contemporaries. Glass bottles were invented around 1500 BC.

So, how plausible is it for ancients to make a vacuum? Not likely. They would need to develop a vacuum pump primarily although you’ll need syringes. But could they create something close to a vacuum, maybe by connecting a blacksmith’s style bellows to an enclosed chamber? How much air could someone pump out? Furthermore, how to prevent air from flowing back in? I will leave this to your inventive imagination.

One question remains. Did any ancients actually build batteries? Maybe; but probably not. They did, however, come close.

During either the Parthian Empire of 150 BC – 223 AD or the Sasanian of 224-650 AD, someone conceivably used a ceramic pot, a tube of copper, and a rod iron as a galvanic cell for electroplating. A galvanic cell is a type of battery, as first demonstrated when an early scientist made frog legs twitch by touching metals to them. And electroplating is about coating one metal with another, such as your nickel cutlery being coated with silver. Or maybe our inventive Parthian or Sasanian used her/his pot(s) for electrotherapy to relax muscle spasms. Did the ancients use available liquids such as vinegar or various fruit juices as electrolytes with which to operate their batteries?

Truth be told, most archaeologists suggest the ancients used the ceramic pots to store sacred scrolls. The MythBusters TV program investigated whether the artifacts could function as batteries by building replicas of the Baghdad Battery. Their concluded probably not, but, by connecting the pots in series, they did generate enough electricity to electroplate a small token or deliver current sufficient for acupuncture. Hence, were the ancients on the verge of applying electricity?

In the event of our hypothetical apocalypse, you have choice. Electroplate your cutlery, relax your muscles or preserve your favorite sacred scroll. For world-building a ancient culture, fear not, your world is limited only by your imagination—and credibility. May the apocalypse never come and may your invented world shine.

Peter Spasov. Last updated Wednesday March 05, 2025

Uncategorized

Magic and Clarke’s Third Law

What if an extraterrestrial could turn you into a sentient tree? Imagine how you might stand fixed upon a grassy knoll unable to move, always looking at the same place day after day, rain or shine (assuming you could see). Birds could roost upon you. Wind could rustle your leaves. Would you sense the birds and wind? How would your mind react during the day? Would you sleep at night? And dream? If so, what?

 “Sure thing,” you may say to me, “what have you been smoking? Tell me another fairy tale.”

How would you consider such a scenario? You may conclude: Must be fantasy, bro. It ain’t got the science to be science fiction.

Maybe so. But just wait a minute. Let’s say, you’re part of a group Neanderthals who managed to escape detection over thousands of years. Granted, this is a big stretch. Okay, let’s switch this around. Say time travel became possible, and you visited Europe at, say, 150,000 years ago. You’ve brought your e-bike, one of those fancy electrically powered mountain bikes some game hunters use such those blogged about here. Okay, I don’t hunt for sport but you get the idea. In this scenario you go for a ride. Eventually you encounter some Neanderthals. How would they regard your ability to ride around? Your appearance, your clothing, you riding your bike, would be a major shock, completely foreign to their world view. To the Neanderthals, you are magical.

This brings us to Clarke’s Third Law. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey. The law states: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If you brought your mobile phone and played your favorite (downloaded) cat video, the Neanderthal might wonder at the technology and the content. She or he may think: what’s the deal with cozying up to these mini cats? Do these strange visitors need some trepanning with a sharp pointed stick?

For the sentient tree scenario, on the other hand, needs more thought. First, would a sentient tree be possible? Second, could a scientist transform a normal human into such a tree? Let’s tackle the first.

Some scientists claim that trees can communicate with others in the same species by sending certain chemicals from root to root. However, other scientists claim the evidence isn’t conclusive. This is how science works.  Test the evidence and if other ‘peers’ think the evidence isn’t strong enough, they remain skeptical. Regardless, such tree-to-tree communication wouldn’t be a sign of sentience. Similarly with the claims of plants being capable of feeling pain, the evidence remains dubious. So, for this post, I’ll suggest that in our real world, trees aren’t sentient. But could they become sentient?

