Climate Change is like a Batch of Pancakes

The chaos in the kitchen: how ecosystems are like pancakes. (Yum?)

To put this not-so-eloquently, Earth’s ecosystems are like grandma’s famous pancakes: her recipe, when followed correctly, produces the fluffiest, tastiest, most golden-brown pancakes of anyone in town. That’s where Earth’s ecosystems have been for millions of years. Before her recipe—that is, before Earth had stable ecosystems—too little or not all of the ingredients existed to make that perfect batter. No matter how hard you tried, it couldn’t be done.

Now imagine grandma’s recipe was so good that your family opened a restaurant. For years, it was the talk of the town. Now you’ve taken over, but other breakfast restaurants have opened in recent years, and some of them serve breakfast food 24/7.

To stay in business, you’ve adopted a new (badly-thought-out) strategy: you turn off your water supply and every day, customers bring their own water to help you save money for better advertising. Today, you have all the ingredients to serve 1,000 people. All your customers come in, and one by one, you add their water to the mixture—the mixture that everyone is eating from, mind you. At first, as you’re adding water to the mixture, it all seems to be going fine. It’s almost to the right consistency when you get a phone call, so you step away. While you’re gone, everyone in line pays your assistant, who is lazy and just lets whoever brought water dump it in the batter…without filtering it. Worse yet, some people didn’t measure how much water they actually had; they just filled glasses of different sizes and dumped them in.

When you get back from your phone call, you look inside the vat and see that the batter is soupy, watered-down, and has dust and dirt from people’s unfiltered water. But it’s too late now. Most people are sitting at tables, eagerly waiting for their stack of grandma’s famous pancakes. There are a few people left in line waiting to pay, and a few of them brought glasses of water. In anger, you take their money, but tell them to dump their water in a flower pot and go sit down.

To compensate for the soupy batter, you cook the pancakes longer than grandma’s recipe says to, hoping the excess water will cook out and save the pancakes. But no: they spread out until they’re thin as paper. So you turn up the heat—and the pancakes start to burn.

Outside, people are getting restless. They paid good money for grandma’s famous pancakes, and they all have places to be and things to do. Several of them come back to the kitchen to ask what’s taking so long, only to see you scrambling around and yelling at your assistant for being so negligent. When the small band of customers asks what’s going on, you angrily tell them the pancakes will be out soon.

Unconvinced, the customers go back to the dining room and explain what they saw. Some of the first-time customers leave; they like the other restaurants anyway. The long-time customers—those who have been loyal for years—refuse to believe that the pancakes could be ruined, and tell other customers how grandma’s pancakes are the best they’ve ever had, and how, if people leave, they will never find better pancakes anywhere in the world, ever. The customers who witnessed the chaos in the kitchen argue with the long-time customers, but are called out as liars who are trying to promote competing restaurants. In the confusion, some undecided customers peek inside the kitchen, see the chaos, and sneak out of the restaurant. One stays behind and manages to convince a few loyalists to go see the chaos in the kitchen for themselves. Those who refuse, say, “We’ve never gone back to see it before, and the pancakes always come out fine. Why should this be any different?”

By this time, you have managed to produce a couple good-looking pancakes and threw them on top of the pile to cover them up the terrible ones. Still, a majority are coming out ruined, and there’s no way you’re going to feed everyone in the restaurant. Then the door opens, and a few of your most loyal customers see the good-looking pancakes you threw on top. You just smile and assure them their pancakes will be out soon. Some, however, notice you covering up the burnt and watered-down pancakes, and leave the restaurant. Some switch sides and say the restaurant is clearly failing and needs to be shut down, while others say that nothing like this will ever happen again.

When you finally manage to cook a few dozen good pancakes and several hundred bad-but-edible ones, you roll them out to the dining room—only to see that, of the 1,000 people who were in your restaurant this morning, a mere 300 remain. You force yourself to smile and start serving them. Only the first ten customers get the best pancakes of the batch, and don’t notice the ruined ones underneath, and promise to bring even more water the next day to compensate for the idiots who walked out. They go on eating breakfast happily, their consciences clear. But then the best pancakes are gone, and other customers pick at their pancakes in disgust, or throw them in the trash, refusing to accept the pancakes at all. And when all the pancakes are gone, there are still 100 people who haven’t been served at all, and demand refunds, or storm out and vow never to eat at your restaurant again.

