Green bean galaxies (GBGs) are very rare astronomical objects that are thought to be echoes of quasar ionization. These galaxies are so rare that there is on average only one in a cube about 1.3 billion light-years in diameter.
In "The cube" Tom asks AL how long he has slept revealing that our astronaut, during his journey, uses a sort of "suspended animation".
Suspended animation is a slowing down of the individual's normal vital functions without causing death, induced by external means. Outside of science fiction, the application of this process to humans is entirely hypothetical, although Mitsutaka Uchikoshi's case of involuntary hypothermia has opened up prospects in this regard. Breathing, heartbeat and other involuntary functions may still be present in a subject subjected to suspended animation, but their detection can only be carried out using measuring instruments. Extremely low temperatures can be used to accelerate the slowdown of vital functions; this principle is the basis of the science known as cryogenics.
The proposal to subject astronauts to suspended animation was advanced to allow humans to reach the destination of a long interstellar voyage by eliminating the need for a generational ship; occasionally the two concepts have been merged, theorizing a succession of generations of technical supervisors of a larger frozen population.
The ability to hibernate, therefore, is present in the genetics of human beings. We still don't know how to activate it, but we should be able to endure it once it is restored,.
A suggestive case in this sense is for example that of Mitsutaka Uchikoshi, (mentioned above) a thirty-five year old who, who remained hibernated for twenty-four days at a temperature of 22 degrees following a fall in the mountains, did not report any permanent damage. There is also a very rare disease called 'spontaneous periodic hypothermia' which resembles hibernation, and in addition there are many parallels between the condition of the human fetus during intrauterine development and animal hibernation, so there is a certain optimism in the scientific community that the human being may be able to reactivate this mechanism...
The theme of suspended animation is a science fiction topos, often used to allow individuals to survive for long periods of time; it is present in numerous space opera stories that deal with long space travels and as a narrative artifice in various dystopian works set in a more or less distant future.
Arthur C. Clarke has used the concept of suspended animation in many of his works. In novels such as Childhood's End (1953), The Songs of Distant Earth (1986) and the Space Odyssey series (1968-1997), it is used to facilitate interstellar travel, allowing humans to endure journeys that take months, years, even decades. . In the novel 3001: The Final Odyssey, it is revealed that Frank Poole, murdered by HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey was cryopreserved from his exposure to the vacuum of space, and found and brought back to life by advanced scientific methods a thousand years later.
In 1964, comic book superhero Captain America, popular in the 1940s and discontinued in the 1950s, returned to publication with the explanation that he had been accidentally frozen in Arctic pack ice. [9]
The Age of the Pussyfoot, a science fiction work by Frederik Pohl, is about a man who is brought back to life from cryopreservation in the year 2527, having been killed in a fire 500 years earlier. This story was first published as a serial in three-part Galaxy Science Fiction, beginning in October 1966, and was later published as a novel in 1969.
Relatively few stories have been published on the use of cryonics for medical time travel. In Edgar Allan Poe's story "Some Words with a Mummy" (1845 (1845), the electrically reanimated mummy mentions that his Egyptian civilization uses mummification to travel through time.
"The cube" is a tribute to the Borg spaceship from Star Trek. It is a totally anti-intuitive form and I chose it because it reflects the "square" character of the civilization that inhabits it. The alien-ant civilization is totally devoted to the perpetuation of the species and apparently to space travel. We don't know much why Tom's gaffe ends the discussion.
In "Inside the cube" Tom is faced with one of humanity's most widespread fears: the encounter with extraterrestrial entities.
In his book, "Aliens: The World's Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life", quantum physicist Jim Al-Khalili asked a number of experts to explore how humans might actually come into contact with aliens. The possibility isn't as far-fetched as it once seemed: Since NASA launched its Kepler mission in 2009, researchers have discovered thousands of new planets and "revolutionized our concept of how many habitable worlds could exist," writes the astrobiologist Nathalie Cabrol in one of the essays in the book.
But while Hollywood suggests we should expect to fight their inhabitants, science tells a different story.
Here, five popular alien myths that Aliens debunks:
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| 5 popular alien myths that science bunk |
Myth 1: Aliens will eat us
Films like The Blob and Critters envision aliens gathering humans for food, an unpleasant prospect. But it doesn't follow the science of nutrition, writes astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell. In order for aliens to feed by eating us, their bodies should be able to process our molecules (such as amino acids and sugars). And that requires similar biochemistry, a possibility for a species from a different world.
Myth 2: Aliens would reproduce with us
Both of this summer's extraterrestrial blockbusters, Alien: Covenant and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, involve human-alien hybrids. But since we can't even reproduce with our closest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee, it's "extremely unlikely" that we could do it with aliens, according to Dartnell.
