Author: Alessandra

EP. 6: I LOVE HOW FRANK HERBERT BEGINS EACH CHAPTER OF “DUNE”. HERE’S WHY.

On By AlessandraIn Books, Reading, Writing

Frank Herbert’s Dune is another famous novel where some backstory is relayed at each chapter’s heading.

The novel’s first installment is much more extended than the whole Foundation trilogy, so Herbert had more “narrative space” than Asimov to introduce subtle details. 

Each chapter begins with a fictional quote, e.g.: 

“[…] And take the most special care that you locate Muad’Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. […] Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.” 

(Chapter 1 Heading, from Princess Irulan’s The Manual of Muad’Dib)

The story’s primary location is the arid planet Arrakis, a.k.a. Dune. To paraphrase the ancient Romans: “nomen omen,” the destiny is in the name. In other words, one can already guess that the planet’s environment will be as crucial to the plot as the human characters.

“YUEH […], Wellington […], Stdrd 10,082 — 10,191; medical doctor of the Suk School […]”. 

(Chapter 5 Heading, from Princess Irulan’s Dictionary of Muad’Dib)

Writing about Galactic empires, one must pay attention to the word ‘years.’ The length of the year on Earth (365 days) is not the same as, for example, on Mars (1.88 Earth-years) or Venus (224.7 Earth-days). Dune’s universe extends over numerous worlds, each with its revolution period around the parent star. Thus, to credibly define Dr. Yueh’s age, Herbert had to use an Stdrd (i.e., standard).

“[…] With the Lady Jessica and Arrakis, the Bene Gesserit system of sowing implant-legends through the Missionaria Protectiva came to its full fruition. The wisdom of seeding the known universe with a prophecy pattern for the protection of the B.G. personnel has long been appreciated, but never have we seen a condition-ut-extremis with more ideal mating of person and preparation. […]. ” 

(Chapter 7 Heading, from Princess Irulan’s Analysis: The Arrakeen Crisis)

The Bene Gesserit order is probably what inspired George Lucas when he invented the Jedi order of Star Wars. Like the Jedi Masters, the Bene Gesserit use powerful mental techniques, developed through years of hard training, to engineer Galactic politics according to their plan. For example, one of their purposes is to select the mythical figure known as Kwisatz Haderach genetically. A similar plot device occurs in The Phantom Menace, the first episode of the Star Wars saga. The main storyline has the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi Wan-Kenobi chance upon a boy who might be the “Chosen One.” This is another name for a Galactic Messiah.

“[…] On the first day when Muad’Dib rode through the streets of Arrakeen with his family, some of the people along the way recalled the legends and the prophecy and they ventured to shout: ‘Mahdi!’. But their shout was more a question than a statement, for as yet they could only hope he was the one foretold as the Lisan al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World. […]”

(Chapter 13 Heading, from Princess Irulan’s The Manual of Muad’Dib)

The author’s intent is once again to convey the significance of Muad’Dib’s character. The people of Arrakis call him ‘Mahdi,’ a strongly messianic title. Indeed, ‘Mahdi’ isn’t a fantasy name but belongs to a religious figure of Islam. According to some Muslim traditions, the Mahdi will show up to deliver the world from evil and injustice in the Last Days. Throughout history, various individuals have claimed to be or were proclaimed to be the Mahdi. Among them, Muhammad Ahmad, the religious leader who established the Mahdist State in Sudan in the late 19th century and obtained a famous victory over the British in the siege of Khartoum.

EP. 5: ARE ROGUE WORLDS THE ULTIMATE ABODE FOR LIFE?

On By AlessandraIn Extrasolar Planets, S.E.T.I.1 Comment

The search for extraterrestrial life has captivated humanity for centuries. Countless questions arise in our quest to discover if we are alone in the vast universe. The Drake Equation, a mathematical formula introduced by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961, attempts to estimate the number of civilizations within our Milky Way Galaxy. However, recent scientific discoveries have unveiled a new intriguing possibility – rogue worlds. These wandering bodies, expelled from their original solar systems, may hold the potential for harboring life. In this blog post, we will explore the fascinating intersection of the Drake Equation and the enigmatic realm of rogue worlds, exploring the tantalizing notion of life beyond our home planet.