The point of the story is this: fossil fuels were once the best-of-the-best. Yes, they provided the foundation society needed to get its feet off the ground, but then they got too big, and started doing long-term damages. Some people turned to more sustainable energies and grew their own niche markets that provided energies around-the-clock, which was attractive to an even larger market. Now that fossil fuels are being proven to have adverse effects on Earth’s ecosystems, people are switching to the sustainable resources, which are becoming cheaper and more abundant every day. Only the loyalists, the people who have been in the business their entire lives, refuse to see what’s going on behind the scenes and keep supplying the necessary economic resources. Only by educating the general public, showing them the damages for themselves, and converting them to cleaner, ever-cheapening, and near-infinite energy sources can we begin to heal Earth’s damaged ecosystems.

“But it’s tradition” is no longer a valid excuse. There will always be a better recipe.

--------------------------------------------

Did you enjoy this read? Consider visiting Experience Daliona, a futuristic website that will take you on a journey across the galaxy.

Please support my mission of spreading science concepts. Purchase a t-shirt! 50% of all profits are donated to WildAid to support environmental, wildlife, and climate programs.

Alex Martin is the author of six futuristic science-fiction novels. His next book will be published on October 17, 2017. He's a science communicator, having given assemblies at schools, colleges, bookstores, and libraries. He also manages the Experience Daliona website, an extension of his books, where he also publishes factual content about real concepts in science.

The Physics of the Embassy Universe, Part 2

This is Part 2 of a blog series dedicated to the scientific concepts I use within my science-fiction novels Embassy and Resonance, Books 1 and 2 of the Recovery Series

Read Part 1 Here

TPEU #2: The Kairos Supernova

One of my favorite recurring events in Embassy and Resonance is the Kairos supernova (in Resonance, it’s later explained to have actually formed a magnetar, but the main characters just call it a supernova). The light from Kairos reaches Undil on June 12, 4319, so Kairos itself collapsed in the year 4262. The light reached Narviid in 4311, and Rygin in late 4317. It has yet to reach any other planets; however, Arman and our trusty cast get to see Kairos explode three times, and unexplode (literally) three times.

While I don’t show every single instance in the books, I do show both stages of Kairos enough to get the point across.

As you can see, Kairos is an incredible distance from the Bubble (the collection of inhabited planets in which Embassy and Resonance take place). The distance between Narviid and Kairos is roughly the same as the distance from one side of the Bubble to the other (Belvun to Artaans).

After Arman and Co. see the supernova on June 12 (their second day in Undil’s Embassy), it stays bright in Undil’s northern skies for a little less than a month. Of course, if you’ve read the books, you know Arman travels to Belvun on June 18, about a week after the supernova appears. Therefore, the light has traveled about one light-week from Undil…in certain directions.

When Arman’s fleet departs for Belvun, they catch up to the light of the supernova on the second day of the expedition, passing it early in the morning of the third (yes, the fleet travels faster than light. Click Hereto Read How). Sticking to basic relativity, because the fleet is traveling 166x faster than light, the passengers would watch the reverse-explosion happen extremely quick. The 8-days’ worth of light recedes in about 1 hour and 24 minutes, give or take.

Here's what the supernova would look like normally:

Here's what the supernova would look like in reverse:

Each time the expeditions leave Undil and travel to Belvun (in Embassy and Resonance) or Daliona (in Resonance), the passengers would see the reverse explosion. But whenever they return to Undil (at the beginning of Resonance, and again about 3/4 of the way through), the would see the normal explosion (happening extremely quickly in both scenarios, of course).

Visually, it’s a very exciting event, and I love detailing it and bringing it back up during the expeditions. I think it helps add to the feeling of this being a real concept (though so far as we know, this wouldn’t work in real life), because the consistency of this tiny detail is just one of those things that I will ALWAYS pay attention to in my books. I try to think of EVERYTHING when I’m world-building, because really, that’s the only way to do it.

I do this for plot, and I do it for world-building: I ask, “What would ACTUALLY happen right now?” I don’t include things for convenience. All the events and all the details are 100% deliberate and realistic to my best assumptions, and the Kairos supernova being an ever-present event, in real-time, is one of those details you are going to continue seeing throughout the series.

