MPJ

Up there, within our own Solar system (and beyond) everything is in motion. There is no space object that is standing still. Ever since the big bang. Even the black holes that are capturing things into singularity point are moving across the universe along with their own neighborhood. The same is with Earth and its first neighbor Mars. They are both orbiting the Sun in their own time schedule - Earth needs full year to complete the cycle, while Mars in its own distant orbit needs 322 more days to do it. While both, Earth and Mars travel around the Sun, sometimes they got closer to each other by the approximate 55 million kilometers (while the farthest distance between the two is about 400 million kilometers).


Of course, we can't launch directly toward Mars when it is at closest distance, otherwise the rocket will need lots of fuel and speed for a chase race with a running planet. However, more or less, every 26 months, Earth and Mars provide a launch window opportunity for a modestly fueled spacecraft, by using Sun's gravity boost, to intercept the red planet in about 200 days or so. Ever since 1971 and first attempt to land on Mars by Soviet Union, until now the red planet are counting 15 citizens in wide variety of robotic probes, rovers and automatic laboratories. Most of them are now dead, either by problems with descent stage or after they operated a decent number of Martian days or sols to be exact. However, on this day, two of the recent ones are still alive and very much well doing science every sol or when they receive a job from their headquarters. This is a story about them. True Martians. The only ones.

Well, maybe there are other living organisms on Mars still waiting to be found or perhaps there are at least some evidence of former life in the past. but lets face it - in lack of significant global magnetic field, that is the only known natural shield from deadly solar wind and all other dangerous radiation from the heavens, living organisms have no chance to survive. On the surface that is. And probably below the first layers of the Martian ground. So, unless there are no Zions, deep underground, with friendly and scientifically superior little green men, we can safely say that our robotic endeavors are the only Martians in existence. Extremophiles don't count. Nor the fossils. Not that we found any so far. So let's meet our own Martians in chronological order.


During the 60ies and early 70ies, former Soviet Union maintained large Mars exploration, with dozen of flyby probes, landers and orbiters, launched toward Mars, along with Phobos program to study its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Mars 2 and Mars 3 landers were identical twins, launched in May 1971, more than one ton weight with included small ski based rover named PROP-M, which was not rover per se, but instead an attached movable scientific instrument designed to study soil composition attached to main lander. Unfortunately, "Mars 2", crashed on surface during descent, due to the technical malfunction, but "Mars 3" had better luck, at least when it comes to descent - it manages to perform soft landing perfectly well, but only 20 seconds after it started basic operation, instruments stopped working for good, perhaps as a result of the massive surface dust storm, lander had to go through during descent stage. Both small rovers never got the chance to do any science, but if they did, along with the mother lander, attached scientific instruments were equipped to study atmosphere composition as well as mechanical and chemical properties of the surface, including a search for organic materials. State of the art of the time, 360 degrees view television cameras were mount to take first ever photos from the planet surface.

Even more disastrous fate hit flyby spacecraft "Mars 6" and "Mars 7" and their landers two years later. With significantly smaller cargo in size and weight and without rovers on board, "Mars 7" prematurely deployed it's lander and miss the red planet entirely, while "Mars 6" managed to descent all the way down but unfortunately it lost connection just before soft landing. As it seems, 635kg lander was rocking and swinging too heavily under the parachute or it had insufficient thrust during landing and finally crashed on surface. However, it was the first time that any lander in Mars exploration history recorded all stages during the descent until the very end.


The very next launching window, after Mars 6 and 7 twins, was taken by one of the major historical success with our "fight" with red planet. In August and September 1975, another twins are sent to Mars, within Viking program, operated by NASA. Contrary to previous Soviet missions, Viking orbiters didn't fire landers before establishing stable orbit around Mars or before flyby. This provided better planning of choosing the landing sites by analyzing orbiter's images of Mars surface. After safest landing places are chosen, both landers detached and performed perfect descends. The only "glitch" in this phase was the rocky terrain below Viking 2, causing lander to stay tilted at 8.2 degrees with one leg on a rock. Combined, both landers stayed operational for more than 3500 Martians sols (one sol is longer than a day by 39 minutes and 35 seconds) thanks to two radioisotope thermoelectric generators with plutonium-238 as a fuel. Not only that they returned to Earth ton of color images and data related to Mars weather, atmosphere and soil condition as well as seismological and magnetic properties of the landing area but as a crown jewel of landers scientific research, Vikings were equipped with four scientific tools to carry out biological experiments in search for Martian life or at least proof of existence of organic materials. To say the least, results of biological experiments provided scientific debate among scholars for years. In short, one biological test called Labeled Release, successfully proved that Martian soil is able to metabolize test samples, which is something that is made by microorganisms on Earth. However, not a single organic molecule was found in the soil by other three tests. In conclusion, either microorganisms exist on Mars but somehow weren't detected by three independent experiment, or metabolism can be performed by non-organic materials in highly oxidizing soil.

On the other side, aside biological experiments, if you ask me, two interesting facts related to the program is Carl Sagan's involvement with the Viking team by searching and choosing potential landing areas on Mars and the other one is successful test of general relativity. On November 25, 1976, Mars location was perfectly positioned behind the Sun, and landers were instructed to return radio signals sent from Earth. The time of the round trip was measured and confirmed the "Shapiro time delay effect", which states that radar signals passing near a massive object, like in this case the Sun, take slightly longer to travel to a target and back than they would if the mass were not present.


Twenty years after Vikings, no lander was designed to travel toward red planet. In the meantime, technology matured enough to provide cheaper development of scientific tools, spacecrafts and rovers, especially when it comes to communications with different orbiters launched toward Mars in the meantime as well as with advances in information technology and scientific tools. The next lander that was launched in December 1996, was NASA's "Jet Propulsion Laboratory" project "Mars Pathfinder" with its own small rover named "Sojourner", The mission itself was more a Proof-Of-Concept of grown technologies used for future exploration comparing to acquired scientific data. Perhaps the major innovation during descent was using large airbags to cushion the impact. After aeroshell аnd parachute did their jobs to slow the descent to 68m/s and after lander was deployed from the backshell down by use of sort of tether and after retrorockets mounted on the backshell did their job to slow down descent to 0m/s, inflated airbags that completely surrounded the lander cut loose and fall on the surface bouncing for more than dozen times with first bounce being about 15m high. Amazing. I remember back in 1997 when I watched all animations of whole descent, I wished I was Martian and saw all this in real time. Anyway, once the lander stopped rolling, airbag deflated and retracted and Pathfinder's petals, just like with flowers, opened to allow the lander its three months of operations. Second POC in the Pathfinder project was real wheeled rover, that was engaged near the lander and examined about couple of hundreds of square meters and performed chemical analyses at sixteen different locations. For the first time it was used semi-automatic navigation with automated obstacle avoidance. After mission closure, the name of the project is renamed to "Carl Sagan Memorial Station" for his contribution to the World of Science and especially for his engagements with Mars exploration.

