6 Oct 2011

If a Tree Falls on the Bike Path

posted in: personal news, quirky | 0

Something happened today that made me think of the old question: If a tree falls in the forest…

I wasn’t in a forest, exactly, but Captain Jack and I were walking on a wooded section of the Minuteman Bikeway, and we’d paused while Jack sniffed something. I heard a sudden, very loud CRACK-K-K-K! and turned to see a large, full-grown tree crash down across the path, about fifty feet from where we were standing. I just stood there with my mouth open, wondering, What the—? and feeling extremely grateful that I’d been standing here and not there. A woman on the other side of the tree no doubt felt the same way. From what I could see of the base of the trunk, it appeared that the roots had rotted or broken away or something, and the tree had just been waiting for the right moment to fall.

A minute later, a group of bicyclists rode up, saying to each other, “That wasn’t there an hour ago!” I told them it wasn’t there five minutes ago. I called the police to ask them to notify the town tree people, and then I took these pictures.

 
For the rest of the day, I mulled the event over, wondering what dreamlike or theological significance I should give to it. The only thing I’m sure of is, there was definitely a sound when this tree fell.

11 Aug 2011

Cool Things in Space

posted in: quirky, science, space, Sunborn | 0

We might not have the space shuttle anymore, but there’s a lot to be psyched about in space. Here are a few, in case you haven’t heard about them.

Antimatter Orbiting the Earth?
Sounds crazy, but it could be for real. Scientists working with the Pamela spacecraft (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, in case you were wondering about the name) report that they have found antiprotons in orbit around the Earth, apparently gathered into bands similar to the Van Allen radiation belts. While not in large enough concentrations to cause passing spacecraft to go boom, the researchers note that they could be a source of fuel for future spacecraft.

Water Flowing on Mars?
Could be. New studies of images from Mars orbit sure look a lot like seasonal flows of water. If it’s the real deal, this could mean liquid water close to the surface, and that could mean a greater likelihood of life on Mars. Now, not a million years ago.

Beer in Space!
Now we’re talking. Yeah, people—including NASA types—are really looking into the possibility of beer in weightlessness. Very serious stuff! They’ve already done parabolic flight testing!

Star Trek Theme Park in Jordan?
Okay, this isn’t real space, but damn. King Abdullah II of Jordan is the main investor in a proposed Star Trek theme park, which has secured $1.5 billion in funding. Plans are to build it in Aqaba, Jordan. King Abdullah, you see, is a Trekfan, and even got himself a cameo appearance, back before he was king, in Star Trek: Voyager. You’ve gotta love it. But I haven’t even made it to Universal Studios yet!

By the way, one reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I’ve been really busy writing. I’ve also finished the proofing of text for the World Edition of Sunborn (crazy problems with Word losing styles, which I’ve finally gotten under control). Look for an announcement soon on that!

26 Apr 2011

Times Marches On

posted in: ebooks, personal news, publishing, quirky, science fiction | 0

What with one thing or another, I never got around to posting my Easter greetings to everyone. So, thinking in a time-travel fashion (ghoststream, as it is called in the still-nascent Reefs of Time), I will now wish all of you Happy Easter! And Happy Passover! And if you don’t celebrate Easter or Passover, and even if you’re allergic to chocolate bunnies, I hope you had a great weekend, anyway.

During the weekend, my Chaos omnibus got a nice featured mention on Spalding’s Racket, the indie-book-oriented blog of writer Nick Spalding. His blog is well worth perusing, if you’re interested in seeing work by some writers you might not know yet.

Family members have been coming and going here. Allysen was gone for two weeks and has returned. Alexandra was home for a week and has left again. Julia was gone for a week and has returned. Talula, our house guest, was here but just left on a trip. Me, I’ve just been settin’ here coughin’ on the pollen and wonderin’ why God or evolution invented allergies, anyway. (But grateful for the Roombas and Scooba.) And wondering, why does our attic smell like mildew? Please tell me we don’t need a new roof. (But I think we probably do.)

Here for your amusement are a few fun pages that appeared recently at Syfy.com:

14 Jan 2011

Tale of the New Computer (with Snow)

posted in: personal news, quirky | 0

Yesterday was snow day in Boston. We got 20 inches or so in Arlington, and I spent a good part of the day driving the snowblower around. God, I love that machine! How did we ever dig out those plowed-in driveway aprons before? I forgot to take pictures, but you know what snow looks like, right? It was fun.

Here’s something less fun, though by the end I could only laugh. I spent much of the last week getting a working computer for my office. My old computer, Orion, died right before the holidays, and I replaced it with a cheap model on sale at Microcenter. It didn’t take long to realize the replacement was seriously underpowered, so after the holidays I boxed it up and went back to the store. Thus began my saga. Here’s how it went:

  • Before trip — new computer (1) comes home. It works, but is slow and wimpy.
  • January 6 — I upgrade to new computer (2)—a nice, powerful HP tower—a refurb, but so what? I take it home, add in the extra peripheral cards (did you know computers don’t come with parallel printer ports anymore, or firewire ports—both of which I need?), and fire it up. Gaaah! No video output! Dead as a freaking doornail.
  • January 6 (later) — Back to the store. The salesman, Yonas, looks worried when he sees me. But he’s a trooper. He fixes me up with another: new computer (3) — same model. I mean, it had to be a fluke. It was a refurb, but so what? I take it home, set it up. It works! I spend the weekend installing software, getting things the way I like. Then… doom!…it suddenly starts shutting down with the ominous red message: CPU fan failure. Nooo!
  • January 9 — Yonas sees me and winces. We huddle. Agree on a plan. In order that all my work doesn’t go to waste, they’ll replace the fan with a better fan, and upgrade the warranty for my trouble. The tech, Mark, gets right on it. All seems well with new computer (3.5). At home, I flick it on. It flashes a cheerful greeting: CPU fan failure.

