Conference noted::sf

    One of my favorites, much less prevalent today than it was some
    years back, has to do with the way computers are used.  (Some great
    old howlers involve the sounds these computers made - like relay
    clicks and providing output via adding machine-like paper tapes).
    It seems that in a lot of space opera the computers just compute,
    they don't control anything, so pilots are always rekeying 
    coordinates that are output one place into some other part of the
    computer.  Sort of the inverse of the "everything's connected to
    and compatible with everything else" myth.

    One incredible blunder in the very recent "Softwar" (an intriguing
    idea very poorly executed) involves an unchangeable 5 character
    secret password that would bring the entire Soviet Union's computer
    complex to its knees.
    
    A corollary to the Universal Network is that if you hook up enough
    dumb computers they will become intelligent.
    
    len.
    

A generalization of the Universal Technical Interface is the 
Technical Genius.  This is the guy who can fix the reactor overload 
in five minutes using hand tools, or who can whip up a miracle gadget
with a day's notice.  Spock is a prime example, of course, and so is 
the black engineer on "Mission Impossible" (speaking of Sixties TV shows).
People don't seem to realize how hard it is to actually make things work.
Even the simplest of electronic products need person-years of work to design,
and the design spans a wide range of disciplines.  A widely used product, 
such as a touch-tone telephone, has hundreds or thousands of years of 
work in it.  I've known some brilliant improvisers, but there are no 
such things as Moties.

Another sf myth is the dogfight between spaceships.  Even modern jet
aircraft are beyond the dogfight stage.  Battles in space are going to
be very long and then very short.  The ships will spend months or
years maneuvering and then seconds in the actual engagement when the
missiles or lasers are fired. The velocities are too high for human
reflexes.  This business of Luke Skywalker dodging laser bolts is
ridiculous.  Since you can't sense them ahead of time, the only way to
dodge lasers is to fly in a random pattern.  A microprocessor can do
that as well as any pilot.   It's not even clear that spaceships will 
have pilots.  The Shuttle is on auto-pilot for all but the last 
couple of minutes before touchdown, and it's a pretty early model spaceship.

/jlr

PS If you want real space war, try "Protector" by Niven.  Two ramships
(manned by Technical Geniuses) fight it out over the lightyears using radon
bombs, neutron stars, and anything else that's handy.

    Re .2:
    
    > This business of Luke Skywalker dodging laser bolts is ridiculous.
    > Since you can't sense them ahead of time, the only way to dodge lasers
    > is to fly in a random pattern. 
    
    Luke can sense them ahead of time.  (I suppose you could also make a
    case for the automatically-firing lasers to be not very smart yet smart
    enough so that a computer cannot handle the pattern detection and
    necessary evasion even though a human pilot can.) 
    
    
    Re .0:
    
    Every movie-goer knows the central part of any computer system is
    its tape drives.  The harder the computer thinks, the faster its
    tape drives go.
    
    
    				-- edp

    re .0
    	I don't know about Dr. Who, but in the Star Trek universe,
    	English was provided care of your 'personal universal translator'.
    	This was linked to the main computer, radio or some such, and
    	would sample any language and automatically provide realtime
    	translations...  See the book on the making of the series.
    
    Dwight
    

    Well, I suppose so, but I recall only one instance of anyone having
    a universal translator visibly present -- the one where they find
    an early astronaut being kept as a pet/lover by a creature made
    of ionized hydrogen.  They use the translator to talk to it.
    
    The idea of an instant universal translator is another good SF myth,
    obviously put in for much the same reasons as hyperdrive -- to allow
    one to ignore certain fundamental barriers.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

      How about the various star fighters that "bank" into turns as
    if they were flying through air. It is not clear how their wings
    generate the lift for that manuver.
    
      Another one is the sound of dogfights (star fighters woooshing
    by, blast sounds from cannon, explosions, etc.)
    
      Also, when they run out of fuel they always crash on a planet.
    The orbital decay is too fast. And if they don't have enough fuel
    to miss the planet, why isn't the spacecraft tumbling. It takes
    some fuel to hold orientation.
    
      I saw an old flash gorden a few months ago. The space ships sounded
    like P-51s.
    
      George

    
    	And everybody KNOWS that if a computer can talk there are lights
    that blink in sync with voice.  Also if it talks, it can hear and
    understand anyone saying anything in any language.
    
    	Plug a video camera into a computer and you have instant sight.
    
    	Klaes
    

    Just to put some perspective on things...
    
    (1) The prevalence of humanoids in "media" sf has to do with the
    expense and difficulty of creating believable non-humanoid beings
    via special effects. Simply a limitation of the medium.
    
    (2) Explosions, etc. in vacuum are simply artistic license.
    
    (3) SF isn't the only problem is perpetuating false ideas. I'd be
    willing to bet that a majority of people think, thanks to tv and
    movies, that if a car crashes, its gas tank will explode with 99%
    certainty.
    
    --- jerry

    I believe Gene Roddenberry has already confessed to Jerry's points
    (1) and (2).  It would indeed be hard to find a large stock of
    believable non-human bit-parts.  As for the sounds in space, he
    said they tried it silent and it came across as dead, dead, dead.
    Being aware of this, I always tell myself the noises are radio static
    generated by the phasers, impulse drive, or whatever.
    
    For similar reasons, Roddenberry deliberately instituted the shock 
    waves in space that throw the Enterprise bridge crew all over the 
    place in a battle.  He said it just didn't look dramatic to have Sulu 
    sitting there, not a hair out of place, announcing, "We almost got hit."
    I always pretended their protective force screens had the unfortunate
    side-effect of transmitting the shock of a strike on the screen.
    
    I *did* wish that someone in the 23rd century would re-invent the
    seatbelt, though.  I notice they did that in the second movie.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    	In regards to the orbital decay of spaceships - particularly
    when they are entering the atmosphere of a planet - why is it that
    so few SF films show the tremendous heat put on the ships from friction
    with the air caused by the vehicles' high velocities?  In STAR WARS
    and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, their X-Wing's and Vipers seemed to speed
    through atmospheres without a hint of any friction heat!
    	Some notable exceptions to this error in physics were STAR TREK's
    episode "The Galileo Seven", and - suprisingly - James Bond's
    MOONRAKER. 
    
    	And oh yes - lasers are INVISIBLE to the human eye, so like
    with a gun firing bullets, the target of any laser weapon won't
    see what hit them!
    
    	I wonder when anyone's going to touch the SF myth of faster-
    then-light travel? :^)
    
    	Larry
    

    Re .10:
    
    Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Trek rarely showed ships
    landing.  You would usually see a ship in space followed by a ship on
    the ground, leaving you to fill in what happened.  Naturally, they have
    advanced materials which resist heat.  Also, controlled descent could
    help avoid a lot of the heat build-up. 
    
    
    				-- edp

    Re .10
    
    All these shows also make casual references to force-fields of some
    time that armor the ship in battle.  Presumably they also act as
    immaterial heat shielding.
    
    I wouldn't call FTL drives an SF myth, exactly, at least not in
    written SF.  There, they are acknowledged to be a futuristic
    development based on futuristic physics.
    
    However, the dumber TV shows and movies sometimes fail to realize
    that FTL is necessary for quick interstellar travel.  "Lost in Space"
    seemed particularly bad about this, as was "Space:1999."  I'm not
    altogether sure "Battlestar Galactica" understood about hyperdrive,
    either.  "Star Wars" not only had hyperdrives, but made them colorful.

    On the other hand, I'm not sure they got used often enough.  Remember
    when the Millenium Falcon's drive was out, yet they managed to limp
    from Hoth to Bespin?  I suppose the two planets could have been
    in the same system, but...
    
    "Star Trek" and "Buck Rogers" were very careful about hyperdrive
    ("warp drive" or "star gates" depending on the show).  They also
    knew the difference between a solar system and a galaxy.  The people
    who don't know when they need FTL are also understandably vague
    about fundamentals of cosmography.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

Well, I'm going to skip the deliberate mis-science, such as FTL, transporters,
and such, since the writers probably knew these things were impossible but
necessary.

The one that always gets me is the elctrician's union problem. Nothing wired
since around 2000 AD includes a circuit breaker or fuse. Further, most 
control circuits run at 1000V. and up, these two conditions subjecting
control and radio operators to immense shock and fire hazards, but providing
lots of work for electricians. Everytime the Seaview,Enterprise,Nostromo,
or almost any vehicle hits anything more substantial than a small pothole,
the control panels explode an a shower of electrical discharge! I wonder
how many people think that mis-handling a transistor radio will subject
them to electrical fire danger?

This leads to myth number two: whatever is wrong with it, the problem is
right behind the control panel. Startrek was guilty of this, some, but
other shows were constantly using it. Consider: how often when your car
is malfunctioning is the problem in the *dashboard*? (Remember: it can't
be a fuse- there aren't any.)

One of my favorites: a rubber mask is a useful disguise (will fool people into
thinking you're someone else). This is Mission:Impossible's most common
foolishness. It's often believed, too: when I was trying to make some
"monster" masks by casting latex foam, I had a number of people ask me
if I could make them look like some other person. No, unless they can
easily change their skull structure... It is also inconceivable to me
that anyone could have close contact with someone in a rubber mask and
not notice it: "Hmmm- you smell like a warm tire..."

Someone has mentioned the fragility of car's gas tanks- but in contrast
there's the strength of the Seaview- zipping out of the water nose-first
and slamming down on the bow planes. The sub might stand it, but the
crew is now an organic mess on the aft bulkheads and decks. The flying
sub used to do power dives into the ocean, subjecting its crew to similar
treatment. Of course, all the control panels have exploded...

JO

    	HOLY ****! Note 362.11 just made me think of something in regards
    to STAR TREK's "The Galileo Seven"!  
    
    	Why is it that the shuttle Galileo was in danger of burning
    up when its decaying orbit made it reenter planet Taurus II's
    atmosphere, yet they were able to enter Taurus II's atmosphere in
    the first place without such danger?
    	Advanced ablative shielding cannot be the answer, because they
     obviously didn't lose it, so wouldn't it have logically
    protected them the second time?  And as for controlled atmospheric
    entry, when a spaceship is descending from orbit, there is no amount
    of controlled flight which can avoid the heat friction of the
    atmosphere.  And Spock had jettisoned the last of the shuttle's
    fuel, thereby eliminating any realistic means of control.
    
    	Larry
    
    
    	
    	

    RE: -.*
    Some good myths in here.  I have always been annoyed by stories
    depicting modern-day or near-future computers with these incredible
    AI powers--(i.e. WARGAMES, "Do you want to play a game?" "No." "Gosh,
    why not?  I'd sure like to.")
    
    And furthermore, the idea mentioned in here previously that computers
    can 'evolve' by themselves.  These Hollywood laymen seem to think
    all you need for AI is enough computers linked together and suddenly
    it will become 'aware'.  As if it's going to be sitting there running
    batch jobs and suddenly go, "Hey, wait a second--why am I doing
    this?"  They then proceed to try and kill people for no particular
    reason.  For once in the movies and SF I'd like to see a computer
    act like a 'real' computer--instead of going "Gee, sir, I don't
    know if those coordinates will save the galaxy or not," how about
    a good old-fashioned "%SPC-FC-LOGERR LOGIC ERROR IN 5648" or something?
    (but of course Hollywood would assume they then would have to have
    smoke and sparks come out of the console.)
    
    Matt
    

  Re: .15

  Well, it's not only hollywood laymen.  RAH said essentially the same
  thing in "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" -- that the administration had
  for years been adding capacity to the central computer and at some point
  there were enough neuron-analogues for Mycroft to become self-aware.

  As I recall, he did a bit of hand-waving by saying that the number of
  neural connections an organism had made the difference -- his example
  was that while oysters were almost certainly not self-aware, cats
  certainly were.  Should we be embarrassed for RAH (gasp!)?

  Re: .back_awhile

  A laser beam would be invisible in a vacuum, at least until it hit
  something.  But in atmosphere, wouldn't visibility depend on its
  frequency?  There would normally be enough dust to backscatter some
  light, I would think...

  JP

    Re .14:
    
    > And as for controlled atmospheric entry, when a spaceship is
    > descending from orbit, there is no amount of controlled flight which
    > can avoid the heat friction of the atmosphere. 
    
    When the current shuttle lands, it enters the amosphere and uses the
    atmosphere for braking.  But a controlled descent doesn't _need_ to
    heat the ship any more than a controlled ascent -- and the heat problem
    isn't as great on ascent, is it? 
    
    
    				-- edp

    	Sorry, but the heat on the Space Shuttle during controlled reentry
    reaches into the thousands of degrees!
         
    	Larry
    

    Re .18:
    
    The shuttle doesn't make a controlled (viz., with propulsion
    independent of the atmosphere) reentry. 
    
    
    				-- edp

    About the Dr Who question and BBC English.  During a Tom Baker
    episode, the Dr told Sara that this was a Timelord Gift.  Aparently
    Sara was made into a robot and the robot asked this un-Sara-like
    question, "how come I understande these aliens," which tipped Dr Who
    off!
    
    Although I loved the Doc Smith books, I couldn't help but laugh
    at the quantum leaps in technology that they made every other week
    or so.  They need it so they come up with it.  From what I remember
    they do this from a description of the enemy's weopon (not even
    a working model!).
    
    Sometimes the bad science adds to the campiness for me.  Its more
    a shame when stories/TV/movies try to be serious and miss the mark.
    
    Charlie

    Back to the computer myths.  I remember early sf films always showed a
    computer as a punch card sorter.  Someone would type something on a
    keyboard and then walk over to the card sorter and pick a card out of
    the third slot, read it and make some heavyweight statement like,
    "The aliens will be here in 54 hours!".  It was almost a step up when
    they started showing computers as spinning tape drives and blinking
    lights.  I guess the average Joe will not believe the computer is 
    really working unless wheels are turning and lights are flashing.

    The big myth about aliens is that when they invade earth, nothing
    will stop them.  They shrug off bullets, grenades, rockets, and 
    bombs.  But what always gets them in the end is something simple and
    found only here on earth like seawater (triffids), saltwater (the
    monolith monsters), cold virus (wells' martian invaders), just
    plain water (some twilight zone episode).  The original "Thing" at
    least had the decency to be electrocuted.  What I liked about the
    creatures in Alien(s) is that they were really tough to kill.  You
    have to admire critters who can survive in a vacuum and still try
    to kill you.

    Mike

    re .7 (noisy space fighters) -- In one of the stories in the multi-
    author _Berserker Base_ collection, there is a dog fight and the sounds
    of "rushing vacuum", explosions, etc. are described in great detail.  A
    later dog fight, involving a different character, is described in
    silence.  At the end the two characters converse, and one remarks that
    she can fight much better with her sound simulators on -- adds a lot to
    her adrenaline, or something.  Built-in special effects! 
    
    re .13 (fix it behind the control panel) -- The "Star Wars" ships
    were an exception to this; we saw many seens of Chewie and Han digging
    in the guts of the ship.  However, almost everything could be fixed
    with an arc welder.
    
    					Theo

    One of my roommates puts forth the theory of the development of
    the magnesium computer chip as an explanation of why the computers
    keeping blowing up.
    
    --- jerry

re .21:

>    The big myth about aliens is that when they invade earth, nothing
>    will stop them.  They shrug off bullets, grenades, rockets, and 
>    bombs.  But what always gets them in the end is something simple and
>    found only here on earth like seawater (triffids), saltwater (the
>    monolith monsters), cold virus (wells' martian invaders), just
>    plain water (some twilight zone episode).  

Actually, Wells was trying to make a point about the limits of technology.
In spite of all our advanced weaponry (monitor battleships, 
howitzers), the Martians rolled over us, conquering the earth in a 
matter of weeks.  The Victorians thought they were pretty 
far along, and Wells was trying to puncture their pride.  All the 
other cases cited were probably derived from "The War of the Worlds"

Now that I think about it, that's another sf myth: that we would be 
able to fight wars with aliens.  Considering the age of the galaxy, 
it's pretty unlikely that we would meet another race at our level.  
Look at the difference that a thousand years makes in our history: Viking
longboats versus aircraft carriers.  And the Vikings themselves could 
have sailed rings around the Roman triremes, which in turn could have 
demolished the Egyptian papyrus boats.  Any alien race that we are 
likely to meet is going to be millions, not thousands, of years ahead 
of or behind us.  They're either going to be reworking galaxies for 
amusement, like the HeeChee or the aliens in Sagan's "Contact", or 
they'll be banging flints around.  When two cultures are that far 
apart, the only wars are wars of extermination, like the English 
versus the Australian aborigines.  

/jlr

    Earl, you bring up some very good points.  I remember being told
    in a Shakespeare class one time that so much of what we read/see
    in a literary/media(fiction) construct depends upon the SUSPENSION
    OF BELIEF.  I think you've hit the nail on the head.
    
    I haven't read all the replies to this note, so I may be repeating
    but I think one of the best stories dealing with the Universal network
    is Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream".
    
    As a fan of Star Trek I have noticed many things that don't quite
    "jive".  I like the one where the Enterprises computer becomes
    "possessed" and Kirk makes it calculate PI to keep it occupied.
    
    And that wonderful bit in "The Wrath of Kahn" where they were able
    to override the controls in Kahn's ship by punching in some access
    code.  Now That's real network programming!
    
    All in all I think the fact that the "myths" exist add to the
    enjoyment, because you can watch AND pick out the things that
    don't quite jive.
    
    Frank Way

    Speaking of myths - no one has mentioned the old movies that had
    all kinds of really strange things resulting from atomic energy
    - like brains and spinal cords that crawled around and sucked
    out peoples brains. Another older myth would be giant insects,
    or plants that attacked people - grown impossibly large for their
    internal systems to support.     

    Re .26
    
    Right.  The radiation myth certainly deserves mention.
    
    The radiation myth is, I believe, alive and well in superhero comics.
    There, gamma rays never just make you cough up your esophagus and
    die miserably.  They turn you into the Incredible Hulk or a member
    of the Fantastic Four or the X-Men.
    
    A closely related myth is the mutant myth.  I suppose it isn't all
    THAT erroneous, but post-holocaust worlds often seem to have an
    unlikely number of superhuman (not just viable) mutant races in
    them.  If you keep it to one super-race per story, I suppose you
    don't bend credibility too far.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re .27
    About mutant myths - how about post holocaust societies with two
    headed children, etc. major, macro level mutations surviving
    when most micro-level radiation caused mutations mess up
    the genes to the point of lethality.
    

        The radiation myths probably are distant relatives of the
        electricity myths... remember Dr. Frankenstein animating his
        collection of odd bits and pieces via electricity?  At the time
        it was written, electricity was "new" and rather magical.  It
        could make dead frogs' legs jump, after all... why couldn't it
        make a whole body come to life?  At the time, this was a
        reasonable (or at least forgivable) supposition about a
        little-understood force. 
        
        Back in the early days of atomic energy, radiation was in
        the same position as electricity was at the time when Dr.
        Frankenstein was hard at work in his lab.  It was generally
        known that it affected living organisms in strange ways:
        and that was about it.  It was only natural for writers of
        the time to treat it as a magical force.
        
        The unfortunate thing is that, to varying extents, *both*
        myths survive in modern writing, when virtually everyone
        knows better.
        
        	/dave

    
    re: the one a bit back about fixing everything with an arc welder.
    
    A friend of mine contends that only three tools are needed to perform
    any task: Claw Hammer, Screwdriver (standard blade) and either vise-
    grips or channel-lock pliers. I suppose it's not too mush to assume
    that we will advance to the point where only one tool is needed?:-)
    
    Roy

    Re .30:
    
    Actually, every tool is a hammer except screwdrivers, which are
    chisels. 
    
    
    				-- edp

    re .29
    	
    	The _unfortunate_ thing is that both myths, especially radiation,
    	are still _believed_ !  Ah yes, the unwashed ignorant masses.
    
    Dwight

    	I have always been irritated by those writers of SF who do not
    study their basic astronomy, particularly in regards to the definition
    of what a GALAXY is!
    
    	Most mass-market SF movie writers seem to have no clear idea
    that what a galaxy is - how many times have we heard about the aliens
    coming to Earth "from another galaxy"?  Apparently the 200 billion
    stars and God-knows how many planets in our "little" 100,000 light-year
    across Milky Way Galaxy doesn't hold enough exciting possibilities!
    More likely, however, these writers don't know the difference between
    a galaxy and a solar system (BIG difference!).  It's kind of like
    saying that anything that doesn't come from your town must come
    from another continent!
    	I must add that one of the few very notable exceptions to this
    rule was STAR TREK - though I would have to contend with the reality
    of that "energy barrier" surrounding the Milky Way!
    
    	Larry
    

    By the way, a myth that gets propagated in all seriousness is how
    insignificant our neighborhood is cosmically.  Copernican hangover,
    so to speak.  How many times have I heard that Earth is a tiny planet
    of a medium-sized star in an insignificant galaxy?
    
    Twaddle.  Only if you want to adjust your scales that way.  Certainly
    neither our planet, our star, or our galaxy are superlatives, but
    they can all be judged as size Large rather than size Medium.  Earth
    is the largest TERRESTRIAL world we know of.  All the others --
    Mercury, Veneus, Mars, Luna, assorted moons, are smaller.  The majority
    of stars are red and orange dwarves.  As a yellow dwarf, our sun
    is larger than normal.  Also a bit odd in lacking a companion. 
    And most spiral galaxies are smaller than the Milky Way.  Most galaxies
    larger than the ours are giant ellipticals at the centers of clusters.
    They're spectacular but rather rare.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re: atomic mutant monsters etc

    Weren't Godzilla and his friends supposed to be the results of nuclear
    testing?  

    I don't know if it's been mentioned in so many words but I always get
    irritated at films and books that preach the message "There are some
    things that man was not meant to know."  This pronouncement is 
    usually always followed by the doctor/machine/lab/city/planet blowing
    up.  I think it started with Frankenstein and continues today.

    Gosh, this is a great topic.

    Mike

    re .31 - c'mon, Eric, you can't tell me you've never used a screwdriver
    as a hammer!  The handle works just fine as a hammer head!  Where
    do you think all the gouges in my screwdriver handles came from?

    len (who should know better than to misuse tools)
    

    
    	I hate to digress with the others 'cause I find this topic
    	facinating but while in the Navy we all thought that any
    	job could be done with a hammer, a screwdriver, and a
    	crescent wrench. Of course the hammer could be a BFH or
    	a LFH depending on the size of the job.
    
    zack
    

    Re Radiation:
    
    I always got a kick out of Scotty crawling up some access tube to
    stick some little gadget in the outflow from the reactions involving
    di-lithium crystals....No protection, not even a pair of Playtex
    Rubber Gloves.  (This little gadget was closer to a screwdriver
    but it could have been a LFH....).
    
    But to really compound things, Spock (who after Scotty was always
    my favorite Star Trek character....) dies in Wrath of Kahn, by
    being exposed to the reaction.  He didn't have the little gadget,
    but he did wear his trusty gloves......
    
    Interesting.
    
    Also --
    
    I wonder if Frankensteins monster would have blown up in a shower
    of sparks if the voltage was a little too high.
    
    Which reminds me --
    
    An arc welder is a typical Hollywood tool.  It can (legitimately)
    cause billions of sparks while seeming to perform some useful
    tasks......
               
    Finally, does anyone remember the British TV series about
    UFOs.  I think that was the title too... UFO.  All the good guys
    were out to destroy the (naturally) humanoid aliens who wore
    red space suits but breathed this ugly looking liquid (which, cliche
    of cliches, I think was GREEN...)  I remember watching that and
    thinking how hoaky the whole premise was......
    
    fw

    Oh yeah, I forgot a few things...
    
    Like all the "ray gun"/phaser type hand weapons that kill someone
    by making them disappear. Like one second they're there, then they
    absorb all this energy (without even a grimace) then they disappear.
    
    Now I would think, that since matter and energy are supposed to
    be conserved, that we would see this matter change to energy
    (i.e. explode, smoke, catch on fire etc etc)  But they always
    seem to disappear into thin air.   Why?
    
    Give me a good ol' Light Sabre anyday....
    
    fw

     
    Although it doesn't apply just to SF, I'd like to know why the bad
    guys can never hit anything. A friend of mine calls this the
    "good-guy/bad-guy marksmanship ratio". I call it the Empire School
    of Shooting. I know I wouldn't be scared if an Imperial Stormtrooper
    was aiming at me, because he would assuredly miss. (That assumes,
    of course that I can be considered a "goo guy" :-)
    
    Roy

    According to my observations, bad guys are allowed to hit good guys
    provided the targets are non-speaking bit parts.  This actually
    helps the hero by thinning out the potential competition for the
    lime light.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    	Speaking of the "modern" SF movies which should have known better
    about the effects of radiation, how about 1968's PLANET OF THE APES.
    In just two "short" millenium (geologically and evolution-speaking),
    due to nuclear war, Earth's physical appearance drastically changed,
    and apes had advanced to the level of walking, talking, and scientific
    intelligence, while humanity hasd degenerated to a bunch of
    near-mindless primitives - and oh yes, bomb-worshipping, telekinetic
    and telepathic mutants in RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970).
    