I think I still have a science magazine from the time with beautiful photos took by the lander of the small rover doing some science with X-ray spectrometer on the "Yogi Rock". In a way this lander was a milestone for next lander missions and it was recorded not only by scientific circles, but also in Hollywood productions. I remember a pretty good Sci-Fi film called "Red Planet", starring Val Kilmer, premiered in November 2000, being an homage for the NASA's Discovery Program, with Mars Pathfinder as its second project. Not only that they used inflatable airbags for the descent to the surface from the orbiting spaceship but Sojourner helped estranged astronauts to make a radio contact with the orbiter.


In our chronological order, after Pathfinder's successful mission, two landers launched in the dawn of the 21st century, experienced misfortune similar to those Russian probes from seventies. First one called "Mars Polar Lander", from the title image above, came to Mars in December 1999, designated to land near the south pole on Mars and to study the soil and climate of "Planum Australe" plain. During the descent phase MPL supposed to fire two "ballistic" probes named "Deep Space 2" and to study soil from the impact craters. However, the lander prematurely stopped engine and in result lander fell down with high velocity and failed to made soft touch down. No communication was made with either lander or two impact probes ever since. This was the only mission targeting south pole so far and potentially retrieved meteorological conditions of the area, analyzed samples of polar deposits would gave us lot's of data to compare with other regions.

Sadly, if we exclude latest three rovers which are located not too far south from Mars equator, all other Mars missions designated to land deep into southern hemisphere failed or crashed during descent. Exactly four years later, in December 2003, ESA's "Mars Expres" orbiter launched small British lander called "Beagle 2". Small lander never called back and for 12 years nobody knew its fate. Finally this January, NASA's "Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter" with its HiRISE camera, took a photo of "Beagle 2" completely intact on the surface just where it was expected to land. Unfortunately, one of the petals, didn't open properly and deployment of its radio antenna failed to take position. Contrary to most others Mars lander missions, "Beagle 2" is not created and funded by any of space agencies. Instead it was the academic project of Milton Keynes "Open University" and University of Leicester headed by Professor Colin Pillinger.


Perhaps the most famous Martians, considering all robotic missions so far, was Mars Exploration Rover twins, "Spirit" and "Opportunity". Following the successful technology used in MPF/Sojourner project, significantly larger rovers are designed in JPL and in January 2004, both airbags, carried cocoon type of lander's, bounced and rolled safely to their designated landing sites. It was especially interesting Opportunity's stopping point - airbags stopped into ultra small, only 22 meters wide crater, now named "Eagle crater" which served as a hole in one giant, inter-planetary golf game with a 7 months long shot. I remember, I regretted when they named the crater - much better name was "19th hole". Spirit landed in Gusev crater on the opposite side of Mars and staid operational until March 2010. MERs were, sorry, are ("Opportunity" is still alive and keep doing science ever since), fully solar-powered, six-wheeled, rovers with Sojourner's "rocker-bogie" modified mobility system and lots of scientific tools and instruments. Spirit passed 7.73 km, "climbed" to three hills and even though it lost one of its front wheels, until it got stuck in soft soil and stopped all operations due to power problems, scientific data retrieved from analyzed rocks hinted that they were altered by water flow in the past. Some of the minerals found are thought that can only be formed in the water.

More water-friendly areas, at the other side of planet, where Opportunity is still rolling and doing geology, showed definite proof of ancient wet environments with, probably most important discovery of near-neutral-acidity clay deposits formed in presence of water. Furthermore, evidence support theory that in distant past water on Mars wasn't permanently present and then evaporated. Instead Opportunity detected multiple floods and dry periods happening in Endurance crater where "Oppy" spent almost half an year in its now two-digits life span on red planet. Especially interesting was rover's visit to the western rim of the crater and a small hill located there called "Matijevic hill". Rocks explored there are estimated to be the oldest rocks it has ever studied on Mars. There were layered, fine-grained formations and date from Mars' Noachian period, which is more or less up to 4 billions years old. Other, younger rocks indicates that they formed or altered in presence of highly acid waters which means that older Mars had bigger chances to provide life-sustainable environment as we know it.


Four years later, in May 2008, another lander joined MER twins. This time, robotic lander named "Phoenix", part of "Mars Scout Program", handled by several agencies and university laboratories from multiple countries and companies, took the best launch window, that occurred in August 2007 in order to send a rover to the northernmost area of the red planet possible. Just like our blue planet, the red one is tilted by 25 degrees, providing unique weather properties on its poles. When Phoenix arrived, in late spring, the Sun was on the sky all day long and lander didn't experience sunset before September 2008. It was pretty handy, considering extremely low temperatures so far north and the fact that the only power was coming from solar panels. On the dark side of the medal, planet's tilt also provides seasons and eventually, when winter came it was also the end of the Phoenix life as it was projected for work only during summertime.

Wintertime temperatures can go dip down to a frigid -150° C. However, during 155 sols of operation, Phoenix confirmed previous findings by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter from 2002 that the northern region on Mars contains water ice mixed with the soil just below the surface. By using "Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer", samples are heated to 0° C and water vapor was detected. Another great find was perchlorate (ClO₄) - which not only that some bacteria on Earth use for food, but it is possible to use it as a rocket fuel and for a source for oxygen for future human missions to Mars.


The next rover, "Curiosity", arrived on Mars in August 2012, within the southern equatorial area. Like its predecessors, Curiosity is also six-wheeled "rocker-bogie " rover, powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators and it as big and heavy as a small SUV car. For the first time in short history of Mars surface exploration, robotic lander managed to descent to the previously selected landing site, just couple of kilometers northeast from the selected bulls-eye spot. This was provided by new steering technology by using thrusters and ejectable balance masses. Also, for the first time, mission to Mars received a goals and objectives that we might consider true research and a base for future Mars missions. Of course, I am not trying to minimize all the achievements from previous landers and rovers - they actually gave us lots of scientific data about the planet climate, atmosphere and soil composition, local weather and evidence of previous conditions on Mars. However, for the first time, Curiosity received a task to investigate exploration area in respect of Mars' habitability and collecting data for a future manned mission. "Gale" crater more than 3 billion years old, where Curiosity landed, was chosen with keeping in mind that future astronauts could spend the most time in the future within similar environment - equator is the hottest place on Mars and the area is rich with minerals that might provide further evidence of early wet periods on Mars and possible findings of micro fossils due to detected presence of chloride minerals that are very useful in preservation of fossils on Earth. Landing in crater by its nature is preferable due to the fact that large object that created it in the first place is one of those natural drill mechanism and digging in the crater's floor is like investigating deep below surface and provides a chance for exploring rocks and soil samples that would be impossible to find on the surface without a serious drill.

