An assignment for sci-fi fans.

I admit I’m a sci-fan fan, however I’m mostly a tv and movie fan, not really a book fan. So I never really got into alot of the authors, and to be honest after watching The Prophets of Science Fiction I never knew some of the movies and stuff I liked were by such-a-such author. “Really? He wrote that one?”

I did look to see if there was a Dummies Guide to Science Fiction Authors, no such luck. So I would appreciate it if you could tell me what your favorite sci-fi author is and maybe throw a book title or two my way. Heck maybe even on Kindle would be nice. Thanks.

Another science hypothetical – Time Travel

Ever since I was a young boy I had this thought that I can never square, which involves Time Travel. You have the movies and tv programs that show someone creating a machine that whiz and you’re in 1922 or 7575. Besides the fact that “how does the machine know it’s 2012 right now????” there’s a fundamental part that I don’t get.

So you’ve built the machine. You rev it up and to test it you go back in time for one hour. Here’s the part I don’t get. You press that button and move back one hour, why don’t you physically move over across state lines to the next time zone? Point being : the planet is rotating, so if you wink out and wink back in again the planet isn’t where it was.

“Well the momentum of matter should keep you in step with the matter of the planet.” True, if I were to move forward in time an hour, I should keep in line with the rotation of the planet and stay in that relative position, but not if I move backward in time. In fact the momentum should be working against me.  Also, the planet itself is moving at phenomenal speeds in orbit around a star, which also is moving at phenomenal speeds in an orbital pattern around the center of our galaxy. Are you going to be able to be in the same relative position to all that? If you’re traveling in a car say a 100 miles an hour while holding a coffee mug on the window, then turn a curve but let the mug go will the mug follow your curving or go in a straight line?

My thought is I take that time machine and move a hundred years in the future, that’s a hundred years in that specific point in space even accounting for the momentum shift of matter, I’ll still wink back in and suck vacuum. The Earth is long gone many hundreds of thousands of miles away from where I started. (oh wait forgot to carry the two…..)

Or am I wrong?

A loony hypothetical

I’ve always wondered how this planet would have been had it not been for the moon. What if the moon wasn’t there? Would there have been tides? When the world was created the moon was much closer to earth then it is now. (Did you know it’s slowly drifting away?) So what’s going to happen in say ten thousand years, how will that affect the earth? What if there were multiple moons like Jupiter, or a set of rings like Saturn? How would life on earth, or just the general color of the sky, have looked like?

Anyone have any thoughts? Anyone out there breathing?

Does anyone know this?

This is one of those scientific questions that I’ve wondered about, not a hypo, just general science. So if anyone knows I would appreciate a quick shout-out. Oh hello Mr. Hawking.

ok, we have labels to quantify all sorts of things in nature; volts, ergs, dynes, etc. We have constants (Planks, gravatational) and formulas that allow us to describe to each what is going on. But there’s one quatification that I’ve never heard of: gravity. I mean there’s the number of G’s of say the space shuttle gets when it’s leaving the earth, there’s the gravatational constant to allow us to calculate trajectories. But if I have a 9 volt battery I can use measurement devices that can give me a number, “hmmm..yep, 9 volts.”

So is there an actual definition of a unit of gravity? If I go from the earth with a measuring device to the moon I would get .15 blahs, then to Jupiter where I’ll get 50 blahs. (I just made up the number quick, don’t  know off-hand what the actual numbers are).  I mean when they try to prove Einstein’s theories of relitivity don’t they need a unit of something? Thanks.

Another sci-fi hypothetical.

I was thinking of the hypos and I came up with another. I once saw in a movie about how this “mad scientist” type guy made this “time machine”, where he had a test subject, a chicken, inside. During the process we could see the chicken being hatched, grow up to full, then decay to bones, all in a few seconds.

So this got me thinking. I know, that’s rare, but the smoke coming from my ears bothers people. My question is, wouldn’t whatever inside that field die off long before it grew up? I mean the whatever still has to eat, drink, poo, all the usual. I mean suppose you put someone in a jail cell and walked away for a month, no food or water, what happens? Isn’t that what would happen if you were in that field? We in that reference would slow down to a crawl, but the whatever would be “normal”, probably go bonkers talking to himself. Just a question.

If a tree falls…..

During college, about mumblemumble years ago, I accidentally sat in a philosophy course. It might have been interesting had not the professor actually tried to prove that Mr. Spock was real. I mean poke the guy next to you on the bus flesh-and-blood, pointed ears and all. Real. Alive. I mentioned how he was a fictional character, and he said that wasn’t the point. I said I was in the wrong class and left.

I do admit I could use a course or two on philosophy, just to expand the ol’ brain pan. But there is one answer I already know, the riddle of the tree falling in the forest. The story goes that a tree falls in the forest but no one is around, does it make a sound. “Of course it does”, “well how do you know if you’re not around?”

As I said I’m a bit into science, and from that extension logic. Whenever a tree or anything else falls potential energy is transferred to kinetic energy, upon which once it hits the ground that energy is released. There’s a bit of heat from the air and ground friction, a reverse energy release as the energy is passed back into the tree (actually it’s more of the earth transferring the energy as it’s hitting the tree), and yes sound energy is created.

Now that energy is in the form of a wave. We don’t actually detect sound waves directly, we have a bilogical mechanism that moves in relation to that energy as it’s being stimulated through bones, fluids and flesh. In contrast we have the cones of our eyes that detect the photons that then translate that to an electrical impulse to the brain. The direct analogy of the ear is a bicycle, where the bike has no enery of its own, but the energy is transferred from the person via the pedals to forward motion.

I know, science talk, boring. Just trying to quatify what I mean. If no one is there that wave form isn’t transformed into a “sound”, meaning no one can detect it. However that sound wave is still present, whether anyone is there or not.

Finally, physics happens. Just because no one is there doesn’t mean the laws of physics don’t happen, might as well ask if no one is there did the tree fall in the first place, gravity might stop. The laws of physics are man’s means of explaining what the physical world is doing, not a means for man to alter the physical world, so no man and no alteration. Doesn’t work that way.

So in conclusion (finally, damn blowhard) when a tree falls in the forest it will make a sound.

A hypothetical or two (science discussion).

ok I have to admit I’m a science and science-fiction kind o’ guy. Yeah I have a subscription to Pop Sci, so what of it? Anyway, growing up my brother and I would occasionally talk about hypotheticals, just let our minds wander on how things worked, usually based on movies or tv programs. Here are a couple I remember.

 There was this movie I think was called “the girl, the gold watch and everything”, where a guy has this watch that stopped time. He could then walk around and do all sorts of stuff, the same watch I guess from the Twilight Zone. So here’s the hypothetical. If time was stopped for things to freeze where they were, such as bullets and people and such, why not the air? Wouldn’t the air become like being encased in concrete? And how could the guy see, the photons would stop moving as well. he would in effect have to move into the path of those photons, which of course removes them since they’re absorbed by the retina, so in theory if he walked forward, then walked back, and walked forward again that second time forward would be dark. Another question, force equals mass times acceleration, which acceleration is velocity over time squared. Well, we just stopped time, so there shouldn’t be any force on earth that could move anything much less a leaf during that time suspension.

 ok, the second hypo is, could it ever get so cold that you would stop hearing? When you think about it your ears are exposed to the cold, and the working bits inside are fluid, so if it gets cold enough wouldn’t that freeze? At that point you wouldn’t be able to hear then, right? Anyway we figured out that one, since the internal body heat would keep it thawed, in order for it to actually freeze the whole body would be below freezing, which at that point not hearing is the least of the problems.