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Showing posts with the label gravity

Choosing Planets

Let's turn our imagination to the edge and do something different today. We can call it a thought experiment, a childish game, a daydream, science fiction, pure fantasy, or whatever we want, but let's move the boundaries far away from Earth, far away from our solar system, even farther from our galaxy, and do something wild.

Let's choose a planet.

Or, to be more precise, let's select one in the vastness of the cosmos and move away from this Earth and start new life. Of course, in daydreams we are allowed to do this just because the imagination is what our species differs from others on Earth.

Ok, to begin this little endeavor, we need a little astronomy to start with. What we know for sure is that our galaxy alone contains more than 200 billion stars, the majority of them not so different from our Sun, and by using a basic statistical study based on the planet finder's microlensing technique, there are approximately 100 billion planets orbiting them. Perhaps more. Multiply that by a factor of billions of galaxies in our universe, and you'll get that there are far more Earth twins out there than living people on Earth. There are planets for everybody's taste. So let's start with the planet's basic properties.

Choosing the World

It has to be huge, much bigger than Earth, maybe twice as big in size or even more, to harbor as many people as Earth today and still have plenty of room for many more. To be something like in Canada's distant regions today with only up to a thousand people per square kilometer. However, its composition must be radically different than Earth's, as, in my imagination, it has to maintain gravity more or less like the third rock from the Sun. After all, I don't like to move there and look ridiculously dysfunctional when it comes to, say, simple walking. So fewer heavy elements inside, please, and let it be around the famous, well-known number of 9.81. More or less. So no radical changes when gravity is in question, but I would choose the one with radically fewer water layers than we are familiar with within here. Don't get me wrong, I do like water, and I would like to have plenty of it all over the place, but with no oceans or large seas. Rivers are ok in any variety, lakes too, and small seas are also fine, but please no oceans. Nobody needs that. Hey, it's my planet; if you like oceans, find your own, or don't move anywhere; there are lots of oceans here.

Basically, there must be one giant continent in Norway's style with lots of rivers and lakes and small seas with large bays and calm weather. One rotation cycle could be a little longer than Earth's, but not so much over 30 hours. You can't get rid of old habits that easily. Like Earth, it needs to have a slightly tilted rotation axis to provide longer seasons and temperature changes over the year, with a revolution over the main star similar to the one in Mars or approximately twice as long as Earth's. Earth-like atmosphere and its greenhouse effect would provide a temperature range over the year to be a little milder compared to our native planet, maybe no less than -10°C in harsh winters and no higher than +30°C in summers. A tilted axis and position within the habitable zone of the mother star would also provide no big differences between the planet's equator and pole regions. What else? Oh yes, it has to be protected with both a strong magnetic field and a couple of perfectly positioned giant outer planets from both radiation and looney asteroids and comets. It could also be part of a binary star system, where the second star could also provide additional protection when it comes to violent cataclysmic events in the neighborhood. Last and surely not least, it has to be green all over the place. Extremely suitable for cultivation of various kinds of anything possible. The geography of the planet could be variable with both long valleys and mountains, just like in our home yard.

Humanoids by Star Trek "design"

Do you like my paradise so far? In a way, it was not hard to set the basic astronomical properties of the star system and planet itself. However, a bigger challenge comes with defining the demographics of the planet. You might not like it anymore after I continue and say that I would like the planet to be colonized without any domesticated intelligent species. Why? First of all, it wouldn't be right to find a desirable planet along with at least one dominating intelligent species already evolved there. It would be like colonizing the Americas and killing or putting the population into reservations. We've been there. It's just wrong. Secondly, and probably even more important, is that I would like to share it with other intelligent species. Preferably humanoids. Not mandatory, though. That way neither would be in a position to set a flag and say, "This is mine; everybody else is not looking like me; go away". Basically, in my vision, everyone intelligent who would like to come and build a house is welcome at any time as long as they sign some sort of "sharing" agreement. Something similar to the Antarctic Treaty System we are having here on Earth. Basically, the colonization idea would be comparable to the Earth back in dinosaur time, when all the aliens missed the opportunity to colonize it when no domestic intelligent species existed to claim it for itself. Or they didn't miss it at all, and we are actually them and have never been native to this planet.