Curiosity returned several promising findings. Among the most important ones is the measurement on the ground level of radiation. Regarding protective magnetic radiation shield, Mars is considered a dead planet - it has no magnetic field capable to defend the planet and radiation from space, mostly meaning solar winds are easily penetrating weak atmosphere. I read once that future terraforming of Mars should include igniting it's core or magnetizing it with some polar super magnets. But, until then, if even possible to do it with some futuristic technology, Curiosity found that radiation on Mars is not as dangerous as we might think of - its comparable to the IIS environment. That's a good news - it's not that future Mars colonists will be free to walk shirtless on Mars, but still, it will be manageable. Experiments on board the rover also confirmed Opportunity findings that water was flowing on Mars. More water on Mars in the past, means, more habitable it was. Perhaps, even stronger magnetic shielding existed as many scientist believe that solar wind is the one to blame for Mars' desert shape today. Moreover, analysis of some minerals, hints that area where Curiosity is roving right now, based on pH neutrality and presence of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon found in drilled rocks suggest that once before was truly habitable.


InSight lander, successfully landed in Elysium Planitia in November 2018, the flat surface, intentionally selected for the safety of landing. The lander mission was to poke the Mars interior so the surface was not as important as for the other landers and rovers. By reusing technology from the Phoenix lander, it is expected that the cost and risk will be reduced, although it missed first window opportunity which added extra costs to the mission. After more than four years of doing science on the Red planet it ran out of energy due to excessive dust on its solar panels preventing it from recharging. As for the payload of more than 50kg of scientific systems, it involved SEIS, HP3 and RISE sensitive instruments.

SEIS is a very sensitive seismometer, designed to detect Marsquakes and other internal activity on Mars, HP3 involved a burrowing probe to measure the thermal changes of the Mars' subsurface while RISE uses the radio communication equipment on the lander and on Earth compare and to measure the overall movement of the planet. Eventually, the four years scientific data suggested that, based on measurements of over 500 Marsquakes that the core of Mars is between 1,810 and 1,860 km, about half the size of the core of Earth, suggesting a core of lighter elements. Also, with the combination of data from InSight and the three previous Mars lander missions, estimated Mars precession rate is −7605 ​± ​3 milliarcseconds per year. This result is consistent with the precession rate estimated from Doppler tracking of previous landers and orbiters alone. This slow movement of the axis of a spinning Mars is now determined in much greater detail than ever before.


Perseverance rover is an other car-sized Mars rover landed in Jezero crater in February 2021. Similar in design to its predecessor rover, Curiosity, it carries seven primary payload instruments, nineteen cameras, and two microphones. The rover's main objectives were to identify past environments for supporting microbial life, seeking biosignatures of possible past microbial life, caching samples and store them within the rover and on the Martian surface for delivery to a future sample return rocket and to test oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere.

To start with oxygen production, the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE), successfully extracted 5.37 grams of oxygen (O2) from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in one hour. This is really a great result and fine start for the future of the human exploration of Mars. This technology, scaled up in the future could not only provide a basics for life support but also a potential rocket fuel production for return missions to Earth. Perseverance so far hasn’t found those muddy materials in rocks where would be easiest to find evidence of past microbial life, but the sedimentary rocks studied have revealed carbonates, sulfates and unexpected salts, indicating interaction with water and important for life as we know it. Percy actually has found carbon-based matter in every rock it has abraded.

Together with the Perseverance rover, a small robotic helicopter also landed on Mars. It was deployed in the first days of April 2021 and in past two years successfully performed more than 50 flights with 10+ kilometers passed. The Mars Helicopter, called Ingenuity, is a technology demonstration to test powered, controlled flight on another world for the first time. Mars is about half the size of Earth by diameter and has a much thinner atmosphere, with an atmospheric volume less than 1% of Earth’s. The atmospheric composition is also significantly different: primarily carbon dioxide-based, while Earth’s is rich in nitrogen and oxygen.

The helicopter was designed to fly for up to 90 seconds into Mars' atmosphere, to distances of almost 980 feet (300 meters) at a time and about 10 to 15 feet from the ground. With it's 1.5 pounds on Mars (4 pounds on Earth), the mass of 1.8 kilograms, 1.2 meters length of rotors and solar panel charges Lithium-ion batteries, it managed to rise in the Martian air to a height of 12 meters. Not to mention that the helicopter flies on its own, without human control. It must take off, fly, and land, with minimal commands from Earth sent in advance. The small helicopter is without a doubt a great achievement of the mission engineering. It does represent just another proof of concept but still every great things started with a small achievement and Ingenuity is definitely one of them.


In the middle of May 2021, the big milestone for the China Academy of Space Technology was a successful landing of the rover Zhurong, a part of the Tianwen-1 mission to Mars conducted by the China National Space Administration. Zhurong performed a soft landing in the Utopia Planitia, using a combination of aeroshell, parachute, and retrorocket. With it, China became the second country to operate a fully functional spacecraft on Mars. Utopia Planitia was chosen for the belief that it once was a part of a large ocean on the surface of Mars and by the end of its lifespan it sent 1,480 gigabytes of data, offering evidence to support a former ancient ocean hypothesis. The six-wheeled rover weighs 240 kg, and is 1.85 m tall and the list of its scientific instruments include radar, magnetometer, full climate station, spectroscope and multispectral and navigational cameras.

Unfortunately, the Utopia Planitia is a large plain with small but widespread rocks and white wave patterns. In May 2022, the temperature went below -100°C (-148°F) and the rover went into hibernation mode and still waiting for the weather conditions to provide waking up procedure. Zhurong is equipped with butterfly-like solar panels capable to remove the dust, but the cleaning function requires the rover to be operational first and the only solution, as it seams, is for the winds to clean the dust first. If that happens the little rover will have the second chance to continue its endeavor.


These were all fifteen lander missions to date. If you look at them from this distance, it is obvious that Mars surface exploration is maturing and scientifically speaking growing and following technology progress over the years. We now know great deal about our first neighbor thanks to all these missions in previous 60+ years but there is still a lot to learn and we will continue as soon as next launching window arrives.

Interesting time ahead.