-----------------------------------------

So there you go! The second post about the science and physical concepts in my books, Embassy and Resonance.

I hope you enjoyed reading about this! At some point in the future, I plan to compile all of these into a book/ebook that you can add to your collection!

If you have any questions regarding the Kairos Supernova/Magnetar just ask! I’m open to all questions and will explain whatever you need me to.

If this piqued your interest, please check out my books!

Sincerely,

S. Alex Martin

Click Here to Read Part 1

-----------------------------------------

Purchase EMBASSY

Purchase RESONANCE

EXPERIENCE DALIONA (website)

If we want to explore other planets, we need to contaminate them with Earth's microbes, ASAP

Does life exist beyond Earth? That's arguably the biggest question the modern science community faces. There's very good reason to believe it does. Life in the Cosmos seems statistically inevitable, but aside from the "weirdest star in the galaxy," KIC 8462852, we have yet to detect any semblance of intelligent civilization within a relative shouting distance around Earth.

On a broader scale, the challenge astronomers face is finding any life at all, anywhere in outer space. That means life forms as small as microbes and bacteria, which are known to survive even in Earth's most hostile environments, from the subfreezing regions in Antarctica, to the boiling-hot vents at the bottom of the ocean. So many scientists think microbes could be living in the Martian soil--or better yet, the water. There's only one problem:

NASA forbids sending the Mars rovers to analyze the water.

More specifically, there's an international treaty forbidding it. It refers to planetary protection, which is "the practice of protecting solar system bodies from contamination by Earth life, and protecting Earth from possible life forms that may be returned from other solar system bodies" [Source: NASA].

At a glance, this seems like a reasonable law to make. For purposes of remotely exploring other planets, namely Mars, you don't want to contaminate the planet and make a false discovery of life. On the flipside, when rockets start traveling back to Earth from Mars and elsewhere, you don't want to bring back a microbe/bacteria/virus that's going to kill off humans and other species.

But that raises a question: how can humans hope to explore the solar system if these threats and sanctions are ever-present?

While it's admirable to want to preserve the so-called pristine environments of other worlds, we must also accept the inevitable fact that if we want to live beyond Earth, we will have to contaminate Mars, and it's better to do it sooner rather than later.

Finding extraterrestrial life will be an amazing moment in science. There's no doubt about that. But for the long run, we need to think about human exploration and humans inhabiting other planets. We need to accept the reality that Mars simply does not have any enduring surface ecosystems--environments that we would need to worry about destroying. If there were trees and grass and other animals that didn't share our biology, and our contamination, or mere presence there ended up killing those life forms, that would be a big problem. But until we find a functioning, obvious ecosystem, I say we go forth.

Why would introducing Earth life (microbes, bacteria, etc) be good for us inhabiting planets? And why would it be good to start early? Simple: to prepare the way. To begin creating an environment we can survive in and spread Earth life to. It would be one of the first steps of terraforming planets like Mars: nourishing the soil.

Bacteria and microbes, we know, are capable of adapting to hostile environments, and can do so very quickly. And another thing microscopic organisms are good at doing is multiplying very, very fast. Growing colonies of microbial life and introducing them into the Martian soil would allow plants to grow. There's plenty of carbon-dioxide on Mars, so with incremental exposure, there would be no trouble growing plants--and thus changing the composition of Mars' atmosphere to a breathable one (Mars' atmosphere is currently composed of approximately 95.3% CO2, but it's very thin and, as a result, doesn't trap heat well, compared with CO2's effects on Earth and Venus).

Along with the introduction of microbial colonies and imported chemicals and greenhouse gases, and eventually plants, the Martian soil would release trapped gas. On a large scale, this would thicken Mars' atmosphere to a sustainable pressure and temperature, and life would explode--in a good way. Under those conditions, Earth life would need only take root, and we could turn Mars into a second Earth. Water would condense out of the soil, forming lakes and streams and possibly oceans, allowing for even more diversity to flourish.

Some would argue that humans going to another planet would just spell destruction for that planet, that humans are a disease that needs to be extinguished. This is the most pessimistic thing anybody can say, really, but it's a sad reality that our society has seen science take a backseat in the world's priorities to the point where people literally think going to Mars would "kill the planet."