Trees, being plants, are able to photosynthesize, meaning to convert sunlight into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabolism. As for food, trees must absorb water and other chemicals from the ground using their roots. The transport of nutrients means going uphill against gravity. Trees don’t have hearts like we do, to pump said nutrients throughout their body. Instead they depend on a transpiration process. Essentially, water evaporation at the leaves causes a negative pressure which can pull water up from all the way down to the roots. As an aside, how tall can trees grow on Earth? By the way, the tallest height appears to be about 140 meters.

Think of what this mean in terms of being sentient or not? Sentience requires brains as far as we know, and brains use lots of energy. The human brain uses about 20% percent of the body’s energy and animal bodies use more energy than for plants because they have higher metabolism requirements. From this, we can conclude that a sentient tree would need significantly more energy than the currently non-sentient versions, in addition to a brain equivalent.

According to my admittedly simplistic calculations, a human could employ an advanced solar panel on each arm of about 60 cm square. The human ‘tree’ could stand up to expose the panels like a tree would expose leaves on its branches. This could theoretically work provided the panel efficiency was seventy two percent or more. The hypothetical panels would act like artificial leaves in order to convert the sunlight into the human’s need for oxygen and food. This doesn’t yet exist, but I argue it could in the future.

As an aside, prototype artificial leaves already exist. In this case, the sole function of the ‘leaf’ is to take carbon dioxide out of the air in order to cut down on greenhouse gases—and produce fuel. This technology has promise and could potentially expand to increased efficiency and produce other organic molecules required by our hypothetical tree-human hybrid.

Therefore, it’s reasonable to suppose a sentient tree could theoretically exist provided it had a brain and a pump to feed the brain with energy nutrients. Perhaps the person could become a plant-like being akin to the Venus Fly Trap but in an expanded form. This obviously is highly speculative but I would argue clever biohackers could create such a tree equivalent from a human. Please note this is a thought experiment because of ethical considerations.

Whether such a tree could evolve via natural evolution is another matter, and probably not—unless animals were wiped out. Food for thought here for you speculative fiction writers who might be reading this. But I will leave this aside for now to move on to point two. Could an advanced extraterrestrial transform a normal human into such a tree?

Point two is a tall order. It is one thing to biohack someone in a lab over a period of time, it’s another to sprinkle pixie dust or whatever that over a few hours or days transforms a human into a tree without any other intervention. In the lab scenario, surgeons may need to operate on the human.

“Eh,” you may say. “What could be this pixie dust? Sounds like magic.”

“Aha,” I may reply, “remember Clarke’s third law. Use a technology so advanced that, today; our smartest scientists can’t even understand it.”  

“Cop-out,” you may say, “Pure handwavium. Sounds like unobtainium.”

“Well, er, um, you may be right.” I shrug my shoulders with embarrassment. Then the metaphorical bolt of lightning strikes, red hot, searing red hot. (Enough with the melodrama you exclaim.) “Hey. How about nanites?”

Oh yes, the nanite word. How many stories have I read which employed nanites? Many. Hence, let us examine the nanite. Click the preceding link. Alas, that’s all I’ll give you for now. Stay tuned for a possible follow-up post.

And for the diehards, who want to see my calculations, try the download button.

ViabilityOfSentientTree-1Download

Image Credits

This is a poster for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, Warner Bros., the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2018-08/22/16/asset/buzzfeed-prod-web-06/sub-buzz-24234-1534969658-5.jpg

Cover of I am Groot vol 1 issue 1, 2017.

https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/62828/i_am_groot_2017_1 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/I_am_Groot_vol_1.jpeg

Peter Spasov. Last updated Tuesday February 25, 2025

Extraterrestrial

Being ET

What If One Could Experience Being ET?

Much science fiction is about intelligent extraterrestrials. Through these stories readers can experience the wonder of interacting with creatures thoroughly foreign to us. They could be creatures who may not be humanoid, animal or even share none of our biochemistry. But what would it be like to immerse oneself into the mindset of these alien creatures? Can we imagine being a water-breathing scientist who encounters the first humans in the ocean world of Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter? Long ago, as a youth, I had read such a story but cannot remember where. From what I recall, the story was written (mostly) in the point of view of an alien scientist living in an underwater world. My recollection is weak, alas. The story haunts me because this alien dissected some human visitors, considering the humans as specimens for scientific curiosity. I suspect that was the story’s point. To other beings, might we humans be to them like lab mice or bacterial specimens were to us?  Be aware that since the story was written, ethics and animal rights usually became a necessary requirement for research.

