What if explorers found life inside Jupiter, Saturn or Neptune? Or what if those gigantic exoplanets recently discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope turn out to host life?
“Impossible,” you may say.
“Not so fast,” another may say.
But not Life as We Know It
Conventional wisdom assumes life would most likely occur on an Earth-like planet. Such a planet must have temperatures similar to Earth’s and most importantly host liquid water. But would life have to be similar to Earth’s?
On a gas giant planet, such as Jupiter, there is no liquid water or soil. Sunlight would be too weak for the photosynthesis which dominates on our planet.
What did Steven Hawking and Carl Sagan, famous scientists, have to say about life existing within a gas giant? Spoiler alert: They didn’t reject the possibility.
But Why Haven’t We Detected Life on Jupiter?
Indeed, if creatures do exist in Jupiter, how would we see them inhabiting the depths of Jupiter’s atmosphere? Could we ultimately detect them in the far future, with advancements in space craft technology?
Yet, one of Sagan’s speculations involved whale like creatures inhabiting closer to the surface. Surely we might have seen them by now?
Maybe if the whales are over 1300 kilometers in diameter, we might see one if we’re lucky!
What about Carbon?
Life as we know it uses carbon as a key component. Is there a source of carbon in Jupiter?
There are traces of methane and ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere . Both of these molecules contain carbon.
Could Jupiter Sinker Creatures Exist?
Other than whale-like creatures, Sagan also mentioned sinkers could exist. Sinkers fall to their doom in the dense and hot lower atmosphere, but produce tiny offspring that would be pushed into the relative safety of the upper atmosphere by swirling currents.
However Sagan stated could. This doesn’t mean sinker type creatures do exist. Nevertheless, science fiction writers could employ sinker-type creatures in their stories about Jupiter. Right?
And there are other gas giants in our solar system. These are Saturn, Neptune and Uranus. Perhaps life could exist there for the similar reasons as for Jupiter?
What if We Never Find Gas-Planet Life in our Solar System?
In the future, assuming space exploration proceeds, we could explore all the planets of our solar system in depth. Only then, can we know whether life exists in any of the other solar-system planets—besides Earth.
And if we don’t find this life, this does not rule out the possibility of life in gas giants beyond our solar system. Consider planet PSR J2322−2650 b located about 750 light years from Earth. This planet has a mass of nearly 80% of Jupiter’s, but otherwise is a particularly weird planet.
Or life could exist on HD 209458 b, a planet some 157 light years away? Studies undertaken by using the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed the planet to be similar to Jupiter.
Remember these are speculations, albeit scientifically plausible. Until science finds evidence about such life being impossible, science fiction writers may employ such life in their stories.
Peter Spasov. Last updated Friday January 16, 2026
What if your robot, named R2-D2, raises human children after landing on an alien planet? Would you write the following?
R2-D2 raised her children. She raised them well, for which they thanked her.
R2-D2 raised his children. He raised them well, for which they thanked him.
R2-D2 raised its children. It raised them well, for which they thanked it.
R2-D2 raised ser children. Se raised them well, for which they thanked sem.
What’s up with the last example?
I made up the ser possessive pronoun, along with the subject and object versions.
If R2-D2 is a sentient entity akin to humans, might sentient robots deserve the dignity of having pronouns reserved for them? Should there be a pronoun valid for any sentient creature? This could be any self-aware being such as: demon, fairy, extraterrestrial, advanced robot, and us.
It could apply to hybrids such as a robot-human-octopus.
Let your mind reign free.
What is a Personal Pronoun?
Most people will refer to another person by her, him, or them.
Like other pronouns, personal pronouns are used in place of nouns to allow us to speak and write more concisely. Personal pronouns change form based on the grammar rules for them.
These are the rules and practice for regular writing. If you are writing speculative fiction, you may need to use pronouns for non-human characters, possibly some who are neither female nor male. Some speculative fiction has accomplished this in effective ways.
For instance, Becky Chamber’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built covers issues of personhood and gender identity. In speculative fiction, writers can tackle both; personhood and gender identity.
What is a Person?
I believe we can agree a raccoon is not a person. Similarly we would also agree a coffee mugis not a person. The raccoon, although living, is not a human. The coffee mug is an inanimate object.
But what if your story involves both a sentient raccoon and a coffee mug equipped with sensors and a highly sophisticated alternate intelligence? (Must electronic intelligence be artificial?)
In a speculative setting the situation muddies. The question is: What is personhood?
Aha, dear reader, we are delving into the philosophical issues of what defines a person.
