Science and SF Tidbits: Extreme Life, Using our Brains, Celebrating Dawn

Some recent bioscience and science fiction articles I found interesting:

• Ancient Microbes Found in Buried Antarctic Lake : Discovery News »

Some of the strangest forms of life on Earth live in the coldest and hottest environments. As long as there is a source of water, life is likely to be found. That's why any hint of water on Mars or Venus or other bodies in our solar system is big news.

Scientists recently found diverse bacteria thriving in an buried Antarctic lake, an environment devoid of oxygen, saltier than the ocean and a frosty -13°C. That hints at the possibility of life on frozen worlds like Europa.

• Scientists discover possible building blocks of ancient genetic systems in Earth's most primitive organisms

Has life always been as we "know it" today? Quite possibly not.

The genetic instructions in plant and animal life is currently based on DNA, with a deoxyribose based backbone. Before that, it's thought that life may have been RNA (ribose backbone) based. But what came before RNA? One hypothesis is that hereditary molecules were built from aminoethylglycine (AEG) peptide nucleic acids.

One problem with that theory is that AEG had never been found in nature - up until now. Scientists have found AEG inside cyanobacteria that live in extreme environments, such as hot springs. It's a far cry from finding AEG-based life, but the fact that AEG can be biologically synthesized makes that hypothesis less unlikely.

Image: Filaments of cyanobacterium Nostoc colonies. Uploaded by Thibul at fr.wikipedia. Shared under a CC-BY-1.0 license.

• Do we only use 10% of our brains?

Some myths keep being debunked over and over. One such idea is that we only use 10% of our brains, leaving some 90% just idling. In science fiction that often is used as an explanation why a character has psi powers or superintelligence: they have a mutation or took a drug that allows them to use that normally "unused" part of their brain, unlike us normal folk. It's annoying, because it's simply not true.

At BBC Future Claudia Hammond explains why the idea that the claim we only use 10% of our brains is a myth, albeit a persistent one. Various measures of brain function make clear that it's simply not true. And if you think more deeply about it, it doesn't really make sense from an evolutionary perspective either, as Hammond points out:

"It is true that nature can sometimes involve some strange designs, but to evolve to have a brain ten times the size we needed would seem very odd, when its large dimensions are so costly to our survival, leading on occasion to obstructed labour and the death of a mother during childbirth if no help is available."

• Celebrating Dawn by Octavia Butler

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the publication of Octavia Butler's Dawn, author N.K. Jemison reflects on the novel's significance and how Butler dealt with sexism and paved the way for African American science fiction writers:

"this fiction went right to the worst that I was seeing in the real world around me, but then she also suggested we can still do better, we can still survive, grow, change, improve"

Dawn is the first novel in Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy. It takes place on a mostly depopulated Earth which has been invaded - or perhaps rescued - by aliens. The surviving humans must choose whether to adapt to an integrated hybrid human-alien society or fight for independence. If you haven't read the series you should do so!

Going to Mars: are we humans fit to make the journey and when we arrive will there be life there?

Inlet covers for sample analysis at Mars.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS  

Are we humans prepared to travel to Mars? And if we are, will we find life when we arrive?

What has the Curiousity rover found on Mars? The Mars Science Laboratory team has made some tantalizing hints about a "historic" and "Earth-shaking discovery made in a Martian soil sample.

We won't actually know what they found until it's announced at the American Geophysical Union meeting in early December. Some intriguing possibilities are organic compounds, liquid water, or even microbial life. Hopefully the announcement will live up to the speculation.

(Update 11/27:  NASA's "historic news" turns out to be a misunderstanding. No big announcement forthcoming, alas.)

Even if it turns out that something less spectacular than life, any major finding is sure to inspire more calls for a manned mission to Mars. Humans, the argument goes, are more adaptable than mere machines. But I think the real appeal is to expand the boundaries of human territory and to say that we've been able to do it.

Artist's conception of manned exploration of Pavonis
Mons on Mars. Artist:Pat Rawlings for NASA

But some people have even bolder plans for Mars. Billionaire Elon Musk, founder of the private space flight company Space X, has proposed human colonization of Mars. He envisions a "self-sustaining civilization" of up to 80,000 on the red planet, with colonists paying an "affordable" $500,000 for the trip.

Of course the space ships are still under development. It's not clear when they would be ready for even a small-scale mission with a crew of ten.