The original form of the equation is the following:

N = R* f(p) n(e) f(i) f(l) f (c) L

• N is the number of civilizations trying to communicate with us right now;

• R* is the rate of star formation in stars per year;

• f(p) is the fraction of those stars which have planetary systems;

• n(e) is the number of Goldilocks (i.e., Earth-type) planets in a planetary system);

• f(l) is the fraction of habitable planets that are inhabited;

• f(i) is the fraction of inhabited planets that possess intelligent technological civilizations;

• f (c) is the fraction of intelligent technological civilizations that choose to emit detectable signals;

• L is the length of time signals will be sent.

The first three factors are astronomical, the fourth and fifth are biological, and the last two factors are social. There are several issues with the equation. Among these:

(1) The uncertainties are large enough for the astronomical factors and increase as one progresses from the astronomical to the biological to the social.

(2) Most factors depend on theoretical insights of star and planet formation, new discoveries about exoplanets, and varying subjective opinions on the evolution of life and intelligence. The presumed longevity of civilization must also be taken into account.

(3) The equation has many hidden assumptions: a uniform star formation rate (SFR) over the Galaxy’s lifetime and a steady state of civilization birth and death. 

(4) No matter what value one chooses for R*, the assumption is always that a habitable planet must have a star. However, rogue worlds (bodies that have been thrown out of their own nascent solar system) wander around the Galaxy unattached to a star.

This last item has recently awakened great interest in the scientific community.

Theoretical calculations (Imagined Life, by James S. Trefil and Michael Summers, 2019) suggest that:

“[…] the number of rogues might be between twice and thousands of times the number of conventional planets. Interstellar space must be littered with them!”

Also, rogue planets need not be uninteresting ice balls with no life and energy. Lacking direct radiation from a star, a world can be heated by the residual power from its formation and the radioactive decay of elements in its interior. If provided with one or more moons, the planet can draw energy from a process known as tidal heating (which is responsible for the subsurface oceans on some of Jupiter and Saturn’s moons).

All in all, rogue planets can be compared to (Imagined Life by James S. Trefil and Michael Summers, 2019):

“[…] houses whose lights have been turned off but whose furnaces are still operating.”

Interestingly, rogue planets had been predicted as early as the 1930s by American horror and S.F. author Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

In his short story: The Haunter of the Dark, he wrote:

“[…] remember Yuggoth, and more distant Shaggai, and the ultimate void of the black planets… […].”

When the planet Pluto had just been discovered by Clyde Tombaugh (1906-97) at Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff, Arizona), he wrote another short story: The Whisperer in Darkness.

Here are a few quotes: 

“[…] Their main immediate abode is a still undiscovered and almost lightless planet at the very edge of our solar system – beyond Neptune and the ninth in distance from the [S]un. It is, as we have inferred, the object mystically hinted at as ‘Yuggoth’ in certain ancient and forbidden writings; […] I would not be surprised if astronomers become sufficiently sensitive to these thought-currents to discover Yuggoth when the Outer Ones wish them to do so. But Yuggoth, of course, is only the stepping-stone. The main body of the beings inhabits strangely organised abysses wholly beyond the utmost reach of any human imagination.”

And also:

“[…] Those wild hills are surely the outpost of a frightful cosmic race – as I doubt all the less since reading that a new ninth planet has been glimpsed beyond Neptune, just as those influences had said it would be glimpsed. Astronomers, with a hideous appropriateness they little suspect, have named this thing ‘Pluto.’ I feel, beyond question, that it is nothing less than nighted Yuggoth […].”

What would life be like on a rogue planet?

According to Imagined Life, by J.S. Trefil and M. Summers:

“It’s dark. Not midnight-on-a-side-street dark, but trapped-in-a-cave dark. And no wonder—there’s no sun in the sky, for this is a rogue world, one that circles no star. There is a moon up there somewhere, but without a source of light for it to reflect, it’s just a darker patch in the sky. Whatever life forms live on this planet had better be able to see in infrared because there’s simply no other light to be had. You’re wearing infrared sensors, fortunately, and you spot a few of these creatures scurrying back to the planet’s subterranean tunnels, where they can bask in the heat emanating from the planet’s interior. […]”

Life on a dark planet has been described by British author Arthur C. Clarke in his 1950 short story: A Walk in the Dark:

“[…] Here at the edge of the Galaxy, the stars were so few and scattered that their light was negligible. […]” 

“[…] Here at this outpost of the Universe, the sky held perhaps a hundred faintly gleaming points of light, as useless as the five ridiculous moons on which no one had ever bothered to land. […]” 

“[…] No one could deny that the tunnels out in the wasteland were rather puzzling, but everyone believed them to be volcanic vents. Though, of course, life often crept into such places. With a shudder, he remembered the giant polyps that had snared the first explorers of Vargon III […]

The Drake Equation is not meant to give a precise answer but to stimulate scientific discussion and exploration. It is based on several factors that affect the likelihood of finding intelligent life, such as the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars with planets, the fraction of planets suitable for life, and the fraction of civilizations that develop radio technology. Each factor is multiplied by the previous one, resulting in the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy. However, many of these factors are uncertain, and different assumptions can lead to different outcomes. For example, some estimates suggest that there could be millions of civilizations in our Galaxy, while others suggest that we might be the only one.

According to a recent study, under the strictest set of assumptions, where life forms between 4.5 billion and 5.5 billion years after star formation, there are likely between four and 211 civilizations in the Milky Way today capable of communicating with others, with 36 the most likely figure. Another study yielded two main results: an optimistic one and a pessimistic one. In the optimistic situation, the researchers suggested the aforementioned 42,777 communicating extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations (CETIs) with an error margin of plus 267 and minus 369, and they would need to survive 2,000 years on average to communicate with us.

The Drake Equation is a fascinating way to explore the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and communication. It helps us understand what we know and don’t know about our place in the universe. It also inspires us to keep searching for signs of other civilizations and to wonder what they might be like.

Read more about this topic in this post and this other post.

EP. 4: HOW TO MEASURE YOUR CAT’S INTELLIGENCE

On By AlessandraIn Cats, Wolfram "Morsy" Chettoh1 Comment

Cat’s intelligence has long fascinated pet owners and researchers alike. The latest scientific findings shed light on various aspects of feline cleverness, allowing us to appreciate their unique abilities. Measuring the intelligence of cats involves assessing their cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills. One standard marker of cat intelligence is their ability to adapt to new environments and learn from experiences.

I had my cat Chettoh take a challenging test to assess his IQ (which I suspect must be way above the feline average). I found this test in Calla H. Knopman’s book Measure Your Cat’s IQ, which I mentioned in a previous post.

The Cats as Analytical Beings Test comprises four stages, each harder than the previous one. Depending on a given step’s outcome, a devilish genius like my Chettoh can either improve his entry score (5 points) or subtract from it.

Stage 1: Sensorimotor test, a.k.a. ‘out of sight, out of mind test.’

The aim is to test the cat’s ability to understand object permanence.

According to the book, one must:

“[…] Show the kitty a toy and keep their attention by playing with it. Then hide the toy behind your back or someplace out of sight and see if your cat finds it. Kittens and young children would have no idea what happened to their toys. [However], most adult cats immediately go behind your back to retrieve the toy, wondering what is wrong with you. […]”

Unfortunately, Chettoh doesn’t like to play. One might argue that a fourteen-year-old cat is an elderly cat: of course, he doesn’t want to play. I doubt that’s the problem, though. Chettoh never loved cat toys, not even when I first brought him home on April 24th, 2009, in a shoebox with a punched lid.

Soon, I realized that eating, sleeping, licking his fur, and using the litter took up 98% of his time. Sometimes, he enjoyed a bit of hand-to-hand fight (literally) with his human mom. If I only tried to stroke him, he would become a biting and scratching little panther. This attitude soon earned him a second nickname: Morsy, Italian slang for ‘someone who bites.’

So, I can’t use a toy to assess Chettoh’s sensorimotor prowess. Still, I have another story that serves as a perfect example of his uncommonly analytical mind.

Like many cats, Chettoh occasionally suffers from hairballs. This happens mainly during the shedding season. And the consequences are rather unpleasant: he often barfs, usually in the house’s most hidden and hard-to-reach corners. Trying to solve the problem, I went to a pet shop and bought a medication tube. According to the instructions, the yellowish jam had to be spread over the cat’s food. Only a few small doses would suffice to eliminate the worst hairball symptoms.