Personhood includes the ability of a being to recognize huself (I invented a pronoun) as a distinct entity. The concept includes agency, meaning the ability to make choices and act upon them. This combination implies the being expresses hu’s (another invented pronoun) autonomy to pursue goals and shape what hu (oops, another invention) does.
Think of a fully autonomous vehicle exploring the ocean inside an ice-covered moon. Could such a vehicle be a person?
In a nutshell, a person is distinct and has agency. Then what about gender?
Genderless Pronouns
On Earth, much life is either female or male. Some, such as some flowers, include both. Some other languages have built-in rules for genderless pronouns. Could English speakers borrow Farsi’s u (او) for she or he?
Robots are generally entities built from electromechanical parts and electronics. Hence robots do not need gender, although you could endow one with gender. More on that later.
As for organic extraterrestrials, would one necessarily expect them to be female or male?
Must ETs have gender?
Could organic extraterrestrials have exotic genders of your own invention? Could your Oooga-oogalog reproduce using a five-some mating ritual? Sure, it’s your story. But would this be fantasy or science fiction? Could life have plausibly evolved elsewhere to employ such a means of reproduction?
Could you world-build the ecology where parasites didn’t evolve to exist? Would your extraterrestrial sapiens reasonably be androgynous? Would sexual asymmetry be necessary?
Evolutionary science has much to say on this topic. Although asexual reproduction is possible, two genders appear to be simplest means for random chance to have evolved the most optimal means of reproduction.
World-building Your ETs
You will need to consider the extent of your world-building skills such as considering these questions. Furthermore, consider these factors.
Perhaps you can invent a science-based possibility for life evolving in a non-Earth environment? This would require lots of effort. Plus you would have to orient your reader to a setting—without loads of info dumping. Are you up to this challenge?
Myself, I’ll stick to the more Earth-like scenarios.
Plausibly, advanced ETs would have recreated their own robotics or equivalent. Perhaps these ET robots have usurped their masters. Perhaps these robots created their own organic creatures employing a five-some mating ritual? One never knows. By taking evolution out of equation, Bob’s your uncle—or an ET equivalent you invent for the expression.
You could also invent genderless ETs, whereby robots combine with organics. Oops, someone already has.
How the Borg Reproduce?
The Borg doesn’t reproduce. Famously, they assimilate!
They are cybernetic organisms (cyborgs) linked in a hive mind called “The Collective”. The Borg co-opted the technology and knowledge of other alien species to the Collective through the process of “assimilation”: forcibly transforming individual beings into “drones” by injecting nanoprobes (see my post on nanites) into their bodies and surgically augmenting them with cybernetic components.
After assimilation, a drone’s race and gender become “irrelevant”.
Gender identity for The Borg is more nuanced than simply irrelevant. The Star Trek Borgs later included a Borg Queen, among other developments. Nevertheless, I’ll return back to robots.
Should one endow a robot with gender?
What if you create a robotic spouse, akin to the Pygmalion legend? In this case, create your robot to include gender features, and voila, love could be in the air.
Gendering robotic bodies can be important in some stories, even robots inherently need no genders. The reader can judge for herself or himself whether these stories are effective.
Bear in mind, to make these possibilities plausible, your alien race should have achieved technological intelligence prior. Then your aliens could have self-engineered themselves to employ some of the exotic possibilities described in the link.
However, their rationale for doing this remains up to you.
Peter Spasov. Last updated Monday December 15, 2025
Imagine living in a space station and standing on a tennis court. Your feet remain firmly planted on the ground due to gravity. The court curves slightly upward on the left and right instead of being flat. It’s your serve and you strike the ball, visualizing its trajectory. May your ball land in the service box; otherwise you’ve committed a fault. The ball flies from your racket yet veers from the direction of your strike. What happened?
Welcome to the world of centrifugal gravity.
Becoming a Space Faring Civilization
In the future, humans may venture beyond planet Earth. Several reasons could drive us to do this. Reasons range from an expanding population requiring additional resources to escaping repression on Earth. Otherwise, why leave a ‘paradise’ home to which we had evolved to thrive within? This assumes we won’t ultimately destroy our paradise to become inhabitable. An unfortunate consequence of our technological capabilities is that we could make our world uninhabitable.
Existential risks abound. And let us hope none of these happen. We’d rather not destroy our Earth or society. Otherwise, we couldn’t enjoy playing sports such as tennis.