1*
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/mars2-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_3#/media/File:Mars_3_Image.png

2*
http://pretendy.tumblr.com/post/21033099214/life-on-mars
http://www.donaldedavis.com/2003NEW/NEWSTUFF/DDMARS.html

3*
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars-pathfinder/
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=2111

4*
http://www.stfc.ac.uk/3175.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander

5*
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/explorer-caught
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2568274/Mars-blueberries

6*
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phoenix_Mars_Lander
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/Phoenix
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronomy/mars/phoenix/

7*
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/gallery/pia14255.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/curiosity-wide-angle-selfie

8*
https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2154.html

I have no sailor material in me. At all. I don't mean qualified skills that are fascinating and easily acquired through study and experience. I mean literally and physically, my body is simply not built for the navy. I realized that when I entered those 4D/5D theaters for the first (and the last) time, about dozens of years ago. I remember anxiously waiting for that sophisticated motion ride system built into movie theater seats to come to my city, and when it finally arrived, I was among the first in the tickets line... And I was first to get out of the small theater with a terrible motion sickness thundering throughout my entire body. I should have guessed what was going to happen after seeing the title of the short film had the word "rollercoaster" in it. I fully recovered more than 24 hours later. After that, I never stepped into any movie theater with more than 3D label on its front gate. Sometimes even in those I check if the chair is fixed solid.

To be honest, I knew the outcome would be like this because it has happened to me many times at sea during summer vacations, and every time I promised myself the dancing boat floors will never see my foot again. However, in my case, it's just that all those self-promises are easy to reject when new experiences and adventures knock on the front door. In that spirit, when my good friend Lasse, the head of Rackpeople, one of the leading IT company in Copenhagen, asked me to join the cruise around Saronic Islands this May in Greece, without thinking I said yes. How could I say no to seeing all the wonders of the Saronic Gulf, it's crystal blue waters, the amazing history of Ancient Greece and the place where Themistocles' outmatched fleet defeated the forces of King Xerxes and drove the Persian army back to Asia never to try again to conquer the Greek mainland.


The cruise started on the island of Hydra. I boarded a catamaran yacht, medium sized but impressive in every way. Fortunately for me, the first two days of the cruise passed with extremely calm seas and enjoyable spring weather, which is usual for Saronic Gulf in this time of the year. As for the island itself, two things immediately caught my eye. The residential area is so compact that there is simply no room for any type of motor vehicles, and by law, cars and motorcycles are not allowed (except for garbage trucks). To travel outside the port town, the only means are horses, mules, donkeys and water taxis. The second site was bastions on the port entrance with lots of cannons still pointing toward the sea. They originated from the 18th century in order to protect the island from assault by the Ottoman fleet and pirates during the Greek war for independence.

At first, I thought that the island's name is connected to the legendary myth of Lernaean Hydra, the multi headed water monster who was slayed by Heracles in his second labor, but unfortunately, very little is known about ancient times of the island. The name in Greek is simply derived from the word "water" (ὕδρα). Although, in classical Greece, Lerna was a region of springs and a former lake near the east coast of the Peloponnesus, which is close to the island of Hydra, just across the strait and in ancient myths represented as one of the entrances to the Underworld.


The next destination and where we spent the first night was the well known tourist destination, the island of Poros. It lies on the other side of Argolis, the eastern part of the region of Peloponnese, where it acts as a Saronic Gulf's southern arm. The Poros' main port is separated from the Peloponnese only by a 200m wide sea channel, and my main impression in the morning was that poor little ferry, which is breaking the perfect silence connecting Poros with the town of Galatas across the strait every half an hour. Sometimes carrying only couple of people across. I'm sure a future bridge would be something worth building.

Fortunately, and I mean it when I say it out loud, we had ex-Royal Danish Navy sailors at the helm of every boat. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have running exercises in the morning, and if we hadn't had a morning run, we wouldn't have passed through the phenomenal narrow streets of the small town that stretches through the entire hillside by the marina. Running (and sometimes walking while catching our breath) down and up the small streets and countless stairs from the harbor to the famous clock tower, made me think and better understand the life in such small towns where you can feel the ease of living life to the fullest.


The next day was absolutely the best one on the cruise. It started with the sailing competition between the two boats. In the best spirit of the teambuilding activity we competed in sailing between Poros marine and the Moni island, the strange islet in the middle of Saronic Gulf, that absolutely hates humans, but lets get back to that later. One would think shutting the engines down and sail to speed of, in some occasions less than one nautical mile per hour and sail only by using maps, compass and wind arrow is ridiculous but it is complete opposite. It requires full team effort and cooperation, just like in tech companies and it was one amazing experience. From the navigation part, through speed and time tracking, steering the ship and hard work with two sails, everything had to be synchronized and precise and when inexperienced IT people do it, the result is exceptional and filled with all possible sailing phases, from challenges in understanding the basics of sailing and navigation to all the comical moments we went through but also all those proud moments when you realize you've done something right.

As for the Moni island, half of it is rocky and barren, but what was most interesting was its other half. The only inhabitants of that part are a family of wild peacocks, deer, wild goats including Cretan Ibexes and of course many squirrels. Humans are limited to the only seasonal beach accessed only by sea, included us that day. The animals are not afraid of humans and wandered free even on the skirts of the forests where ruins of human's tryouts to inhabit the Moni are visible all over. The old men of Aegina island across the bay tells various stories about the history of the island that always include curses, inexplicable destructions, three fires, and an ongoing struggle between the divine forces and human stubbornness. Telling in whisper, they say that always when people tried to inhabit the island, no matter if that was in Byzantine period when they tried to turn the island into a dairy farm or during the 1970s, when the island served as an organized camping spot, it always ended in large fires that devastated the little isle to the full.


But, the sightseeing of the Moni, after the cruise competition wasn't the end of the day. It continued with one amazing lecture given by Erik, the second ship captain about leadership, relations between competence and confidence among team members and all the connections between tech companies and sailing. The epilogue of the competition itself was unclear and ultimately not important, what was matter the most is great spirit and team building closure which ended in singing popular songs led by the first ship captain Lasse, who surprised us all with his musical talent which was not left unrewarded even by the people on the neighboring yachts with thunderous applause.

Unfortunately, in the spirit of the Moni island hatred for people, that night came really nasty weather from nowhere. In the morning it turned into small windy rollercoaster that woke me up with the first sunshine. I came on deck to find a spot where I could pass it as best I could but soon it was the 4D movie theater all over again. Only this time it lasted several hours and I sadly realized that the cruise for me is over as I knew I would need more than a day to recover. After couple of hours of 'pros and cons' measuring, with great regret I opted out myself from the remaining of the trip. After all, being on the boat is all about being part of it, otherwise is something else entirely.