Well, it didn’t work. Chettoh became pickier than usual with his food. He refused to eat whenever he smelled the tiniest amount of yellow jam. Out of ideas, I resorted to reading the small printing on the patient information leaflet. “In case of difficult cats,” it said, “the product should be smeared on the animal’s paws.”

At first, this second attempt was a roaring success. But, as often happens, it was too good to be true. Sure, Chettoh gulped all his food, carefully licking every last scrap of medication from his front paws. Also, he stopped throwing up.

However, he soon developed an unquenchable craving for the yellow jam. He began refusing even his favorite food (fish and chicken cakes). All he cared for was a generous amount of that devilish drug on his paws. 

I tried to wean him out of that medicine by gradually reducing the amount I put on his paws and hiding the green tube.

Unfortunately, Chettoh knew the kitchen cabinet where I kept it and waited long hours in front of it, looking sad.

Finally, after long, frustrating weeks, I succeeded.

So, I know the answer to the sensorimotor test. My cat can understand object permanence.

EP. 3: CATS INTELLIGENCE: INTRODUCING WOLFRAM “WOLFIE” CHETTOH

On By AlessandraIn Cats, Wolfram "Morsy" Chettoh

Wolfie Cheetoh is my favorite – and only – cat. He’s an eleven-year-old male. I love him as a son, even though he often bites and scratches me, barfs on my bed, and clawed my sofas to shreds.

In short, a typical cat.

So, why am I blogging about him?

Because I just found out how brilliant he may be. Much more than your average kitty. I just read Calla H. Knopman’s Measure Your Cat’s IQ: Tales from the Devilish Genius to the Feeble-Minded Fuzz Ball. This book is chock full of ideas to estimate your cat’s IQ.

For example, you should notice how he reacts when you feed him. 

Suppose the cat doesn’t eat his food but only stares at it, especially when it’s a vegetarian, biological, green variety. In this case, you’re likely dealing with a “devilish genius.”

More testing is necessary to confirm whether Wolfram “Wolfie” Cheetoh is a real Einstein cat, but he already had a terrific start.

Further assessments of Chetto’s IQ level can be found in Ep.4, Ep.7, and Ep.10 of this blog.

EP. 2: IS THE UNIVERSE AN AWFUL WASTE OF SPACE?

On By AlessandraIn Extrasolar Planets, S.E.T.I.

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” 

This quote is attributed to Carl Sagan from his novel Contact (1985). It is often interpreted as reflecting Sagan’s optimism and belief in the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He strongly advocated for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and believed that the discovery of intelligent life beyond Earth would have profound implications for humanity.

In other words, Sagan suggested that if the Universe is so vast and we are the only intelligent life in it, it would be a shame to waste all that space on just one civilization.

A recent estimate (Conselice C.J. et al. 2016) says the observable Universe contains two trillion – or two million million – galaxies. Of course, this is a huge number, which math buffs can probably better appreciate if I translate it into scientific notation:

two trillion = two million million = one thousand billion = 2 x 1012

Even if we neglect 99.9999% of the Universe and consider only the Milky Way, we are left with a staggering number of about 100 to 400 billion stars.

Of course, these hundreds of billion stars vastly differ in age, mass, and chemical composition.

According to the stellar luminosity function:

A small percentage of stars are massive, young, and very bright (the so-called O, B, and A spectral types, with colors ranging from ultraviolet/white to blue);

A relatively large number of stars are medium-sized (the F and G spectral types, yellow to orange in color). Our “dull” Sun is one of them;

The majority of stars are small, old, low-mass stars (the K, M spectral types, a.k.a. red dwarfs);

Many stars are brown dwarfs (dark, spherical lumps of stellar material that never reached the star stage).

In the last few decades, roughly from the early nineties, it has become known that most, if not all, stars possess planets. Our Sun has eight major ones (excluding the KBOs or Kuiper Belt Objects). The former planet Pluto, now demoted to “dwarf planet,” is one).

Just like stars, planets also show a vast range of types.