If a risk became reality, we would be forced to settle elsewhere. Alas, outer space is a deadly environment where we could not live without significant technological assistance. Other planets are also unsuitable for multitudes of reasons. Mars is the closest to being Earth-like—that we know of. Even there, we would need to build pressurized shelters with advanced life support systems. The costs to build a suitable infrastructure are extremely high, especially when considering the costs to deliver materials from Earth.
Alternatively, we could try a ‘live off the land’ approach as proposed by the Mars Society (Or also known as In Situ Resource Utilization.) Essentially, settlers could use local Martian resources and if required, one could mine additional resources from ‘nearby’ asteroids and our moon, where escaping Earth’s gravity wouldn’t be a factor.
Can we do this? Eventually yes but certainly not now. It could take a century or centuries to build up the outer-space mining and manufacturing capability. Opinions vary, ranging from optimism by the Mars Society and the NSS to the less optimistic. For a sobering viewpoint, check out “A City on Mars.”
The Challenge of Non-Earth-Like Gravity
A big unknown for Mars settlement is to live in a lower gravity of one third of Earth’s. Experience with astronauts has shown that zero gravity can cause bone loss among other effects. And we do not yet know the impact of non Earth-like gravity. In particular, we do not know whether human procreation in partial or heavier gravity is possible. And without procreation, what future is there for tennis?
One prudent approach is to settle where gravity is similar to Earth’s. But few other planetary alternatives potentially exist. Being light years away, we do not know yet if other factors may rule out these alternatives. Besides, all of them have gravity differing considerably from Earth’s.
Why Would We Live in a Space Station?
If one rules out planetary possibilities, this leaves us with artificial possibilities. Since the early 20th century, some theorists have suggested space stations. The type we will focus on here is the O’Neill cylinder,
Welcome to the O’Neill Cylinder
This animation will give you an idea of the interior of an O-Neill cylinder. Certainly looks like one can build a tennis court in it.
A pair of O’Neill cylinder consists of two counter-rotating cylinders. The cylinders would rotate in opposite directions. Without the counter rotation, it would be difficult to obtain the sunlight required for power. And without power we cannot sustain a tennis-playing culture. For now, we’ll ignore alternative power sources, such as nuclear reactors. Besides, we need a sufficiently large population of people for sustaining a long-term society.
Generally each cylinder would be 6.4 kilometers (4 mi) or 8.0 kilometers (5 mi) in diameter and 32 kilometers (20 mi) long, connected at each end by a rod via a bearing system. Their rotation would provide artificial gravity.
Among other things, the large dimensions are necessary for reasonable gravity generation. To understand how gravity is generated, we’ll need to consider some physics. Sorry about that.
Remember Newton? He told us that force causes mass to accelerate. More precisely, the amount of force on an object equals an object’s mass multiplied by its acceleration. Acceleration is not just speeding up or slowing down. An acceleration can also be a change in the direction of motion.
About Space Station Rotation
Guess what? Rotation is a change in direction. This means rotation is also acceleration. It turns out that acceleration causes one to experience a fictitious force, where the term fictitious force is a physics term referring to a force resulting from acceleration, instead of a force which causes acceleration.
If you’ve ridden a Graviton at a carnival, you’ve certainly felt pushed against the inside wall of the ride. Nothing fictitious about that feeling! That force is centrifugal force. Similarly when an O’Neill cylinder spins, a centrifugal force pushes you against its inner wall. The force feels like and sort-of acts like gravity pulling you to the ground.
The strength of centrifugal force increases with the radial distance from the axis of spin and with the square of angular velocity. You probably know from experience that spinning at high speeds can make you throw up. So how fast can people spin comfortably? (See answer #13)
According to some research, a revolving speed of one revolution per minute (RPM) can be sustained comfortably. This means that in order to achieve a force sufficient for Earth-like gravity, one needs a larger radial distance. Hence the size of the station must increase, for example a cylinder diameter of 6.4 km.
Although living in an O’Neill cyclinder would be like living in gravity, there are some differences.
The Weird World of Spinning
When you walk on the Earth, you don’t notice a force pushing you sideways. It exists though, but it is too small to notice. Whenever something moves on a rotating surface the object experiences a coriolis force. Because the Earth rotates, this force affects ocean currents and cyclones. The preceding link shows the coriolis force as acting sideways when one is standing on a spinning disk. When standing on the inner surface the coriolis force direction will depend on spin direction and on which direction the object moves within the cylinder.
This means a sufficiently fast tennis ball will experience a coriolis force, unless the ball moves parallel to the spin axis. As the ball’s angle of direction (away from parallel) increases, the coriolis force increases for any given ball speed. When the ball moves perpendicular to the spin axis, it will experience the maximum possible coriolis force for any given ball speed.