At the next marina, a taxi took me to the nearby port town of Methana where I missed the last ferry by an hour, so I went strait to the first hotel where I took the night to recover. There, I witnessed a worm hospitality by the hotel owner, something only in Greece I felt before, especially in my childhood when we were visiting the country frequently on family vacations. Serbia and Greece have this unusual friendship between two countries from the time immemorial. There was no part in the history of two countries with any animosities between the two, let alone any conflicts or wars. So it was always a pleasant joy seeing a sincere welcome and smile on people when I say from where I am coming from. Anyhow, when she heard I am Serbian, with the warmest smile she said 'I will give you the best Seaview in Methana'. And the best it was.

It turned out Methana is not an island at all. The best I could describe, it is a 'wannabe island' peninsula. It has an island shape but connected to Peloponnese with a narrow land bridge. Methana is entirely of active volcanic origin with the last eruption occurred in 3rd century BC. Due to the pressure of the plate of North Africa, which slid under the Asia and European plates, there were active tectonic movements on the line of the Aegean islands of which are Methana, Milos, Santorini and Nisyros. As it seems, the future of volcanism in Greece is not yet written, and Methana is one of the volcanoes that unfortunately has not yet said its last word. The last great eruption in Greece was Minoan super-volcanic catastrophe that reshaped the island of Thera in the middle of the second millennium BC and devastated entire Mediterranean for years.


As a central island of the Saronic Gulf, Aegina shared rich history of ancient Greece with other independent states. It was inhabited since the Neolithic and was at the peak of power around the 7th century BC and after, due to its strategic position. Aegina economy was strong and competed with Athena with silver coins as a currency recognized in other states. They were rivalries for many years and Aegina even made a close collaboration with Persia until the battle of Salamis (480 BC) when the island ultimately sided with Themistocles. The rest of the history of Aegina's independence was full of turmoil but it's glory at the end faded out through numerous invaders and occupations in the face of Macedon, Romans, Venice and Ottomans. Today it is a holiday and weekend resort for Athenians and tourists worldwide. Just next to it, Agistri, a small pine-clad island, with pristine beaches and crystal-clear waters, shared the history of neighboring Aegina Island and considered being part of its statehood. It was unfortunately not a part of the cruise. Perhaps in the years to follow.

Finally and historically the most famous island is Salamina, where already mentioned battle of Salamis took place two millenniums ago. It is the largest Greek island in the Saronic Gulf and due to its close proximity to Piraeus it is not the best choice for a vacation time. If we add the fact that the northern part of island is a home for the largest naval base of the Hellenic Navy it is clear that the island is not as popular a tourist destination as the other islands, but it is far from lacking destinations worth attention. If I happen to visit it in the future, on the top of my list would be monuments dedicated to Salamis' ancient battle and the Cave of Euripides where the playwright Euripides came to write his tragedies. The man was described as a misanthrope who avoided society by lurking in that cave but even so his 19 plays that survived the time since then are still performed and studied today over the distance of more than two millenniums.


If I were to try to sum up the past week and describe my first cruise longer than a day in three words, it would definitely be "an extraordinary experience". Especially the part about learning new things about sailing and trying to be part of a team in close cooperation with colleagues. Being in Greece for the umpteenth time is also special to me and having opportunity to talk to locals is another dimension of the travel. Spending most of the time at sea limits that part of the experience, but in this case it was intentional and focused on teambuilding which is perfectly fine. I am sure there are many methods to achieve this and sailing is definitely among the top five.

More and more I found myself troubled by following worldwide news on daily basis. It's not that I have lack of free time to filter them all out. More, it is that recently I started feeling certain reluctance reading the headlines filled with conflicts, wars and civil fights, religious and cultural animosities, political and all the other disgusting affairs, political elections full of poorly casted actors, stories that you have to use superb power to read them between the lines, worldwide armed conflicts and warfare in foreign countries that I have not the slightest clue what initiated them all and why, mediocre journalism and sensationalism in the worst meaning of the word, etc... The list is endless and believe me I'm not even referring to all those black chronicle stories with unappropriated articles where i.e. somebody killed his parents with an ax or mass murder of cinema crowd by a lunatic in batman suit or worse. Or in today's case and what inspired me to revive this blog post, the mass murder in Belgrade by a 13 years old.


If you read news every day then there is no reason why you shouldn't ask yourself this question: "What is wrong with the World?" Well, If I have to answer it by using the "Occam razor" logic it would be: "Sadly, everything is as usual as always. It is in human nature to act like this from the beginning of time." Its simple, before we didn't have mass media in the scope we are having today and luckily for us we didn't know much further out from our own neighborhood. Today is different. It's more like that immediately when something terrible happens, somebody thinks it is extremely important to put it into news feeds filled with dramatic plot so we wouldn't be spared the sick feeling in our stomach after seeing the photos and videos in accompanied articles. I am not trying to sound shallow and I do sympathize with all the innocent victims and I truly was on the verge of tears almost every time after those events happened. It's just too incomprehensible and over the edge of my intelligence and capacity to dazzle. Once I performed an experiment - I didn't watch or read any local, regional and worldwide news for a long period of time and replaced the activity with more work and fun stuff and only read RSS feed of chosen feeds in science, technology, environment and nature. It was just like I anticipated, I started to fill much better and it was like placing me above and outside all the world's problems. But, it was only the illusion and its not really possible to live like that or to stay hidden from the 21st century full of gadgets and information sources. Not if you are software developer fused to computer screen with fast internet running in behind. The news always finds the way to you, one way or another.

Actually, until we find the way and train our mind to pass through all unwanted news entering one ear directly toward another and out, without bothering brain cells, there is nothing we can do. The world will stay the same. Globally unhealthy from many points of view.

Unless...

Hmmm, ok, let's leave bad news aside for a moment and try something else entirely - let's try to think and enumerate all the things need to happen or invent in order for the World to be a better place. For the World to be relatively healthy and free of bad news. Impossible you say? I agree - it is totally one of those impossible missions or thought experiments if you will, but nevertheless following is the list of what should be done to make it so. I also tried to make the list "in order of importance" and it is a mix of technology achievements and social dogma we need to either invent, understand or deal with.

These seven global changemakers or wonders, once achieved, might have power of changing the World globally. Following is a brief explanation for each one.

Complete Scientific Awareness

The most important is like always, pure knowledge. What we are, why are we here, what are we made off and where are we living. Don't think of these questions spiritually, we can leave this for poets. What I meant is literally - how we came to be in the first place, what is life as we know it, what is universe we are living in made of and what is our place in it. Science is slowly advancing toward definite answers but this will take lots of time. Some areas are researched better than others but I have this feeling that science is going in right direction. Experiments are performed on daily basis, theories are proven or rejected and slowly this process is going forward. I will give you just one example to get the better picture of how hard it is. In physics, astronomy and cosmology we have learned a lot but still many theories are waiting for the right time or technology to be tested. Right now even though laws of physics apply very well in current equations we still don't have pure knowledge of the Universe itself. Is it all there is or there are others universes out there? Is space-time continuum the last frontier we need to solve or there are more dimensions above our four? Is everything made of particles or we will find strings if we dig deeper? Or the last frontier is just one tiny holographic dot placing all of us in one giant and incredible simulation?