So how would all that sharing look like, and what kind of civilization am I talking about? There are so-called Kardashev scales defining possible civilizations out there, dividing them into Types I, II, and III, and it, by definition, represents a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of usable energy they have at their disposal. All three types are far away from the civilization of humans as we know it today, and all three are suitable as potential residents for my planet. By the way, let's call it in further text "M." Accidentally, although I first thought of my first name's initial, it is titled more accurately according to the planet's classification seen in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. Anyway, the point of using high-end civilization in my story is that young civilizations like ours are simply not suitable. Why? Several reasons, actually. First, it seems that a big amount of mutual tolerance is needed for the sharing principle I have in mind. All desirable intelligent species have to be evolutionary mature and unburdened by racial, religious, and any other interspecies differences. Additionally, the population must be technologically advanced. The system on the planet would be as simple as possible; there would be no countries nor any kind of political organization, no governments of any kind, nothing like on the third rock of our solar system. There will be just one institution, planetary-based, with just one treaty where all colonists have to sign, and it should be pretty simple. If you want to live there, you would have to choose the land that is free and yet unoccupied, claim it yours, and the only condition to keep it is to produce zero waste outside of its boundaries. Otherwise, you can do whatever you want with it—create your dream house, build a school, trade market, entertainment facility, anything at all—as long as you play fair in relation to others.

ISS 3D Printer and first 'emailed' socket wrench

There will be no cities, as the technology at everybody's disposal would provide transportation to the most distant part of the planet easily, safely, and fast. I see smaller settlements, though, based on their mutual benefits and relations. There will be no sports, at least not in the form of the ones we know on Earth. It would be extremely unfair to play, for example, basketball involving multiple species with different masculine properties. However, the technology sports would survive, like races or any kind of recreational activities. Advanced technology in everybody's home would provide planetary and interplanetary networks of various communications; there would be no need for many supporting factories except for basic ingredients, as home computers would be equipped with state-of-the-art 3D printers capable of producing both simple tools and complex machines. The same home computer would also be able to use food replicators for creating food and food supplements. I don't like the existing concept of killing other species and using them for food. Cultivation and planting are perfectly ok, and each household would possess its own greenhouse for growing appropriate food, but I expect high-end civilizations in evolutionary terms would solve "the meat" problem, and I am not talking about a vegetarian diet.

Of course, the main star system would be well explored, with several outposts built for several purposes, along with mining outer moons, other planets, and asteroids in search of all necessary ingredients for planetary life, along with a variety of orbital activities for planetary residents, including entertainment.

Unfortunately, choosing a world to move is still just a dream. Reality still resides far in the future. Nevertheless, I wonder if such a world already exists out there in a far, far... You know.

Image ref:
https://3dprint.com/32269/made-in-space-emails-wrench/

Refs:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/07/full/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/k-4/features/F_Measuring_Gravity_With_Grace.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_M_planet
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0734472/

Gravis Gravity by Gravitons

Don't take this title too seriously. It's wrong on multiple levels. Grammatically and scientifically. Nonetheless, it fits perfectly for this post. As for grammar amiss, I used the Latin root word 'Gravis', which means heavy, and it is actually the perfect adjective for gravity as we perceive it here on Earth. As for the scientific issue, the rest of the title might be all wrong. If we glimpse into the features of the three main natural forces of the universe, it is obvious that they work in more or less the same fashion—they use carriers or elementary particles to mediate the force through the force field. The photon is one of them, and it carries electromagnetism, while strong and weak forces in the nucleus, respectively, are mediated by gluons and W/Z bosons, and they are all confirmed in experiments. Gravitons are supposed to be the same thing as gravitational force, but they are never found and confirmed either directly or consequently. Ever since Einstein, we have had second thoughts about whether or not gravity is acting as a 'normal' force at all or if it is something entirely different.