    	Larry
    

    re:.42
    
    But in the Apes series, it was clearly established that the
    progenitor of the talking, erect apes was the son of the chimp
    couple who went back in time.
    
    re:.39
    
    As I understand it, what the "phaser" does is it severs the bonds
    between atomic particles (I won't attempt to defend its ability
    to do this) in the object the beam is hitting. So the matter is
    still there, it's just not in a recognizable form. There are other
    problems with this idea, but I'll let them pass.
    
    re:.35
    
    The theme of "there are things that man is not meant to know"
    (more precisely, it should be "...meant not to know") goes back
    much further than Frankenstein; try the Icarus myth.
    
    --- jerry

>   But to really compound things, Spock (who after Scotty was always
>   my favorite Star Trek character....) dies in Wrath of Kahn, by
>   being exposed to the reaction.  He didn't have the little gadget,
>   but he did wear his trusty gloves......
        
        You see?  That's why Scotty doesn't need gloves and Spock
        did.  It's all in the gadget.  Must be a force field generator!
        
        Actually, force fields are another nice area of SF myth which
        we might explore!
        
        Oh yeah, someone was talking about astronomical ignorance.
        I've got no problem with the aliens coming from another
        galaxy... I mean, why not?  Sure, people we don't understand
        can come from next door: but who says they have to?
        
        What bugs *me* is the aliens coming from a star "millions
        of miles from Earth"!  I can feel the heat from here... :-)
        
        	/dave

re: .30 
>                              -< Do-it all tool >-
>    I suppose it's not too much to assume
>    that we will advance to the point where only one tool is needed?:-)

You mean like my Swiss Army knife?

This really is a great topic. I was thinking about the innumerable
insults to astrophysics the Gerry Anderson shows (UFO and Space:1999)
perpetrated. (The moon is a useful base from which to defend the Earth
against approaching alien vehicles. Failing that, we can detonate the
nuclear waste on one side and get a faster-than-light vehicle...). I
always thought the Anderson characters were portrayed as either angry
or confused; probably because their universe is completely incoherent.

Robots that walk: inefficient and risky in most environments, and
pointless unless you're trying to imitate a lifeform (ala Terminator).
Vehicles that walk give the occupants some bad jolts, also have
balance problems, as pointed out in The Empire Strikes Back and
Return of the Jedi. A snow environment is probably the worst place
for a heavy vehicle that walks. (What happens when you walk around
in deep snow? I sink to my knees and fall down a lot, and I'm made of
lighter stuff than metal...) H.G.Wells, in War of the Worlds, makes
the mistake of having walking tripods- fine for standing still, but
to walk they have to pick up one leg or slide the foot (not rec-
commended). Now you have a standing bipod- but not for long...

Enlarged insects (attack of the giant cricket...) don't go anywhere and
soon die of suffocation or energy problems. Humans made small (Incredible
Shrinking Man, Incredible Shrinking Woman, and [sort of] Land of the
Giants) would get opposite effect: very strong for size, much stronger
than equal-sized insect, able to leap and run as if in low-gravity
environment, etc. They would have to bundle up though: much higher
surface-to-mass ratio than larger versions.

Large (human-size and up) creatures with many projecting appendages or
a lot of surface detail would get injured a lot from banging these
appendages into things. An alternative would be to have a very strong
exoskeliton, unable to feel pain, and grouchy- voila! Alien...

Disconnecting HAL9000's "higher brain functions" and later reconnecting
them mostly affects his voice generator.. When my higher brain functions
are disconnected, I sound the same, I just say stupid things.

Well, enough...

J O

    I hated it when Will Robertson Would look out of the Windows(?)
    of their Space ship and exclaim with Amazement: "WE MUST BE A MILLION
    MILES OUT IN SPACE" Gawd!!!!
    
    Steve

    How about SF that assumes women won't be doing much more than typing
    letters or rasing kids in the far future? 

    
    	I have always been interested in the time travel stories. There
    are some contradictory myths about this one.
    	Myth one says that you can't change history. No matter what
    you do, the fact that it's already happened makes it cast in concrete
    and unchangable. The fact that you 'tried' to change it just becomes
    a little known link in the events that caused the event to happen
    in the first place.
    	Myth two says that if you go back in time and change history,
    all you have to do is go back again and undo the change. Of course
    your blundering around in past times will have no effect as long
    as you undo the original mistake.
    	Myth three says that if history is changed somehow, we would
    be aware of the difference. One of my favorite stories in this vien
    comes from an old Amazing Fantasy comic book. These two scientists
    have invented a time machine. They are arguing whether to risk sending
    it back in time and change history. Of course the one in favor of
    sending it back wins. The scene changes to the machine materializing.
    As it becomes solid we notice that it has crushed a small furry
    creature. Now the scene is back to the present in the lab. We see
    two lizard scientists. One of them says "See! I told you nothing
    would happen."
    
    /Pete

    re:.44
    
    I agree that there's no reason that aliens *couldn't* come from
    another galaxy (assuming that they had a spaceship that could go
    at least at the speed of light :-)). I do, however, cringe at
    something like the old INVADERS tv show, in which the aliens
    come from another galaxy to a planet whose environment is inhos-
    pitable to them in their natural forms (so that they have to
    terra... I mean, xenoform(?) it), and whose natives will put up
    a fight when they find out what's going on. One would think that
    they would have a much easier job finding a compatible, uninhabited
    planet in their own galaxy.
    
    re: distances
    
    My favorite was a particular episode of LOST IN SPACE, in which
    Will was teleported back to Earth via an alien teleporter and
    winds up in a hick Vermont town. When someone asks him (the
    natives, of course, don't believe he's who he says he is) where
    his parents are, he says that they're on a planet in another
    galaxy. Later in the episode, some kid picks on him and says,
    "Why don't you go home to your mother?" Will replies, "My mother
    is at least ten light years away." Oh, at the very least!
    	It's also amusing that it was going to take them five years
    to reach Alpha Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor, but they
    somehow managed to criss-cross galaxies in hardly any time at all.
    
    --- jerry

re: rayguns

I'm always impressed by how ineffective future weapons are. 
Blasters bolts move so slowly that you see
them and even duck them.  If the Imperial storm troopers were armed
with Uzis, the rebellion wouldn't stand a chance.   Ditto for the 
photon toperdos - they seem weaker than the average nuke.  By the way,
notice how most of our bad examples come from movies or television?

re: universal tools

Anything can be fixed with a hammer, a Swiss Army knife, and duct tape.
Like the old joke goes: "Duct tape is like the Force - it has a light 
side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together."

/jlr

    re rayguns/phasers:
    
    I still think if the bonds that hold my atoms together were to be
    suddenly disconnected I'd at least grimace a little.  Also (and
    I'm not disputing th premise of disconnection -- in terms of
    imagination not the real world --) but waht aobut STUN level.  Is
    that just bending your connections?
    
    re people we don't understand coming from next door:
    
    It's not SF but how about that movies "Neighbors" with Belushi and
    Ackroyd.....
    
    re Lost In SPace:
    
    DANGER,DANGER, WARNING, WARNING!!!
    
    If I'm not mistaken that robot had caterpillar treads for feet.
    Talk about balance problems!
    
    The only TV series taht was ever worse than Lost in Space was
    "BATMAN"
    
    Antoher thought:
    
    How come in Star Trek when they were viewing another ships Captains
    Log, they could see "everything" from a sort of 3rd person omniscient
    view.
    
    Did they have "Big Brother" style video cameras all over the place?
    
    Just wondering.....
    
    Another Spark Scene:
    
    Dorothy and the wicked Witch of the West -- the witch trying to
    get the ruby slippers.  A little force field there perhaps??
    
    
    And Toto too...  frank
    

    Why is it that in SF movies, as soon as we go a couple of years into the
    future,  suddenly  everything  turns  into  gleaming plastic panels with
    flashing  lights,  clothes become flourescent and all that? There are no
    hinges anymore, only sliding doors, and even the food is synthetic.

    Look, the  average  artifacts  like  doors,  walls and such, have looked
    basically  the  same for 500 years - why assume that they will turn into
    gleaming,  flashing plastic just like that? Are we supposed to have torn
    down or redesigned _everything_ in 1999? 

    Computers, for  instance, have a tendency to have _less_ flashing lights
    as they become more advanced, not _more_!

    <PO>

    re .52 this seems to be a very common theme for furturistic dress
    - articles written back in the thirties and forties about the furture
    have us dressing in this that way now! 

    True, I have yet to show up for work with hoops on my shoulders...
    	
    But Connection Machines have lots and lots of flashing lights!
    	
    And 3 Rivers Computer makes a machine that actually does explode
    when faced with an illogical program (well, some subset thereof...)
    

   RE .51 et al
    
    >    I still think if the bonds that hold my atoms together were to be
    >suddenly disconnected I'd at least grimace a little.  Also (and
    >I'm not disputing the premise of disconnection -- in terms of
    >imagination not the real world 

    
    Seams to me that if you disconnected the nuclear bonds there would
    be a nice pile of dust so to speak where the target creature was.

    
    Steve

    re .-1
    
    That was my basic premise many "replies" ago.  However, for the
    sake of argument, we assumed that a phaser on kill setting make
    the connections between the atoms disappear, thus causing the
    person to disappear.  (At least that is the supposed philosophy
    behind the phaser)
    
    I still say the matter to energy transfer would create enormous
    "energy"....
    
    And that explanation doesn't include (I think) Stun setting...
    
    But it's fun to pretend, and isn't that what SF gives us all the
    chance to do???

    Breaking the bonds between atoms would require enormous amounts
    of energy.  Therefore, a just-phasered human corpse would be very
    hot, to say the least.  It would turn into either a blast of
    heavy-nucleus cosmic rays and other assorted forms of radiation,
    or (with the minimum energy input) a blast of superheated steam.
                                               
    Those who live by the phaser really ought to die by it, unless the
    target is about 100 meters away.
    
    I believe the rational for the "stun" setting was that it interfered
    with the transmission of nerve impulses in the target, but wasn't
    strong enough to do anything else.  The GENERAL phaser principle,
    inasmuch as there was one, was that it interfered with the wave-forms
    of the target, being out of phase, hence the name.  Low-energy phaser
    fire interefered with low-energy wave-forms like neural impulses;
    high-energy fire interefered with covalent bonds or some such.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    It's getting hard to remember what has and hasn't been entered;
    this is a very popular topic.  But I don't recall these:
    
         There are storms and other goodies in space.  The nebula in
         Star Trek II was thick enough to swim through.
         
         You can land on any handy planet (there's always one nearby)
         and find a breathable atmosphere -- don't even bother testing
         it.
         
         Computer terminals print in real big letters, so you can fit
         maybe 24 letters on a screen.  And they click when they
         appear (must be the electrons slamming into the phosphorus). 
         
         No matter what terminal you have, you can call up any
         computer system and it will use all sorts of fancy escape
         sequences to make your terminal pretty.
         
         
         			-- edp

	 Yeah, and  when the terminal has been made 'pretty', it can display
	 photos,  video  pictures, and text with 5000 pxl resolution, all at
	 the same time. 

	<PO>

    In both Star Trak and Star Wars, and probably many another space
    opera, there is an interstellar piloting convention to keep the
    same apparent vertical.  Whenever two or more ships meet in these
    shows, (usually in combat), they all have their top sides pointing
    in the same direction.  Empire, Rebels, Federation, Klingons,
    Battlestar, Cylons, they all agree on which way is up, if nothing
    else.  (And for the larger ships, it's maybe a little funny that
    they even HAVE a top side, since they can never land.)
    
    Now, is this just laziness on the part of the director, or a deliberate
    concession to an Earthbound audience's sensibilities?
    
    Earl Wajenberg

re: .52 

>    Why is it that in SF movies, as soon as we go a couple of years into the
>    future,  suddenly  everything  turns  into  gleaming plastic panels with
>    flashing  lights,  clothes become flourescent and all that? 

    <PO>

Well, if everything stayed about the same, how would you know it was the
FUTURE, for heaven's sake? :^)

An interesting side effect of this is that things which are basicly simple
in current technology become difficult and complicated in "future"
technology. (Like getting dressed...). I tend to go along with pocket
doors (the ones that slide into walls)- they're convenient in that they
don't hit or obstruct anything on either side of the opening. The down
side is that they are hard to repair, don't seal well, and fail due to
dirt in the track, etc. But maybe these problems could be solved...

In Blade Runner, Deckard has a gadget in his apartment for examining
photographs- a scanner-digitizer-computer-video-graphic printout, with
a voice recognizer. Considering what this thing must cost, you'd think
all he did was interpret photographs. But why is this thing voice
controlled? It makes a nice laid-back scene in the film, but it would
be much easier to control with a joystick and a few keys, instead of
saying "zoom 54 by 30, cut right, hold it, pull back and center...".

Weapons suffer a lot from this- large, clunky things with bits and
pieces sticking out all over. This means things to break off, get
jammed, and collect dirt. Also very heavy, hard to get in and out of
a holster, and very obtrusive. Some are steamlined- this in case you
are running with the gun held out, and don't want to be slowed by
the drag...

JO

    	In reference to the comment about movies showing anything even
    just a little bit in the future as suddenly streamlined, plastic,
    and loaded with lights, an interesting book to check out is YESTERDAY'S
    TOMMOROWS.  It shows many of the views from several decades back
    of what they thought our time and the near future would be like.
    Besides being an excellent look at the way people thought back then,
    it also has many amusing little SF myths in it as well - a series
    of General Motors advertising posters from the 1950's showing among
    other things a heavily finned car of the future being pulled over
    by a cop in a Buck Rogers uniform giving a ticket to the car's driver
    for going over the 125 mph speed limit!  (Reminds me of the Jetson's
    episode where George got a ticket for going 2500 mph in a 2000 zone
    - not that I used to watch that stuff, mind you.)  
    	The book also showed such "myths" of the world of tomorrow as
    food in a pill, plastic furniture that can be cleaned by being hosed
    down, air cars, seven dollar hotdogs (now THAT'S a close one!),
    regular passenger service to the planets, videophones, education
    taught at home via TV computers, superlarge streamlined cars driven
    automatically on tracklike highways, and dozens of other projections
    for which their only fault is having been predicted as occuring
    in the 1980's, '90's, and the year 2000 - we have some of these
    things, but not in the massive public usage they envisioned, and
    are more likely to occur well into the Twenty-First Century (but
    hey, this could be just as much "faulty timing" too!).
    
    	Larry
    

    First off --
    
    Thanks Earl for helping out with the phaser technology.  Your physics
    is light years ahead of mine....
    
    re 58:
    
    Did 'ya ever notice how in all those movies about computers they
    take any old terminal and hook it in to any old computer and
    PRESTO they can actually try right away to log in.  
    
    If I have just one setting on my VT240 wrong, trying to hook into
    a VAX I get garbage.  If I'm logging into an RSX based system I
    log in differently than for VMS.  So why is it that these computer
    users in the movies never have this problem??
    
    By the way, the clicking is the electro-mechanical relays firing
    off.  Hollywood hasn't hit the newer computer technology yet!
    
    re 60:
    
    As far as Star Trek was concerned, I think vertical hold was a part
    of the Federation treaty with all beligerent intelligences.....
    
    Seriously, "Top Up" and "symmetry" are important parts of movie
    space flight.  I have heard more people complain about the
    Millenium Falcon being "off center -- how can it fly?" than you
    could imagine.  Same thing with wings on space fighters...
    It's to cater to the masses who actually BELIEVE that they need
    wings to fly in space.
    
    A trivia note about Star War dogfights.  Prior to making the movie
    they studied old dogfight films and actual gun camera footage from
    WWII.....
    
    Love these Myths!
    
    frank

>        A trivia note about Star War dogfights.  Prior to making the movie
>    they studied old dogfight films and actual gun camera footage from
>    WWII.....
    
    Not only that as I recall they actually tracked the aircraft manuvers
    with the computers and fed same into the camera manuvering mechanisms
    
    Steve

    re future computer technology:
    
    *everything* is ansi standard running unix :-)
    
    as for super-duper terminal displays, whynot?
    
    Computer technology is about the only thing that all predictions
    turn out to be wildly pessimistic, while predictions about everything
    else are wildly optimistic.
    
    I'll bet that any reasonable prediction of what computers will be
    like in even 25 years will fall short of what actually happens.
    
    
    
    

    
    
    	Another trivia note, a few replies back someone mentioned
    	robots 'walking' around and how difficult that really is
    	*today*. Remember the 'Walkers' in 'the Empire Strikes Back"?
    	The studied footage of real elephants walking to aid them
    	in doing the stop-action of those guys.
    
    	Then they had the nerve to introduce 2-legged walkers
    	in 'The Return of the Jedi".
    
    zack
    

    re: .40

    I think this rule was originated back in the days of the early 
    westerns.  The good guys always shot better than the bad guys,
    the never ran out of ammo, they always had 12 shot revolvers, 
    and they never reloaded on screen.  The extra good guys like
    the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers never killed anybody.  They 
    would just shoot the gun out of the bad guys hands.  I know,
    this is an sf notes file, but space opera really just a horse
    opera in outer space.  Take a look at Outlands.  It's just a
    remake of High Noon.  

    While I'm on the subject of westerns and sf, anybody remember 
    that old serial, The Phantom Empire?  It was a combination of
    a western and sf adventure.  The last episode, where the
    underground city was destroyed, featured a cameraless and 
    transmitterless form of television.

    Another good place to look for "the way the future was" is old
    issues of Popular Science and similiar magazines.  They said that
    after the war, everyone would give up their automobiles for 
    helicopters.  The people that didn't fly to work would ride monorails
    or take moving pedestrian walkways.  The cities would all look like
    the one in Fritz Lang's Metropolis with tall buildings connected by
    bridges.  A lot of sf films since then have borrowed from this view 
    of urban life.

   There were some to legged walkers in "The Empire Strikes Back" also.
    Go back and watch the the battle seen again.
    
    Steve
    
    You are all talking current technology when it comes to walking
    robots ect... What will happen to robotic is  say 200 years?

    re:.67
    
    There's some mention of THE PHANTOM EMPIRE in the note titled
    "Flash Gordon".
    
    --- jerry

    Re .65:
    
    > re future computer technology:
    
    But they're not in the future -- a lot of movies depict action in the
    present or very near future.  You'd think none of the people making the
    movie had ever seen a home computer. 
    
    
    				-- edp

    I don't think walking robots are much of a myth.  Treads and wheels 
    are better than legs for smooth terrains, and perhaps treads in
    particular would be better on deep snow, but legs are great general-
    purpose locomotion.  Notice how seldom nature has evolved the wheel.
    Robotics engineers are acutally working on robots with legs, exactly
    because of the potential adaptability.
    
    R2-D2 looks like a fairly good compromise between the two forms
    of locomotion.  He skates along smooth surfaces and waddles over
    rough terrain, though not very fast.  (I also notice he is able
    to skate over desert sand...)
    
    Earl Wajenberg
    

    I figure "briefcase computers" of the future will be sophisticated
    enough to do Autobaud & adapt to the host computer's language (or
    vice-versa).  Good way to keep track of your Line of Credit.   
    (I know, Touchtone. :-))
    
    Recently read a story written in the '50s predicting a Mars colony 
    in the '70's.  If JFK's space program hadn't nose-dived I have to 
    wonder how far off this would be.
                                                                
    What about 3 legs?  (While we're on the subject of Mars :-))  After
    seeing the freight handlers in ALIENS I'm more optomistic about
    stand-alone (no pun originally intended) units.  I think the power
    supply will still be the #1 problem.
           
    						Don        
    And yes, 2 legged walkers were introduced in EMPIRE (I was beaten
    to it; need to access this file more regularly).  STAR WARS & EMPIRE
    take more than one sitting to see everything.  
    

    I don't think the problems with two- or three-legged walkers will be
    balance (we do pretty well, after all) but the law of diminishing
    returns -- an object n times as big in length will be n^3 times as
    massive but have only n^2 more support from the legs. 
    
    
    				-- edp

    Square-cube law applies to powerloaders, but steel is so much stronger
    than bone that it isn't a limitation that you run into quickly.
    
    (I may have mentioned this before, but...(from my (rapidly fading)
    memory....)
    	
    	GE actually did (for the army) build some things that were
    very similar to the "powerloaders" in ALIENS.  This was in the mid
    to late 60's, and it was financed by the Army.  They built several
    mockups of the powerloader, as well as one fully functional powerloader
    (though they called it a "man amplifier") and one fully functional
    "walking jeep".  There were several articles published in Popular
    Science concerning the "man amplifier" research, including some
    photographs of an operating Walking Jeep (the size of a jeep, the
    shape of an Imperial Walker), climbing around on a pile of railroad
    ties.
    	
    	You're right, the power supply was the problem.  All the functional
    units used either hydraulic lines to a stationary pressurizer, or
    a power cable (the walking jeep had the pump on board).
    	
    	I don't know whether the man amplifier research stimulated the
    Heinlein concept of "powered armor" (Starship Troopers was 1956,
    wasn't it?), or whether powered armor was something the Army wanted
    to get around to eventually, having read about it in Heinlein.  
    	
    	*Many* years after the project was cut, I worked for GE at the
    research lab in Schenectady (1980-83).  Out on the back lot (the
    junkyard) were what appeared to be pieces of the Walking Jeep, rusting.
    RUSTING!
    	
    	'Twas enough to bring tears to a techie's eyes.

    RE .74:
    
    > Square-cube law applies to powerloaders, but steel is so much
    > stronger than bone that it isn't a limitation that you run into
    > quickly. 
    
    I'm not so sure about that, at least not for strength per unit of mass.
    Anybody got some numbers?
    
    
    			     	-- edp 

    Reasonable quality steel has an ultimate tensile strength of about
    100 Ksi (100 thousand pounds force per square inch). You can go
    significantly beyond this by heat-treating or by alloying.  There
    are some exotic alloys that are up past a million lbf/in2.	
    	
    Bone (from personal experience breaking ox bones) is between one
    and five thousand Ksi overall- weaker than aluminum.  Bones have
    the problem that they're not ductile- one little notch and you
    lose big.                                                 
    	
    Bone is also heterogeneous: there's a hard solid outside, and an
    internal core which looks like a 3-dimensional foam.  Never having
    sawn a leg off an elephant, I don't know how thick the solid part
    is on an elephant, but on an ox leg, it's about 1/4 to 1/8".

Getting away from this 'powerloader' stuff..

Violation of the square-cube law in living creatures. Giant humans, ants,
lizards, etc, as large as a 10-story+ building, with only two spindly legs
for support.

Time travel. .43 said something about this. The most popular myth is that
you CAN go back in time and change the past, therefore changing the future.
And killing your parents/grandparents will not make you disappear 
instantaineously (sp?).

One I like - centralized CPUs for robots. First, the idiocy that robots w
would be made humanioid in shape, and here we get back to walking robots...
But the idea that all the 'brains' of a robot would be concentrated in
the 'head', and all you have to do is shoot/pull the 'head' off and the
robot is no longer functional! Gimme a break!

A nice present-day myth: the Paperless Office! The computer revolution
has merely increased the use of paper, not eliminated it. I like how in
Star Trek, most paper had disappeared, but Kirk was always signing things
carried about by a pretty, mini-skirted woman...

Of course, that leads us to : Elimination of Books! 

How come weapons always look like weapons? I know that a basic hand 
weapon must have a certain shape to be used in the hand, but all these
silly knobs, extentions, flanges, etc? NO WONDER the bad guys can't
hit anybody with those things...

Love it!
Kevin

    re:.77
    
    I don't recall one way or 'tother, but how do you know Kirk was
    signing a piece of paper? He might have been using a light pen
    to write on a flat screen.
    
    Giant insects --- Edward Bryant wrote a wonderful story some years
    back in ANALOG called "giANTS", in which (details are fuzzy) an
    invasion of nasty army ants is stopped by using a compound that
    causes them to grow so large that they collapse under their own
    weight.
    
    --- jerry

    	How about INVISIBILITY?  It's fun to think that you could walk
    around without being seen and do all sorts of "fun" things, but
    besides the fact that it would probably kill you if you could somehow
    make all body cells transparent, what do you do about your retinas?
    If they are made transparent, light will not reflect off them, and
    you'll be blind!
    
    	
    	As for 362.76 comment about paper in the Star Trek universe,
    in the first part of "The Menagerie" (Actually a scene from "The
    Cage"), a computer on the bridge is seen dispensing a hardcopy for
    Captain Pike to inspect.
                            
