Post by Xaa on Aug 13, 2006 22:50:03 GMT -5
As you my fans and readers are already aware, I often use nanotechnology in the science fiction stories I write. Nanotechnology has interested me for many years, and I've kept up with the developments in the field, particularly the work at Sandia Labs.
As you may not be aware, however, I'm a rather regular reader of "Shlock Mercenary", a sci-fi web-comic by Howard Tayler. It's funny, and (for the most part) scientifically accurate. There's a bit of handwavium here and there, as in most science-fiction, but on the whole Howard tries to stick with known science, or at least with extrapolations of current cutting-edge theories.
For example, the main interstellar transportation method is the "teraport", which literally creates countless microscopic wormholes, disassembles the ship and everything aboard, stuffs them into the wormholes, and they pop out the other end, automagically reassembled. It's based on real science theories of wormholes, and the notion that though it would be impossible to maintain a large wormhole for any length of time, microscopic wormholes could be created and maintained quite awhile.
Where the handwavium comes in is nobody knows how to create a wormhole in the first place. It would require what scientists call "strange matter" - non-baryonic particles that are outside the realm of current knowledge. Handwavium - they have advanced knowledge of particle physics that we don't. Next, how do all the wormholes get pointed in the same direction so that the "exit points" for all the matter both correspond precisely to the input points, and are all exactly where they want to go? Keep in mind that if you're being torn apart and reassembled at the atomic level, simple brownian motion could be fatal - you might be reassembled, yes. But as a gas. Handwavium - it works. And, of course, it would require scads of power. Absolutely insane amounts of power, in fact.
The power requirements don't require handwavium, however - in the "Shlockiverse" (as it's known to it's fans), power isn't a problem. They have perfected direct matter-to-energy conversion, and the "annie plants" (short for "Matter Annihilation Plants") are cheap, readily available, and can be made the size of a small moon, or small enough to power the sidearm in your holster. And, since matter-annihilation plants have been made small enough to power hand-weapons, we assume that they also have gotten around little tiny problems like the absolutely staggering amount of gamma rays that E=MC^2 actually releases in pure conversions like that, though it's never explained how - but what the hell, it's advanced technology, it works. Folks, if you can figure out how to both create neutronium and anihilate it for power in a matter-to-energy conversion, gamma rays are definitely not going to be a problem. Hell, you probably absorb them somehow and turn them into electrical power.
So, as you can see, there's very little handwavium involved in the science of Shlock Mercenary - once you say "well, they've perfected the annie plant and they obviously have a greater understanding of physics than we do today", the teraport falls within the realm of believability. Overall, "Shlock Mercenary" is a very well-written comic strip from a science-fiction point of view, and is very funny.
Ah, but now we come to the point of this post:
Recently (as in a couple months ago), Howard Tayler (the creator of Shlock Mercenary) came up with the idea of "Nanny-cams" - nanomachine cameras that could be used for covert observation, since they are nanomachine-sized. Nanomachine-sized being defined as dust-mite sized or smaller, I.E. below what you can see with the naked eye. His idea was that the nanny-cams would be networked together to produce an image, which would then be broadcast to a reciever for recording and/or playback.
Well, those of you who know physics may already be going "wait a minute..." I know I did, so I sent him an e-mail to explain why it wouldn't work. I'll spare you the details, but the short of it is that Howard basically replied that I was wrong, it'll work just fine, it'll be networked together like radio telescopes.
And no, I am NOT trying to encourage any of you to change his mind, so don't EVEN think of sending a barrage of e-mails to Howard regarding this. It's his story, he can damn well do what he wants. That is NOT the point of this post.
Anyway...
Well, the "nanny-cams" disappeared from Howard's strip right about the time his production buffer had dropped to nearly nothing, so I figured that maybe he'd realized I was right, and decided to write them out of the strip. Unfortunately, this sunday's strip shows that he didn't write them out, they had been put aside while he developed other storylines and tied things up a bit.