I found a helpful classification in Imagined Life: A Speculative Scientific Journey among the Exoplanets in Search of Intelligent Aliens, Ice Creatures, and Supergravity Animals by James S. Trefil and Michael Summers. We can envisage the following kinds of exoplanetary environments as the most promising for alien hunters:

(1) Goldilocks Planets: planets like Earth, located at a distance from their star that allows them to have oceans of liquid water on their surface for extended periods;

(2) Subsurface Ocean Worlds: planets on which oceans of liquid water are bounded below by solid rock and above by ice. Examples in our solar system: the planet Pluto and several moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune);

(3) Rogue Worlds: planets without a parent star. Such planets have been ejected from their solar system of origin and now wander through space. An example is OTS 44, a free-floating planetary-mass object located at 550 light-years, with approximately the mass of Jupiter;

(4) Water Worlds: planets with no dry land at all. That’s what a post-apocalyptic Earth would look like. (See, e.g., Kevin Reynolds’ 1995 movie Waterworld);

(5) Tidally Locked Worlds: planets that always present the same face to their star, much as the Moon does with Earth. Their peculiarity is that one side is perennially hot, while the other is an eternal Antarctica;

(6) Super-Earths: planets whose size falls between Earth and Neptune. Given their mass, the main characteristic of these planets is their intense gravity. Creatures must live in oceans or evolve a strategy to deal with this crushing force. A nice fictionalization of this is Edmond Hamilton‘s Starwolf series (1967-68), where Morgan Chane, the son of a human missionary family, grows up in a heavier-than-Earth world.

If these worlds exist, and there’s a tiny chance some might be inhabited, well… I want to see them. I’ll probably never do it in person (sadly, I’m not an astronaut). However, I can still dream about them, hoping someone will get there someday.

I wish someone to be able to say, just like the replicant Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner:

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Time to die.”

Read more about this topic in this post and this other post.

EP. 1: SF WORLDBUILDING: HOW ASIMOV’S “FOUNDATION” FEEDS BACKSTORY TO THE READER

On By AlessandraIn Books, Reading, Writing

A compelling SF worldbuilding cannot be done without delivering some backstory at the novel’s beginning. This must be done as early as possible without giving away too much and trying not to bore the readers. 

According to On Writing and Worldbuilding, Volume I, by Timothy Hickson:

“[In] Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone […] J.K. Rowling introduces every major concept and virtually every major character in the story with well-hidden expository writing.”

With all due respect for J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series, I don’t agree that ‘expository writing’ must necessarily be hidden.

I can quote a few great SF classics where a nice chunk of information is in plain view right in the first page’s heading. It may take the form of a journal excerpt, a quotation from an encyclopedia, or even an interview with one of the secondary characters.

Here are a few examples: 

(1) Foundation, Isaac Asimov:

“HARI SELDON— … born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069. […] Born to middle-class parents on Helicon, Arcturus sector […].” From the ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA.

And a few lines below, just after the incipit:

“[…] There were nearly twenty-five million inhabited planets on the Galaxy then, and not one but owed allegiance to the Empire whose seat was on Trantor.”

From these few words, the reader can already learn a lot about the tone and setting of the story:

— It’ll be about a Galactic Empire. The plot will unfold in a nation-state encompassing most of the Galaxy’s habitable planets.

In technical jargon, a Galactic Empire is what astronomers call a Kardashev Type III civilization, which is “a civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its galaxy” (M.M. Cirkovic, 2015);

— It’ll be about a long-lasting human civilization. Isaac Asimov’s future human society survived the so-called Great Filter. As explained in the book Exoplanets by Michael Summers and James Trefil:

“[…] there really doesn’t seem to be anything at all special about the way that life developed on Earth, and given the abundance of planets out there, there is no reason that complex life shouldn’t be quite common. On the other hand, from what we know about the process of evolution, we can expect the winners of the evolutionary game on other planets to be no more benevolent than Homo Sapiens. In this case, the [coming] Great Filter is easy to see. Once an aggressive, warlike species discovers science, they are likely to turn their discoveries against one another and, in essence, wipe themselves out. […]”

— It’ll involve interstellar and faster-than-light (FTL) travel. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation is loosely based on Gibbon‘s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In his monumental work, the XVII century English historian stressed Roman roads’ importance in ensuring efficient communications between the central authority and the dozens of provinces of an enormous Empire. The Galactic analog of Roman roads is, of course, hyperspace. Asimov was one of the first SF authors to use this plot device to sidestep the long time required for interstellar journeys.

Find out more about relaying the backstory in a novel in this post and this post.