You might ask why do we need to know everything? Who cares whether our universe is made out of nothing or it was just a side-product of some natural or artificial phenomenon? Think of it like this, one day Universe is going either to expand over the boundaries of pure existence or something unknown will happen and it will start crunching back into singularity. It is long way until that, but who knows, we might learn how to make another Universe before it happen and escape on time. The Sun is going to collapse much before Universe's ultimate fate and only pure knowledge can save us on that very day.

To conclude, we need to keep funding all kind of scientific thoughts. One day it will be literally worthwhile.

Removing Political Influences

I spent my university days in a country named Yugoslavia governed by socialism utopia. Many of my friends who live in democratic societies from the birth don't understand the stupidity of many things in former socialist societies. For example, one of those stupidity was within my university where I signed to learn electronics and computer science. Socialist government forcibly added more than couple of additional classes within first four semesters where we had to learn about Socialism, Communism and Military Defense. Imagine that. You desperately wanted to continue your education and learn to build and program computers and they forced you to learn about Lenin or Marx or tanks and rifles. I am proud to say that I have the smallest grades from those classes possible. However, one thing is still poking my mind from one "defense" lecture. Retired general or who ever he was who gave the lecture told us definition of war with exactly these words: "War is nothing else but simple continuation of politics only by using force and violence." So there you go. If you listen to him all we need to do is to get rid of politicians. You know what, sadly, even though all wars we had in the past didn't originated in bad politics, the most of them were. Actually in big percent of all military conflicts he was right. Politicians are the ones to blame fully. So how to do this small thing and remove politicians out of equation?


Actually the answer is simple, we replace them with technology. In the beginning of developing democracy, politicians were nothing more than just intermediaries between people and government. It was necessary back in Greek times but today we don't need a politician to ride a horse for days between his village and capital city in order to represent his community and vote for government's agenda. Today, people can do that by themselves by using smartphones. There will be turbulence as politicians today infiltrated every aspect of governments worldwide but sooner or later democracy will evolve and big decisions will never be in one man alone, metaphorically speaking. Even today with current technology, simple census can be organized for everything imaginable. For example, if some government comes to think into going into any war they must first ask people for approval and I can't imagine what kind of conflict must exist in order majority of voters to allow going into war and send their people into possible death.

Anyway my second post in this blog was about this and you can read it entirely at Real Democracy System. It was one idea of how to expand democracy and replace politicians with technology. The same like human workers in automobile industry are replaced with industrial robots. Not a big deal. Only cars are now better and assembled with greater perfection.

Dismantling Religion

Can you imagine a world without religion?

I can.

I know this is sensitive subject so I am not going to "preach" against religious dogma. Instead, let me just tell you one story what we would be missing in hypothetical religion-free world. Couple of years ago, I was a god-father on the baptism ceremony for my best friend daughter. She was about two years old and genuinely terrified with the procedure of washing her body with cold water, cutting her cute curly cowlick out and most of all with appearance of the priest. He was truly scary character, wearing long black dress, greasy long hair and messy even longer beard. With his thick-rim black glasses and couple of teeth missing he was blabbing a prayer in a way nobody could understand. Until the very end of the ceremony when his ability to talk dramatically improved and we all understood when he said something about how primitive and impolite her parents were when they failed to raise their daughter not to be afraid from priests and house of god. Truth is, even we adults would be heavily scared seeing this guy in the middle of the night and I completely understand children suffering in his not so cheap baptisms. If you add to the scene that we had to circle three times around some totemic item in the middle of the church and in every turn forced to literally spit on the floor while saying "I hate the devil" you could probably get full understanding how ridiculous all this was. When I said earlier that not all wars are triggered by politicians and their agenda it was because I am sure that remaining wars in the past directly or indirectly are caused by worldwide religions. All the cultural conflicts, dozens of crusades and wiping out native civilizations during colonization have religion in background.


Unfortunately, dismantling religion is next to impossible or one of those Sisyphean tasks. Even if on this very evening friendly aliens land on the top of UN building and say that there is nothing up there, worldwide believers would not believe them and continue worshiping the divine, only with slightly modified prayers with heretic aliens included.

Respecting Earth and Biodiversity

Broken natural equilibrium between humans and especially degraded relationship of humans and everyone else is one of those doomsday scenarios directly caused by us. It seems that one point in time will come in the future where everything might collapse whatever we do. This is the point when natural balance on Earth will be inevitably reached. It is simply impossible to prevent the energy and the resources failure for all of us if we continue damaging local and global ecosystems we live in. In the world with billions of humans we are literally unprepared for the major collapse of the biodiversity, either caused by us directly, indirectly or by any doomsday catastrophe caused by natural phenomenon.


Simply put, if we would take care of our planet and our neighbors (and I don't mean just humans next door, but everything with DNA molecule in their cells) like we take care of ourselves, this issue would probably not exist.

Mastering Gravity

While previous four changemakers are more about how to deal with current issues or dogmas, following three are all about breakthrough discoveries in technology and engineering. There are numerous potential discoveries capable of changing the world but eventually I selected these three as all of them needed lots of more work to get in production and once they do the door would be open for many more.


Let's start with gravity. Even though it is still uncertain what it is exactly, is it another field governed by graviton bosons hinted by particle physics or it is just a property of curved space and time continuum or perhaps something else, learning the basics of gravity eventually would provide us ways of how to master it. If we succeed, the consequences would be extra ordinary. Imagine the world with new transportation capable of reaching the distant point on Earth within minutes. Astronauts would finally escape zero gravity issues and you would not have to be athlete in order to go into space. Speaking of astronauts, yesterday I was picking up my son from the school and I found him and his friend arguing about whether or not small space shuttle toy they were playing with was actually a plane or a shuttle. Boy's father ended discussion by explaining them that miniature "Discovery" is actually both since it flies in orbit like a shuttle and lands like a plane. Well, if we manage to master gravity in the future there will be no planes any more. Just shuttles.

I have to admit that this changemaker is maybe the most difficult one to achieve, but if proven possible, one day it would add additional wind blow in many other areas. Imagine construction machines with gravity drive and tools, home appliances floating around, safe space travels, weekend houses on the Moon or Mars, cheap solar system exploration, robotic mine facilities in asteroid belt and beyond.