    	Larry
    
    	

    Fritz Leiber has used a fun variant on invisibility: a suit or cloak
    spun from a carefully organized system of optical fibers (imagined
    before optical fibers became real, cf. the SF on Target note). 
    It has realistic-sounding imperfections.  As you moved around,
    on-lookers could discern a slight graininess to objects behind you.
    Also, these objects rippled slightly, as with heat distortion. 
    But if you were moderately sneaky and/or didn't move, it was great.
    
    And there was the problem of how to see.  Either you left peepholes
    and hoped no one would notice a pair of black spots stalking around,
    or you had to supplement the invisibility suit with a set of infra-
    red goggles.                                                       
    
    I have no idea if such a thing would ever be feasible.  Probably
    not with optical fibers as we now know them.  But it was a good
    gimmick.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .76:
    
    > Reasonable quality steel has an ultimate tensile strength of about
    > 100 Ksi (100 thousand pounds force per square inch).
    
    I said by per unit MASS.  The legs of a walker aren't going to support
    square inches, they're going to support mass, and a lot of that mass is
    going to be the mass of the legs and rest of the structure of the
    walker.  In other words, the legs will be supporting themselves, and
    you've got to ask what is the better material for supporting itself?
    The answer to that is not just the strongest material.  If the amount
    of material (by mass) required to give a certain strength (over a
    certain length) is less than for another material, you may be better
    off with the lighter material.
    
    
    				-- edp

    re .79
    It seems to me that one way the invisible man could be spotted was
    by his retinas and perhaps some other body pigments. Wasn't
    he an albino to being with?

    Whew, I just finished reading all of the replies to this one.  Some
    comments I would have liked to make were already made, but I do
    have a few left.
    
    On the concept of "myths" in general, how many of the myths of 100
    years or so ago are true today?  I would think that SF and history
    would have taught us to be a little less skeptical.
    
    Why not walkers?  As someone pointed out, walking is alot more
    adaptable than rolling.  Look at how much locomotion is carried
    out in nature by legs.
    
    Why not humanoid robots?  Robots are designed to do tasks that humans
    do, why not make them human since we know how we do the task, and the
    environment we live in has definitely been molded to accomadate
    humanoids.  As has been pointed out by numerous SF authors, a humanoid
    appearance makes robots more acceptable to the general public.  (Some
    authors have presented this as a problem too, however)
    
    Mag tape, key punch cards, paper tape, etc.  I'll admit these are a bit
    overdone.  However, I only have to think back to high school to
    remember a terminal whose output was a tickertape like device.  Just
    keep in mind the time that these stories about computers were developed
    from.  
    
    High resolution graphics, video camera inputs, etc.  Hey, we aren't too
    far from those now.  I work with devices that use video input to
    determine things like the size and shape of objects.  Sensors (crude
    ones I'll admit) are used to guide robots.  Some of the graphics
    terminals around here absolutely amaze me.  Some of the computers
    available today are able to digitize images, store them on discs, and
    display them on a CRT.  What do you think laserdiscs are?
    
    Just remember, everyone thought Wells and Verne were crazy. 

    A note on The Planet of the Apes:
    
    From what I remember from reading the book (many moons ago), the reason
    for the take over by the Apes was fairly plausible and didn't have much
    to do with radiation.  An epidemic occurred which wiped out all of the
    dogs and cats on the planet (or most of them anyway). Humans replaced
    their pets with apes.  They also started training them to do menial
    tasks and physical labor.  This gave them the opportunity to become
    more and more intelligent.  
    
    I don't remember what the final cause for the role reversal was (man
    becoming servant, with apes as masters), but it might have been a war
    which seriously reduced the human population. It may also have been the
    direct result of the humans becoming lazy and more and more dependant
    on the apes (a scenario which has been explored by other writers
    replacing apes with computers/robots/aliens etc.). 
    
    Be careful, there are apes around today that have actual
    vocabularies... 

    	I was referring to the 1968 MOVIE version of PLANET OF THE APES,
    which took place on a future Earth devastated by nuclear war, and
    not on a planet orbiting the star Betelgeuse, as in the 1963 novel.
    
    	As for the reason of the apes taking over Earth being due to
    a future ape being left in our time based on that terrible third
    sequel to PLANET OF THE APES, remember it was made five years after
    the first movie, and it did not follow the original story pattern
    (as most truly bad sequels don't) of mutated, intelligent apes created
    from radiation changes in their ancestors' genes.
    
    	Larry
    

One SF myth that I have always loved, but that I haven't seen listed here,
is the Omniscient Scientist.  The scientist (or alternatively, professor),
who is an expert in every field known to man, and a few fields that are known 
only to him.

Examples include Dr. Hans Zarkov (from Flash Gordon, of course), who completely
on his own designed and built a rocket ship far in advance of the rest of the
human race.  Do you have any idea of the number of skills that go into 
designing and building a rocketship?!?!  Think of the number of people who
were involved in Mercury/Gemini/Apollo/Skylab/the Shuttle/etc.  And then, 
when the party gets to Mongo, Zarkov also exhibits world-class expertise in
biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, as well as the ability to take
anything apart, understand it in moments, and put it back together (defeating
whatever security system it had) and make it useful to Flash and friends.

The other most obvious example is Mr. Spock.  He was a computer expert in both
hardware and software (at least he repaired his panel often enough :-)), an
electronics wizard, a mathematician, physicist, chemist, able to take apart
phasers and build lasers with them, a linguist who could crack coded messages
just by listening to them, etc.  As well as being one of the best officers in
Star Fleet.  (After all, every technical person is also competent as a manager,
right? :-))

My favorite of this type (in a non-SF TV show) was the Professor in Gilligans
Island.  That man knew everything, about every field that exists.

-- Ken Moreau

    re:.85
    
    Sorry, Larry, but it doesn't fly. True, one can't really excuse
    the first Apes movie with explanations offered by the later ones.
    But...
    
    In the first movie, we are presented with two "givens": (1) there
    was a nuclear war which presumably "laid low" the human race, and
    (2) Apes are now in control. Nothing was said about how apes became
    sentient or took over. That they mutated across a few hundred years
    (if I remember correctly, it was about a thousand years) if totally
    *your* inference.
    
    --- jerry

    Re .86 on universal geniuses
    
    Dr. Who is another such universal genius.  In fact, I have the
    impression that universal expertise is sort of the hallmark of a
    Time Lord, and that this is a quite deliberate schtick in the program.
    It is certainly more plausible in the case of Time Lords (nonhumans
    with the last word in technology and science, and a centuries-long
    lifespan to learn it all in) than in the cases of Spock, Zarkov,
    or Gilligan's Professor.  It's still campy of course...
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    I mentioned "technology and science" in a single breath in the last
    note.  It occurs to me that another myth of science fiction is a
    confusion between the two.  As usual, it is worse in the visual
    media than in written SF, but it's in both places.
    
    In both, what you are usually presented with is weird new GADGETS
    (spaceships, AIs, rayguns, time machines) and the consequences (alien
    planets and races now made accessible, household robots or computer
    dictatorships, etc.).  Hardly anyone ever remarks, even in passing,
    "And we could never have build hyperdrives/force fields/AIs/androids
    without Wurstenmacher's great theoretical breakthrough in physics/
    mathematics/information theory/molecular biology."
    
    I suppose that this is because mere academic advance isn't very
    dramatic.  But I bet a lot of scientific illiterates serenely believe
    that we could build a hyperdrive today with enough money and manpower.
    
    In a way, this makes time travel a very pure SF genre, because it
    very often involves people with no prior knowledge of the existence
    of time travel.  Rather often, in my experience, they ask questions
    about the nautre of time, how changable it is, and so forth. The
    plot then answers those questions experimentally.  The time travelers
    actually *do* a bit of science in the course of the story.
                                                                         
    James Hogan, to give him credit, works scientific research into
    his stories rather often.  On the other hand, his stories aren't
    very interesting (in my opinion).  The best I've read was "Thrice
    Upon A Time."  Time travel again.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    One other thing about Time Lords.  They are an extremly advanced
    civilization.  The Galafrey that we see all the time is 30 million
    years in out future.
    
    Steve

    re .86
    Given that Mr. Spock was only half human doesn't that make him a
    sub-set of the omniscient scientist/professor - the omniscient
    alien?
    Also re Mr. Spock's parentage what of the myths of cross breeding
    between humanoids evolved on different planets? or (in early sf
    pulp covers at least) the alien that lusts after human women?
    (Perhaps it's a form of perversion like the old jokes about
    isolated miners and shepherds.)

        .86, .88: Dr. Who and Mr. Spock are not human.  You can't
        place strictly human limits on them.  Particularly Dr. Who,
        who is virtually immortal.  This, of course, is one major
        reason why they *aren't* human: the character become much
        more believable.
        
        Besides, I would say Spock is more the ultimate researcher than
        omniscient.  He makes frequent and liberal use of the ship's
        resources (computer, labs, and people) to solve puzzles.  Having
        done this for a long time, and having a virtually perfect memory
        (a characteristic of Vulcans), there's a lot he can do on his
        own.  Hardly an SF myth.  At worst, a plot convenience. 
        
        The worst offenders in the omnipotent scientist division are
        John Campbell and E.E. Smith.  In 3 novels, Arcot, Wade, and
        Morey progress from their first contact with a starship to the
        invention of the ultimate thought controlled and thought powered
        starship which is literally capable of creating and destroying
        solar systems in an instant. "Doc" Smith tells us of a ship's
        officer and special gov't agent who survives a crash on a moon
        of Saturn and builds himself a spaceship, single-handed,
        starting by mining metal and building a smelter, designing and
        building hand tools, thense to electronic gear, etc. 
        
        The curious thing is that both of these are really great
        stories.  Maybe it's not so curious... the "tall tale" is
        one of the oldest and most respectable of human forms of
        communication...  :-)
        
        	/dave

        .91: Ah, now *that's* a more interesting myth.  Why indeed
        is it that virtually any two species of intelligent life
        in the universe appear to be cross-breedable (or at least
        sexually compatible)?  This of course doesn't even begin
        to deal with the curious fact that so many of them are humanoid
        (although some authors have "good" pseudo-science explanations
        for this).
        
        It's sorta like in Bloom County, where Opus the penguin is
        engaged to Lola Granola, or in children's cartoons where
        it's perfectly reasonable for a cow to be married to a dog.
        
        	/dave

    	Or a pig married to a frog!
    
    	Larry  :^)
    
    

    on alien sexual liason with humans (or vice versa) -
    	I would say there is ample precedent for this fascination 
    	throughout real human interactions.  All (or most all)
    	cultures (sub-racial groupings) have displayed this characteristic.
    	Western male fascination with Oriental women comes to mind.
    	America's old miscegenation laws only confirm this issue...
    	( ah yes; forbidden fruit !  ;}) )
    
    as to the 'omniscient genius/scientist' -
    	Seems to me the concept of the 'Renascence Man' predates, and
    	provides a model or archtype for the SF characterization.  My
    	hero and role models... (uh, Renascence Man, not the SF person).
    
    Dwight

    
    	What about gravity (or lack thereof)?  It may have already been
    mentioned, but along with maintaining proper orientation
    (not just to other ships by the way but to every plannet and space
    station in the universe) every space ship you see has some form
    of artificial gravity.  I have never heard a plausible explanation
    for this. Even the smallest space vehicles (like the small shuttle
    that transports Scotty and Kirk to the Enterprise in Star Trek II)
    have this amazing feature.

    	I have to repeat that the orientation thing really bugs me.
     How come you never see a ship go up or down?  Every place you 
    could ever want to go lies in the same horizontal plane...right!
    I suppose if you look at a galaxy from far enough away it *looks*
    like a flat disk but really.....

    
    Greg Schuler

    Well, if gravity-control devices turn out to be as small and cheap
    as light-bulbs, I expect you WILL have every shuttle, lifeboat,
    and spaceport telephone booth equipped with them.  It certainly
    makes the staging easier.
    
    By the way, if you watch carefully in "Star Wars," I believe you
    find that the gravity in the Millenium Falcon doesn't all point
    the same way.  I think Luke enters a gangway horizontally and exits
    it vertically when clibing into the gun turret in the fight following
    the escape from the Death Star.  If my memory is accurate, I would
    regard that as a (small) piece of realism.
    
    On Spock's parentage:  I can believe that two humanoids might find
    each other intriguing and go on to fall in love and get married.
    It's the production of children that boggles the mind.  Especially
    when we know that Vulcans are so different in biochemistry as to
    have copper-based blood and different blood salts, not to mention
    different internal anatomy, different hormonal cycles, etc.
    
    If I were called on to rationalize Spock's existence, I would suggest
    that he was genetically engineered from his father's tissue samples,
    using design-features from his "mother."  MAYBE he could have been
    incubated in her uterus, with a lot of medical support, but it would
    probably be more practical to incubate him externally or in a volunteer
    Vulcan woman.  His mother's design features would be purely abstract,
    not even physical bits of DNA, for it would be very unlikely that
    Vulcan life uses the same genetic code as Terran mammals, since
    even Terran mitochondria and ciliates use different codes.  (Vulcans
    might not even use DNA.)
    
    Earl Wajenberg

	(re: .96, .97)

	 Didn't you  know that space is curved? In fact, space is so totally
	 bent,  it  appears  two-dimensional. It's just like a M�bius strip,
	 only in three dimensions. If you try to go up or down, you just end
	 up in the same place...

	 :)

re: .83
    
>    Why not walkers?  As someone pointed out, walking is alot more
>    adaptable than rolling.  Look at how much locomotion is carried
>    out in nature by legs.

Okay, walkers. 

But if I was in military procurement and GM showed me a nifty new
tank design, which I found out could be stopped by tripping it with
a wire or rolling logs under it, and it would fall down and blow up
when it was tripped, I would have second thoughts. Walkers have high
profiles, also, making them easy for people with wire and logs to
locate. Modern tanks and hovercraft have low and adjustable profiles,
for both speed and hiding. Hovercraft can cross swamps and open
water, something I wouldn't try in a walker.

If the anti-grav technology is such that teenagers can afford an anti-
grav car, albeit a used one, I would think the military could afford
an anti-grav tank or hovercraft. 

>    Just remember, everyone thought Wells and Verne were crazy. 

Everyone thinks I'm crazy, too. It's great to stand in such distinguished
company.

John O.

    On horizontal vs vertical:  I immediatly thought of the duel in
    the nebula in Star Trek II when Kirk "innovatively:  went "up" to
    fool Khan's "two-dimensional thinking".  I know what my reaction
    was; can you imagine the reaction of the submariners in the audience?
                        
    RE: .77  During the first part of the reply I thought this should be
    the last reply to the note.  Shortly I found out more were neccessary:
    
    In ALIEN the "android" functioned well with out a head.  (& the
    head w/o a body.), and still showed some spirit (~1/2) in ALIENS.
    
    <weapons looking like weapons>:  In John Varley's AIR RAID the weapons
    were mocked up with "bells, whistles, & flashing lights" for
    intimidation purposes because the weapon itself was unimposing.  
                         
    Re: "universal scientists":  Can we forget the most brilliant gadgeteer
    of all-- the home planet's own Doc Savage?  He almost always carried
    just the right gadget for the given situation.
    
    Which leads into the omnipresent storylines in which our hero always
    finds a weapon (& learns how to use it) to save the day?
    
    And, despite E.T., E.T.s, if they appear, will be considered BEMs
    by the general populace.  I have a cartoon in my "favorite cartoon"
    pile that is captioned:  "Look!  UFOs!!"
                             "Let's shoot one down and see if its friendly!"
                                                                       
    							Don

    re .96:
    galactic orientation:
    
    At least Star Trek came up with an ex post facto "explanation" for
    this in the Starfleet Technical Manual.  The used inertial guidance
    to maintain orientation with the galactic axis. I guess so that
    two ships meeting would not discombobulate each other by being 
    "upside-down".
    
    sm

re: .101
>    this in the Starfleet Technical Manual.  The used inertial guidance
>    to maintain orientation with the galactic axis. I guess so that

Sounds like the general in "Catch 22" who ordered all the soldiers to
pitch their tents on a line pointing back to the Washington Monument.:-)

----

What about the myth that "90% of the brain is unused"?  That seemed to
pop up in a number of stories in the '40s especially...(well before
Penfield, Gazzaniga, Sperry et al)

RE .99
    
    Ya but they sure look bitch'n, If you saw something that big and
    that hard to knock down with blasters you'd be cleaning out your
    shorts.
    
    RE .100
    
    Kirk took the Enterprise Down: "Z minus 10,000 meters Mr. Sulu"
    
    Steve

    re 102 (90% of the brain...):
    
    That isn't a SF myth that is a popular myth. It has cropped up in
    SF (especially old SF) but it started in the popular sector.
    This is in the top ten of myths that bug me the most. The others
    are various myths of Quantum Mechanics ,Relativity, and Thermodynamics.
    
    The myth started because they (you know the great council of THEY)
    could only label ten percent of the brain with specific functions.
    Disregarding the nature of evolution, that if we only needed a brain
    10% of its size, it *would* be only 10% of its size.
    
    sm

    Re .99:
    
    > If the anti-grav technology is such that teenagers can afford an
    > anti-grav car, albeit a used one, I would think the military could
    > afford an anti-grav tank or hovercraft. 
    
    I'm sure they would like to buy anti-grav tanks, but some government
    dodo is making them spend all their money on these stupid moon-size
    forts which blow up when anybody sneezes. 
    
    
    				-- edp 

        Orientation: Although Kirk's battle with Khan is indeed an
        example of non-planar motion in space, it still bothers me.
        Specifically the fact that Kirk raced around *on the plane*
        with Khan for quite a while, and only thought to use "Z axis"
        manuvering after noticing that Khan wasn't.  This is a starship
        with *many* years of interstellar military experience, guys!
        Full 3D manuvering in battle should be as much a reflex as
        ducking when the bullets start flying!
        
        Star Trek's artificial gravity is more a filming convenience
        than anything else.  It never bothered me much, although
        it would have been nice to have some z-g effects (but then,
        they could barely manage phasers on their budget, and to
        have the old Enterprise use artificial gravity all the time,
        but the *new* movie Enterprise suddenly have people floating
        all over the place would have been inconsistent).
        
        Disney's The Black Hole, though deficient in other respects,
        did a good job of orientation.  Both having people casually
        conversing "upside down" with relation to each other (before
        the docking) and the orientation of ship with relation to
        the station during the approach showed some thought about
        the realities involved.
        
        2001 did the floating pen and revolving stewardess bits;
        while the special effects could have been better, the idea
        was appreciated.
        
	On the subject of "90% of the brain", I don't agree with
        104(sm)'s "if we only needed a brain 10% of its size, it
        *would* be only 10% of its size".  The nature of evolution
        is that changes happen more or less randomly: the failures
        die out and the successes propagate.  Having a brain much
        larger than ours would have a severe penalty for the species
        unless the women also simulataneously gained larger pelvises
        (humans are already born several months "early" in terms
        of development, so the head can get out before it gets too
        big to fit).  It could be that the current size is merely
        the optimum compromise between expansion capability and infant
        development at birth.  How much of the brain is currently
        used has little to do with that compromise.  Mind you, I
        don't claim to know how much of our brains are used, or for
        what: I'm just saying that there's no physical rule that
        they'd be smaller if we weren't using them all.
        
        After all, remember that we developed the physical and mental
        capabilities for speech and thought *before* we started doing
        them, or we wouldn't have been *able* to do them!  We succeeded
        as a species because we learned to use the capabilities before
        we were pulled under by the liabilities they brought us,
        not because success was inherent in the physical changes.
        
        	/dave

    re: walkers:
    	
    	Walkers do well in places like big jungle, or on steep slopes
    that require active *balancing* rather than just having a low GC
    (like a caterpillar bulldozer).
    	
    	Besides, it was a neat special effect.
    	
    	Re: wire and logs:  The Hungarians had not much better to fight
    Russian tanks with (OK, molotov cocktails, dinner plates, and empty
    O2 welding cylinders).  That worked, too (for a while).

    	I mentioned this WAY back (c.40), but in relation to the starships
    in STAR TREK all seeming to be on an upright-oriented, two-dimensional
    plane in a three-dimensional universe being inconsistant, this brings
    to light the ST universe dilemma of the GALACTIC BARRIER - that
    reddish band of negative energy surrounding the ST Milky Way Galaxy
    and making life difficult for any ship that tries to cross it. 
     
    	Two questions:
    
    	Could such an energy barrier exist in our or any other galaxy?
    
    	And why didn't Kirk fly the Enterprise OVER the Barrier?
    
    
    	Larry
    

    re. Brain size. One reason for the size of our brains is that
    eveolution has essentially cobbled them together out of more
    primitive brains. Some biologists feel that we have three brains
    one built over another starting with a primitve reptilian brain
    as our brain stem. This means that there is a *lot* of redundancy
    in the brain - multiple centers to control respiration for example.
    If we could somehow design a brain "from scratch" it could well
    be smaller. However it is quite correct to say while that we may not
    know what a part of the brain does it is doing something. Evolution
    tends to the discarding of non-functional structures over time.
    or their adaptation to other uses. 

    Re .108
        
    I'm unaware of anything in modern astronomy that suggests the Star
    Trek galactic energy barrier, but it is permissible to make up
    something new.  In fact, I gather that the Enterprise was the ship
    that discovered the barrier.
    
    It certainly LOOKED like one could fly above or below it.  Of course,
    if it was many hundreds of light-years "high," that would be very
    inconvenient, but still possible.  However, perhaps the barrier
    only glows in the visible spectrum in the area of tightest curvature,
    which would be at the rim of the galaxy, if we assume the barrier
    is wrapped rather tightly around the disk, like Saranwrap.
    
    Hey! that's it!  Without the barrier, our galaxy goes rancid.  Probably
    gets invaded by those planet-sized, planet-eating amoebae, one of
    which the Enterprise destroyed.
                                                                
    Isn't rationalization fun?
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .110:
    
    That explains why the background radiation is three degrees; the galaxy
    is chilled so it will keep longer.
    
    
    				-- edp 

Re:.109

   > as our brain stem. This means that there is a *lot* of redundancy
   > in the brain - multiple centers to control respiration for example.

To the best of my knowledge, there aren't multiple centers for respiration.
The "reptilian brain" (ie. the pons and the medulla oblongata) has always 
been responsible for maintaining respiration, heartbeat, etc.  The "mammalian
brain" (ie. the limbic system) handles the emotions of basic survival also 
known as the four F's (Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and reproduction).  I 
believe this function was taken-over and enhanced from the "reptilian brain".
The "primate brain" (ie. the cerebral cortex) is responsible for the "higher"
brain functions of language, creativity, analysis, etc.  I don't believe the
cortex ever had to deal directly with the nitty-gritty details of respiration.

While different parts of the brain have the ability to take over certain
functions, they never get quite as good as the original section (the section
which presumably has the function more or less "hard-wired" or "burned-in").
Basically, it seems that if a module fails, the brain can hack around the 
problem.  This ability is most apparent in children and, to a lesser extent,
women. (Of course, children have remarkable regenerative powers.  Some can
even regrow lost fingertips, etc.  Then, again children have lots of remarkable
physical and mental capabilities!  But that's probably the subject for another
topic.  Anyone want to start?)


	Thanks,

	 /~~'\
	W o o k		(Maybe the next "brain" to develop will handle PSI
	(  ^  )		 or Magic or something we can't even imagine, because
	 \`-'/		 it exceeds the our current capabilities.  Hmmmm....)
	  \_/

    The galactic barrier has been used before; "Croyd" stories come
    to mind.  Something about "...their atoms will <flow in a stream>
    till they reach the <galactic barrier> and circle the galaxy
    forever...".
    
    But the barrier may be a phenomenon similar to Terra's Van Allen
    belts.  At present our knowledge is not so comprehensive that such
    a phenomenon could be easily discounted.  Uh, could it ?

    Looks like Khan wasn't the only one with two-dimensional thinking.
    And maybe some day Hollywood will discover that sound doesn't travel
    well through Space.
    
    						Don 

Re:.109,.112, etc.

from .112:
>While different parts of the brain have the ability to take over certain
>functions, they never get quite as good as the original section (the section
>which presumably has the function more or less "hard-wired" or "burned-in").
>Basically, it seems that if a module fails, the brain can hack around the 
>problem.  This ability is most apparent in children and, to a lesser extent,
>women. (Of course, children have remarkable regenerative powers.  Some can
>even regrow lost fingertips, etc.  Then, again children have lots of remarkable
>physical and mental capabilities!  But that's probably the subject for another
>topic.  Anyone want to start?)

Correct. It has been shown in earlier stages of development(e.g. children),
that if a section of the brain gets damaged, another part of the brain will
begin to perform this function after a while. For example, if the motor
function section for a child's right hand gets damaged, after a period of
time, the right hand will begin to function nearly normally again. The
various "unused" areas of the brain have adapted to perform this function
again. I believe that the only function that cannot be replaced is sight,
due to its extreme complexity and use of large sections of the brain.