If the velocity is parallel to the rotation axis, the Coriolis force is zero. For example, on Earth, this situation occurs for a body at the equator moving north or south relative to the Earth’s surface. Within an O’Neill cylinder, the spin axis runs along the centre of the cylinder. If one places the tennis court to run along the side, to make longer sides parallel to the spin axis, the coriolis force becomes zero if the ball travels purely parallel along the side of the cylinder. Making the ball fly at an angle however causes a non-zero coriolis force.
Simulation
Here is a simulation of a ball sent flying from within a spinning cylinder. Left click to shoot the ball. Press escape to stop the simulation. To shift the position of start location use one of W, S,A or D keys. Try to shoot the ball. Notice how the ball deflects.
You can also use the Tom Lechner simulation to see some of the effects of throwing a ball along the wall. A tennis court should be meshed in completely during play. Otherwise some balls may escape to inward within the cylinder, or otherwise bounce within the cylinder.
For a more detailed look at coriolis force, including direction, refer to a UBC physics note which also describes the right hand rule. In summary, use your right-hand thumb to point along the axis of rotation. By physics convention, the positive rotation axis would be spinning counter clockwise. The index finger points in the direction of the object (ball in this case) velocity. The middle finger would point in the direction opposite of the coriolis force (due to a negative sign in the mathematical derivation).
For a spinning cylinder spinning counter clockwise, hitting the ball towards the end results in a coriolis force pointing left, resulting in a leftwards deflection.
Would the Coriolis Force be Noticeable?
When we walk on Earth, we don’t notice the coriolis force due to our slow speed relative to the large size and spin rate of the Earth. Would the effects be noticeable while playing tennis in a ‘typical’ O’Neill space station?
I did a crude calculation to ascertain this. I used a cylinder spinning at 0.6 revolutions per minute and with a diameter of 6 kilometers. I considered a player hitting the ball from corner to corner in a standard doubles court. Furthermore this person sent the ball flying at 225 kilometers per hour.
The resulting acceleration from the coriolis force would be about 0.14 g (g being acceleration due to gravity on Earth). After one second the ball would have diverted from a straight line of travel by about 70 centimeters. This would be noticeable.
I imagine a player would also notice the force pushing sidewise upon them while running about on the court, but I haven’t done any calculations in order to assess this.
Peter Spasov. Last updated Saturday October 04, 2025
Philosopher’s stone as pictured in Atalanta Fugiens Emblem 21
Oldest golden artifacts in the world (4600–4200 BC) from Varna necropolis, Bulgaria — grave offerings on exposition in Varna Museum.
The Ultimate Transmutation Machine
For centuries, people have valued gold. The oldest gold artifacts date back to the 5th millennium BC. People have long sought the magic of making this precious element.
What if one could convert lead into gold? The short answer is yes. Alas, the answer comes with a lot of gotchas. A second question follows: Would one want to?
More universally, what if one could transform any element into another element? Imagine turning nitrogen into platinum. Could future people make an ultimate transmutation machine? Would it be desirable? Let’s find out.
The Lure of the Philosopher’s Stone
Early chemists, also known as alchemists, tried to turn cheaper metals into gold, a process known as Chrysopoeia. These chemists were in search of ‘the philosopher’s stone,’ a magic substance for the purpose of converting something else into gold. Surprise, they never found it.
However, recent scientists have managed to make gold, but by spending much more than gold is worth. But, could a future society produce gold economically? And if it did so, what would this do to the value of gold?
Before answering these questions, we should consider how gold ended up in our universe in the first place.
Back to Basics, the Elements
Elements compose all matter in universe. They range from the hydrogen atoms produced shortly after the big bang, all the way to the most complex moleculeever made (so far). All molecules are made from the elements, and the elements are hydrogen (the lightest), helium, lithium, and so on … all the way up to oganesson, which is so far the heaviest element.
What? You’ve never heard of oganessson? Now you have.
Remember the periodic table? Of course you do. Reminds you of school, I bet.
In short, all elements are made from the stars. Remember the line from the Woodstock song, We are Stardust? Joni knew where we all came from. Hear the song here.
If nature already produces gold, why bother making it? Good question. If the universe has gold, space venturists could go out there and mine it. Right?
Billions of years later, gold from the stars ended up as deposits on Earth. For instance, an ancient asteroid (or asteroids) may have seeded the Witwatersrand basin in South Africa to become the richest gold deposits on Earth. For more refer to the Origin section on Wikipedia’s page about gold.