In my experimental writing, I riffed on something akin to that story. I tried to put myself in the mindset of a hypothetical plant-like creature which lived on Proxima Centauri b, a true-life potentially Earth-like planet in orbit around Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star, is Earth’s second-closest star at about 4.2 light years away. Need I say the Sun is Earth’s closest star? Currently our knowledge of the planet is limited. According to one artist the planet’s surface could be this:

An artist’s representation of the surface of Proxima Centauri b (as seen by a human!)
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser (https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1629a/)

In my imagination, the native inhabitant was similar to terrestrial mosses but with additional organic systems for optical sensing and had a brain plus nervous system equivalent. The point is how would the being narrate its world view to us human readers? This being would have no prior knowledge of Earth and its humans. In my case, I wrote in English but by restricting the words to mostly botanical terms. Sometimes, I employed some generic terms in addition to the botanical. And I experimented too with varying subject-verb-object ordering for its version of dialogue. All said, I can’t claim my method worked well enough for publication. Could a typical human understand and enjoy the work? As an aside, the story concept originated from combining two prompts: I have a pulse – and – root bound. These prompts led me to consider: What if a botanical creature could have a pulse?

You might ask, how do established and published writers write in the point of view of aliens? To me, it seems, they stick to settings closer to human than I attempted.

One example is Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest.

Unfortunately I hadn’t read this one, but would like to one day. Hence I’ll depend on the Wikipedia description. The story takes place on a fictional planet colonized by humans. Two of the main characters are human. The third however, is a native of the alien planet. Le Guin wrote part of the novel in the point of view of Selver, the native from the planet. From the plot synopsis I surmise Selver had already assimilated some human culture, hence he can narrate in terms for humans to follow. Wikipedia itself states, Le Guin wrote from an omniscient point of view for her Selver chapters. The novel explores themes of language, communication, dreaming, consciousness, colonialism and ecology, among others. For instance, for Selver, “forest” and “world” are synonyms. So too, is “dream” and “root”. Selver and the natives generally view humans as an insane people.

All in all, sounds like a great novel with effective world building, but for getting into an alien’s head, I’m not sure.  There is another example; Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, a novel I had read about a year prior to writing this post.

This story too is set on a fictitious exoplanet similar to Earth, one which humans populated with terrestrial animals long ago. In the story, a species of spiders had since evolved into having human-like intelligence, and initially being unaware of the prior existence of humans on Earth. However, initially unknown to the spiders, descendants of humans orbit the planet in a space station. The story also spans thousands of years, primarily for covering the evolution of the spiders, and featuring several spider characters. During the chapters about the spiders, Tchaikovsky writes in the third person point of view. After meeting the humans, the spiders refer to them as star creatures. There is an AI which has directed their evolution, which the spiders refer to as the Messenger. Being more intelligent variants of terrestrial spiders, the reader has sufficient context to understand the spider behavior. Generally the spiders think similarly to humans but due to their evolutionary origin have a more female dominant society. Over time, the relationships veer closer to equality.

Did Tchaikovsky cheat on his portrayal of the spiders? Were they too human in mindset? Look, I don’t blame him for this. Can anybody, by definition, sufficiently portray the alien? Furthermore, can such person do it in a manner for the rest of us to understand? Is this a stretch too far for writers?  I don’t believe so. If and until actual extraterrestrials are encountered, we can be imaginative, to immerse ourselves into very foreign worlds. Creative speculation about evolution under unusual conditions can guide us.

Finally, for a more philosophical examination, I will refer to an academic paper that has gained some fame, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” written by Thomas Nagel. A bit of a heavy read, I’ll attempt to summarize it as plainly as I can.  Philosophers have struggled with something called the Mind-Body problem, generally meaning whether they are separate or one controls the other. Confused? If one is sad, they cry. Does sadness occur because we cry? Or do we cry because we are sad? Aliens likely would evolve eyes or some equivalent. Such an organ would probably need to secrete liquid due to dust in the air. The current thinking is that evolution employed crying as a means to signal sadness. I’m simplifying. For some background on how emotions may have evolved check out Evolution of Emotion . Depending on how deep one may want to dive into this, this could inspire some thoughts for world building. Here is a link to Nagel’s paper in full.