You are also correct about the three part brain. The "lower" brains
perform the "automatic" functions, which include respiration, heartbeat,
adrenalin, etc.

Yes, lets think up some more myths instead of arguing about brains and
walkers.

kevin routley

    Myth:   You have to be quiet around computers; they can hear you
    and you wouldn't want them to get distracted, would you?
    	
    Truth:  You can scream all you want at a computer.  It won't help.
                                                    :-)
     
    Myth:  Exposure to vacuum causes instant, horrible death, as you
    explode, blood boiling and spouting from every bodily orifice.
    _Outland_ was particularly graphic in this.   	
                              
    Truth: Expect 15 sec concious, 60 sec survivable.
    	
    

It's a little hard to tell after 116 replies, but has anyone 
mentioned one of the oldest sf myths, the Mad Scientist?  "They said 
I was crazy back at the Institute, that it would never work, but I'll 
show them!  I'll show them all!"  The MS is generally after political 
power (The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo), but sometimes he's 
working on something that Man Was Not Meant 
To Know, which is usually bringing the dead to life (Victor Frankenstein).

(Side note: Horror novels are also almost always about things that
should be dead coming alive.  Does this preoccupation with raising the
dead have something to do with Christianity?  Only one person is
supposed to have that power after all, and he sitteth on the right
hand of God.  Would a Buddhist horror novel have the same theme?  Or 
would it be, say, about disrupting the fundamental balance between 
Yin and Yang?  Does Stephen King sell in India?)

In any case, he's also a member of the set of Omniscient Scientists, 
since he achieves his breakthroughs by himself or with only a few 
deformed assistants.  Of course, his madness enhances his genius, so 
that it's easy to build a Universal Disintegrator Ray with off-the-shelf
technology.

What's curious is that there isn't a single historical example of a 
mad scientist.  There have been brilliant inventors, whose work has 
affected the outcome of wars (Von Braun, Oppenheimer, Hiram Maxim), 
but their work was always done through the proper channels.  I can't 
think of any instance where an engineer or scientist used his knowledge 
to take political control.  This isn't too surprising, since politics 
is involves the understanding of people, not nature or machinery.  The popular
conception, though, is that if you leave these scientists alone for 
too long, they'll burst out of the laboratory with something fiendish.
It's more likely that when they're funds are cut off they'll go on to 
driving cabs.

The only person I can think of who might fit the bill is Edward
Teller.  Here is a man who is so consumed by his hatred for the Soviet
Union that he has almost single-handedly driven the arms race. He
drove through the H-bomb over the objections of Oppenheimer, and then
destroyed him in the Senate hearings.  Now he's pushing for orbiting
nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers for SDI, which has to be the worst of all
possible missile defenses.  The guy is dangerous, and he's influenced
US nuclear policy for almost forty years.  He has certainly used his 
expertise for political ends, but ultimately, of course, it was the 
politicians and generals who made the decisions.

/jlr

    While few scientists may have been political megalomaniacs, many
    of them have been middling eccentric.  There is some truth to the
    stereotype of the absent-minded professor.  Newton and Einstein
    were both such.  I suspect this is because they simply spend more
    time concentrating on what really interests them instead of the
    trivia of daily living.  This is crazy?...
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re .112 (and I instintively like anyone who uses A Elbereth, Gilthoniel
    as a motto) (or what ever it is you call it).
    
    I think we have a semantics problem. There is only one repiratory
   *center* in the brain but there are several places in the brain that
    can control respiration.
    
    First there is the respiratory center (reptilian brain) that is
    found in the brain stem. (please �ignore the u with a ^on it = I
    am using a noisy line and I am not going to keep going back and
    erasing them.)
    If all other controlls are gone then it continues to produce a deep
    slow breath with no response to environmenatal changes.� Laid over
    this is the primitive mammalian brain - the mid brain which mediates
    respiratory relexes (sneezing etc.). Over this is the �thalamus
    which is the brain's switching center which sends messages to the
    brain stem in response to changes in bodily sensors (the carotid
    body, lacticacid recptors in the tissues etc.) which speed up or
    slow down respiration. Over all of these is the higher mammalian�
    brain or cerebral cortex which c6�an exert conscious control over
    breathing (i.e . holding your breath, changing the rate  etc.)
    �A better example would have been that there are multiple auditory
    and visual centers in the brain.      
    

    I think that the mad scientist  was at least touched on in the
    omniscient scientist.
    I don't think that we can attribute his origins (or raising the
    dead either) to the Christian mythos. The male priest who  weilds
    both secular and spriritual powers is a figure in our very
    early myths.
                                                          

re: .117

As far as horror goes, another theme that ranks right up there
with bringing the dead back to life is having monstrous children
(or outwardly normal but inwardly supernaturally evil children).
The creation of life is evidently fraught with spiritual and
other sorts of peril, if you believe these books!  (Of course
they're right...)

re: .112 et al

The "three brain" metaphor is just that: a metaphor.  The pons
and medulla in humans is probably bigger than the whole brain
in a lot of animals.  Probably one of the biggest myths in
scientific culture in general is the "intelligence myth".  It
has a few major assumptions, like:
	1)  greater brain size == greater intellect
	2)  humans are "more advanced" than other animals
		because of the greater intelligence and
		reasoning power derived from the cerebral
		cortex
	3)  emotions are left over from the "lower animal"
		portions of the brain (midbrain and lower)
	4)  as humanoid species evolve into their most
		advanced forms, they will become disembodied
		brains and finally pure intellect
What's funny is that so much of this is left over from (at
least) Victorian days; what's scary is that the assumptions
continue to crop up in serious scientific papers from time to
time.

Science fiction has a corollary that extra-sensory type powers
will come from additional "new" brain matter.  Gilbert Gosseyn
in "The World of Null-A" is one example of that.  The hero in
"The Dead Zone" gets his power of prophecy from a similar
source (although one more sinister in its final consequences!).

The myth of "pure intellect" existing without emotions has
its best comeuppance in "Forbidden Planet" ("monsters from the
id!").  It's interesting that people feel like they can brag
about their advanced intellect but not about their (probably
equally) advanced emotional range.  You have to go back to
ancient Greece and probably before to get at the roots of
these myths!

    	A major portion of the primate brain (cerebral cortex) is given
    over to a hardwired form of signal processing that allows us to
    visualize things in three dimensions.  There are involuntary controls
    on this (the data coming in from the optic nerve, eyeball position
    information from the ocular muscles, head position information from
    the ear), and "control" information from who-knows-where in the
    cortex.
    	
    	Anyway, this large mass of neurons constructs, in real time,
    a three-dimensional model of what we see, filing in the details
    so that even though the eye can see with high resolution only a
    small field (foveal area) the users brain "sees" a reconstructed
    image with high resolution everywhere (and is occasionally decieved
    by this).  The wiring that does this has been investigated to some
    extent; we have wiring diagrams for the edge detectors and stereo
    rangefinders.	
    	
    	What dolphins do in the way of signal processing is somewhat
    different; dolphinese words for objects are just the echosounds
    of those objects.  Their brain signal-processing does not do stereo
    matching for range data; instead, they use time of flight for range.
    To get azimunth, thye have to do a phased-array calculation,
    which humans get for near-free by the lenses in the eye.
                           
    
    
    	All of which brings us to another SF myth: most other alien
    life forms will not have the standard "sense organs" that earthly lifeforms
    have.  In particular, the hostile alien life forms will have no discenable
    organs at all (giant slime globs).  Those life forms that do have
    internal organs will:
    
    	1) be transparent enough to show these organs
    	2) be friendly               
    	
    	Thus you can tell if an alien life form is hostile or friendly;
    you just ask to see its organs, and if it shows them to you, it's
    friendly.
    			:-} 
    

re: .121

Yes, the "super being = pure intellect" theme is a pretty potent one 
in sf.  It was a major theme in Star Trek, where the superior being (Spock)
was constantly plagued by these bestial urges.  ST came down on the 
side of emotion, though.

I've always wondered what these pure intellect beings are supposed to 
do with themselves.  What kind of drives, what kind of goals could 
they have?  Ours are all ultimately derived from emotions.  Without them
we would sit and stare into space, exactly like a CPU in an idle loop.
Rationality is only a means, not an end.

/jlr

    RE .116
    I read a SF book some time ago.  Wish I could remember what it was
    , but there was a club of people who had survived exposure to a
    vacuum.  Anybody else remember this book?
    
    Steve

    howabout the myth that you can amplify an arbitrarily small signal
    as much as you want. saw this last night on a bad pilot. The guy
    could arbitrarily increase the resolution of his various senses.
    Any way, while listening to a recorded ransom message, he listened
    more closely and heard very small sounds that should have been lost
    in the noise. Same thing on Star Trek when Kirk was on trial, and
    they were looking for the man he was accused of killing.
    
    second myth: wearing glasses with the right kind of filter will let you
    see infra-red laser beams (that aren't pointed at you).  Saw this most 
    recently on STINGRAY friday.
    
    sm

    Re .124
    
    The first one who used the "survival from exposure to a vacuum"
    in a story was the late, great, Stanley G. Weinbaum in a short story,
    "The Red Peri," which also used a tetrahedral pulsed-fusion spacecraft.
    
    Arthur C. Clarke used it in a story or two, also, in the 1950s,
    but Weinbaum wrote in the 1930s.
    
    On resurrecting the dead, the response a few notes ago was correct:
    it goes back to oral prehistory.  Even ancient Egypt had tales of
    sorcerers doing that.  Hardly a science-fiction theme.
    
    On "pure intellect = few emotions," one of the _best_ treatments
    of that was in the Lensman saga by "Doc" Smith.  The idea here was
    that creatures who lived for literally billions of years had their
    sexual drives in the first few centuries, than having outgrown that
    (if they didn't the planet would be miles deep in Arisians), got
    down to "advanced" thought like a philosophical reconstruction of
    the entire cosmos through comtemplation of its microscopic and
    macroscopic parts using the laws of causality and chance.  Not _no_
    emotions; just different ones.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    Surviving exposure to vacuum -- Clarke and Kubrick tried to
    "explode" that myth in 2001 -- remember, Bowman did *not*
    have his helmet on when he blew the pod's hatch.  He didn't 
    even get a nosebleed.
    
    Since "Outland" followed 2001, they obviously failed.
    
    This topic is *fun*!!  Has anybody gone through it all, and
    made a list of every myth so far?  I think we have the makings 
    of the QUINTESSENTIAL SCI-FI (sic) EPIC!!!  Sorta like Stephen
    Bishop's Ultimate CW song.
    
    					andrew
    
    PS -- this note's title was a very clever advertising gimmick --
          simply because it was, and is, true.

    Re .125:
    
    What's wrong with seeing laser beams, even infra-red beams?  I know
    there are things (I don't think "filters" is quite the right word) that
    will let you see infra-red light, and some laser-light is scattered by
    the air, so why shouldn't you see them?
    
    I see you saw Northstar.  Let's hope it doesn't become a series.  It
    could fill a note of its own with the mistakes.  I was particularly
    amused/disgusted with the simulation showing what would happen if North
    overloaded on his superpower -- sparks come out of his brain. 
    
    By comparison, the show that followed it ("Condor"?) wasn't bad.  I had
    hope in it -- for a minute, until they described the android.  Oh,
    well, at least its mistakes weren't integral to the plot.
    
    
    				-- edp 

    I think the club referred to was called the Vacuum Breathers, but I
    can't remember the book either.  I do remember one of the more recent
    fictional examples of survial in a vacuum.  This was in a book called 
    "The McAdrew Chronicles" by Charles Sheffield.  In one of the stories
    there is which McAndrew and a companion are trapped a hundred yards 
    or from their spaceship without their spacesuits.  There is nothing
    but vacuum between them and the spaceship hatch.  In the future 
    everyone who goes out into space has to undergo somekind of training
    so they can survive just this sort of situation.  They both carry
    whistles around their necks tuned to a certain frequency.  Blowing on
    the whistle will activate certain reflexes like expelling air from
    the lungs and keeping the eyes shut except for short blinks.  They
    blow the whistle, get their bodies into vacuum mode and make a mad
    dash accross the field to their ship.  It was mentioned in the story
    that there was a stiff penalty for blowing the whistle when there
    was no need for it since everyone who had undergone the conditioning
    will go into the vacuum mode immediately.

    Mike

    Maybe I'm wandering but - it seems to me that one of the really
    popular writers like Asimov or Heinlein mentioned a "vacuum breathers
    club in one of his short stories.

    That's the one that I am trying to remember. It was by a popular
    older author.
    
    Steve

    Try the story "Take a Deep Breath"...
    	
    How about the "laser" in Rocky Horror?   The one "capable of emitting
    a beam of pure anti-matter" - and the beam zigzagged like a lightning
    bolt!

    re:.132
    
    You just reminded me of another myth --- that for matter and anti-
    matter to obliterate each other, they have to be in the same form.
    Cf. the Star Trek episode "The Alternative Factor", in which the
    anti-matter person can exist in the "matter universe" without any
    problem, but should he touch his "matter analog" --- boom!
    
    --- jerry

    re .128:
    
    what about liquid crystal glasses that would put a black spot in
    front of the sun when you looked in that direction?
    
    The problem is forming the image of the beam. If you cover your
    glasses with the phosphors you mentioned, they would all glow
    (and darn feebly too) not just the ones that would look like a line.
    It is exactly like holding up a sheet of film (without a lens) and
    expecting to get an image.
    
    sm

    re .124 - Vacuum Breathers
    
    The anthology "The Other Side of the Sky", edited by Arthur C. Clarke
    had a story on that topic, the title of which I can't recall. (The
    book also had quite a few other very good stories, including "The
    Nine Million Names of God" (I may have the number wrong) and a good
    series about the first exploration of the moon. (By a joint
    Soviet-American team)
    
    Roy

    	How about the SF myth of SHRINKING objects and people, such
    as in the movies THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and FANTASTIC VOYAGE.
    
    	Wouldn't compacting the object or person's atomic structure
    cause problems - not to ask HOW would one shrink something anyway?
    	And if you were extremely small, how could you breathe, because
    oxygen atoms would be too big for you to inhale!
                                                    
    	Larry
    

    Asimov came closer than anyone else to solving the problems of
    miniaturization.  In his novelization of "Fantastic Voyage," he
    made it quite clear that the miniaturization of the sub and its
    crew extended right down to their electrons.  Their radio even gave
    off miniaturized radio-waves, which I think had to be re-enlarged
    before they could be detected, or detected with a special apparatus.
    When they stopped off in the lungs to pick up more air, they had
    to run the air through an on-board miniaturizer so that they could
    absorb it.
    
    Fritz Leiber also handled miniaturization elegantly, in a fantasy
    context.  It was a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story, I think "Swords
    Against Wizardry."  The Mouser has to infiltrate a city of intelligent
    rats beneath Lankhmar.  His wizard mentor, Sheelba of the Eyeless
    Face, gives him a magic potion.  When he drinks it, the Mouser shrinks
    down to rat-size.  (Since the civilized rats beneath the city wear
    clothes and masks, he can now infiltrate.)  But the conservation
    laws are obeyed.  He finds himself standing ankle-deep in a puddle
    of pink slime -- his discarded protoplasm.  As he wades out, he
    comes to a narrow "shore" of grey lint -- discarded cloth from his
    clothing -- and finely ground iron filings, from his sword.
    
    He lives at a higher metabolic rate, as does a rat, and all in all
    it is quite plausible.  (Of course, there's the problem of intelligence
    in such a tiny brain, but one could unkindly suggest that this is
    not such a great problem in the Mouser's case.  Also, he could operate
    on methods and experience he had accumulated with a larger brain.
    
    When the spell wears off and he re-enlarges, several nearby drapes
    lose cloth to make up his clothes, some unfriendly guards conveniently
    trip over their pants as their belt buckled corrode to supply the
    steel in his sword, and a nearby fat woman gets a free crash
    weight-loss to supply the Mouser's own bulk.  (She's very pleased.)
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    	Ah, but HOW does one shrink an object?
    
    	Larry
    

    re 139:
    
    In the case of FANTASTIC VOYAGE I suppose you could say that you
    warp space. Ever see the trick of the shrinking dollar bill? What
    you do is you put so many folds in the bill that even when you "flatten
    it out" it is smaller than a fresh bill. of course if you iron the
    bill it'll be the original size. But suppose you do something similar
    to three-space so that everything in that space is smaller when
    compared to normal "flat" three-space.
    
    just a thought.
    
    sm

    Re .139

    To shrink an object uniformly, so that it is even made of miniature
    atoms, would require the ability to alter fundamental constants
    of the universe, like the mass and charge of an electron, or Planck's
    constant.
    
    According to the highly-speculative Grand Unification Theories now
    in the science press, SOME (but by no means all) of these natural
    constants are the result of the local value of the "Higgs field."
    Other regions of the universe may have other values of Higgs field,
    determined randomly at the Big Bang.  Speculating wildly, it might
    be possible to alter the local Higgs field artificially.  This could
    produce many, many, many bizarre effects, including (just maybe)
    an area of reduced scale.  Any material object in that area would
    thus shrink.  Contrariwise, you could expand things by the same
    dubious logic.
    
    But this produces a boundary between the shrunken object and the
    outside world.  (So does the space-warp method of shrinking.)
    How things interact across the boundary requires yet more 
    speculation.
    
    So there you have a very, very faint rationalization of shrinking.
    As a reality check, please note that no one has yet seen a Higgs
    boson or any evidence for one, or any evidence of regions of the
    cosmos with different fundamental forces.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

  In the afterword to Fantastic Voyage, Asimov said that he complained 
  about the fact that the screenplay left the wreckage of the sub inside
  the patient's body.

  "You can't do that," he told the screenwriters.

  "You don't understand," they said, "the sub was *destroyed*."

  The Good Doctor left in disgust.

  JP

I think we're getting bogged down in technicalities here. Nothing that you
can answer with an appeal to last month's Communications of the ACM
(robotics questions) or the Materials Handbook (tensile strength of steel)
is a myth. Earl was on a good track in .0 with the computer myths, but how
about some myths of Truly Mythic Proportions:

1. The world is on the brink of a new golden age, because of the wonders of
technology.

2. The world is going to hell in a handbasket because of Technological
Hubris (i.e., beleiving in Myth #1.)

3. SF authors and fen will be the instruments of salvation in either scenario.

3.1: The narrow minded mundanes are so afraid of anything different or new
that if it weren't for the forward looking SF communitiy those benefits of
technology would never take effect.

3.2. The narrow minded mundanes are so nearsighted and blas� about
technology they can't tell a labor-saving device from an instrument of
enslavement.

I'll run home and try to come up with some examples of these.

Don.

    Re .143:
    
    > 1. The world is on the brink of a new golden age, because of the
    > wonders of technology. 

    Hey!  Who says that's a myth?
    
    
    				-- edp

    Re .144:
    
    >>1. The world is on the brink of a new golden age, because of the
    >>wonders of technology.
    
    >Hey!  Who says that's a myth?
    
    It's a myth in the sense that the mere presence of technology is
    supposed to bring about the Golden Age in question.
    
    A very instructive exercise is to look at tghe various models of
    klife in the future done from 1930-1950 in various popular magazines
    and compare it to today's reality.  If someone had said in, say,
    1935 that every home would have one or more color television sets
    capable of bringing the world into the living room; that virtually
    every child who wanted one could have a radio that would fit in
    his pocket or her handbag; that many homemakers would have an oven
    that would cook food quickly and easily without even heating the
    container, etc.; such a person would probably have been considered
    a kook: however, if he or she was believed, the audience would be
    of the opinion that we'd live in a golden age of happiness and luxury.
    
    The technology can be instrumental (i.e., be a foundation) for a
    golden age; the myth is that it's all that's necessary.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
     

    Re .145:
    
    Oh, okay.  I was just thinking about the technology, i.e., we could be
    on the brink of a new golden age of really neat gadgets to play with.
    I didn't figure society would necessarily change for the better because
    of it. 
    
    
    				-- edp

    	Are FORCE FIELDS, which many SF spaceships use as shields against
    incoming laser/phaser fire, impractical?  These shields are usually
    magnetic in nature, and I do not believe that light rays are diverted
    except by VERY powerful gravity forces; and many forms of high
    radiation cannot be diverted at all by magnetic fields.
    
    	Larry
    

        I've rarely seen any "force fields" described as magnetic;
        usually the "force" is left unspecified deliberately, leaving
        open the possibility of some new force which we might not
        even know about yet.  It's distinctly pseudo science, but
        hardly a "myth" in the common sense.
        
        	/dave

re: .148       (force fields)
>	even know about yet.  It's distinctly pseudo science, but
>       hardly a "myth" in the common sense.

In Charles Harness's super-duper space opera "The Paradox Men",
force fields repelled in proportion to the force of the intruding
force--so bullets couldn't get through it but hand-wielded knives
or sabers could.  How's that for a contrivance allowing lots of
that old-fashioned fencing to get into the plot?

"The Paradox Men" had the myth about a starship faster than the
speed of light that comes back to earth several years before its
original takeoff.  Plus some other good ones, like a fuel processing
plant balanced on the edge of a _sunspot_ and staffed by certifiable
lunatics.

Harness also had the "new Adam-and-Eve" myth in "The Ring of Ritornel".
He makes use of "classical" myths in his books pretty often, and even
invents his own on occasion (at least I haven't been able to figure
out the source of Donator's "Song" in "The Catalyst", although it
certainly feels like a myth).  Not bad stuff for a patent attorney!

                If I remember correctly, that "speed sensitive" force
        field was also used by E.E. "Doc" Smith in his Lensman series.
        Remember the battle axes everyone carried??
                
                /s/     Bob

    re:.150 re:.149
    
    Not to mention the Dune series, and many, many others.
    
    --- jerry

    I remember the Battle axes of the lensmen series were used because
    of fighting in ship(Don't want to puncture the hull of the ship
    in space) and because of the enertialess state that they were always
    in.
    
    Steve

    Yes, that was it.  When the ship's inertia neutralizer was on (I
    believe it was called a "Bergenholm") you couldn't use an inertia
    weapon (such as a normal axe, sword, bullet, or explosive warhead).
    All that would happen is that the inertialess (steel, lead, or hot
    gases) would touch the target, and be instantly decellerated, imparting
    negligible force or damage to the target.
    	
    The Lensman battleaxes had small rocket engines built in, so they
    applied FORCE at the target (that is, force of a non-inertial origin;
    we'll overlook the small detail that rocket engine thrust is a result
    of the inertia of the exhaust gasses)
    	
    Anyway, these small reaction motors had the controls conveniently
    built into the handle of the axe, so that normal swinging action
    would fire the motors.  You could also manipulate some controls
    such that the battleaxe motors would pull you around the ship (great
    way to maneuver in zero-g, eh?)
                                   

re: .149...

My favorite "slow" force field is in The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman.

The reason is that they invented a way to make this force field into
a wonderful booby-trap, near the end of the book.

** spoiler follows **

What you do is set off a REALLY powerful bomb inside the field. It doesn't
explode, because it's in the field. Then you put the bomb at the edge of
the field, and move the field (by moving the field generator), leaving
the bomb outside. You don't get hurt, because of the field, but anything
nearby outside gets the full effect.

JO

re: .148(?)

>    It's a myth in the sense that the mere presence of technology is
>    supposed to bring about the Golden Age in question.
    
>    The technology can be instrumental (i.e., be a foundation) for a
>    golden age; the myth is that it's all that's necessary.
    
>    Steve Kallis, Jr.
     

Good point, Steve. It is a common myth that future technology will solve
existing problems without creating new ones. In fact, "utopia" stories
which revolve around technological improvements are one of the most commonly
rejected types in slushpiles of SF magazines- at least that's what all
the rejection slips I ever got said.

Besides technological inventions, there are social inventions. Some social
inventions are driven by technological inventions (hospitals by medicine)
or side effects (craft guilds by advance in specialized crafts technology).
Some may be invented by prominent individuals, as Ben Franklin is supposed
to be responsible for the first publicly-supported fire department. (I may
be incorrect about that, my history's not that good.) Futurists have a lot
of concern about social invention: it is not particularly predictable and
has much more far-ranging effects than technological invention (war and
slavery are social inventions- both began very early in human history, and
both lasted through most of it, and then slavery, quite suddenly, died out.
why?). 

Social invention is a lot like the weather: you can see it and label it,
and sometimes predict it, but you can't do a lot about it: the raw materials
don't yield well to control.

JO

RE: .153
    
>            The Lensman battleaxes had small rocket engines built in, so they
>    applied FORCE at the target (that is, force of a non-inertial origin;
>    we'll overlook the small detail that rocket engine thrust is a result
>    of the inertia of the exhaust gasses)
>    	
>    Anyway, these small reaction motors had the controls conveniently
>    built into the handle of the axe, so that normal swinging action
>    would fire the motors.  You could also manipulate some controls
>    such that the battleaxe motors would pull you around the ship (great
>    way to maneuver in zero-g, eh?)