So, the nanny-cams are back. And, unfortunately, they still can't work. For those of you who don't understand *why* I think they can't work, I've put together a little explanation, which you can read, below:
So, there you have it. Eyes and Cameras built on a nano-scale resolve images on the nano-scale. And at the nano-scale, anything more than a few millimeters away is just a huge blur. If your eyes drop to around 700 to 400 nanometers in width, you can't really resolve any kind of image except light and dark - your eyes are the width of the frequency of visible light. Below that, you can't even resolve an image at all - your eyes would be too small to be affected by visible light. Networking the data together to form an image doesn't work - there's no useful data to reference, it's all a huge blur. Basically, once you get down to the scale of a dust mite, the best you can do visually is to do what dust-mites do, and tell light from dark. That's it.
So, what we have here is basically a difference of opinion. Howard says "nanny cams will work", and I say "no, they can't." I'm not going to convince him he's wrong, and certainly his replies haven't convinced me I'm wrong, so there we are, as the Valhallans say.
And again, NO, I do NOT want anyone here pestering him to try to get him to change his mind. Even if he suddenly agreed, well, it's too late, they already exist and are a part of the plot, it's a done deal.
No, the point of this post is that the whole "nanny-cam" discussion gave me pause to think about my own science-fiction, and the validity of the science within it.
I've given this a lot of thought, really. There are things in books I've written that today, I look back and say "oops, looks like that might not work." For example, the entire premise of "Ship's Cat" was zero-point energy. But, there are a lot of scientists who are pointing out that the original set of mathematical equations which shows huge amounts of energy available from the quantum vaccum may be flawed, as they rely on a "leap of faith" in the math. As a result, energy levels available from the quantum vacuum are likely not infinite, or even very large. It is entirely possible that the real amount of energy available from the quantum vaccuum is on the close order of 10^-9 joules per cubic meter.
Now, don't get me wrong - this is an absolutely staggering amount of energy when considering a space the size of the galaxy. The expansive force of this energy over a galactic scale just might resolve the issue of galactic spirals not conforming to standard Newtonian predictions of gravitational force determining their shape. And, if so, this would mean the entire "dark matter" notion that physicists and astronomers have been working with for decades will be tossed out the window.
But, when considering the scale human beings can actually work with, 10^-9 joules per cubic meter is literally nothing. You can get a trillion times more power just by setting up a solar-cell array.
So, I thought about it, and I realized that if it turns out the available energy from the quantum vaccuum actually is diddly, well, then we just assume that "The Ship's Cat" (and it's prequel, "Duty and Love") takes place in a universe where the energy from the quantum vaccuum is large. In other words, it's an alternate universe.
Really, all science-fiction takes place in an alternate universe - if nothing else, it takes place in the future, and the future (by definition) hasn't happened yet, it doesn't exist.
Trying to write science fiction that takes place in "our" universe is fraught with peril, because the moment you finish typing "the end", some scientist is going to discover something which will mean that your story couldn't have happened in the real world - or, even worse, if you set your science fiction to take place anytime within the next hundred years, or particularly within the next fifty years...
Well, history will just march along without even the slightest care that you already determined how it should go.
This happened to Gene Roddenberry. The "Space Seed" episode from TOS introduced Kahn Noonien Singh (masterfully portrayed twice by Ricardo Montalban), and explained about the 'Eugenics Wars' of the 1990's. Well, folks, it's 2006, the Eugenics Wars didn't happen. Yet, STNG, DS9, ENT and the Trek movie "Wrath of Kahn", the Eugenics Wars are presumed to have happened. Poof - Star Trek is an alternate universe. In specific, it's an alternate timeline where the Eugenics Wars happened - in our timeline, they didn't.
And I could go on - Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War" was written with what was, in his day, cutting edge science - the discovery of a tenth planet beyond Pluto that was named "Charon." Well, that name didn't happen - that particular Kuiper belt object that Haldeman was thinking of was given another name. "Charon" was assigned instead to Pluto's moon, once we discovered it had one. And more, history marched on - we're now well past the beginning of the "Forever War", and we should already have colonies all over our solar system. Poof - "Forever War" can't have taken place in our universe. Instead, it takes place in an alternate universe with a different history.
So, in the end, I came to a decision - I'll do my damnedest to stick to known science when I can for my "serious" sci-fi books, but any scientific discoveries that invalidate what I've written, I'll just write off as "well, in their universe, it works." From my perspective, pretty much all science fiction takes place in alternate universes, really, just like fantasy fiction does. What's more important is the fiction, not the science. The story has to come first.