Mastering Nano-Technology

Close your eyes and think big and imagine construction materials stronger than strongest known currently in existence. Imagine space elevators between Earth and captured asteroid acting as counter-weight on the other end. Imagine literally unbreakable bridges and skyscrapers. Now blink and now think small and imagine atom-sized semiconductor and molecule-sized integrated circuit. Imagine personal computer of the size of thimble that will never overheat and work without changing batteries. Imagine nano-robots floating in your blood stream capable of delivering medicine only to infected cells. Imagine animals tagged in a way that we would know their exact position at any times.


Now blink again and try to think big and small in the same time and spot humanoid robot with processing power larger than thousands personal computers combined with artificial intelligence programmed in its memory cells. All this would be possible when we finally end our research of manipulating one single thing. The carbon atom. The atom so powerful of making both organic molecules interacting with hydrogen and oxygen and also capable of creating perfect crystal structures on the atom scale creating the most durable and solid materials possible to create in laboratories. Contrary to gravity changemaker, scientific research advanced significantly and we might expect first results in near future, especially in construction and computer engineering.

Mastering Human Body

Finally, the area that is probably the most advanced and almost reached the title of "Mastering" is medicine. We have come long way since humans invented civilization and started taking care of each other. But we are still not there yet. Some areas in medicine like fight the simple cold is still far away from victory. There is still a list of diseases and conditions with unknown medicines and drugs. DNA sequence is still far from final decoding and understanding, especially in context of junk DNA. Perhaps further research in electronics and nano technology would provide additional tools for further breakthroughs in medicine.


When I am imagining a final understanding of humans I am thinking of body sized home appliance capable of frequent non-invasive scanning of human body in order to give us either clean bill of health or diagnose potential hazards much before it might appear.

So there you go, call it fantasy of one leisured blogger or whatever you want but I wish I could see the status of this list say 200 years from now. I am sure lifespan of one human being could be even much longer than 200 years if some or all of above changemakers came to life.

---

Global Changemakers
Initially published in November 2012, republished and slightly edited in May 2023

Image references:

* 7th Grader Opens Fire at School in Serbia, Killing 8 Children
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/world/europe/serbia-school-shooting.html

** Pop Physics: Gravity
http://popphysics.com/chapter-3-gravity-and-orbits/gravity/

*** Space elevator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

Or to be precise, the title should be 'Why I prefer chess bots to human players'. In short, at least with me, is that playing bots is pure fun and learning, while playing against humans is usually nothing more than a competition that always comes with various feelings that are not always related to the game per se. It's not that there are no emotions involved when playing computer algorithms, it's more in the fact that it is much easier to punch the table when the blunder comes out of nowhere if there's a screen across the board than an actual person and it's even easier to hit the 'play again' button without any regrets or remorse. Don't get me wrong here, I enjoy playing humans immensely but the chess is something that occupies me on daily basis and for that the only opponent ready at any given time is artificial intelligence especially all those colorful characters from within Chess.com portal.


To be honest, I've only been playing against bots for about a year now and I'm proud to say that I managed to defeat the last bot from the 'Advanced' group of computer players. It was not an easy ride, especially playing against those rated with 2000+ and for some the ratio between wins and looses goes up to 10+ to 1 in favor of AI intelligence. Perhaps, the most memorable win came against Manuel, the character described with 'Manuel is a romantic, and enjoys studying and reviewing the classic games and openings of the past'. Not much could be deduced from this description, but to tell you the truth, there was nothing romantic about his game, he is a ruthless attacker that requires full concentration and after a couple of days I finally succeeded and ended up with a really interesting middle game.

The entire game can be seen in following PGN file embedded within Apronus.com pgn viewer. I am still a self-learning chess player and in that regard I am only a beginner. That means having a proper knowing of an openings and their variation in chess is essential for playing a computer program. I am constantly delaying that part of education as it requires more time than just recreation chess on daily basis and all my defeats, besides blunders, have roots in poorly openings. This game was no different, it started as 'Italian Game: Anti-Fried Liver Defense'  but soon went into a long middle game that I manage to overcome after 30+ moves.

There are many periods in one person's life. To me, they all seem distinct from each other. Referring to those farthest in the past, in my mind, it was almost like they didn't really happen to me. Some of the choices I made before, from this perspective, looked like some other person made them on my behalf. Especially in the first couple of decades. But that's the point of growing up and all the changes that happen from early youth to adulthood. Later, we are left with tons of memories that we look back on most of the times with a smile on our faces, sometimes with a little sadness or shame and once in a while with a confused look as if it happened at all. But, one thing is certain, everything that happened, exactly how it happened, defines us as we are today.


Of them all, no single period in life compares to the one called teenage years. I remember those years. Vividly. If I could choose just one phrase to describe all what's happening during those seven years, it would definitely be 'trial and errors'. It was just like tasting the life that was thrown at me for the first time. Understanding it. Embracing it. Maybe little changing it on the way.

But enough about me, the rest of this post is about my son Viktor and continuation of the 'Interview' series, started with him being seven and ten years old in 'Interview With an Expert' and 'Interview With an X'. Anyway, these are 15 questions for his 15 years I selected to ask him today. I'm really proud of all his answers and his way of thinking. 

Describe yourself in 5 words or less.
Determent, ambitious, loyal, generous and honest.

What's the best part of your day at school? Why?
P.E. and all of the breaks in-between subjects. Because I get to talk to my friends normally and rest a little bit.

If you could invite three people, living or dead, to your birthday party, who would you choose? What would you talk about?
Einstein, Jesus and my father. We would question Jesus.

Imagine you’re the president and you need to have 3 people to assist you. Who would you pick and why? 
I'm not really into politics so I don't know who to pick.

What have you learned in life that you feel will be the most useful?
Motivation isn't real, but discipline is. Try to be as optimistic but as realistic as possible. Never give up.

If you could change anything in the world and made it idealistic, what 3 things would it be and why?
I would get rid of all the governments, no more countries and everyone would speak the same language.

How would you explain Earth to aliens?
I think there is a lot of diversity to this question but lets say in the case that we come to them. I would most likely try in some way to use physics, math and chemistry to explain Earth.

Do you think it's better to have one great skill you're an A+ at, or many skills you’re a B at and why?
This question is very easy because if you had only one skill that you are A+ in then the rest skills would not be so great... So that is horrible... I would rather have many skills that I'm a B at. I could easily improve in skills that I like. And also have a lot of options if I ever change my mind.

Imagine you're the teacher tomorrow at school. What are 3 things you'd teach that you think would help make school better?
Self defense, how to be a better person and show the kids the real world.

How would you explain the word 'love' to someone without using the word 'love'?
Umm... Make this with my hands 🫶

What is the most important thing you learned in school NOT taught by a teacher?
The world isn't black or white. It's gray.