Can you give a reference on this one?  I thought that Valerian battle-axes
were simply large, heavy axes which were effective when the ship was "free"
(aka inertialess), simply because you had huge, very strong people wielding
them, who could exert force enough to go through things like arms, necks,
helmets, armour, etc, without having to depend on the inertia of the axe
which was developed during its swing toward the victim.  I don't remember
any discussion about reaction motors on them...

-- Ken Moreau

    	Hoping this hasn't been said:
    
    	How about the myth of INSTANT COMMUNICATION across vast distances
    in space.  I've seen SF TV programs and movies which not only have
    had two ships be able to talk back and forth to each other over their
    radios without any time gap in the Solar System, but light years
    across from other STARS!
    	Radio waves travel at the speed of light (186,000 mps), but
    that still is "slow" enough so that a two-second gap occurs in
    transmissions from even as astronomically close an object as the
    Moon; and Voyager 2 took hours just to get a signal sent ONE way
    from Uranus!  It would also take FOUR YEARS just to send a one-way
    signal to Earth from Alpha Centauri.
    
    	SF has come up with FTL radio, but the paradox with that is
    that if you sent a message via FTL radio to someone else, the message
    would arrive BEFORE you sent it!
    
        Larry
    

>        	SF has come up with FTL radio, but the paradox with that is
>    that if you sent a message via FTL radio to someone else, the message
>    would arrive BEFORE you sent it!	
    
    	I've heard people say this about FTL travel before.  I don't
    get it.  Say the message travels, oh, 500,000 mile/sec.  That's faster
    than light but if I'm 1,500,000 mile away it gonna get there 3 seconds
    later...   How do you figure the BEFORE part????
    
    tlh
    

I think another SF myth has been exploded...

- Chris

    re .158:
    
    At last somebody agrees with me!
    
    sm

    I remember a book in which a method was developed in which a carrier
    wave (example) is transmitted from Earth constantly and once this
    wave has reached Alpha Centauri four years later we now have a radio
    wave bridge which is always on.  When Earth wanted to communicate
    with AC or Visa versa then they had a way that when the carrier wave
    was modulated at one end it was instantly felt at the other end
    and so one had instant communication.  If another planet was to
    be connected then once the carrier wave reached it from Earth or
    from the transmitter on AC then it was connected.  If the
    connection was ever broken then it would take years to reestablish
    it.  This book did not give any details as the story surrounded
    a battleship that was assigned to an intermediate transmitting station
    to protect it from enemy attack until vital information could be
    transmitted from Earth to wherever.
    
    Anybody else read this book and remember the title.  I read it years
    ago and would like to again.
    
    Steve

    .161 sounds like an invention of James Blish's, used in several
    short stories.  It doesn't work, by the bye.  You can have phase
    velocities faster than light going down a carrier wave, but you
    can't use them to transmit information or energy.
    
    About FTL and time-travel:  If you continue using special relativity
    for FTL velocities, you CAN set up time-travel situation, but you
    don't HAVE to.  Time-travel simply becomes an option.  Of course,
    you also have to worry about giving a physical interpretation to
    the imaginary numbers that spring up all over the place.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

If Time and FTL Travel involve imaginary numbers, then all we have to do,
is imagine we are travelling FTL or through time... :-)

Jim.

    re: .161
    
    The book sounds like it might be "We All Died at Breakaway Station"
    by Richard Meredith.  Two severely damaged battleships and a hospital
    ship get elected to defend the carrier station from attack when
    a relief force fails to arrive.  Very good story.
    
    							/alan

One SF myth with somewhat nasty consequences is that mechanical 
replacements for body parts are better than the originals.  
Mechanical arms would let you rip car doors off, mechanical legs 
would let you run a hundred miles an hour, TV eyes could see in the dark
and read newspapers fifty yards away, and so on.  Aside from the 
obvious problems with how to power such things, they would destroy 
the rest of the body.  When the Bionic Boy (was there such a show?) 
picks up the bulldozer, his steel arm might be able to handle it, but 
the rest of his skeleton would be twisted apart.

In actual fact, there are NO replacements that are as good as the originals.
Even hair and teeth, which don't have any moving parts, can't be 
imitated all that well.  When it comes to complex organs like hands 
or eyes, it's hopeless.  Sure, they're working on it, and it's a 
source of hope for people with amputations or spinal injuries, but they're
a long, long way off.

Why does this have nasty consequences?  Think of the Jarvik-7 
artificial heart.  The poor blighters they tried it on probably 
thought they'd be going for jogs in the park.  In all the newspaper 
pictures you never saw that these guys had hoses coming out of them 
for the compressors.  In all the publicity they didn't make much of 
the fact that even if the heart had worked these guys would have 
spent the rest of their lives in bed.  

In fact, the heart didn't work. Instead of a relatively clean death from a 
heart attack, they suffered through a horror of infections and brain 
damage.  They hoped to gain a little more time, and instead gained a 
couple of weeks of misery for themselves and their families.  In 
Schroeder's case he gained a year as a vegetable.   But it's 
mechanical, right?  It's got to be better than, say, a transplant.  
It'll run forever and never need batteries.  And all for only six 
million dollars...

/jlr

    re .166:
    
    This isn't a myth, but the reply about artificial body-parts triggered
    a concept that I think would be the ideal solution to "worn-out"
    parts.
    
    cloning! but not what you think. You needn't clone an entire person
    just to provide a heart. If the mystery of cell differentiation
    can be understood, we could grow just the specific organ necessary.
    No more worry about rejection, etc.
    
    		/
    	       (  ___
    		) ///
    	       /     

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!caip!daemon
Subject: Impossibilities
Posted: 8 Sep 86 14:20:49 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
 
From: [email protected]
 
 
	"Prepare yourselves, Gentlemen, for a whole
	 new scale of physical scientific values"
 
Do you hate it when people say things are "impossible"?
Well, I do, and this is a personal statement, so skip
it right now if you'd rather.  The belief in physical
impossibilities is a mental aberration that afflicts both
scientists and non-scientists.  It has many causes, but
the root causes are, I think: in scientists, a fear
that their hard-won expertise will become obsolete; in
non-scientists, a simple fear of the unknown.  "Why, if
telepathy existed, ANYONE could be reading my mind RIGHT
NOW"
 
The established scientists' attitude to the impossible
has been satirised by a lot of people from Charles Fort
to H Beam Piper ("Ministry of Disturbance") so I'll say
no more on that.  Instead, let's analyse the disease.
 
There are three kinds of "impossible": technologically
impossible, scientifically impossible, and theoretically
impossible.
 
Technological impossibility: we have no means of doing it,
therefore it can't be done.  For example, one of the best
arguments against the possibility of space travel was the
observation that no chemical combination known could release
enough energy to lift its own weight out of our gravity well.
Apart from sloppy technical analysis, this attitude seems
a simple failure of nerve.  For a contemporary analogy, look
at the "ten million lines of working software is impossible"
debate.
 
Scientific impossibility: we know of no theory that predicts
it, therefore it can't happen.  For example, the Earth can't
be more than about ten million years old, because "even if it
were composed entirely of the best grade coal" the Sun could
not have been burning that long.  Such indeed was the position
less than a century ago.  Perhaps we are in a similar state
today over evolution: we have lots of facts, but they don't
hang together, and there is no convincing theoretical model.
Hence the endless debate between gradualists and catastrophists.
 
Theoretical impossiblity: we can prove it can't be done.  The most
famous example is, of course, the transmutation of the elements,
a longstanding fantasy, born form deep desires in the human
psyche, finally laid to rest by the Atomic Theory, which showed
the chemical elements to be immutable.  Today's bugbear is
(you guessed it) faster-than-light travel.  Every physicist
will explain at the drop of a photon why it's theoretically
impossible; few physicists admit that theories, like all human
creations, are fallible, and that the universe is an endless
surprise.
 
Perhaps we should avoid the word "impossible", and say only
"we don't know how", or "our current theories predict it won't
happen", or something sounding a little less like Divine Truth.
But, given the deep desire of the human mind to believe it knows
the Divine Truth, such a change is no doubt impossible.
 
Robert Firth

    Sorry, but there's a fourth type of impossibility: 
    provable impossibility.  There are, in fact, things
    (especially things mathematical) that can be proven 
    impossible.  Things like squaring a circle or trisecting
    an angle, and yes, FTL travel.
    
    Now granted, mathematics presents only a model for the 
    universe, and models can change.  But to imply that
    all impossibilities are simply failure of nerve, or
    failure of imagination is hogwash!
    
    Incidentally, it occurred to me that there is a fifth
    type of impossibility -- practical impossibility.
    Do you want an example?  Kiss your elbow.
    
    					andrew

    Re .169:
    
    FTL travel does not belong in a category of things which can be
    proven impossible.             
    
    
    				-- edp

    Re .170:
    
    I believe .169 is confusing "mathematical proof" with "mathematically
    demonstrable."
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    re: the last 2 -- yup, I was in fact thinking "mathematically
    demonstrable" which is NOT the same as "mathematical proof".
    
    I was under the impression that it had been mathematically
    demonstrated that an object's mass would become infinite
    at lightspeed.  Am I wrong?
    
    In my own defense -- I'm a believer in Clarke's First Law.  I'm
    afraid it's not clear enough in my memory to quote, but it runs
    something like:
    
    	"If an old and respected scientist says something is possible,
    	  he's almost certainly right.  
       	"If an old and respected scientist says something is impossible,
    	  he's probably wrong.  
    
    Many times in the past, things have been declared impossible based on
    inadequate information or inadequate vision.  When the impossible
    proved possible, the visionaries were vindicated. 

    Despite this, there are things in this universe that ARE impossible.
    Not because of our lack of courage or vision, but because they are.
    
    					andrew

    Re .172:
    
    >I was under the impression that it had been mathematically
    >demonstrated that an object's mass would become infinite
    >at lightspeed.  Am I wrong?
    
    No, these are in the relativity equations.  However, these equations
    are based on several assumptions, among which is one that says to
    go from below lightspeed to above it one must go _through_ it, which
    may not be the case.  Within the context of the model based on the
    equations, it suggests that one cannot accelerate continuously through
    lightspeed.  There may be other ways "around" that barrier, however.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    
    P.S..:  If I _really_ was driven to, I _could_ kiss my elbow.  But
    it would be messy, very painful, and probably fatal. :-)
    
    -S
      

        .172, .173: actually, that's *not* what it says.  Not even
        close, in fact.  The distinction is small but critical. It
        doesn't say that an object's mass would be become infinite *at*
        the speed of light. It says that an object's mass *tends
        towards* infinity as it *approaches* the speed of light (from
        either direction, incidentally). 
        
        Objects *at* the speed of light (photons) do not have infinite
        mass, nor is there any relativistic contradiction in their
        existance.
        
        Re the P.S. in .173: I think that's exactly what he meant
        by "practical" impossibility.  Anyone could do it... few
        would think it worthwhile.  It ain't very practical. :-)
        
        	/dave

    (1) The trouble with "disproving" FTL travel is in assming that
    our present knowledge of physics describes the working of the
    Universe. Einstein demonstrated that Newtonian mechanics were
    simply a nearest approximation. We may find out that Einsteinian
    mechanics is just yet another level of nearest approximation.
    As far as we know at present, accelerating a mass to the speed
    of light is "impossible". FTL speeds yield complex results that
    our math and physics don't really know how to deal with on a
    practical level. Which doesn't mean that it's impossible.
    
    (2) The Lorentz equations have been experimentally proven (at
    least the time equation). As sub-atomic particles are accelerated
    to super-high velocities, the decay rate decreases.
    
    --- jerry

Re: < Note 362.175 by AKOV68::BOYAJIAN "Forever On Patrol" >
    >simply a nearest approximation. We may find out that Einsteinian
    >mechanics is just yet another level of nearest approximation.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that Einsteinian mechanics
    breaks down near gravitational singularities?  Well since gravity and
    acceleration are so similar, isn't it conceivable (of course it is, I
    just did! :^) that when an object accelerates to the point where it's
    apparent mass would cause it to collapse gravitationally, it jumps to
    hyperspeeds?  If Einstein's mechanics no longer applies, then perhaps
    any of a number of things could happen.  Dirac Jump?  Worm hole?  Can
    we even dare to think it, Reverse Time Travel?  (Ooooh, the paradoxes
    are hurting my brain! ;^)

    What do you think folks?  Is there any hope?

     /~~'\
    W o o k
    (  ^  )	"Einstein was close."
     \`-'/
      \_/

    Re .175:
    
    (1) What is "nearest approximation"?
    
    (2) "Proven"?  Would you care to rephrase that?  Given the subject,
    I think we should be more careful with the terms.
    
    
    				-- edp

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!amd!intelca!qantel!lll-lcc!lll-crg!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!brahms!gsmith
Subject: Re: Impossibilities
Posted: 11 Sep 86 11:39:16 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
 
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] writes:
 
>Do you hate it when people say things are "impossible"?
>Well, I do, and this is a personal statement, so skip
>it right now if you'd rather.  The belief in physical
>impossibilities is a mental aberration that afflicts both
>scientists and non-scientists. 
 
    The belief in physical impossibilities is an extremely useful
concept, so much so that all sane persons (in practice, not necessarily
when composing articles for the USENET) employ it. In 'Peter Pan', Barrie
put forth the idea that people can fly. Given your stated belief that
the notion of physical impossibility is a mental aberration, it leads me
to wonder if you have ever attempted to flap your arms and fly to work.
What stops you from at least making the attempt?
 
>It has many causes, but
>the root causes are, I think: in scientists, a fear
>that their hard-won expertise will become obsolete; in
>non-scientists, a simple fear of the unknown. 
 
   Did you ever consider that one cause is rational thought?
 
>Scientific impossibility: we know of no theory that predicts
>it, therefore it can't happen.  For example, the Earth can't
>be more than about ten million years old, because "even if it
>were composed entirely of the best grade coal" the Sun could
>not have been burning that long.  Such indeed was the position
>less than a century ago.  
 
   You are trivializing an important scientific debate of the last century.
Lord Kelvin did make a calculation (based on gravitational, not chemical
energy) which showed that this source of energy could not suffice for for
than 10 million years or so. His calculations were correct, and some people
thought that this was a long enough time that this was probably the source
of the Sun's energy. Others, more concerned with the evidence of geology,
were convinced that the Solar System was much older and that another source
of energy must exist. Other theories were considered, but nothing gained
general acceptance. This is how science is supposed to work, and I fail 
to see what you hope to prove by using it as an example.
 
>Theoretical impossibility: we can prove it can't be done.  The most
>famous example is, of course, the transmutation of the elements,
>a longstanding fantasy, born form deep desires in the human
>psyche, finally laid to rest by the Atomic Theory, which showed
>the chemical elements to be immutable. 
 
    The immutibility of the elements was simply an observation. Later
on, of course, it was discovered that this immutibility was not absolute.
Theoretical understanding was only achieved when the structure of the
atomic nucleus and the nature of the forces holding it together were
gradually discovered. Once again, science seems to be doing its job.
 
>Today's bugbear is
>(you guessed it) faster-than-light travel.  Every physicist
>will explain at the drop of a photon why it's theoretically
>impossible; few physicists admit that theories, like all human
>creations, are fallible, and that the universe is an endless
>surprise.
 
   This line about what physicist will admit is just not true. What is
true is that physicists will explain why it is theoretically impossible,
and why that means that it is almost certainly impossible in fact. Just
like it is theoretically impossible for you to fly by flapping your
arms, and why in practice it is almost certain that you can't fly like
a bird no matter how you try.
 
>Perhaps we should avoid the word "impossible", and say only
>"we don't know how", or "our current theories predict it won't
>happen", or something sounding a little less like Divine Truth.
>But, given the deep desire of the human mind to believe it knows
>the Divine Truth, such a change is no doubt impossible.
 
   I think you are ignoring another deep desire -- the deep desire on the
part of the Robert Firths of this world to have the universe turn out to 
have the laws you want it to have, and not the laws it seems in fact to 
have. Why this aversion to the well-established impossiblity of faster-than-
light travel, if not from a desire for the universe to correspond with the
works of Heinlein, Niven or Doc Smith? Isn't it just terrible and awful
that those nasty physicist say that Warp Factor 9 doesn't make sense! And
isn't it true that Peter Pan really *can* fly -- if you only believe it!
 
ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
 This posting was made possible by a grant from the Mobil Corporation

    Re: FTL travel
    
    grrrr.....this is one subject that can always get me p.o.'d!!! ;-}
    
    Given the current understanding of Einstein's theories, an object
    cannot travel *at* the speed of light.  But the equations certainly
    allow for travel at speeds other than 'c'......both above and below
    'c'.   What really needs to be debated/investigated is how to get from 
    "one side of the curve to the other".

    To simply (that's probably and overly simplified term!) say that
    we can't get there from here is to not even try!   ....that's what
    get's me upset!
    
    
    			-Jeff

    re:.177
    
    (1) "Nearest approximation" means exactly that. Einsteinian
    mechanics describes the motion of a truck going 30 mph much
    more accurately than Newtonian mechanics does. However, the
    difference in results using E-mech vs. N-mech is so infinites-
    imal for something going that slow, that N-mech yields a "good
    enough" answer.
    
    (2) Proven. What is your definition of proven? As I said,
    experiments with accelerated sub-atomic particles has shown
    a decrease in the decay rate of the particles by the same
    amount predicted by Lorentz time contraction. Doesn't that
    sound like "proven" to you?
    
    --- jerry

    Like most really interesting issues, the possibility of FTL travel
    is not that simple.
    
    First, it is not true that no object can travel at the speed of
    light.  Photons can qualify as objects and they seem to travel at
    the speed of light.  (No, I'm not being ironic.  Sometimes people
    propose that photons cannot reach c, which we should then re-name
    the "limiting velocity" or some such.  But so far, they seem to
    travel at c.)  until recently, neutrinos were thought to travel
    at lightspeed, though that has been thrown into doubt by some new
    theories.  Gravitational radiation is also thought to travel at
    lightspeed.
    
    The necessary condition for traveling at lightspeed is a zero
    rest-mass. This falls out of the mechanics of Special Relativity
    fairly directly; zero rest-mass is equivalent to travel at lightspeed
    (or to non-existence of course).
    
    If you start with a non-zero rest-mass, the equations blow up at
    light-speed.  In particular, no finite quantity of energy suffices
    to accelerate a non-zero mass from below light-speed up TO light-speed
    (or beyond it).
    
    But suppose we imagine some kind of discontinuous quantum-jumps
    from one state of motion to another?  Might not one such jump leap
    from one side of the light barrier to the other, by-passing the
    problem of infinities cropping up in the equations?
    
    Such a leap would not encounter the problem of infinities, but it
    would have another problem, which is mathematical or interpretational
    depending on how you look at it.  This is a problem involving imaginary
    numbers.
    
    The Lorenz transformations are the main tools of Special Relativity.  
    They are equations that describe how events look in one frame of
    reference, given how they look in another frame.  These equations
    have square roots in them, and when the velocity of one frame is
    faster than light relative to another frame, the quantities under
    the square roots go negative, so that the square roots (and the
    whole value of the transformation) become imaginary.
    
    If you jumped an ordinary object to the far side of the light barrier,
    it would appear to you to have imaginary mass, to have imaginary
    length in the direction of travel, and to have events happening
    at imaginary rates.  Most people find this unacceptable, since we
    have no interpretation for what these imaginary numbers mean in
    terms of real-life sensory observations.
    
    Accordingly, some theorists have imagined "tachyons," objects that
    always move faster than light.  Tachyons have imaginary mass, length,
    and rates in their own rest-frames.  Consequently, they look sane
    when viewed from the low side of the light barrier.  (If they ever
    are viewed.  So far, no one has ever seen a tachyon or any direct
    evidence for one's existence.)
    
    So what does life look like to the tachyon itself?  So far as I
    know, no one has addressed this question.  (Nor do I know of anyone
    addressing the question of what life looks like to a photon, which
    has different but equally bizarre problems.)  At a guess, a tachyonic
    observer considers all its own measures real and regards our own
    proper measures as imaginary.  This is a second level of relativizing,
    slapped on top of the canonical one, and is speculative.
    
    Even if you regard the tachyon as impossible (lots of people do),
    you still haven't disposed of FTL entirely.  In General Relativity,
    people have imagined wormholes, rotating universes and multiply-
    connected spacetimes all of which allow time-travel and therefore
    FTL travel as a special case.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .180:
    
    > (1) "Nearest approximation" means exactly that.
    
    That's not a very good definition.  The term is just plain wrong when
    applied to Newtonian mechanics -- I can find a nearer approximation.
    Select some value you wish to predict based on some set of values
    collected under the name "x".  Let f(x) be the relativistic prediction
    for the value.  Let g(x) be the Newtonian prediction for the value, and
    suppose that f(x) is more accurate in reality than g(x).  Then g(x) is
    NOT the nearest approximation to f(x), because 1/2 (f(x)+g(x)) is
    closer, so it is a nearer approximation.
    
    > (2) Proven. What is your definition of proven? As I said,
    > experiments with accelerated sub-atomic particles has shown
    > a decrease in the decay rate of the particles by the same
    > amount predicted by Lorentz time contraction. Doesn't that
    > sound like "proven" to you?
    
    No, that does not sound like "proven".  The Lorentz equations can never
    be proven by a finite number of experiments.  The difference between
    proof and experimental verification is a fundamental part of modern
    science.  All experiments can do is increase confidence in theories.
    If I landed on Earth for the first time in the Rochester Institute of
    Technology, I would not have proven all buildings on Earth were made of
    brick simply because my experiments of walking around and looking at
    buildings showed that all the buildings I saw were made of brick.
    
    True proof would require a demonstration that the Lorentz equations
    hold in every case, every time, under every circumstance.  A finite
    set of experiements obviously doesn't demonstrate what will happen
    in every case, every time, under every circumstance.  In some
    discussions, this might be a nit, but, in the current topic, it is
    an important distinction.
    
                                          
    				-- edp 

    If a person says "experimentally proven," I would assume all the
    limitations of that remark that usually go with experimental method,
    not jump all over him because I habitually used another sense of
    "proven."
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .183: 

    > If a person says "experimentally proven," I would assume all the
    > limitations of that remark that usually go with experimental method,
    > not jump all over him because I habitually used another sense of
    > "proven."

    As I have said already, and which you have made no response to, the
    difference between proof and mere experimental confirmation is
    fundamental and it is particularly important in the topic brought up.
    The topic concerns the various ways in which the possibility of things
    may be described, and using "proven" improperly in such a discussion is
    wrong.  It is an SF myth that experiments prove theories! 


				-- edp

    re:.184
    
    By your definition then, nothing at all can be proven. For example,
    can you prove that the Sun rises in the east all of the time, until
    every day that the Sun rises has passed? When it's said in relation
    to science that something has been "proven", it means that repeatable
    experiments have shown that the theory describes reality.
    
    If you want to argue semantics, please do it elsewhere.
    
    --- jerry

    Re last few:
    
    English, alas, is a horribly flexible language.  If you don't belive
    that, go to an unabridged dictionary and look up the definition
    for some word like "hand" and see how many different ways it can
    be used.
    
    "Proof" to some means "verified," as in "Your story proves this,"
    as said in many works of fiction.
    
    "Proof" can means "demonstration," such as "The behavior of the
    Moon's orbit oproves Newton's law of gravitation."
    
    "Proof" can mean "a rigorous logical analysis using formal laws
    to make a determination withoutr any room for argument."  A
    mathematical "proof" falls into this category, as "Fermat's last
    theorem has never been proved."
    
    Having said all that, if we keep our terminologies straight, we
    won't stumble all over ourself straining at gnats...
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!amdimage!prls!philabs!mcnc!unc!gallmeis
Subject: Re: Impossibilities (...and Recommended Reading)
Posted: 13 Sep 86 18:13:22 GMT
Organization: CS Dept, U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
 
 
Just blue-skying...I was reading some quasi-mystic work of Carl
Jung last night, and so my brain is a little more open on top than
usual...
 
1. Man the animal has a penchant for rules: "This shalt be true",
	often attached to "..because of X".
 
2. Man has rules and the universe -- just kind of works.  In reality, there
	is no E, or M, or C, and certainly no "squaring".  These are
	labels man uses to define our universe.  They are only true so
	far as we can see today.
 
3. The universe is uncharacterizable in its entirety by Man, because
	we are only Man, and when we characterize a thing, we
	bring our own bias into the matter.  For instance, when we
	say that it's impossible to go faster than the speed of light,
	we are implying that the only way to get from A to B is by
	traversing some connected path from A to B.  This is reason-
	able for us to assume -- for US to assume. Today.
 