Myth 3: Aliens look like us
Human evolution depended on so many unique and unpredictable factors, it is nearly impossible for an extraterrestrial species to have human-like characteristics, such as the aliens in The Day the Earth Stopped and Star Trek. It is much more likely, writes neuroscientist Anil Seth, that they are as diverse as the octopus, "our Earth alien," which has a high level of intelligence, a decentralized nervous system, and an alternative style of consciousness.
Myth 4: Aliens are "living" creatures
Even sober films like Arrival are wrong, according to some scientists. If aliens contact us, cosmologist Martin Rees believes we will not hear news from other organic creatures, but from the robots they have produced, which can, in theory, live forever.
Myth 5: Aliens would steal our water and metal
Independence Day aliens famously arrive to strip Earth of its resources. But again, that logic doesn't add up, writes Dartnell. Most of our metal is found in the core of the Earth, not in its crust; asteroids would be far better targets for mining. And frozen moons, like Jupiter's Europa, would be easier places to stock up on water. They are uninhabited and do not have the strong gravitational pull of the Earth.
So, if aliens aren't interested in collecting our lands or our bodies, why should they make contact? he suspects a purer motive: curiosity. "If aliens came to Earth", writes Dartnell, they would probably be "as researchers: biologists, anthropologists, linguists, eager to understand the peculiar functioning of life on Earth, meet humanity and learn about our art, music, culture, languages. , philosophies and religions ".
In short, we didn't make a good impression in front of the ant alien. Blame for too many science fiction films
In "Ethical reasons" we reflect on the choice of generational travel and on the ethical developments of AI.
One of the inevitable questions when thinking about artificial intelligence systems is whether one day they will become smarter than us and want to establish themselves as superior beings. This occurrence, the moment when human beings will no longer be the smartest beings on Earth, is one of the so-called "singularities". According to the most optimistic, this will never happen because humans will always be able to pull the plug ... According to others this argument makes no sense because such intelligent artificial systems will be able to avoid being knocked out so simply.
In this short video, which looks a lot like an episode of the dystopian TV series "Black Mirror," the Guardian imagined the encounter between a very intelligent android named Günther and an ethics expert, called to give advice on how to build an algorithm that allow artificial intelligences to distinguish good from evil. In the video Günther reaches the singularity and comes to think that human beings are not yet developed enough to have a brain like his and for this he disappears.
We have already addressed the issue of generational choices (Some things about Space Life part 2) and recommended Giuliano Pontara's book.
In "Immersive reading", as well as being a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, he thinks about the developments that virtual reality could have. The idea of a fully immersive realistic digital environment, which allows you to get lost in another world or in a compelling storytelling (or both), exerts considerable fascination. In popular culture, the most famous example is probably the "Star Trek" holodeck. a couple of episodes of the show investigated the potential negative repercussions of this technology (the concept of "hologram addiction"), the holodeck was considered a positive technological development, in line with the generally utopian vision of the future proposed by this TV series classical. Clearly, some cultural works have chosen a more cautious tone towards virtual reality or have even sounded a sinister dystopian alarm. The most famous example of this is probably the very important film "The Matrix" from 1999.
In "Asimov's laws", Tom curses the famous laws of robotics, which are evidently also implemented in AL. The latter, in fact, prevents our astronaut from using virtual reality for too long.
The laws first appeared in Runaround, a story published in 1942, by Isaac Asimov. The story was then resumed in the subsequent novel I, Robot, where the idea of the positronic brain was introduced.
1. A robot cannot harm a human being, nor can it allow a human being to receive harm due to its failure to intervene.
2. A robot must obey orders given by human beings, as long as such orders do not contravene the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its existence, as long as such self-defense does not conflict with the First or the Second Law.
Under these laws, AL prevents Tom from continuing to use immersive reading.
In "Universal Internet" assumes the existence of a cosmic data network.. Super computers or supernets are a widely used topic in science fiction. In this episode the inspiration is drawn from the stories of Multivac written by Asimov. In particular "The Last Question". It contains, towards the end, a galaxy that houses a super computer that anyone of the human race can access. Even in "Space Life" the network is in a super galaxy ...
The technical references (quantum fluctuations) are inspired by an interview by journalist Kirk Ouimet to a real AI (GPT-3 by OpenAI).
Have fun finding references and quotes in the next few episodes! feel free to write your ideas in the comments.
Have a good space explorer trip...
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/books/review-aliens-search-for-extraterrestrial-life-edited-jim-al-khalili.html
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6420947390236190679/7946170517505730851#
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6420947390236190679/7946170517505730851#
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1249b/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/21/japan.topstories3
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