If you could travel back in time 3 years, what advice would you give yourself?
Make me proud.

If you could grow up to be famous, what would you be famous for?
I would be famous for motivating other people to become the best version of themselves and show how to really be successful.

If you had enough money that you never had to work, what would you do with your time?
There is no money in this world that would make me not work.

What do you think your life would look like 10 years from now?
I hope I will be successful in the future and be more capable.

So there you go. When selecting the questions, I knew they should not be too detailed or too serious. Nevertheless they supposed to be appropriate for the age and to make it sure, I performed a small research first to find the right ones which I thought was the most suitable. Sometimes, even the shortest answer to an apparently entertaining question shows a lot.

I wonder, if I had a chance, how would I answer them back then. Hopefully not too different.

Let me answer with what I think right away. To me, this is not one of those yes or no questions because it's impossible to tell. Simply put, the theory behind the question is most likely unprovable. Not from the within anyway. 'Simulation Hypothesis' and the phrase 'Non Playable Characters' are concept relatively new, born not that long ago, when digital computing came to be fast enough to produce graphically demanding multi-player games sophisticated enough to hint this question and probability that we might also be inside one of those simulations. And to dispute the question about the nature of reality is quite useless, because everything that surrounds us, no matter how strange we think it is, can also be real and not part of the code. Even if our reality was simulated, its origin would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to prove. By design, nothing inside the simulation could be able to see the lines of the code, only the outcome of its work. In order to say that we are all NPCs, something extraordinary has to happen. Something unexpected, like a bug in the code. A glitch that would clearly break the laws of the physics.


On the other end, in the future, near or far, the engine behind simulated characters in games would be even more sophisticated in a way that all characters will be able to easily pass the Turing's test. To act just like you and me. The AI behind them would be so advanced that they will be equal to the human players. Or much better. So to speak, one game in particular, already achieved this goal. The Chess. When asked about chess engines, Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion, said exactly this: "I find it much more interesting to play humans. And also, of course, now that they have become so strong in a game like that, I wouldn't stand a chance". I love chess, but I have to admit I disagree with Magnus - playing against computer bots became more and more indistinguishable to playing real people. In the most popular chess.com engine online, I solely play against computer personalities behind Komodo and Stockfish engines and I enjoy them for years. But I agree that playing against humans is much more fun. For now. Let's revive this talk again in a decade or two... Or three.. When chess bots develop more to their personalities. More non-chess features. A sense for a humor maybe.

In any case, the main problem with simulation theory is that it lacks a definition of reality itself. What it really is. Is this what we are living in? If it is simulated, where is it simulated from? If we skip all the philosophical views so far solely based on Nick Bostrom book 'Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?' and stay to the physics realm only, I think that simulation of any reality or anything at all requires two prerequisite conditions to start with. One is that there is a high probability that the system performing the simulation should be distinct from its simulation and the second is a large complexity behind, something what Jonathan Bartlett from the Blyth Institute explained with: "The problem with that [simulation in general] is that it always takes more stuff to simulate something than the thing you’re simulating".


Additionally, we are, kind of, looking to the simulation hypothesis through the gaming lenses today, in which simulated reality must have 'real' players from the original coders reality. But what if our reality, if being simulated, is not a multi-player game. What if it is a zero-player game? Or not a game at all? In that case, we all could be NPCs and there would be no real players. Because original and simulated reality could be two completely incompatible actualities. What if simulated reality is not a computer program at all? What if it is something else entirely?

I know I post a lot of questions here, but bear with me. If we follow the logic of more complex, upper reality which is distinct enough from its simulated creation, what would I think of first? For me, it's shadows in Plato's 'Allegory of the cave'. In his famous work, Plato describes a group of people who are chained to the cave facing a blank wall. All they see were shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. The shadows are the prisoners' entire reality, while the objects before the fire represent the true forms of the items that they can only perceive through reason. Plato goes further elaborating his mind experiment but for our topic let's focus on the shadows themselves. They are just two dimensional images of something coming from the upper third dimension. They are distinct from the original objects and certainly, less complex and the product of a comprehensive setup.


Well, the final question arises by itself. Is it possible to cast three-dimensional shadows of four-dimensional objects? Just like a square represents a cube from the third dimension, the cube could be just a shadow of a tesseract, it's fourth dimensional counterpart. The casting in this scenario would not be as simple as in Plato's story, nor the shadows would be what we mean by the term, but it's definitely something worth giving a second thought. One hypothetical four dimensional reality would be ideal source of three-dimensional simulations and there's even a scientific theory that 'casts' a light in the right direction. It's called the 'Holographic principle'.

The origin of the theory lies in black holes and the best is to quate my fictional self from the 'Revelation of Life', a hard science short story I wrote couple of years ago: "If Hawking was right, any black hole no matter how massive would evaporate over time. When that happens all the information swallowed inside would be lost. The problem is that quantum dynamics is clear about it - nothing, especially information, can ever be lost". The solution to this paradox is that the information belonging to the objects swallowed by the black hole should not be part of the three-dimensional reality in the first place. Holographic principle states that "the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region" or the dimensional boundary surrounding entire universe while our familiar space-time continuum might be just a (holographic) projection of the entities and events located outside.


Finally, and to get back to the original titled question, in this reflection we indeed could be all NPCs in a hypothetical simulation originated from upper dimension. Just like in a famous Zero-Player game invented by John Horton Conway, mathematician from Princeton University, a simulated three-dimensional world can only be a setup, created with an initial state and left to evolve on its own. Just like we culture bacterial colonies in a Petri dish. Or it can be a more complex setup with added life forms driven by conscious artificial entities or even by 'real' people from the upper dimension. For the question why would such simulation be created in the first place, there is no good answer. The reality of a fourth (or fifth, sixth, etc) dimension would be something we couldn't be able to fathom right away. Or at all. Nevertheless I though about one simple reason and embedded it in the 'Revelation of Life', but if you are eager to read it, please watch a 'Game of Life' first, a short film that precedes it.

Game of Life (Simulation story, prequel)
https://www.mpj.one/2016/08/game-of-life.html

Revelation of Life (Simulation story, a hard science fiction)
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/revelation-of-life-part-one.html

Refs:
https://builtin.com/hardware/simulation-theory
https://mindmatters.ai/2021/01/jonathan-bartlett-on-why-we-do-not-live-in-a-simulated-universe/
https://chesspulse.com/is-magnus-carlsen-better-than-a-computer-2/
https://www.chess.com/terms/chess-engine
https://medium.com/@jacksimmonds89/are-you-an-npc-this-may-disturb-you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

Image ref:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/