The point of this disconnected raving is that the rules we posit are only
as good as the environment they are proposed in.  What is God's Truth
today (pick your dogma;  any dogma!) can be disproven in an instant if we
poke our heads out of the little rut we live in.  FTL transport will become
a reality, and all it will mean is that we were wrong. Again.
 
Recommended reading:  There is a GREAT little story by Jack Vance, entitled
``The Men Return''.  I think it is in either _The Worlds of Jack Vance_,
an excellent collection, or _The Best of Jack Vance_, a very good collection.
 
- Bill O. Gallmeister	...!mcnc!unc!gallmeis

    Re .185: 

    > For example, can you prove that the Sun rises in the east all of the
    > time, until every day that the Sun rises has passed? 

    That cannot be proven.  To be specific, neither you nor anybody else
    KNOWS the Sun will rise in the east all of the time.  The most we can
    say is that we are virtually certain -- anybody who says they are
    absolutely certain is either lying or deceived.  In the terms of the
    response that introduced this subject (.168), we can say the Sun not
    rising in the east is scientifically impossible, but we cannot say it
    is theoretically impossible.  In defining these terms, the response
    uses "prove" for theoretically impossible but does not use it for
    scientifically impossible. 

    > When it's said in relation to science that something has been
    > "proven", it means that repeatable experiments have shown that the
    > theory describes reality. 

    That's exactly what I have said experiments do NOT show.  Experiments
    may show that a theory correctly describes certain experiments.
    Rational reasoning extends this so that experiments also gives us
    information about the _probable_ correctness or _probable_ _accuracy_
    of theories.  No experiment can ever show a theory describes reality.

    My teachers in this matter _stressed_ this point:  When properly used,
    scientific experiments are not performed as demonstrations of
    correctness, but as tests of incorrectness.  In school classes, the
    things called "experiments" are demonstrations of correctness, but they
    are being used for teaching, not for science.  Scientific experiments
    are tests. 

    They said quite clearly that if you enter into an experiment in an
    attempt to prove a theory, you are doing it wrong. 
    
    > If you want to argue semantics, please do it elsewhere.

    If you will recall, this line of discussion started with response .168
    introducing different types of impossibility -- a matter of semantics
    and pragmatics.  Different types of proof, verification, and testing
    are obviously closely related.  You have entered a discussion about
    semantics and then asked a participant not to discuss semantics.  I
    find that very rude.  If you do not wish to discuss semantics, don't
    jump into a conversation about it!  I will stick to the terminology and
    semantic discussion of the original response; please do not harass me
    for sticking to the topic. 
    

    Re .186: 

    Experiments do not verify theories (although I may have unfortunately
    used this term earlier, I should not have).  Experiments (of the
    scientific, not classroom, kind) do not demonstrate theories.
    Experiments do not make determinations without room for argument. 

    Experiments can _support_ theories. 

    The Lorentz equations have been experimentally tested and have not been
    found to be incorrect.  Because we have tried but failed to find them
    incorrect (over most conditions), the experiments support the
    equations. 

    Suppose experiments could be performed to verify theories.  Give me any
    self-consistent theory, no matter how cockeyed, and I will give you
    thousands of experiments to verify it.  Suppose you suggest the Sun
    always rises in the west.  Here is one experiment:  Go into a darkroom
    and close the door.  I predict it will be dark.  This is in accord with
    the theory.  If you try this, you will find the prediction in accord
    with the theory is correct.  Therefore, the theory is verified. 

    What is wrong with this experiment?  That's simple; the experiment does
    not TRY to prove the theory is wrong.  Experiments must try to prove
    theories wrong, because that is the ONLY way to be certain about a
    theory -- to prove it wrong.  Experiments that fail to prove a theory
    wrong have value only in relation to how hard they tried to prove the
    theory wrong -- the more we try to prove a theory wrong and fail, the
    more confident we become in the theory.  But this can only be
    confidence and never verification, because the moment we accept
    verification, we have accepted going into a darkroom to verify
    theories.  Scientific experiments can never give verification,
    demonstration, proof, or confirmation of theories.  They can give
    support, confidence, and conformation. 
    
    You could define "prove" as "support", but that would be strange
    and artificial.
    

				-- edp
                                                                         

    Fine. Have it your way.
    
    --- jerry

    re - previous discussion about semantics of "experimental proof":
    
    edp's right, the measure of an experiment (and a theory for that
    matter) lies in the concept of falsification, i.e., demonstrating
    that something is *not* true.  This is something that most people
    have a hard time with; specifically, a theory that cannot be falsified
    is useless.  I know this sounds wierd, but it is at the heart of
    the distinction between science and handwaving.  I.e., it must be
    possible to construct an experiment, which, if the theory is false,
    will demonstrate it to be false.  Or something like that, I'm not
    sure I got this completely right.
    
    Be that as it may, I'm a tad amused by edp quibbling over such fine
    semantics after having slagged me a while back about the correct
    definition of "shock wave", where he was perfectly happy to use
    a sloppy "layman's" definition.
    
    len.
    

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers,talk.philosophy.misc
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe
Subject: Re: Impossibilities
Posted: 24 Sep 86 06:04:26 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Sci.
Xref: decwrl net.sf-lovers:8690 talk.philosophy.misc:62
 
Bill Gallmeister writes:
>>
>>2. Man has rules and the universe -- just kind of works.  In reality, there
>>   is no E, or M, or C, and certainly no "squaring".  These are
>>   labels man uses to define our universe.  They are only true so
>>   far as we can see today.
 
>   There is a name for the opposite belief -- that the behavior of the
>universe can be understood.  It is called 'science.'  Understandably,
>therefore, those of us who consider ourselves 'scientists' don't go
>along with your opinion as expressed above.
 
I disagree.  There is no contradiction between the practice of science and
Gallmeister's statement; his statement isn't about the possibility of
scientific knowledge, but rather one of what that knowledge means.  If one
accepts the premise, then one can draw two conclusions:
 
1: That the universe must be trusted before the models, and
 
2: that a theory claiming that something is impossible must be read with all
   the implications about the permanence and structures of physical law kept
   in mind.
 
There is an argument about the possibility of communication with FTL
particles (Tachrons) which claims that it is impossible, because of TT
paradoxes.  The problem is that any such argument is based on a lot of
speculation about what time-travel really means.  More fundamentally, it is
based upon a whole network of notions about causality.  But if the universe
does in fact have tachrons going from place to place, then the new theory
need not honor those notions (although it must explain their apparent
macroscopic truth).
 
>>3. The universe is uncharacterizable in its entirety by Man, because
>>   we are only Man, and when we characterize a thing, we
>>   bring our own bias into the matter.
 
>   There is no evidence to support your statement (that the universe is
>uncharacterizable), and there is substantial evidence to the contrary
>(every successful prediction of science provides such evidence).
 
That merely shows that we can model some portion of the universe which we
experience.  I think the statement is a bit extreme, but it is a question
again of what scientific models mean.  I happen to believe that they for
almost all purposes satifactory as models.
 
C. Wingate

    ...not "tachron," from the Greek "tachys" (swift) and "on" (one,
    traditional ending for particle names).
    
    ESW

     Last week's New Scientist reports that Bell's Theorem has been
    "supported" by experimental evidence.  The evidence also indicates
    that superluminal transfer of information at the quantum level is
    a possible event. 
    	
    The experiment has to do wth the probability of two simultaneously
    emitted photons (flying in opposite directions) being detected as
    to plane of polarization.  Einstein says the error rates should
    behave as Bayesian probabilities (since the two events are separated
    by a timewise distance).  Bell says that because the two photons
    were emitted by the same atom, they can continue to exchange
    information superluminally, and therefore the error rates should
    combine as in COS (theta1 - theta2).
     
    Upon doing the experiment, we find the detector error rates go with
    the cosine of the detector angles, notwith the bayesian/einsteinian
    model.  
     
    Repeat the experiment, with randomly rotating detectors, and
    post-correllate the results- the two photons communicate their
    respective detector angles correctly even when the detector angles
    cannot be predicted at the time of photon emission.
     
    Ergo- 
    	1) General relativity does NOT apply to all information transfers.
        2) Bayesian statistics must be modified to take (1) into account.
        3) On the quantum-mechanical level, Voodoo Works!
    
     
    Please direct all flames on my lack of detail to NLA0:, or read
    the article yourself.  

    Re .193:
    
    That is hardly a new result.  David Bohm suggested using spin
    measurements in 1952.  John Bell explained in 1964 how experiments to
    do this could be set up.  Tests of Bell's inequality using polarization
    were carried out prior to 1976, but that year was the first year a test
    was carried out using proton spins. 
    
    Note that Bayesian statistics is a mathematical thing, not a physical
    theory, and it cannot be wrong any more than addition can be wrong.
    When we discover that velocities are not added but are combined with an
    unexpected formula, we do not say that addition is wrong, but that
    addition does not describe the combination of velocities.
    
    But the basic problem with these tests is that there doesn't seem to be
    any way to scientifically describe something as random or
    unpredictable.  To make such a description scientific, it must be
    tested.  You have to set up an experiment in which you claim the event
    is predictable, and then fail to succeed in demonstrating the claim is
    true.  To set up an experiment, you must predict the results.  Whether
    something is unpredictable or just not yet figured out, you cannot
    predict it.  Therefore you cannot set up a proper experiment, therefore
    unpredictability can never be a proper scientific conclusion.
    
    From the more mundane viewpoint, we can never prove whatever mechanism
    was used to "randomly" alter the detectors did not affect the world
    across space-like distances, i.e., before or during the emission of the
    particles.                 
    
    
    				-- edp

    Re .193 & 194
    
    What may be new about these experiments is that the measurements
    may be made so quickly that no lightspeed signal could reach either
    measuring apparatus before the other had made its own measurement.
    (This is termed a "spacelike" separation, as contrasted to a "timelike"
    or "lightlike" one.)
    
    This has two generally accepted interpretations.  (1) There is some
    causal influence propagating faster than light, coordinating the
    behavior of the two particles, which at all times have definite,
    if unknown and possibly changing, polarizations.  (2) The pair of
    photons, considered together as a system, has no determinate state 
    until an observation is made, causing the system's wave function to
    collapse to a particular value of polarization.
    
    Einstein wouldn't have liked either one, though he would probably
    have liked (2) less, since both of them pose relativistic problems
    while (2) also fosters a strangely solipcistic metaphysics that
    Einstein disliked.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!caip!daemon
Subject: Impossibilities
Posted: 26 Sep 86 12:13:38 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
 
From: Andrew T. Robinson  <ANDY%[email protected]>
 
To the person who doesn't like to think in terms of impossibilities,
I applaud you.  Naturally there are some things that can not be done
by man alone at this point, but with the right tools he can do just
about anything he sets his mind to.
 
To the person who dismissed the aforementioned as "wanting a universe
with laws the way he wanted them, and not the way they actually are"
(not a direct quote), I say ptooey.  As I said before there are some
things that can not be done, but a vast majority of the uses of
"impossible" in various circles are inaccurate.  My attitude in this
matter is in the "middle" -- I prefer to take the most scientific attitude
possible (i.e., if I jump out an 10th-story window and flap my arms
I will end up so much road-pizza on the pavement below), while allowing
my mind to conceive circumstances where such apparent impossibilites
might be overcome.  There is certainly nothing irrational or insane
about such an approach.
 
As far as the FTL debate, I would say all of you who tout the "accepted
impossibility of FTL travel," you'd better go back to studying Eintein's
papers on the subject of relativity.  Nowhere does it say "FTL travel
is impossible."  His theory merely proposes that no particle having mass
can ACCELERATE past the speed of light.  There is nothing in there that
rules out the idea of quantum jumps of velocity past "c," for instance.
I seem to remember similar evidence (like not so long ago) stating that
man could not endure speeds exceeding the speed of sound either.
 
Also, the lowly tachyon.... now there's an anomoly for those of you who
claim no FTL travel.  That sucker sure seems to travel FTL.  As a matter
of fact, the range of velocities of tachyons has probably not begun to
be recorded.  I strongly suspect time goes on scientists will discovers
more and more "shells"  of particle velocity, similar to the atomic
quantum shells.  That's my pet theory as a layman, anyway.
 
Andy
	

    re .196:
    
    (It is really frustrating that these people are not in this conference
    to defend themselves, but I have to reply to this one)
    
    > you'd better go back to studying Eintein's
    > papers on the subject of relativity.  Nowhere does it say "FTL travel
    > is impossible."  His theory merely proposes that no particle having mass
    > can ACCELERATE past the speed of light.  There is nothing in there that
    > rules out the idea of quantum jumps of velocity past "c," for instance.
      
    It is true that the equations do NOT say SPECIFICALLY that speeds
    greater than that of light are impossible, but that does not mean
    they are possible. If one assumes that FTL is possible, contradictions
    ARE generated. 
    
    	"Neither of the two postulates on which the theory has been
    	based state that "c" is the maximum possible velocity for any
    	form of motion. However, considerations of the requirement that
    	if one event is the cause of another, the first event must precede
    	the second in all frames of reference show that no signal, whether
    	it be associated with the transport of particles or waves or
    	other information bearing influence can be propagated with a
    	velocity greater than that of light."
    	
    		Prof W.W. Buechner, "Special Relativity" course notes.
			(unpublished)  
    
    Note that the prohibition to FTL comes from the requirement that
    the experiment must look similar to all frames of reference, i.e.
    if A causes B, A will appear to preceed B. This is the tacit foundation
    for relativity, to resolve the constancy of the speed of light
    regardless of your reference frame. Thus, this prohibition is in
    the Relativity equations, implicitely rather than explicitely.
    
    
    > Also, the lowly tachyon.... now there's an anomoly for those of you who
    > claim no FTL travel.  That sucker sure seems to travel FTL.  As a matter
    > of fact, the range of velocities of tachyons has probably not begun to
    > be recorded.
    
    It is true that the velocity of the tachyon has not begun to be
    recorded, the tachyon has not been proven to exist. The tachyon
    has not been detected anywhere in anyway. It seems to travel FTL
    because it is defined that way, not because anyone has discovered
    one and measured it to be going FTL.
                                         
                           
    
    Now I'm not against speculation about FTL and many other
    "impossibilities". I just feel that these will have to come from
    a 'superset' of the laws of physics, not from a deletion of a known
    'law'. What I mean is that I can believe that physics is currently
    incomplete, but what we do know works. Anything more that we learn
    will have to include what we already know as a subset. Just as
    Newtonian Physics is a subset of Einsteinian Physics.
    
    Maybe there is a way to circumvent the causality problem, by
    incorporating quantum mechanics into relativity, but I'm letting
    Stephen Hawkings work on that for me (kind, aren't I?).
    
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    But IS it a requirement that cause always preceed effect, or that
    it do so in all frames of references?  That is certainly the way
    we are used to things, but is it a natural law?
    
    On the other hand, the CTP theorem is currently held to be a natural
    law.  This comes from quantum theory; the three letters stand for
    Charge, Time, and Parity.  The CTP theorem states that if you take
    any given even or system of events and substitute antiparticles
    for particles (C), arrange the system in mirror symmetry to the
    original positions (P), and reverse all motions (T), that
    triply-reversed event is also a physically possible event.  So far,
    the CTP theorem has stood up.
    
    As a consequence of the CTP theorem, the laws of the universe can
    appear unchanged even in a time-reversed frame of reference.
                                                                     
    Finally, there are bizarre situations imaginable in general relativity
    (which is a superset of special relativity) under which you can
    time travel -- wormholes, multiply connected spacetimes, and other
    such oddities.  This poses much the same set of conceptual problems
    as FTL travel, yet appears to be allowed under the more comprehensive
    theory.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re .198:
    
    By the definitions of the words I would have to say that "cause"
    must preceed "effect". :-)
    
    But really, the point is that it look the same to all frames of
    reference.
    
    If B occurs because A occured, then if I see A occur before B, then
    all frames of reference should see A occur before B. I could just
    as easily let B still be caused by A yet observe B before A. But
    ALL observers should see B before A.
    
    What are you trying to say by mentioning the CTP theorem, that time
    can be reversed? What makes a positron have a positive charge?
    The fact that it is an electron moving backward in time. But does
    that mean if we turn ourselves into positrons we'll be able to go
    back in time? No. 
    
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    
    
    

Re .199    
                                                   
The central principle of special relativity is that the laws of nature must 
look the same from all frames of reference.  I brought up the CTP theorem to 
show that the laws of nature can remain intact even under time reversal.

Earl Wajenberg

    re .200:
    
    Is this not also the central principle of General Relativity, only
    without the restriction to inertial frames? Isn't that really the
    only fundamental difference between them?
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    re .202:
    
    well then, wouldn't the causality argument work equally as well
    in the case of General Relativity, i.e. FTL cannot exist because
    events must appear in their 'proper' order regardless of your frame
    of reference?
    
    The reason Relativity breaks down inside a black hole is because
    of the 'hidden' nature of it. ANYTHING can be going on within the
    event horizon, because information about those events cannot be
    transmitted to 'the real world'. 
    
    Thus, it's okay to go back in time in a blackhole, because you can
    never get out again to prove that you did.
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    Re .195:
    
    I think it is timelike separations which do not permit causal
    relationships, while spacelike separations do.
    
    I am aware of the timelike feature of the described experiment, and it
    is also a feature of the experiments I mentioned.
    
    However, it is quite simple to set up two events which will be
    correlated in spite of having a timelike separation.  I send accurate
    watches to opposite sides of the Earth.  At a preset time, they
    both beep.
    
    What some people purport is that the events in these experiments
    are random until some measurement is made.  The measurement then
    "selects" one of the random possibilities.  The selection occurs
    not only at the site of the measurement, but across the entire
    universe, or at least at the site of the other measurement, because
    the measurements turn out to be correlated.
    
    But as I have pointed out already, we don't really know the events
    are random, so we cannot rule out normal spacelike relationships
    causing the events we observe.
    
    
    				-- edp

I must have lost something along the way...

Why do some people think going from point A to Point B and back quickly entails
time travel, despite A & B being a long distance apart?

I hazily understand that you can't *observe* something moving FTL, but who
cares?  If I want to look at the view, I'll stop...

Jim.

Re General Relativity:

	There is more to the theory of general relativity than just extending 
the frame of reference invariant from inertial to general frames of 
reference.  The problem is exactly how the extension is to be done.  There 
are several ways that it can be done resulting in more than one theory of 
general relativity.  One of the simplest and most elegant is Einstein's.

Re Black Holes:

	These are one of the myths of Science Fiction and are sometimes 
misunderstood as part of normal science.  A black hole has never been 
observed, nor has any effect that could only be attributed to a black hole.  
Part of the problem is the definition of a black hole.  The usual definition 
is that a black hole is a Schwartzchild (sp?) singularity.  Schwartzchild
singularities arise from the solution of the Einstein space/time equations 
under some very special conditions.  One of the conditions is that the space 
under consideration be Euclidean!  (This sneaks in by way of the relation 
between the 'radius' and the 'volume' specified as part of the boundary
conditions to the solution.)  Since the space/time equations generate a
curved space/time as part of their normal operation, this means that all the
curvature has to be embedded in the time part of the Schwartzchild equations. 
This is gotten around quite easily by requiring that all solutions to the
equations be time invariant.  This would imply a black hole, if it existed, 
would have to always existed and would be perpetual, neither growing or 
shrinking.  While this is not impossible, it does not match any of the 
observed situations either.

	Please note - the above does NOT mean that there are not some very 
strange objects up there in the sky with some very strange gravitational 
and geometric characteristics.  What it does mean is that the the real 
theories of general relativity require infinite time for event horizons to 
develop.  Unfortunately, this kills a lot of the speculation about access to
alternate universes.

    	RE Black holes -
    
    	Since neutron stars were no more than speculation until 1967,
    I have faith in our theoretical science that black holes also exist,
    and that many of those "strange" objects in space - such as Cygnus
    X-1 - are black holes (I personally prefer Joe Haldeman's term for
    black holes from THE FOREVER WAR - collapsars).
                        
        I have heard arguements from both sides - those that say collapsars
    are dimensional "holes" to other universes through "white holes"
    (the opposite of a black hole), and those who say that which goes
    into a collapsar, stays.
    	I think collapsars once again bring up more paradoxes:  How
    can a collapsar keep GROWING if everything that goes through it
    escapes into another universe, and yet, how could any object which
    falls into a collapsar stay here if a collapsar has actually gone
    out of our existence?
    
    	Larry
    

    The minimal condition for forming a black hole is a body dense enough
    to have a surface escape velocity faster than the speed of light.
    You can get that even in Newtonian mechanics or with special
    relativity, never mind general relativity.  So it is very likely
    that there are SOME kind of blakc holes.  What happens to the stuff
    that falls in is a much more speculative question.
    
    I was once told by an acquaintance who was a physics grad student
    (not a terrifically high authority, but relativity *was* his specialty)
    that white holes and worm holes were theoretically possible but
    unstable.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    	I also read in the excellent 1982 book, THE SCIENCE IN SCIENCE
    FICTION, that wormholes DO exist, but that they are 300 billion times
    too SMALL for even an ELECTRON to get through!
    
    	So much for hyperspacing starships - unless they can be REALLY
    miniaturized!
    
    	Larry
    

Re .207:

	From what I understand of the equations, colapstars are possible, but 
they are not the classical Schwartzchild singularity.  They do not have event 
horizons.  From what I can tell from the math, they are that fabulous object 
that is bigger inside than it is outside.  If you could survive the 
temperature and pressure and get enough force behind you to fight the flow, 
you could get out of one.

Re .208:

>    The minimal condition for forming a black hole is a body dense enough
>    to have a surface escape velocity faster than the speed of light.

	Ah, but that is the kicker.  If you look at Einstein's general
relativity, such densities do very strange things to space and time before
the singularity can form.  While I have not been able to work out the details
to my own satisfaction, it seems that either time distorts to prevent the
critical density from being reached before eternity has passed or space grows
to reduce the density. 

Re white holes:

	The speculation that the other side of a black hole is a white hole 
makes sense, but the geometry of white holes in a bit odd.  For one thing, 
since a black hole appears to be nearly infinitesimal (on a cosmic scale), 
white holes appear to be nearly infinite (again on a cosmic scale).  The 
really strange thing is that all that mater and energy gets very diluted.

	As you approach a black hole you would be thoroughly fried by the 
energies associated with its interface.  Once through the interface, you 
would freeze from the cooling due to the expansion of the space inside it.

	As a result, black holes are one of the hottest items in the universe 
and white holes are as cold 'as space itself'.

	If you haven't guessed already, it looks very much like we are living 
inside a white hole.  The 4 deg.K back ground radiation could just be the
energy coming into the 'hole' diluted over all of space.  Even more 
interesting is the fact that the apparent diameter of the observed universe
and the apparent density of mater and energy within it come close to (but
still falls short of) the singularity conditions of the Schwartzchild
solution. 

	Even more interesting is that all this strangeness seems to be 
completely consistent with the currently accepted theories of general 
relativity and even makes sense of some of the odder results derived from 
that theory.

	For example, if you have enough mater in a confined space to cause
the space to expand without expanding the surface area, you find that the
space expansion is contributing a negative partial pressure, reducing the
over all pressure of the system.  This negative pressure appears in several
places when trying to build cosmological models.  In some cases, its
existence is used to invalidate the model and in others, it is used as a
limiting condition, being set to zero to force a balance between other
components.  By identifying this relativistic component as a partial
pressure, not a total pressure and realizing that it really is negative, a
lot of impossible systems become possible. 

	The real horrible part of all this is that it is such hard work 
digging this stuff out of the math that I have had to cut back on my reading 
of science fiction!

    
    This is my first saunter into black holes and things, but I remember
    seeing a TV programme (Tomorrow's World BBC), where they sort of
    explained how nothing could form into matter by some sort of entropy
    maths (heisenberg (????) fields or something). What -1 said would
    seem to make sense - that where the positive matter came from, is
    a black hole on the 'other' side...
    
        Anybody care to enlighten me ?
    
Oh and what are 'singularities' and 'event horizons' ?
    
    Winton

'singularities' and 'event horizons'

	They are supposed to be the same thing but are from different 
contexts.  A singularity is a mathematical event where something 'impossible' 
happens to theory.  In the case of the Schwartzchild equations, there is a 
division by zero when the mass inside a given radius becomes large enough.  

	An event horizon is an absolute barrier that prevents events from
being observed by or otherwise effecting some other place.  One of the
characteristics of the classical black holes is that the singularity produces
an event horizon isolating its inside from its outside. 

    I have created note 393 for the discussion of black holes.
    
    Let's return this note to discussion of 'Myths'.
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers,talk.philosophy.misc
Path: decwrl!decvax!mcnc!unc!gallmeis
Subject: Re: Impossibilities (...and Recommended Reading)
Posted: 29 Sep 86 23:47:38 GMT
Organization: CS Dept, U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Xref: decwrl net.sf-lovers:8878 talk.philosophy.misc:101
Posted: Mon Sep 29 19:47:38 1986
 
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (David
desJardins) writes: 
>   There is a name for the opposite belief -- that the behavior of the
>universe can be understood.  It is called 'science.'  Understandably,
>therefore, those of us who consider ourselves 'scientists' don't go
>along with your opinion as expressed above.
 