Returning back to Nagel’s paper, he claims: An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something that it is like for the organism. Okay, re-read the statement and try to unpack it. I believe it means an organism needs something to experience in order to be conscious. Nagel argues we can’t figure out the subjective experience of another being, such as a bat. We could imagine hanging upside down; we could imagine eating insects, and even echolocation to navigate around obstacles. But, Nagel’s point is that the bat’s internal experience may not be the same as how we imagine it. We can even extrapolate this to ourselves. When you experience anything, I can only assume how you actually experienced it. Similarly, you can only presume how I experience anything. This said, many philosophers challenge Nagel’s assertion.

Alright, how does this relate to experiencing being ET? I would say set your creativity free. Imagine possibilities. Regarding your imagined setting, ask yourself questions. If Grog the blob from planet Splot encounters your protagonist, would the she-he-combo (perhaps the being reproduces asexually) sense your protagonist’s presence from tiny variations of the electromagnetic field? Our bodies do generate bioelectromagnetic fields, albeit extremely tiny. Would Grog go into a mental breakdown due to the strange signal, never encountered before? Or would Grog have no consciousness at all? Perhaps the signal triggers an olfactory hallucination? There are many possibilities.

Peter Spasov. Last updated Monday February 24, 2025

General

Why Science Fiction

Credit: https://pixabay.com/users/d5000-16677078/
Credit: https://pixabay.com/users/alexantropov86-2691829/
Credit: https://pixabay.com/users/alexantropov86-2691829/

What if nobody wrote science fiction? Imagine a world without it. Our only stories would be set in the world of our everyday experience or some fantasy world involving fairy-tale beings, supernatural beings, or superheroes.  Any of these stories can be profound and/or entertaining if written competently. And any could explore the human condition, offer lessons in the consequences of behavior or evoke a deep emotion.

Perhaps such storys have existed since the days of Lucy, the early australopithecine who lived about 3.2 million years ago? Maybe such stories are a key element of who we are as a thinking species. Alas, we have no records of what our far-distant ancestors might have spoken about while sitting around their campfires. We can reasonably infer that they must have.

And what about science fiction? Science fiction is a recent literary genre. Most people credit Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel. Shelley’s story is a cautionary tale: it raises profound questions about who should have the right to create living things, and what responsibility the creators should have to their creations and to society.

Arguably, hers had precedents. For instance, Lucian of Samosata, born around 125 AD, wrote about travelling to the Moon.

Science fiction established itself as a genre (relatively) recently, when science and technology became prominent part of human culture starting with the Industrial Revolution. Regarding the importance of science fiction, historian Yuval Noah Harari believes it has the power to shape public opinion. Yuval has authored bestsellers such as, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011),  Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018). In the latter, he wrote: Art plays a key role in shaping people’s view of the world, and in the twenty-first century ‘science fiction’ is arguably the most ‘important genre’ of all, for it shapes how most people understand things like ‘AI’, ‘bioengineering’ and ‘climate change’.

Let’s examine further why science fiction must be taken seriously. In my opinion, multiple-award winning author Robert J. Sawyer best captures the essence of science fiction (SF) as being the literature of intriguing juxtapositions, as well as its role for engaging readers with the burning issues of the present day.

In his blog What is Science Fiction?, he defined it as the mainstream literature of a plausible alternative reality . In his essay The Purpose of Science Fiction, he posited the genre as the literature of plausible change, to explore the implications of the plausible changes, with the italics being mine. For instance, how can humanity survive to beyond a billion years, by which time the Sun has already cooked the Earth to an uninhabitable state?

What’s valuable about this for societies is that science-fiction writers explore these issues in ways that working scientists simply can’t.

At the core of science fiction is the notion of extrapolation, of asking, “if this goes on, where will it lead?” Can we use the power of storytelling about the future as a toolkit to create experiences of the future? And can SF reflect the realities of one’s own culture? That said the SF writer’s job is not to predict the future. Rather, it’s to suggest all the possible futures–so that society can make informed decisions about where we want to go. In my opinion, SF should conjure the magic of awe. To me, this ability to evoke wonder is the key. Ideally, after reading, a reader should say out loud, “Wow!” For a deeper dive into SF and wonder, click the link in this sentence.

Peter Spasov. Last updated Monday February 24, 2025