As you may not be aware, however, I'm a rather regular reader of "Shlock Mercenary", a sci-fi web-comic by Howard Tayler. It's funny, and (for the most part) scientifically accurate. There's a bit of handwavium here and there, as in most science-fiction, but on the whole Howard tries to stick with known science, or at least with extrapolations of current cutting-edge theories.
For example, the main interstellar transportation method is the "teraport", which literally creates countless microscopic wormholes, disassembles the ship and everything aboard, stuffs them into the wormholes, and they pop out the other end, automagically reassembled. It's based on real science theories of wormholes, and the notion that though it would be impossible to maintain a large wormhole for any length of time, microscopic wormholes could be created and maintained quite awhile.
Where the handwavium comes in is nobody knows how to create a wormhole in the first place. It would require what scientists call "strange matter" - non-baryonic particles that are outside the realm of current knowledge. Handwavium - they have advanced knowledge of particle physics that we don't. Next, how do all the wormholes get pointed in the same direction so that the "exit points" for all the matter both correspond precisely to the input points, and are all exactly where they want to go? Keep in mind that if you're being torn apart and reassembled at the atomic level, simple brownian motion could be fatal - you might be reassembled, yes. But as a gas. Handwavium - it works. And, of course, it would require scads of power. Absolutely insane amounts of power, in fact.
The power requirements don't require handwavium, however - in the "Shlockiverse" (as it's known to it's fans), power isn't a problem. They have perfected direct matter-to-energy conversion, and the "annie plants" (short for "Matter Annihilation Plants") are cheap, readily available, and can be made the size of a small moon, or small enough to power the sidearm in your holster. And, since matter-annihilation plants have been made small enough to power hand-weapons, we assume that they also have gotten around little tiny problems like the absolutely staggering amount of gamma rays that E=MC^2 actually releases in pure conversions like that, though it's never explained how - but what the hell, it's advanced technology, it works. Folks, if you can figure out how to both create neutronium and anihilate it for power in a matter-to-energy conversion, gamma rays are definitely not going to be a problem. Hell, you probably absorb them somehow and turn them into electrical power.
So, as you can see, there's very little handwavium involved in the science of Shlock Mercenary - once you say "well, they've perfected the annie plant and they obviously have a greater understanding of physics than we do today", the teraport falls within the realm of believability. Overall, "Shlock Mercenary" is a very well-written comic strip from a science-fiction point of view, and is very funny.
Ah, but now we come to the point of this post:
Recently (as in a couple months ago), Howard Tayler (the creator of Shlock Mercenary) came up with the idea of "Nanny-cams" - nanomachine cameras that could be used for covert observation, since they are nanomachine-sized. Nanomachine-sized being defined as dust-mite sized or smaller, I.E. below what you can see with the naked eye. His idea was that the nanny-cams would be networked together to produce an image, which would then be broadcast to a reciever for recording and/or playback.
Well, those of you who know physics may already be going "wait a minute..." I know I did, so I sent him an e-mail to explain why it wouldn't work. I'll spare you the details, but the short of it is that Howard basically replied that I was wrong, it'll work just fine, it'll be networked together like radio telescopes.
And no, I am NOT trying to encourage any of you to change his mind, so don't EVEN think of sending a barrage of e-mails to Howard regarding this. It's his story, he can damn well do what he wants. That is NOT the point of this post.
Anyway...
Well, the "nanny-cams" disappeared from Howard's strip right about the time his production buffer had dropped to nearly nothing, so I figured that maybe he'd realized I was right, and decided to write them out of the strip. Unfortunately, this sunday's strip shows that he didn't write them out, they had been put aside while he developed other storylines and tied things up a bit.