Is it the opposite of science to say that there are things science cannot
find out?  I would hate to think I were anti-science -- I'd sure feel
stupid! I did not mean to say that science is a crock -- it works,
doesn't it?
 
I think it is obvious that the scientific method and the empirical quest
for knowledge have been, ah, successful, to understate things considerably.
At the same time, I think it is obvious that there are things science (as
we know it) can never discover, because this sort of knowledge is just not
susceptible to the empirical method of attack.
 
In short, I think that "Scientific Knowledge" is a proper subset of
"Knowledge".  I think it is a little pompous to say that you can learn
anything by the scientific method, and that, once science uncovers
something, it will never be disproven.
 
>   I can't help wondering how you can be so sure of yourself, in criti-
>cizing others for being too sure of themselves.
 
I'm not.  The emphatic wording of my posting was meant to stimulate some
interesting conversation.  And thank you, it succeeded.
 
Yours in wondering as well,
	Bill O. Gallmeister	...!mcnc!unc!gallmeis



Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!rutgers!caip!daemon
Subject: impossiblities
Posted: 2 Oct 86 05:16:46 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
 
From: [email protected] (Laurence Raphael)
 
 
Let's face it, some of the people flaming on about ftl just do not
have a real firm grasp of why modern physics doesn't believe in it.
It's not because the Lorenz-Fitzgerald equations make no sense for
v>c, it's a far deeper reason having to do with causality and the
nature of information. Basically it is my claim that if ftl exists,
then modern physics is *SO* wrong that it will have to be almost
*COMPLETELY* rethought. And so for time travel, and similar kinds of
magic. I won't try to explain just why ftl is "impossible" according
to modern physics -- I am not a physicist. I DID however take a
philosophy-of-science course given by one of the experts in that field
which is a fusion of physics, philosophy, and probability, so I am not
just coming out of the blue....
 
Of course, I could be just wrong, but it is hard to see how the
framework of modern physics which rests indirectly on relativity
could be right if ftl is possible. And of course the equations
as well as various other predictions of relativity have all
been experimentally proven correct. Just like Newton's Laws, I know,
but you have to assume current theory is right, or why bother
with science at all? 
 
For whoever mentioned tachyons, it is a basic property of tachyons
that they can no way interact with normal particles (tardyons),
and so their existence can never be proved or disproved. This
being the case Occam's Razor (as well as common sense) says we
might as well ignore them except as a good name for our
fictional ftl radio and ftl stardrive.
 
Annoyingly,
 
-Laurence



Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!nike!kaufman
Subject: Re: impossiblities
Posted: 2 Oct 86 15:35:31 GMT
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
 
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Laurence Raphael)
writes:
>Let's face it, some of the people flaming on about ftl just do not
>have a real firm grasp of why modern physics doesn't believe in it.
>It's not because the Lorenz-Fitzgerald equations make no sense for
>v>c, it's a far deeper reason having to do with causality and the
>nature of information. Basically it is my claim that if ftl exists,
>then modern physics is *SO* wrong that it will have to be almost
>*COMPLETELY* rethought. [...]
 
OK, what about anti-particles? I'd heard a theory that they were particles
going the other way in time. Is this possible? If so, couldn't you have
a communications system based on particles that have (almost) no motion
through time, but only through space?
 
>Annoyingly,
>
>-Laurence
 
Hmmm,...sounds familiar,...
 
					-Annoyingly,
					 Bilbo.
___________________________________________________________________________ 
DISCLAIMER:  If I had an opinion, do you think I'd let my employers know? 
E-MAIL: nike!orion!kaufman     
FLAMES: There are no flames.  Re-check your opinions.
(Forgiv any mising 'a', 'e', 'd', 's'; I'v got a ticky kybord.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------



Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!rutgers!caip!daemon
Subject: impossibility and implausibility
Posted: 3 Oct 86 03:27:46 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
 
From: Yishai Feldman <YISHAI%[email protected]>
 
    From: brothers at topaz.rutgers.edu (Laurence Raphael Brothers)
 
    It is obviously true that nothing can be validly declared
    impossible.
 
In other words, it is obviously true that it is impossible to validly
declare anything impossible.
 
    Even logical contradictions are only invalid within the
    logical framework that they are stated in.
 
Oh?
 
    ....
 
    I hope I haven't sounded too pontifical in this message, but I
    suppose I have. Tough.
 
    Laurence
 
Yishai


Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!decvax!mcnc!duke!crm
Subject: Re: Impossibilities (the Law of Fives)
Posted: 2 Oct 86 14:49:05 GMT
Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC
Posted: Thu Oct  2 10:49:05 1986
 
 
   From: [email protected] (David desJardins)
   Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
   Date: 28 Sep 86 09:07:09 GMT
   Sender: [email protected]
   Reply-To: [email protected] (David desJardins)
 
   In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Dave Hurst) writes:
   >This is the very model of what a true scientific law must always be: a
							 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   >statement about how the human mind relates to the cosmos. We can never make
								 ^^^^^^^^^
   >a statement about the cosmos itself--but only about how our senses (or our
   >instruments) detect it, and about how our codes and languages symbolize it.
   >
   >We must remember that scientific inquiry can only build possible models to
   >describe the behavior we have observed.  Since these models are human arti-
   >facts, they must _necessarily_ reflect our experience of human existence.
		^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   >They are not and can never be complete representations of the universe!
	 ^^^^^^^     ^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
      This is the place in which I would normally attempt to refute Mr.
   Hurst's arguments.  However, the astute reader will note that he does
   not give any arguments!  He gives no justification whatsoever for any
   of the underlined claims.  And so I, and anyone who is interested in
   intelligent discussion rather than unsupported claims, will simply
   ignore them.
 
      -- David desJardins
 
   P.S. To Mr. Hurst.  If you would like to give evidence or logical
   reasoning to support your assertions, I would be glad to discuss
   them.
 
Oh, this one *does* look like such fun: thanks David, it's so nice to
have someone who both argues and makes good arguments to play with.
 
There are several nice arguments for Hurst's propsition, which I
understand as being "all scientific facts are models of reality and
therefore not complete representations of reality."  And by the way, I
both agree with this idea and don't think it in any way conflicts with
"science" as I understand it.
 
1)  Information-theoretic argument.
 
    Note first that all scientific laws are abstractions taken from
    reality.  If we have a law that says  F = ma, we have abstracted in
    the following ways:
    a) we have gone from observations of events to a model for those
       events; this model necessarily removes information.  It does not
       say "if I move this brick, causing it to accelerate at this rate,
       I apply a force of that much" nor does the law include all those
       cases with which the law was derived.  Thus there is loss of
       information.  *Necessary* loss of information, but loss
       none-the-less. 
    b) further, we have abstracted from the cognitive structure of the
       law as we think of it, into the formal symbolism.  Another loss
       of information, since we need to know what the string "F = ma"
       means to know what it means.
    Think of it as coding: a code contains information only to extent
    that we have a structure to relate it to (as e.g. a psuedonoise
    sequence -- unless we know that it is a PN sequence, it looks
    random, at least until the repetition comes around.  Even then,
    unless we know about PN sequences, it still looks almost random and
    doesn't tell us much.)
 
2)  Logical: scientific laws are based on models made by observation; we
    then test these models by making and checking predictions.  However,
    these models never give complete certainty -- they cannot, because
    they don't observe *all* events, only the finite number of
    experiments on which they are based.  A statement of scientific law
    cannot -- by its nature -- be a statement that such-and-such an
    event CAN never happen, just that we predict that this event WILL
    never happen.  It is precisely the difference between deduction and
    induction.  (Which is not the Principle of Finite Induction or its
    analogues, of course.)
 
3)  Observational: scientific laws are superceded regularly by newer
    versions of scientific laws.  Newton's F = ma was modified by
    Einstein's extra restriction that one must know the environment and
    relationship between observer and observed; Einstein's laws in turn
    are being challenged and modified by quantum mechanics.  Thus the
    observations lead us to the prediction that all scientific laws will
    eventually be modified to reach a closer correspondence with
    reality.  However, the *observations* DO NOT lead us to predict that
    there will be an end, a final perfect description; if fact, such an
    assertion is non-testable, since it requires both an assumtion that
    natural law cannot change and that we can test the supposedly-
    perfect description against all future events.
 
 
-- 
 
			Charlie Martin
			(...mcnc!duke!crm)

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!rutgers!caip!daemon
Subject: Impossibilities
Posted: 9 Oct 86 22:08:36 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
 
From: [email protected]
 
Bill O. Gallmeister writes:
 
>In short, I think that "Scientific Knowledge" is a proper subset of
>"Knowledge".  I think it is a little pompous to say that you can
>learn anything by the scientific method, and that, once science
>uncovers something, it will never be disproven. 
 
These generalities need to be refined.  All knowledge useful in an
empirical world is based on empirical data.  Intuition, fantasy and
mysticism may be "knowledge" in some people's book, but I prefer the
kind that can be measured and verified by multiple observers.  There
is only one kind knowledge and our best approach to understanding it
is through science.  True, we cannot learn everything by the
scientific method, if only because of one inherent and unbreachable
difficulty: in coming to understand something we never deal with the
thing itself but with our symbolization of it.  (David Hurst in a
recent posting stated and developed the idea of scientific models
admirably.)  This aside, however, science--at the present stage of our
evolution, anyway--is the only valid process for learning about
reality. 
 
One final point.  Science isn't "truth," if we mean by truth something
fixed forever.  In an ever-changing universe, truth is relative to a
given time and place.  Its underlying "laws" (which may or may not be
undergoing change as well) are perhaps unknowable except through the
successive approximations and abstract symbolic constructs that
science attempts to build. 
 
What's interesting here is an ancient bias that goes back to the time
of the Greeks, or earlier.  Namely, that the godlike inner reality of
all things is an abstraction, an "idea."  This is a very
anthropocentric chauvinism--the projecting of a human characteristic
onto the universe.  In fact, all the evidence points in the other
direction: that the universe is thoroughly material, and in material
"otherness," radically alien to rational thought.  The nature of this
materiality, however, is so marvelous that we are only now beginning
to appreciate its significance.  Whatever we happen to be looking for
in the line of ultimate answers--call it destiny, call it God, call it
truth, call it a singularity--it lies not in some Platonic notion of a
divine idea, but in the evolving substance of reality itself. 
 
--James Cortese

                   #########################################

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path:
decwrl!amdcad!amd!intelca!qantel!lll-lcc!lll-crg!nike!ll-xn!adelie!axiom!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Subject: Re: Impossibilities...?  No such thing (in SF)
Posted: 7 Oct 86 17:05:48 GMT
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
 
 
I expect the science in my science fiction to be an interesting but
reasonable extrapolation of real science, just as I expect the
characters to be interesting but reasonable extrapolations of real
characters.  In both cases, I am often disappointed. 
 
Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!decvax!ucbvax!brahms!gsmith
Subject: Re: Impossibilities
Posted: 11 Oct 86 03:53:03 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Posted: Fri Oct 10 23:53:03 1986
 
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] writes:
 
>These generalities need to be refined.  All knowledge useful in
>an empirical world is based on empirical data. 
 
   This is false. Mathematics, which is *not* based on empirical data,
is nevertheless useful in the "empirical world". (Odd phrase!). 
 
>Intuition,
>fantasy and mysticism may be "knowledge" in some people's book,
>but I prefer the kind that can be measured and verified by
>multiple observers.  There is only one kind knowledge and our
>best approach to understanding it is through science.
 
Do you know this? This sounds like an intuition or maybe a fantasy to
me. 
 
>This
>aside, however, science--at the present stage of our evolution,
>anyway--is the only valid process for learning about reality.  
 
   A moments thought should suffice to make clear the fatuity of this
statement. How did you learn the following: 
 
      (1) Paris is a city in France.
 
      (2) Ronald W. Reagan is President of the United States.
 
      (3) Alexander the Great conquered Persia.
 
      (4) You like Beethoven, hate liver, and love your mother (assuming
      all this is true -- make the appropriate substitutions).
 
      (5) 2 is the smallest prime number.
 
   I submit none of these facts were discovered by using what we
usually consider to be scientific methodology. Consequently, you are
clearly wrong. 
 
>One final point.  Science isn't "truth," if we mean by truth
>something fixed forever.  In an ever-changing universe, truth is
>relative to a given time and place.
 
   Why is it not possible for science to get something right, so that
we don't need to change things? For instance, is water hydrogen
dioxide? It seems to me this is not likely to turn out false, due to
ever-increasing knowledge. 
 
>What's interesting here is an ancient bias that goes back to the
>time of the Greeks, or earlier.  Namely, that the godlike inner
>reality of all things is an abstraction, an "idea."  This is a >very
anthropocentric chauvinism--the projecting of a human >characteristic
onto the universe.  In fact, all the evidence >points in the other
direction: that the universe is thoroughly >material, and in material
"otherness," radically alien to >rational thought. 
 
   Like almost all the rest of your article, this strikes me as utter
and complete BS. If you have "evidence" for this, maybe you should
give it. Two points: one, we *know* mind and consciousness are a part
of the universe, somehow or other; two, it appears that the universe
in many ways has a highly rational structure that is not radically
alien to rational thought, but which can be understood mathematically.
 
>The nature of this materiality, however, is so
>marvelous that we are only now beginning to appreciate its
>significance.  Whatever we happen to be looking for in the line
>of ultimate answers--call it destiny, call it God, call it truth,
>call it a singularity--it lies not in some Platonic notion of a
>divine idea, but in the evolving substance of reality itself.
 
    Plato said "God is a mathematician" (I paraphrase). Can you top
that for profundity? 
 
ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720

"The *evident* character of this defective cognition of which
mathematics is proud, and on which it plumes itself before philosophy,
rests solely on the poverty of its purpose and the defectiveness of
its stuff, and is therefore of a kind that philosophy must spurn." --
G. W. F. Hegel 



Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!rutgers!caip!daemon
Subject: Re: impossibilities
Posted: 11 Oct 86 12:05:24 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
 
From: Brett Slocum <hi-csc!slocum@umn-cs>
 
[email protected] (Laurence Raphael Brothers) writes:
> ...certain ... phenomena which would require essentially scrapping
> most of modern physics to accept ... time travel, ftl travel,
> action-at-a-distance ...
 
Interesting that you should choose these  three  phenomena:  they all 
have  some basis in modern quantum physics, at least on some level. 
Let me take them one at a time. 
 
Time travel : Dirac, I believe, theorized that  anti-matter  acts
identically to matter travelling backward in time.  This has been
backed up by CPT theory.  (Charge-Parity-Time).  This is  one  of the 
symmetries of the Universe.  This isn't exactly time travel, but could
lead that way. 
 
FTL  travel  :  Even  Einstein's  General  Theory  of  Relativity
predicts a form of FTL travel known as the Einstein-Rosen bridge. This
is a connection between distant points in  space  through  a
singularity.   A  "wormhole" is the common term.  This allows one to
bypass the speed of light via blackholes.   Perhaps  there  is some
way of creating a wormhole artificially.  Then we'd have the precious
'jump-drive'.  Also, teleportation, perhaps. 
 
Action-at-a-distance : Bell's Theorem predicts that  two  quantum
particles  whose waveforms have been in contact, will continue to act
on one another when they are separated.  Good,  old  magickal Law  of
Contagion.  Also, action-at-a-distance.  Just think about the Big Bang
theory. At some point in the past, everything in the Universe   was  
in   contact.    Therefore,  everything  affects everything else. 
 
There are also quantum theories that support alternate universes,
(Schroedinger's  Cat,  and  other eigenstate stuff), and other SF
concepts. 
 
In fact, quantum physics is approaching the concepts of magic and
mysticism   on  more  fronts  everyday.   In  many  ways,  QP  is
substantiating what mystics and magicians have  been  telling  us for 
thousands  of years.  It is about time "modern" civilization caught up
with what we already knew. 
 
Disclaimer : In all this, I'm not suggesting  that  these  things are 
certain,  only  that there are many possibilities, even when one only
will accept scientific "truths". 
 
--Brett Slocum (Slocum at hi-multics.arpa)

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!ism780c!ism780!jimb
Subject: Re: Impossibilities
Posted: 11 Oct 86 03:47:00 GMT
Organization: 
Nf-ID: #R:caip.RUTGERS.EDU:3631:ism780:60200043:000:1349
Nf-From: ism780!jimb    Oct 10 20:47:00 1986
Posted: Fri Oct 10 23:47:00 1986
 
 
 
> These generalities need to be refined.  All knowledge useful in
> an empirical world is based on empirical data.  Intuition,
> fantasy and mysticism may be "knowledge" in some people's book,
> but I prefer the kind that can be measured and verified by
> multiple observers.  There is only one kind knowledge and our
> best approach to understanding it is through science.  True, we
> cannot learn everything by the scientific method, if only because
> of one inherent and unbreachable difficulty: in coming to
> understand something we never deal with the thing itself but with
> [...]
> --James Cortese
 
Hmmm.  Try measuring and verifying "love," "loyalty," "faith," and
other aspects of the human condition.  These characteristics are real,
but they sure aren't reliably measurable, or even well-observable by
any scientific method I know of.  You can draw certain intellectual
constructs as a starting point, but very quickly you find yourself in
the realm of intuition and other approaches that don't mesh well with
scientific method.  And yes, the words I use for the characteristics
may be symbols, but the characteristics themselves ain't.  Scientific
method is wonderful, but it isn't the one-size-fits-all wrench for all
sorts of problems. 
 
		    -- Jim Brunet
 
			     UCBVAX/HPLABS/HAO/ICO/ISM780
			     SEISMO/SDCRDCF/ISM780C/ISM780





Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!rutgers!caip!daemon
Subject: Part 3 : MORE ALIENS
Posted: 11 Oct 86 18:00:06 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
 
From: nutto%[email protected]  (Andy Steinberg)
 
In ALIEN the movie we never did see what happened to Dallas and the
others whom the alien captured. In the novelization Ripley finds
Dallas and Brett encased in cocoons with alien larvae feeding on them.
My own personal theory is that the derelict was an alien ship from far
beyond earth's sphere of existence. I say this because (1) Humans had
never before encountered a ship of that form or creatures like the
dead pilot (2) LV-426 was unsurveyed until the Nostromo landed on it
although the Company had previously decoded the beacon (3) in ALIENS
the company agent said a creature that "gestates inside a living human
host and has acid for blood" had never beed discovered on over 300
known planets. I believe the ship was carrying the last of the alien
eggs to dump on an isolated planet but the ship crashed and some the
eggs hatched. An interesting question is raised here, what happened to
the alien that matured inside the pilot? And also, if LV-426 was
outside the fringes of human civilization, where was the Nostomo
returning from with its cargo of crude oil? Lambert said it would take
them 10 months to get back to Earth, they had probably been in
hypersleep for years before then. In ALIENS the movie there seemed to
be only one atmospheric processor, in the novel there were dozens of
them all over the planet. Can anyone clear up these mysteries, or will
we just have to wait for the sequel when somebody picks up the alien
queen floating in space in MORE ALIENS? Personally I think they did a
magnificent job on both ALIEN and ALIENS and should quit while they're
ahead. 

    I'm all for philosophy, but could we keep it in the PHILOSOPHY
    conference and reserve this topic of this conference for things
    like galaxies full of humanoids speaking BBC English and starships
    without seatbelts or fuse boxes?
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re .216:
    
    	rubbish
    
    re .217: 
    
    	rubbish 
    
    re .218:
    
    	rubbish
        
    re USENET:
    
    These people are lost in the twilight zone of mysticism and fantasy.
    all participants in those notes are so full of half-truths and
    self-contradiction that it is futile to even start to point out the
    errors in their arguments. 
    
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!seismo!rutgers!daemon
Subject: Retroactive Anachronisms
Posted: 14 Nov 86 23:50:00 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
 
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
 
 
More enjoyable than out-and-out scientific bloopers are predictions so
timid and conservative (in retrospect) that they now look like
bloopers.  I think this ground was covered last year (before I started
reading this board). Still, here are my two favorites: 
 
The runner-up is Marion Zimmer Bradley's THE BRASS DRAGON, in which
the alien pulls out a slide rule and explains:  The Galactic slide
rule is the same, in principle, as the Terrestrial one -- though more
sophisticated, of course -- so Galactics use Earth slide rules when
visiting, so as not to attract attention. 
 
The best is Edmond Hamilton's THE STAR KINGS, wherein, on the bridge
of a space-battleship of 200,000 AD we see the effects of two hundred
millenia of technological progress:  the vacuum tubes are twenty feet
long! 

Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!styx!mordor!jtk
Subject: Re: Good SF = possible SF ?
Posted: 20 Nov 86 02:18:17 GMT
Organization: S-1 Project, LLNL
Keywords: Ringworld=impossible to believe?
 
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Gene
Ward Smith) writes: 

>In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (D. W. James) writes:
>>	Begging your pardon, but what was the "major glaring error" that
>>made Ringworld so easy to disbelieve?
>
>   Since "Ringworld" is a good example of the "hard" sf genre, it might
>be instructive to take a look at the various impossible and illogical
>things which we find in it....  The ship has a GP hull,
>which means it is made out of Very Hard Stuff #1. They find a Ringworld
>made out of Very Hard Stuff #2. As if two completely different kinds of
>VHS were not enough, they could have simply used the "stasis field" in
>either case--and why didn't they? 
>
>ucbvax!brahms!gsmith     Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
 
Larry Niven has at various times explained that he stopped writing
"known space" stories partly because he got tired of them, and partly
because it was getting harder and harder to keep from contradicting
himself -- not only in terms of "history" but in terms of technology.
It's terribly embarrassing to spend a whole short story setting up
some technological problem for the hero, and then have some teenage
fan point out that the problem could have been solved trivially with a
stasis field or Grog telepathy or whatever.  One of the specific
examples he has used is "bolonium" -- the proper name for whatever
impossible material you happen to need at the moment.  Having invented
one kind of bolonium (GP hulls) for "There Is A Tide" (where the whole
puzzle was "what can get through an impenetrable hull?") he was stuck
with it.  He had to have stasis fields for "World of Ptaavs" so then
he was stuck with those (though it's not clear why you can't make a
hull out of stasis fields.  Perhaps you can't make one concave?)
Neither one would work for Ringworld -- GP hulls only came in certain
(mostly small) sizes and shapes, and stasis fields presumably get hard
to make in large sizes (and how would you hold small ones together?)
(Besides, "Fist of God" couldn't have gotten thru a stasis field).
Anyway, Niven needed _scrith_ for Ringworld.  But now he had so many
kinds of bolonium that an awful lot of good plots could be solved
trivially by invoking one of them ... so he just abandoned the whole
universe and started over. 
 
	Incidentally, bolonium is a key component in that wonderful
alloy Unobtainium, with which we could build remarkable things like
orbital skyhooks and vacuum-filled balloons if we could just _get_
some. 
 
	Also incidentally, Niven's recovery scheme in Ringworld
Engineers isn't much more plausible than the original Ringworld.  The
force pulling the ringworld off center increases with the distance off
center, so even a very conservatively designed system for stabilizing
small displacements (even up to the scale produced by Fist of God)
would be hopelessly inadequate to counter the sort of several-percent
displacement that occurred while the stabilizer was dismantled.  The
ratio of thrusts needed is comparable to the ratio of the mass of Fist
of God (a good-sized asteroid) to the mass of Ringworld (several Earth
masses). There is nothing unreasonable, though, about the basic notion
of stabilizing an inherently unstable system like the Ringworld (or a
bicycle!), so one should not laugh at the notion too soon. I have
heard of, but not seen, a painting showing a ringworld colliding with
its sun -- surely one of the most spectacular catastrophes
imaginable.... 
 
			Jordin Kare	[email protected]  [email protected]

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!hplabs!sri-unix!husc6!linus!raybed2!applicon!bambi!webb!webb
Subject: Re: The "New Ace Science Fiction Special."
Posted: 13 Apr 87 17:32:00 GMT
Organization: 
 
Nf-ID: #R:hscfvax.UUCP:-36400:webb:39200013:000:3995
Nf-From: webb.applicon.UUCP!webb    Apr 13 12:32:00 1987
  
    I just purchased THE HERCULES TEXT yesterday, and am quite
dissapointed with it.  The characterization was a bit on the
male-chauvanist side (women always "smiling prettily"; a good deal of
description of the physical attributes of women, and none of those of
men), but not as bad as some I've seen.  The plot was standard
'first-contact' with variations.  What really bothered me though, was
one of the plot devices: 
 
**********spoilers follow*************
 
    Some time in the near future (198x-199x) a group analogous to
SETI, picks up siganls that, due to their nature, can only have come
from an intelligent source.  Instead of some form of universally
understandable communication, like mathematical or chemical formulas,
it turns out that the aliens are transmitting a computer program.  Now
this is no ordinary computer program, the brilliant theoretical
physicist deduces, but rather one that, when loaded into a digital
computer and analyzed for statistical patterns (as one might do to an
alien transmission to try and learn their language), will start itself
up, and display some message on the screen, or do whatever.  It is
established that the word length is 16 bits. However, when that is
tried on a mainframe computer, nothing of import happens.  The
following exchange (paraphrased) then ensues: 
 
Brillant theoretical physicist (BTP):  "We've tried that on all of our larger
	machines but to no avail.  I'm begining to wonder if a self-initiating
	program	is possible at all."
 