Think about this: you are located in the spacecraft far in space outside of the big, heavy planets and stars and truly experience microgravity. You start the engine, and your fancy spaceboat starts accelerating with about 10 m/s, and each second increases the speed with 10 m/s more. Actually, the right number is 9.806 m/s per second, which is the measurable 1 g force of the planet Earth. In our thought experiment, a spacecraft that works in a fashion that always uses constant acceleration and half the journey from, i.e., Earth to Mars, pushes with 1g, and the other half turns around and uses backthrust with the same 1 g, could not only provide a normal human environment inside the craft, but it would also be very fast and reach the red planet in just three days*. If you can't imagine how this would be working in real space travel, I will only state the name of one fictional spaceship from the sci-fi literature. Its name is Rocinante**, and it is one great piece of interplanetary Corvette from the amazing franchise "The Expanse".

Well, science fiction aside, the point here is that gravity and acceleration seem to be one thing. The obvious conclusion in this chain of thoughts is that Earth and Rocinante are both capable of creating gravity of one steady g. At least it looks the same from the observer's point of view. However, we know for sure that Earth is round and rotates, and no matter where you are standing, it will pull you toward its center without accelerating anything. It's just enormously big and does something to the very fabric of spacetime itself, which is actually pulling you by invoking some mechanism we don't understand yet. Perhaps by using gravitons—our friendly force carriers from the title? Actually, both particle and string theories predict gravitons as real things. In the former case, it is a massless boson with spin-2, while in one of the string theories, it is sort of a closed string with a low-energy vibrational state. I will not go into further scientific details in both theories, but it is evident that a massless particle or low-energy string is very hard to observe, as it either never or extremely rarely interacts with other particles on subatomic levels. Let's compare it with neutrinos for a moment—an elementary particle with no charge and the tiniest mass we can detect. Their large, super-awesome underground detectors, like the Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Detector in Japan, detect only a handful of neutrino interactions with regular matter over a long period of time. For example, when light from the Big Kaboom from supernova SN1987A reached the Earth, Kamiokande detected the sum of only 19 neutrinos from this super explosion. And to use Carl Sagan terminology, there were billions and billions of neutrinos only from that event. Detection of a single graviton, even if we consider some theories that suggest gravitons with non-zero mass, would be extremely hard.


Ever since Einstein's general theory of relativity, scientists have been struggling to find the best description for gravity. If we are looking at it as a fourth natural fundamental force, compared to the other three, it is the weakest by far; for example, gravity is about 36 orders of magnitude weaker than electromagnetic force, and it probably has a trivial influence on subatomic particles. However, it is cumulative and always attractive and therefore plays the major role in the macroscopic realm, making it possible for planets to orbit their stars, and it is behind the recently experimentally confirmed gravitational waves by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) experiment. Einstein himself first noticed the difference in behavior of four fundamental forces and spoke of gravity as not a 'normal' force per se but more as a fictitious (or apparent) force that is observed only as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime caused by the presence of large masses or energy throughout the universe. A very nice example of one apparent force is the Coriolis force, or Coriolis effect. It is observed as a force, but in reality it is just an apparent deflection of an object that is moving in the spherical system, such as Earth, that rotates. Deflection is caused by the fact that the rotating speed of the Earth is faster for a moving object located near the Equator than for one near the pole. In simple words, the system you are moving in is also in its own motion that must be included when you want to calculate the actual path of yours; otherwise, you will never reach your intended target. And in the universe, everything is in motion. Gravity could be just that—an apparent force that is caused by the interaction of large moving masses with the fabric of the universe itself that might be in its own motion as well. Or perhaps gravity could be the outcome of the interactions of mass with the potential energy of that fabric itself. In science fiction and also in the quantum science realm, this is known as zero-point energy, quantum vacuum zero-point energy, or simply vacuum energy. If I understand this correctly, by applying Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (we can only know the position or velocity of a moving particle, but never both), every quantum system to sustain this principle must have minimum non-zero energy. In the case of a vacuum, this is the minimum energy of all fields in the universe, including the necessary Higgs field needed to provide the existence of every mass everywhere in the cosmos in the first place.