So, the nanny-cams are back. And, unfortunately, they still can't work. For those of you who don't understand *why* I think they can't work, I've put together a little explanation, which you can read, below:
So, there you have it. Eyes and Cameras built on a nano-scale resolve images on the nano-scale. And at the nano-scale, anything more than a few millimeters away is just a huge blur. If your eyes drop to around 700 to 400 nanometers in width, you can't really resolve any kind of image except light and dark - your eyes are the width of the frequency of visible light. Below that, you can't even resolve an image at all - your eyes would be too small to be affected by visible light. Networking the data together to form an image doesn't work - there's no useful data to reference, it's all a huge blur. Basically, once you get down to the scale of a dust mite, the best you can do visually is to do what dust-mites do, and tell light from dark. That's it.
So, what we have here is basically a difference of opinion. Howard says "nanny cams will work", and I say "no, they can't." I'm not going to convince him he's wrong, and certainly his replies haven't convinced me I'm wrong, so there we are, as the Valhallans say.
And again, NO, I do NOT want anyone here pestering him to try to get him to change his mind. Even if he suddenly agreed, well, it's too late, they already exist and are a part of the plot, it's a done deal.
No, the point of this post is that the whole "nanny-cam" discussion gave me pause to think about my own science-fiction, and the validity of the science within it.
I've given this a lot of thought, really. There are things in books I've written that today, I look back and say "oops, looks like that might not work." For example, the entire premise of "Ship's Cat" was zero-point energy. But, there are a lot of scientists who are pointing out that the original set of mathematical equations which shows huge amounts of energy available from the quantum vaccum may be flawed, as they rely on a "leap of faith" in the math. As a result, energy levels available from the quantum vacuum are likely not infinite, or even very large. It is entirely possible that the real amount of energy available from the quantum vaccuum is on the close order of 10^-9 joules per cubic meter.
Now, don't get me wrong - this is an absolutely staggering amount of energy when considering a space the size of the galaxy. The expansive force of this energy over a galactic scale just might resolve the issue of galactic spirals not conforming to standard Newtonian predictions of gravitational force determining their shape. And, if so, this would mean the entire "dark matter" notion that physicists and astronomers have been working with for decades will be tossed out the window.
But, when considering the scale human beings can actually work with, 10^-9 joules per cubic meter is literally nothing. You can get a trillion times more power just by setting up a solar-cell array.
So, I thought about it, and I realized that if it turns out the available energy from the quantum vaccuum actually is diddly, well, then we just assume that "The Ship's Cat" (and it's prequel, "Duty and Love") takes place in a universe where the energy from the quantum vaccuum is large. In other words, it's an alternate universe.
Really, all science-fiction takes place in an alternate universe - if nothing else, it takes place in the future, and the future (by definition) hasn't happened yet, it doesn't exist.
Trying to write science fiction that takes place in "our" universe is fraught with peril, because the moment you finish typing "the end", some scientist is going to discover something which will mean that your story couldn't have happened in the real world - or, even worse, if you set your science fiction to take place anytime within the next hundred years, or particularly within the next fifty years...
Well, history will just march along without even the slightest care that you already determined how it should go.
This happened to Gene Roddenberry. The "Space Seed" episode from TOS introduced Kahn Noonien Singh (masterfully portrayed twice by Ricardo Montalban), and explained about the 'Eugenics Wars' of the 1990's. Well, folks, it's 2006, the Eugenics Wars didn't happen. Yet, STNG, DS9, ENT and the Trek movie "Wrath of Kahn", the Eugenics Wars are presumed to have happened. Poof - Star Trek is an alternate universe. In specific, it's an alternate timeline where the Eugenics Wars happened - in our timeline, they didn't.
And I could go on - Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War" was written with what was, in his day, cutting edge science - the discovery of a tenth planet beyond Pluto that was named "Charon." Well, that name didn't happen - that particular Kuiper belt object that Haldeman was thinking of was given another name. "Charon" was assigned instead to Pluto's moon, once we discovered it had one. And more, history marched on - we're now well past the beginning of the "Forever War", and we should already have colonies all over our solar system. Poof - "Forever War" can't have taken place in our universe. Instead, it takes place in an alternate universe with a different history.
So, in the end, I came to a decision - I'll do my damnedest to stick to known science when I can for my "serious" sci-fi books, but any scientific discoveries that invalidate what I've written, I'll just write off as "well, in their universe, it works." From my perspective, pretty much all science fiction takes place in alternate universes, really, just like fantasy fiction does. What's more important is the fiction, not the science. The story has to come first.