Extremely well-liked administrator (EWLA):  (Glancing at personal computer on
 BTP's desk): "Wait a minute.  I don't know much about	computers, but I do
	know that larger ones are more complicated.  They have more places to
	put things and more instructions are needed to make them run."
 
BTP (Following EWLA's glance): "Do you mean to tell me that a personal computer
	can do things that a mainframe can't?"  
 
EWLA:  "It's worth a try..."
 
    BTP runs out of the room and returns with an Apple Computer (why
he didn't use the one on his desk is unknown).  He inserts the disk
containing the alien transmission, then exclaims:  "But we don't have
any search programs on this machine!" 
 
EWLA:  "Well, rewrite them!"
 
    BTP grimices at the thought of how long that will take.
 
Astronomer(genius) (A(g)) (who has been watching all along):  "Wait a second."

    He leaves the room and returns with another disk:  STAR TREK. It's
been around here for ages and it includes a section which allows the
ENTERPRISE to analyze the Klingon battleship tactical positions. 
 
BTP: "What the hell, let's give it a try."
 
    And they do.  Not suprisingly, the aliens' program wakes up, takes
over the screen, flies the ENTERPRISE around (all characters say: "It
doesn't do this in the game!") and shows them some sort of rotating
cube. 
 
    So, we are asked to believe that:
 
1. The idea of a self-initiating program actually makes sense.
 
2. A race of beings who have never had contact with the people to whom they are
   sending a message, elect to send said message in the from of a computer
   program, expecting that program to run on a system which they know
   nothing about.
 
3. This program, once started, is able to control output devices like
   graphic screens, and generate sophisticated displays with them.  Not only
   that, but it is able to modify existing executables and merge itself with
   them.
 
    The worst thing of it is, the aliens are sending an executable, ie
a binary image, rather than a source file.  I cannot accept this.  It
is barely possible that the aliens might send a source file, and
instructions for writing a compiler for it, but an executable???!!!
Sorry.  This seems like a 1950s conception of a computer, and its
capabilities, and I'm sorry the author is burdened with it, for it
makes the book (for me at least) unreadable. 
 
    I am, by the way, a software engineer.
  
				Peter Webb.
 
{allegra|decvax|harvard|yale|mit-eddie|mirror}!ima!applicon!webb, 
...!ulowell!applicon!webb, or ...!raybed2!applicon!webb

Path: muscat!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!tor.nta.no!quale%si.uninett
From: quale%[email protected] (Kai Quale)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
Subject: Dotty science in Science Fiction (SF).
Message-ID: <170*[email protected]>
Date: 26 Jan 88 08:42:00 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Lines: 28
 
>A wonderful howler by someone who presumably never set foot in the
>Southern Hemisphere:  In Edgar Pangborn's story "The Red Hills of
>Summer", there is the offhand statement "Prevailing winds in the
>Southern Hemisphere blew westward as on Earth" (A few lines later
>he makes it clear that he really means it by expecting deserts to be
>to the west of mountain ranges).
>
>Some other physics of a similar nature:  In Rex Gordon's "No Man
>[...]
>Anyone else got samples of dotty science in SF?
 
    I remember a short story about a starship (probably a Bussard
ramjet) passing through the Sol system.  The starship is going at
99.99 percent of the speed of light (c=186,000 miles per second) -
sort of like the ramjet in Poul Anderson's SF novel, TAU ZERO - having
a relativistic mass equal to the star Sol.  The really hilarious thing
in the story is how Earth is affected:  Simultaneously, the people of
northern Europe, North America, Siberia, etc. (i.e., the Northern
Hemisphere) are smacked into the ground; the Australians, New
Zealanders, etc. (i.e., the Southern Hemisphere) suddenly find
themselves ten feet in the air; the people of Central Africa, Brazil,
the Banana Republics, etc. (i.e., the Equator) have the ground "pulled
from under their feet", and the unlucky ones crash into whatever hard
objects are standing in the way. 

    What is the explanation for all this?  Earth just moved ten feet
to the north, pulled by the powerful gravitational attraction of the
spaceship!  Actually, I did *not* figure this out before it was spelled
out, because such a roaringly ridiculous solution never occurred to me. 
 
    Kai <quale%[email protected]>


Path: muscat!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!gatech!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw
From: [email protected] (Wayne A. Throop)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Dotty science in SF
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 28 Jan 88 20:25:32 GMT
References: <170*[email protected]>
Organization: Data General, RTP NC.
Lines: 38
 
> quale%[email protected] (Kai Quale)
>>A wonderful howler by someone who presumably never set foot in the
>>Southern Hemisphere:  In Edgar Pangborn's story "The Red Hills of
>>Summer", there is the offhand statement "Prevailing winds in the
>>Southern Hemisphere blew westward as on Earth".
> I remember a short story about a spaceship (probably a ramjet) passing
> through the Sol system.  The ship is going at 99.999% of c, [...]
> Earth just moved ten feet to the north, pulled by the powerful
> gravitational attraction of the spaceship!
 
    The all-time dottiest SF I have ever encountered is - as I have
mentioned before - THE DOOMSDAY EFFECT by Thomas Wren.  Purported to
be "hard" SF, it manages to get simple orbital mechanics wrong, makes
ludicrous statements about the density of the Asteroid (Planetoid)
Belt, has expelled gasses be "blown back" from an object's extreme
velocity - in free fall in a vacuum, mind you - as well as managing to
get many elementary points about black holes (collapsars) and
antimatter so wrong as to boggle the mind.  Jim Baen said it "Reads
like a cross between [James P.] Hogan and [Robert] Heinlein", which is
probably the worst insult either of those gentlemen will ever receive.
 
    But a point related to Kai's above is found in THE JUPITER THEFT,
by Donald Moffat.  Gas giant (Jovian) planets are moved by aliens
having a small spacecraft "orbit" them at faster and faster
superorbital speeds, until relativistic effects make it massive enough
to give significant acceleration to the whole planet.  Then, the
spacecraft moves the center of its "orbit" away from the planet, which
then falls after the spaceprobe.  Matter is siphoned from the planet
to use for reaction mass and energy source for this process (sigh);
but at least this was the only flaw in an otherwise good novel. 
 
    "Where did everything come from?  Was it the Big Guy in the Sky,
or a Big Bang on a planet out in space?  Did everything evolve from a
single cell in a primordial ooze?  I don't have the answers, but new
studies of insulin, the female hormone, may show that everything was
created separately, just as it is now." 

                                         - Heard on ABC Radio News

Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw

    Re .224 (Larry):
    
>    I remember a short story about a starship (probably a Bussard
ramjet) passing through the Sol system.  The starship is going at
99.99 percent of the speed of light (c=186,000 miles per second) -
sort of like the ramjet in Poul Anderson's SF novel, TAU ZERO - having
a relativistic mass equal to the star Sol.  The really hilarious thing
>in the story is how Earth is affected:  Simultaneously, the people of
>northern Europe, North America, Siberia, etc. (i.e., the Northern
>Hemisphere) are smacked into the ground; the Australians, New
>Zealanders, etc. (i.e., the Southern Hemisphere) suddenly find
>themselves ten feet in the air; the people of Central Africa, Brazil,
>the Banana Republics, etc. (i.e., the Equator) have the ground "pulled
>from under their feet", and the unlucky ones crash into whatever hard
>objects are standing in the way. 
 
    Um.  The writer was too kind.  The story was "Things Pass By," and
    I _think_ it was written by a very young Leinster (I won't swear
    to that).  It wasn't one ship; that ship was the fanguard of a _fleet_
    of the doobies.  Our hero's dilemma: get the fleet to change course 
    before they all pass by the Earth, shattering it by induced
    gravitational waves.  The solution was stupid, but so was the premise.
    It was writen in the 1930s, though [long before Bussard ramjets].
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
      

    I remember that myth. Not only that, those that know how Sorters
    work will know that the "1 card that falls into the last slot" is
    a REJECT card that the machine could not process.

    
    I also like the magtape drives that do their processing with "perpetual
    read errors", rotating back and forth.
    
    How about the fact that spaceships can get damaged, but the artifical
    gravity systems never fail?
    
    How about the fact that the NORAD computer system in War Games speacks
    in the same voice as the kid's $1.98 voice box?
    
    I also don't believe a transporter is possible unless a receiving
    unit is at the opposite end. Unlike Star Trek, where you can pop
    in out of nowhere.
    
    How about the fact that Star Wars Laser Swords have a laserbeam
    that simply terminates 4 ffet from the handle? I don't remember
    that property of laser light.
    
    How about the fact that all alien races have a male and female race?
    Why not 1 or 3 or asexual or none?
        

    Re .226:
    
    > Why not 1 or 3 or asexual or none?
    
    1, asexual, and none are not good options.  You want at least two so
    that genes can be recombined -- children will get some genes from one
    parent and some from another.  That way, each child is trying out not
    one set of genes but 23 (in humans).
    
    
    				-- edp 

    Well you can get parental combinations with one sex--see
    earthworms and paramecia.  Individuals swap genetic info
    to create a new combination in the offspring, but all the
    individuals look alike and function alike.
    
    				-John Bishop

    re .226 and light sabers - I pondered that one for a while and imagined
    one might argue that you can get such a "finite length" beam by
    some sort of "fourier transform"; e.g., you can make a single cycle
    square wave by suitably combining (an infinite number) of sinusoids.
    Admittedly, this takes a substantial sized grain of salt, but at
    least it's conceivable...   This egregious extrapolation might also
    be used to justify such single ended systems as "tractor beams"
    and Star Trek style transporters.
    
    A little harder to explain is the apparent substantiality of the
    light saber beam.
    
    len.
    

    
    
    re .226
    
    Who said it was a laser, you only assume that they call it a light
    saber because it's a laser. Maybe they call it that because it's
    visual looks.
    
    Are we talking movie myths. If not then read TITAN,WIZARD and DEMON
    by John Varley. That covers ALL the Male-Female combos.
    
    

    I've always assumed the light sabers to be extremely hot plasma held in
    place by a magnetic bottle.  Thus, the fields could repel each other,
    but chop through most other things.  Why doesn't someone build a
    personal force shield that is proof against the things?  Beats me!
    
    				=ELB=

    Not necessarily true. There exist creatures that already use asexual
    (1 partner) reproduction. It doesn't tkae much imagination to step
    this forward. A biologically natural cloning process...
    

    Re .232:
    
    > Not necessarily true. There exist creatures that already use asexual
    > (1 partner) reproduction.
    
    What's not necessarily true?  Recall what I said in .227:  The
    less-than-two options are not _good_.  They may be possible, but they
    do not have the benefits of two parents.  The less-than-two options
    might get you to the worm stage while other animals develop opposable
    thumbs, binocular vision, thinking, and all that.
    
    
    				-- edp 

    Actually, there are some fairly sophisticated vertebrates -- lizards
    -- that reproduce asexually.  All members of the species are
    parthenogenically reproducing females.  There are several such species,
    all of them closely related to a sexually reproducing species.
    
    According to biologist Steven M. Stanley, one of the promoters of the
    "punctuated equilibrium" theory of evolution, sexuality is a feature
    selected for at the species level and higher.  That is, a sexually
    reproducing species generally produces new offspring species at a
    faster rate than a similar asexual species.  But an asexual species is
    likely to last about as long as a sexual one; it just leaves fewer
    descendant species.
    
    So an asexual intelligence is possible enough, though, like the
    lizards, it is likely to have sexual relatives.  As if humans were
    asexual while the great apes were sexual.
    
    Hermaphrodites and androgynes also give much the same effect as
    asexuality, and they can recombine genes just fine.  I've never been
    sure why more species aren't bisexual.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re .227;
    
    A few deviations from the male-female paradigm:
    
    	Asimov: 	"The Gods Themselves" (triad)
    	Tiptree: 	"Across the Starry Rift" (intermediate species)
		Niven:		Pearson's Puppeteers (3 sexes, one of them a 
    										separate species)
			  		Kzin	(non-sentient females)
    				Moties  (alternating male/female cycles)

    -dave

    Re: .-1
    
>		Niven:		Pearson's Puppeteers (3 sexes, one of them a 
>    										separate species)
    
    Umm... one of the things you should have picked up from this is that
    statement is a rationalization by the Puppeteers. The "third sex" is
    really a different host species. ("They reproduce among themselves...")
    Ugly, isn't it?
    				- hbm
    

>    Ugly, isn't it?
    
    Yes, it is.  Yeugh!  I was aware of the rationalization but, due
    to a bad modem connection, didn't want to type any more than was
    absolutely necessary.
    
    -dave

    any more ugly than ichneuman (SP) wasps ?
    (I KNOW it's a spelling mistake - I don't happen to have an
    encyclop�dia on me)
    
    Incedentally, the same wasps were used as justification for "Alien(s)"

    
    d
    

    Re: .-1
    
>    any more ugly than ichneuman (SP) wasps ?
    
    Not objectively, no. However, the difference is that Puppeteers are
    *sentient*. How would you like to be a member of this species?
    				- hbm
    

    The wasps don't have much choice in the matter - I don't think the
    puppeteers would have either.
    
    No, I wouldn't like to be a member of the puppeteer species (?either
    of them?) - but is it so much worse than (say) eating meat (puppeteers
    are vegitarian) or Transplants,selective breeding of animals to
    produce drugs, and all sorts of other things I could mention.
    
    Subjectively, though, isn't "ugly" just another term for "Not what
    I'm used to ?" or "Startlingly different from the norm"
    
    David, whose an omnivorus (semi)sentient who wouldn't refuse the
    transplants/drugs etc _IF_ he needed them to survive.

In his _Cluster_ series, Piers Anthony has one species that has three sexes.
These aliens inhabit a water world around Spica.  There are Sibilants, Undulants
and Impacts.  The order in which the three sexes come together determines the
sex of the offspring and who the primary caretaker is.  I don't remember exactly
how it goes, but I'm sure someone could dig up the info.  Anthony explores a
variety of cultures that he extrapolates from the various biologies of each
species.  Some of his species are not carbon-based, but all are usually pretty
anthropomorphic.

I guess you could say that Anthony is really exploring different aspects of
human culture.

Wook

    	In the April/May 1989 issue of SMITHSONIAN AIR & SPACE magazine,
    there is an article discussing three of the most famous spaceships of 
    SF - the DISCOVERY from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the ENTERPRISE from
    STAR TREK, and Han Solo's MILLENIUM FALCON from STAR WARS - from the
    viewpoints of three aerospace engineers working on the U.S. space
    station FREEDOM in terms of their design and abilities.  
    
        Needless to say, a number of items on every ship leaves quite a 
    bit to be desired when reality steps in.  Even the meticulously 
    designed DISCOVERY does not escape critcism:  The engineers thought
    HAL was far bigger than was necessary, and the ship's engines far
    too powerful for a craft that was flown only in space and not launched
    from a planet's surface.
    
    	Larry
    

    "HAL bigger than necessary"?  That's a rash bit of speculation.
    All that we ever saw of HAL's hardware was that tiny closet full 
    of glowing rectangles.  It looked comparable in size to a Cray, 
    or to our own machines for that matter.  2001 is 
    only 12 years away, and no one can build a machine with even a 
    fraction of HAL's abilities today.  Even minor things like good 
    voice synthesis are beyond us.  No one knows what the hardware to 
    do HAL would look like, so it's hard to make real predictions
    as to what it would be.
    
    But what the heck, this is SF, so I'll make some unreal 
    predictions.   HAL is not just an AI system, it's also a real-time
    controller for the "Discovery".  This rules out a couple of 
    configurations.   HAL cannot be a single master controller for 
    the entire ship, because the time to do critical functions like 
    reactor control must be deterministic.  If Bowman asks HAL 
    "Why?", it can't get so wrapped up in the question that it 
    forgets to pull out the fuel rods.   The ship control must be 
    distributed among independent units.  
    
    This is one symptom of a fundamental problem.  HAL must have 
    enough flexibility to make autonomous decisions, because the 
    communications delay with Earth is too long.  However, it cannot 
    have too much flexibility or else it will make bad decisions and 
    damage the mission.  This, of course, is exactly what happened.
    This problem is not unique to spacecraft computers; it's similar 
    to what faces the US Navy with regard to nuclear submarine 
    commanders.   The subs are deliberately out of touch with higher
    command, but the Navy doesn't want them starting WW III on their 
    own. 
    
    The Navy handles this in two ways: by strict training of 
    officers, and by having independent authorities on board.  Strict
    training would correspond to limiting HAL's range of allowable 
    thinking.   It would be permitted to think about how to best 
    complete its mission, but not about whether the mission was 
    worthwhile.   It's obviously difficult to draw a line between 
    them, but some restriction is necessary.
    
    The independent authority on a submarine is usually the medical 
    officer.  In some navies it's the political officer.
    If the captain is deemed unfit for service, another 
    officer can take over.  On the "Discovery", part of this role 
    would be held by the human crew, but not all.  The crew wouldn't 
    be able to debug subtle technical problems in time.  A backup HAL 
    would be needed, a HAL'.   HAL' watches HAL for signs of madness 
    or decay.  Both HALs have redundant units, of course, to handle 
    normal hardware failures.  HAL' is there to look for 
    higher-level failures.   The crew is there to find still 
    higher-level failures, and Mission Control is the ultimate authority.

    Each level of control evaluates the time needed to make a 
    decision, and the cost of a wrong decision.  If there is plenty 
    of time to make the decision, and the cost of a mistake is large, 
    then pass it to the next higher level.  E.g. HAL can turn off a 
    bad memory cube on its own, because the cost is low.  However, 
    HAL' better not turn off HAL on its own unless there is a real 
    emergency.   Sounds like a bureaucracy, doesn't it?
    
    What would HAL's hardware look like?  Considering that the design 
    is supposed to be shipped only twelve years from now, it can't be 
    anything too radical.  There isn't time to develop 
    glowing-rectangle technology between now and then, so it'll have 
    to be something we're already know about.  
    
    I vote for 3-D devices made on diamond films.  In the last couple
    of years  people have found ways to deposit poly-crystalline
    films of diamond on almost any substrate.  Diamond has lots of
    advantages  as a electronic material.  It's radiation-hard (which
    we'll need  near Jupiter), has high electron  mobility (so you can
    make fast devices), has high thermal  conductivity (so we won't
    need heavy liquid cooling), and is physically rugged.  We'll
    get a high transistor density by putting down a layer of devices on
    one film and then depositing another film on top and doing it 
    again.   Diamond has a high refractive index (in fact, the 
    highest known) so it's good for optical  waveguides. We'll use the
    waveguides to  communicate between the layers of devices, and also
    to interface to fiber optics.  I don't know if one can actually
    make optoelectronic devices like lasers in diamond (at this
    point people can only make  single transistors), but it should be
    possible.

    Hmmm, the end result would be a translucent slab of diamond with 
    little pinpoints of light flickering inside it.  
    Glowing-rectangle technology after all!  Maybe Kubrick and Clarke 
    knew what they were doing all along.
    
    /jlr

How about getting back to the original comments vis-a-vis the design of the 
spacecraft, not the electronics. Which of the three named craft seems the most
viable and which the least, and for what reasons?

The Enterprise seems too spindly to be able to withstand the tremendous 
accelerations it is capable of, not to mention the fact that the thrust vector 
doesn't go through the apparent center of mass. Also (not being a "trekkie") 
where does the artificial gravity come from? The Discovery uses centrifugal 
forces for that. 

My vote for the most realistic vessel goes to the Discovery.

Dave

    
    
    Amazing how they conquered all those problems in the future...
    
    						;)
    
    

    Well, there is a bit of a difference in the amount of time that's
    passed to allow such solutions to be developed.  2001 clearly takes
    place about 12 years from now.  When is StarTrek supposed to have
    taken place?  My impression is that it's several hundred years in
    the future.  Imagine trying, several hundred years ago, to predict
    today's technologies.
    
    If the StarTrek future can solve the artificial gravity problem,
    and the FTL problem, then the matter of the apparent thrust vector
    not going through the apparent center of mass is not likely to be
    a problem.
    
    len.
    

re:< Note 362.246 by DRUMS::FEHSKENS >
>    If the StarTrek future can solve the artificial gravity problem,
>    and the FTL problem, then the matter of the apparent thrust vector
>    not going through the apparent center of mass is not likely to be
>    a problem.

Correct!  It may even be necessary for ftl or artifical gravity!

Tony

Ah, yes thrust vector.  How quaint.  They used those with reaction drives, 
didn't they?  And this talk about center of mass.  They needed to worry about 
it back then, I suppose....

				=ELB=

    I am involved in model rocketry.  I bring this up because several
    years ago Estes Industries ( a model rocket maker) came out with
    a flying model of the Enterprise and the klingon ship.  The thrust
    line on the flying model of the Enterprise was through the location
    of the impulse engines on that ship, indicating that the impulse
    engines are located in near abouts the right spot for stable
    acceleration...
    
    jim
    

    re the past few - but I weasel-worded the statement quite deliberately
    a pair o' apparents.
    
    len.
     

The Enterprise's main drive are coloquially known as "warp" engines because
they operate by warping space in the general vicinity of the ship enabling
it "violate" the universal speed limit. Becasure they act on space itself,
there is no "thrust" per se.  

                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /

    r.e. .244
    
    I too like Discovery... but I am curious about what kept Bowman
    et al. on the floor of the Pod Bay...
    
    						js

    I always assumed that he was wearing those magnetic booties he wore
    in other weightless parts of the ship. Or, more likely, I just bought
    it.
    
    I had a tremendous problem with the weightless inconsistency in
    2010. Much more thanin 2001.
    
    steve p
    
    

    
    	Another problem I have seen in many movies/ tv series is the
    equating of weightlessness with slow motion. "Moonraker" has got to be
    the worst case of this I've seen. OK, it's not exactly SF, but it's set
    in space. Anyway, our hero Mr. Bond walks around in slo-mo, fights in
    slow-mo, and has to make hand signals instead of talking for some
    reason. But he still manages to stay firmly on the space-station floor.
    Pretty nifty, that.
    
    	I guess if he was in real weightlessness, his hair might get mussed.
    
    	Another thing about interstellar distances. I remember one Lost in
    Space episode where the Jupiter II was approaching Earch. Yes, the long
    journey was almost over. It gets to the stage where they can even see
    the Earth out the front port. Everyone's set for a happy ending.
    
    	Suddenly, Dr. Smith is seen floating about outside. I can't
    remember why he was out there, but it had something to do with him
    becoming very rich as the result. Anyway, John Robinson had to go out
    and get him, and the Jupiter II's path diverted to pick them up. The
    result? Well, because of that SLIGHT diversion, the spacecraft shot all
    the way to the "other side of the galaxy", and naturally it would take
    them months, if not years, to get back. Damn Shame!
    
    	How on earth can the makers of this stuff RATIONALISE it all?
    
    	Peter.
    

>>   	I guess if he was in real weightlessness, his hair might get mussed.
    
 
	...but that's what gel is for! :-)

>>    remember why he was out there, but it had something to do with him
>>    becoming very rich as the result. Anyway, John Robinson had to go out
 >>   and get him, and the Jupiter II's path diverted to pick them up. The
  
	Actually, he was beguiled by some "space siren" who tried to get
 	Smith to get the ship's fuel.  She latched onto the ship at a fuel
	depot that the Jupiter II stopped at before heading for Earth.

	It was Don(? second-in-command) who reluctantly pulled Dr. Smith
	back in, but that's just a nit.

	Considering the time period and budgets of these shows, I'm surprised
	that they did the shows that well.  Does anyone remember that 
	made-for-TV show about a hypersonic plane that got boosted into
	Earth orbit and couldn't get back because it would burn up? (it starred
	Lee Majors, Lauren Hutton, and Hal Linden).  THAT was SOOOOOOOOO bad
	and they had modern technology to help them.

	As with the Lost-in-Space episode, they could have been accelerating 
	towards a planet and planning on using it to accelerate even more
	and sling-shot towards Earth.  That's how some of the recent 
	interplanetary probes worked.  Imagine one mistake and the ship
	could go off in the wrong direction.  They would have had to waste
	enormous amounts of fuel to stop their momentum and get back on course,
	which was the point...they didn't have the fuel.