This simply isn't true. We learn from our mistakes, and as society and science advances, so does our appreciation for nature and the universe. Humanity's recent history is a lesson in progress, and the more we develop, the more careful and precise we will be. We wouldn't be killing Mars; we'd be developing a world where life as we know it could survive. A second inhabited world on which to preserve life. It is our duty as an intelligent, cognisant species to spread life wherever it can take root.

The window of opportunity to spread life is opening wider, and we must take it while we can. We cannot hold back. We must carry life to those far off, distant worlds.

The Physics of the Embassy Universe, Part 1

This is Part 1 of a blog series dedicated to the scientific concepts I use within my science-fiction novels Embassy and Resonance, Books 1 and 2 of the Recovery Series

TPEU #1: The Barrier Law

I’m not gonna lie: I didn’t think up the Barrier Law until halfway through writing Resonance, Book 2 in the Recovery Series. But when it comes down to it, Barrier Law is my favorite concept of the entire series (tied for first, actually. There’s one big concept that’s yet to be introduced…)

The Barrier Law (as it’s called in Resonance) is what allows space stations to travel in FTL (faster than light speed). In the novel, dark matter acts as a non-Newtonian substance. What’s a non-Newtonian substance, you ask? Have you ever seen what happens when you mix cornstarch and water? When you run or jump on the mixture, nothing happens! Except maybe your feet get a bit gooey. But when you stop moving, you sink right through! (and it’s VERY difficult to get out).

Watch this video to see non-Newtonian Fluids in action!

A non-Newtonian fluid is a substance that has variable viscosity. Put simply, it acts like a solid under certain conditions, and a liquid under others.

So how does this relate to the Barrier Law?

As I said, the Barrier Law allows certain massive spacecraft to travel in FTL to achieve interstellar travel between planets. In my book series, dark matter acts as a non-Newtonian substance, meaning, under most conditions, spacecraft will travel through it and not interact with it at all….but under certain conditions, spacecraft are able to use dark matter both as an energy source AND as a “highway” to another star system.

What ARE those conditions?

There are a number of conditions that must be met in order for spacecraft to interact with dark matter.

First, and most obvious: there needs to be dark matter to interact with. DUH!! Luckily for the characters in my books, dark matter is pretty much everywhere….outside of a solar system. For sake of the physical laws in the Recovery Series, dark matter is not massively present within solar systems due to the influence of each solar system’s sun.

To reach a spot that has dark matter, spacecraft must fly outside the heliosphere – the area of solar wind influence for any given star – before they find a patch of dark matter stable enough to interact with and be propelled into FTL.

The spacecraft in my books have engines that can accelerate them to 61.8% light-speed within the heliosphere…but outside the heliosphere, they aren’t much use.

But that’s okay!! Because traveling at 61.8% light-speed is the velocity required to interact with dark matter – our non-Newtonian substance. Any slower, and the spacecraft would pass right through. (And the engines physically can’t accelerate spacecraft to faster than 61.8%. In fact, they deliberately adjust for gravity assist, slowing the craft to prevent it from traveling any faster).

What happens now?

When spacecraft interact with dark matter, as I described, it acts as a “solid” substance. Imagine some sort of low-density cosmic goop. You’re still traveling through space-time, but now you’re pushing through this gel of dark matter.

And that's where stuff gets weird.

Another set of the spacecraft’s engines can now “inhale” dark matter and use it as fuel. The thrust provided by this dark matter fuel accelerates the spacecraft to approximately 166x the speed of light, or a little less than 1 light-year every 2 Earth days (just about 53 hours, to be exact. In fact, the galactic calendars in my books are measured in hours, not days, because hours are measured the same on all planets…but that’s a post for another time. Hehe, time).

Dark matter fills up most of the galaxy, so running out of an energy source (soon, at least) isn’t a problem. What IS a problem is general relativity – the relative motion part.

I’ll get to that in a second, but let’s take a quick step back: when the spacecraft enters the dark matter, it begins to “drag” the dark matter with it, and, inevitably, there’s a “barrier” that forms a sort of cosmic tunnel (wormholes, anyone?).

No, not a wormhole…not exactly. Don’t think of the Barrier in my books as a wormhole. No stargates here.