Perhaps one might find more gold deeper into the Earth’s interior. An enterprising futurist could drill deep into the Earth’s mantle to extract it. Or look for gold-bearing asteroids. In a space epic, the hero could visit the remains of merging neutron stars. Somewhere in that neighborhood, one might find gold-bearing asteroids. Perhaps.
Given the daunting task of making a go at interstellar mining, let’s consider the gold fabrication option.
Making Gold from other Atoms
So far, two laboratories have produced non-radioactive gold. Seaborg’s laboratory blasted the bismuth inside a particle accelerator. It did so by using carbon and neon nuclei to remove protons and neutrons from bismuth atoms.
A bismuth atom has 83 protons and the bismuth-209 isotope has 126 neutrons. The nucleus of the common stable gold-197 isotope has 79 protons and 118 neutrons.
CERN, the largest particle accelerator facility in the world, produced gold from lead. In an ALICE experiment, near-miss collisions between high-energy lead nuclei produced small amounts of gold nuclei.
Both of these methods utlized high energies and expensive facilities, and both only produced only miniscule amounts at very high expense. So, how is a sci-fi writer going to world-build an economic method of making gold?
A Universal Machine
One could conceive of a universal element maker, banging protons and neutrons together to form any element, including gold. The machine would also need to supply electrons for each atom in order to match the number of protons. But wait, there’s another possibility.
Use neutron capture followed by beta decay. In neutron capture, the electrically-neutral neutrons collide and bind with an atom’s nucleus to make the atom heavier. Eventually beta decay occurs, during which the atom emits beta radiation – and – a neutron transforms into a proton by switching a ‘down’ quark into an ‘up’ quark. Quarks are the basic constituents of matter, forming sub-atomic entities such as protons and neutrons.
Perhaps some exotic new technology would manipulate quarks more directly? I’ll let a physics guru answer. If this were possible, a machine could transform a neutron into a proton, or vice versa, by switching the appropriate quark.
Perhaps this machine would use photons to ‘manipulate’ the subject quark, such as by using gamma rays. It is hard to manipulate something smaller than an atom by using a component made of atoms. That would be harder than fixing a precision watch while wearing heavy gloves. Regardless, if some future means is found, the process will be highly energy intensive.
In theory, this all sounds good. Alas, any process would be highly radioactive and energy costly. Will any culture be capable of economically running such processes? Enter the highly-advanced civilization. Specifically, meet the Kardashev super civilization.
A Kardashev Super Civilization?
The Kardashev classification system labels civilizations in terms of how much energy a society utilizes. Within a few centuries, humanity might achieve a Type I level, whereby a societ harnesses all available energy on the home planet. But to achieve economic transmutation of elements, the civilization may need to achieve Type II at minimum. At Type II, the society utilizes the entire energy of its host star. In our case, use our Sun.
For Type III, the civilization utilizes the entire galaxy. Mind boggling.
Assuming such civilizations could exist, a future society may produce gold by utilizing the virtually-unlimited energy at its disposal. However, what would happen to the value of gold? It appears the real value for advanced civilizations should be based on energy, not gold.
Let’s look at why gold is valuable now, and why it might not be valuable in a future society.
The Future Value of Gold
Generally, gold is valuable because it is sufficiently rare while also being durable, beautiful and easily recognizable. Hence society has used gold as a basis for currency although changes have occurred.
Rareness is important for making something valuable. When was the last time you spent a fortune to purchase pepper to go along with your salt? If you have the resources to read this website, you probably don’t spend a lot of money on pepper. However, there was a time when pepper cost a fortune. Long ago, due to the difficulty of pepper cultivation plus its high demand, pepper had been a basis for currency.
How should currency be set? This is a loaded question leading to debate. Seeing how energy defines the advancement level for future civilizations, should there be an energy-based currency? As valued commodity, will gold become passé?
Afterword
King Midas suffered because turning everything into gold made it worse than worthless, making this material literally toxic. Consider the lesson.
Olympus Mons photo taken at unknown altitude above Mars. Mountain width of about 624 km, the size of Arizona or France. Image source Wikipedia
Mount 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?
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 Cruise
50
km/hr
Range
150
km
Bike+trailer+battery
75
kg
Mass loaded w rider
295
kg
And its battery. A rider would need to swap or recharge batteries as required.
Battery
72
V
75
Ah
Energy
5200
Whr
Mass
15
kg
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 water
4
L or kg
Astronaut daily food
1
kg
Design expedition length
5
days
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.
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.
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
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.
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