    THIS IS RIDICULOUS. It can’t be the fan; it must be something else in the machine.

  • January 10 — They’re starting to cross themselves when they see me come into the store. I’m glancing over my shoulder, myself, wondering about boggarts or poltergeists. We huddle. Forget my work setting up a new machine, forget refurb. They’ll swap me up to a better unit, new. The tech will move my peripheral cards over—and since they’ve gone to the trouble of giving me an upgraded fan, he’ll put that in, too. We test it; all is well. I go home with new computer (4) — I set it up, turn it on. Yay! It boots up. I decide to boot it up a few times to test. The machine helpfully speeds up the process by telling me: CPU fan failure. Noooooooo!
  • January 11 — Mark the tech sees me first and turns pale. We take it back to the workbench, and the machine helpfully reproduces the problem. It has to be the fan, sez Mark. Forget the odds of two fans being bad, it has to be the fan. We’ll put in a better fan. We walk into the store and Mark picks out a fan that looks like it came from a Saturn 5 rocket, a tower full of pipes and fins. Oops—this one requires taking the motherboard out. Oh well, the sooner we start… I go read while Mark works. For quite a while. I saunter back to see how it’s going. Mark’s lowering the motherboard back into the case, with towering fan attached. I mention that the fan seems to be sticking out of the case by half an inch. Mark stares in disbelief, then sags.

    Now what? It has to be the fan, so Mark goes and gets another fan like the first upgrade they gave me. He installs that. He fires up the machine, and… the fan doesn’t go. CPU fan failure. He gives the blades a little flick; they spin up nicely. And that’s when the cold truth sinks in: there’s not enough current to start the “better” fans. “Oh right,” says another tech offhandedly, “those HPs won’t accept aftermarket fans.” Mark gazes at the machine in despair. The original fan from this computer, which was probably fine, is no longer available.

    I go back to find Yonas. He’s ready to give me title to the store, if I’ll just go away and be happy. We huddle. Yonas sets me up with another new machine, out of the box, and Mark moves all my stuff into it from the last machine. It works! I go home with new computer (5) — which, knock on wood, is working beautifully. I have almost all my software installed, and it purrs nicely. Back at the shop, they have four machines in pieces, and are wondering where they went wrong.

I like my new computer. I’ve named it Polaris, in honor of the guide star, but even more in honor of the rocket ship piloted by Tom Corbett and his fellow space cadets of the Solar Guard.

Up in the sky, rocketing past,
Higher than high, faster than fast,
Out into space, into the sun
Look at her go when we give her the gun

— from the Space Cadet March (Space Academy)

26 Nov 2010

Time Travel My Way

posted in: quirky, science, science fiction, writing | 0

The SF novel I’m currently writing, The Reefs of Time (Book Five of The Chaos Chronicles), involves time travel as an important story element. Specifically, a couple of my characters need to go back in time a few hundred million years, to see what they can learn about a malignant entity believed to have originated that long ago, near the center of the galaxy.

This is a pretty demanding jaunt for anyone, even those who travel with the help of far-future alien technologies. The time-travel theory involved, which I devised after a long period of mulling possibilities (and for which the prime criteria were: Does it make sense to me? and, Does it work in the story?), posits that travel back into deep time can be accomplished through an extreme version of exploiting quantum entanglement: essentially the possibility that we live in a vast web of entangled particles spanning deep space and deep time. (If you don’t know what quantum entanglement means, stay with me for a moment. I’ll get to it.)

According to theory (of alien origin, in my story), there are a couple of limitations on this form of time travel. One is that you don’t really travel physically or materialize in the past. It’s more like projecting yourself, ghostlike, in a way that lets you observe the past without actually (in theory!) interacting with anything in a way that could change the present or future. It’s so ghostly that it’s called ghoststream transmission. The theory (being tested right now by my characters Julie and Ik, under dangerous conditions) further says that any change that might be made in the past will create only limited local ripples. Nature has its own self-correcting mechanism that prevents, for example, the grandfather paradox (where you go back and shoot your grandfather before he meets your grandmother).

All fiction, folks.

Except, maybe not. This week’s New Scientist has an article about a couple of researchers who believe they may have shown that quantum time travel is theoretically possible (registration required to read article), not by the usually-cited method of flying through a wormhole or other means requiring black holes, but by performing just the right trickery with quantum-entangled particles. (Quantum-entangled particles are particles joined in a spooky way such that an action on one—change in polarization or spin, for example—is instantaneously reflected in the state of the other, even if they are separated in distance, theoretically limitless distance.) It’s one of those weird things that makes quantum physics so mind-bendy.

The New Scientist article goes on to explain that this model for time travel has a built-in mechanism that prevents time-travel paradoxes. Effectively, an entangled photon cannot go back and kill its grandfather photon, because if conditions are such that it can actually pull the trigger on its little quantum gun and pull off the photonicide, then the time travel fails to work in the first place. How’s that for prevention of terrorism?

I started to develop a peculiar sense of déjà vu as I read this article. Didn’t I just write this stuff a few months ago, weaving a bit of world-building that would make my story make sense to me? What are they doing, talking about it now in a serious scientific magazine?

You don’t suppose the researchers took a little trip forward in time and read my finished book, do you? Hey guys—if you did, please tell me, how the heck does the story turn out?
 

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