The Barrier starts out wide, but shrinks in diameter as the spacecraft pushes forward and stretches out the length of the tunnel. So non-stop trips across the galaxy are impossible. The maximum distance any spacecraft can travel is roughly 20 light-years…so a bunch of pit stops are in order.

Back to General Relativity.

Remember how I said that traveling slower than 61.8% light-speed means you can’t interact with dark matter? Well, in my books, there are theories that say describing how something vastly different will happen if you exert more force on the Barrier (physicists and engineers in the books are still unsure, but they’ve run models to make predictions).

If an object, say, a Molter (equivalent of a fighter jet in space) were to depart from the spacecraft’s hangar and accelerate (thus traveling with stronger force relative to the spacecraft), theories predict that the dark matter barrier would rupture in a sort of explosion. Maybe the Barrier would collapse. Maybe the energy would rip apart everything inside the barrier. Maybe, with enough force, it could cause an explosion with all the energy that’s being channeled into powering the spacecraft.

Basically, physicists are in agreement: DO NOT. BREAK. THE BARRIER.

Put simply, pilots free-flying outside a spacecraft during interstellar transit have a specific range they’re allowed to fly in, and flying too close to the edge of the Barrier is definitely frowned upon. It’s never happened, and nobody is eager to find out if the theories are true (because the only way to measure interactions with the Barrier and dark matter is to be inside it at the same time).

How do you drop out of the Barrier?

Dropping out of the Barrier is easy! The spacecraft decelerates, the force interacting with the dark matter lessens, and it returns to its “fluid” condition, the non-interactive condition.

Remember how a spacecraft cannot interact with dark matter until it breaches the heliosphere of a star? Well, the same is not true in reverse. A spacecraft can drag the dark matter barrier into a heliosphere. The Barrier, of course, will gradually weaken under these conditions, but it’s possible.

That being said, it’s standard protocol to drop out of the Barrier well before entering a heliosphere – for a number of reasons:

First and foremost, you don’t want to smash into a star, planet, or asteroid field. Cruising at 166x light-speed isn’t exactly maneuverable, even at large distances within a solar system. Adjusting course on a large scale within the Barrier would generate too much force to remain contained.

Second, remember, normal matter can interact with the Barrier in this condition. That means it has a significant amount of gravity and a significant amount of energy, which would be devastating to stars and planets, not to mention massively disrupting the orbits of planets and debris. It just wouldn’t be a happy ending for anyone.

It would go boom…probably…and that would be bad.

So by decelerating a spacecraft well before entering a star’s heliosphere, you harmlessly slip through the Barrier, the dark matter returns to its normal state, and everybody avoids having a bad day.

So let's recap:

• In my books, dark matter acts as a non-Newtonian substance under certain conditions.

• Barrier Law refers to how a spacecraft interacts with and manages interstellar travel within a “barrier” of dark matter.

• The spacecraft must be traveling at 61.8% light-speed, and exit the heliosphere to generate a barrier.

• Once within the Barrier, it’s theorized that exerting substantial extra force/attempting to achieve a greater velocity will cause the Barrier to collapse, rip, or explode.

• Traveling inside the Barrier allows a spacecraft to reach a peak velocity of 166x light-speed, or 1 light-year every 53 hours.

• The diameter of the Barrier decreases over time, so a spacecraft must drop out after 20 light years. In order to travel from Artaans to Belvun (the furthest travel distance in my books), a spacecraft would need to drop out of the Barrier 2x before reaching its final destination.

• Drop outs must occur near a solar system so the spacecraft can use the energy from the nearby star to accelerate back to 61.8%.

• Dropping out too far away is essentially a death sentence.

• Dragging the Barrier into a solar system will obliterate the stability of that solar system due to its gravity and the energy contained within it.

• To drop out, a spacecraft need only decelerate back to below 61.8% light-speed.

-----------------------------------------

So there you go! The first of what will hopefully be several posts about the science and physical concepts in my books, Embassy and Resonance.

I hope you enjoyed reading about this! At some point in the future, I plan to compile all of these into a book/ebook that you can add to your collection!

If you have any questions regarding Barrier Law, just ask! I’m open to all questions and will explain whatever you need me to.

If this piqued your interest, please check out my books!

Sincerely,

S. Alex Martin

-----------------------------------------

Purchase EMBASSY

Purchase RESONANCE

EXPERIENCE DALIONA (website)