In the conclusion of the scientific part of this post, I am hoping that whether the future will confirm gravitons and 'pronounce' gravity as a real fundamental force or we finally find how big masses influence the tiny quantum world of the universe's fundamental ingredients, in the end we will have our answers, which might bring more challenges and questions for future generations. Maybe even ways of mastering it by applying some ingeniously clever engineering of future gravity-related devices and tools. Of course, how exactly the world would be changed with full understanding of gravity and gravity-based appliances; perhaps the best vision is in the science fiction of the amazing futuristic thriller "Influx", written by Daniel Suarez.


I am always eagerly acquiring novels with gravity premises in the background if the plot teaser is interesting enough, so I bought 'Influx' a while ago and stored it in my Kindle's queue for future reading. I was a little busy with my work and reading a couple of other novels, but now I have this regret of why I didn't read it sooner. It was really amazing! Just exactly as comprehensive and entertaining as I was hoping for when I saw the book cover in the first place. The science behind the gravity mirror or deflector invention in the book is perfect and just in the realm of sci-fi plausibility I am always looking for. It was explained perfectly well in both the science behind the invention and also in the workflow of all engineering vehicles, armor, satellites, and other appliances that were built on it. If you add to the main 'gravity' twist all 'regular' sci-fi inventions such as AIs, robots, cold fusion, quantum computers, futuristic weapons, immortality, and other non-sci-fi thriller stuff, please believe me that my additional regret after reading this book was that it had only 500+ pages. I wouldn't mind if Daniel added more stories to it and created a sequel. I read somewhere that FOX is interested in the movie, and hopefully this will see the daylight in the end. It perfectly fits for a motion picture, not just because of the science and story but also because of the potential artistic and visual aspect of gravitational falls in all directions that was extraordinary.

Image refs:
https://www.artstation.com/artist/deningart
http://www.thethoughtarchitects.com/2014/04/14/detecting-neutrinos-neil-degrasse-tyson/
http://www.thedaemon.com/

In-text refs:
* http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/30/flying-to-mars-in-three-days/
** http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/Rocinante

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/01/08/national/science-health/japans-super-k
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/coriolis_effect.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2mec3vgeaI

Science of Life in Solar System

There will come one day in the future. Relatively and astronomically speaking, it might come sooner than we think. It could happen way before we realize that there is no turning back. The day when Mother Earth will simply say, Sorry guys, I have no more energy to sustain this kind of life anymore, and when most of the biodiversity cocoons on Earth will reach the ultimate hazard and start imploding back into themselves. Air and water pollution will help a lot, and not even the planet's regular motions will be able to take us into another interglacial cycle. It is as much inevitable as what we are going to do next. We will take a long look toward the stars and say, "Well, we have to do this sooner or later. It's time to leave the Earth. Time to jump into Christopher Columbus's shoes again. And find the new home."

But we will not get far. There will be no warp drives, "phasers on stun", robots, AIs, or artificial gravity like in sci-fi blockbusters, and there will be no scientific breakthroughs that will bring Moon or Mars gravity to the comfortable number of 1. No, we will be completely helpless in all our efforts to terraform other planets and gas giants' moons. Not at first. Or fast. Or to make large asteroids rotate. Or to initiate Mars' core to fire its lost magnet. Or to make Venus act a little less than hell.


Artificial biodomes of Eden in Cornwall, England*