And then there's the human factor. At least the first few manned missions to Mars are likely to be relatively rough compared to what later colonists are likely to experience. The journey would take anywhere from 150-300 days, with extended periods of weightlessness and - possibly more importantly - extreme isolation for the crew.

The astronauts aboard the International Space Station have been carefully monitored to help understand the physiological effects of living in microgravity. It takes a serious toll on the human body: bone and muscle mass are lost, vision can degrade, and some astronauts suffer debilitating space sickness.

But up until now stays aboard the ISS have be relatively short. It was just announced that two astronauts - American Scott Kelly and Russian Mikhail Kornienko - are scheduled to begin a year-long stay on the ISS in early 2015. Tests and experiments will be run to determine the physiological effects of such a long stay in space. That will hopefully give scientists a better idea if the human body will be able to tolerate a long journey to Mars under weightless conditions.

Concordia Research Station Source: StephenHudson on
Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

And the effects of living in isolation with a small group are being tested in Antarctica. The scientists at Concordia Research Station in Antarctica are completely isolated for nine months of the year in the most extreme environment on Earth. Even in summer the outdoor temperatures rarely rise about -25°C. In the winter the temperature can fall to -80°C (-112°F) and there is darkness around the clock.

The scientists at Concordia are well aware that their experiences model the psychological pressures the crew of a manned mission to Mars will experience. In an article for the New York Times, physician and researcher Alexander Kumar explained what it's like to return to civilization after a stint there. He notes:

"I have learned a lot about Antarctica, myself and, of course, what might lie ahead on Mars. If we can make the journey, why would we go? And, as we have debated into the wee night hours, should we go?"

I think that's the ultimate question: even if we can make a Mars should we expend the resources and risk the lives of astronauts to do so? And would the discovery of possible life on Mars make a difference?

I admit I really like the idea of a human colony on Mars, but I'm not sure if that's just a romantic notion from having read too many science fiction novels. Even Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, which shows the terrible difficulties - both human and technical - of colonizing Mars doesn't suggest we shouldn't try to go there in the first place. Even if it's hard I think we should go.

And heck, if given the opportunity, I think I would go, even if there aren't little green men. I guess I should be saving up so that I have a spare $500,000 when tickets go on sale.

Evolution of the Earth and aliens from a religious point of view

What would the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrials mean for humans? And is it even a likely scenario? Read on...

But first a brief interlude:

• Our Story in 1 Minute (YouTube)

This video shows the creation of the earth and evolution of life in under two minutes.  Lovely!

Of course the time scale isn't linear - it it was, the rise of life would pass in less than a blink.

OK, on to the more serious discussion:

• The Myth of the Evolution of ET - Ted Peters (SETI Talks)

In this video Professor Ted Peters of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary talks at SETI Institute about the mythic elements surrounding discussion of extraterrestrial life.  In particular Peters takes on the assumption of some (many? most?) astrobiologists that extraterrestrials will necessarily be more "advanced" than humans, which is not consistent with what we know about evolutionary biology. He argues that if we do discover extraterrestrial life, it's more likely to be microbes than a technologically advanced society. 

It's a provocative position, as much of the excitement about SETI - the search for extraterrestrial intelligence - assumes that if there is life, it must be advanced. And if ETs turn out to be wise and technologically advanced, what does that mean for religion? And does it matter if life originated from God or nature?

You can read more about Peters' thoughts on aliens and evolution what that could mean for ethical first contact from a religious POV in his article for the Journal of Lutheran Ethics "Anticipating Detection of Life in Space: AstroEthical Scenarios".

Watch the video of Peters' talk - what do you think?

Image: View of North America from Apollo 16. Source: NSSDC Photo Gallery @ NASA.

Friday Free Flick: District 9: Violent Prawns

In 2009 director Neill Blomkamp's low budget science fiction movie District 9 was a surprise hit, and now you can watch the full film for free:

From Crackle: District 9

The story begins when a ship full of sickly aliens appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. The aliens end up living in a crowded slum neighborhood called "District 9". Thirty years later, the aliens - derogatorily called "prawns" - are to be evicted and moved to a more isolated internment camp, with the move managed by a private military company (you too can can train to join MultiNational United and arrest non-humans!). Unrest and violence ensues.

 The film's South African settings and depiction of the forcible re-settlement of the "prawns" into a segregated camp intentionally evokes on the historical enforced racial segregation of the apartheid era. But the racial issues are not just fictional; there has been significant criticism of the movie's depiction of Nigerian immigrants as gangsters and "savages".

So what about the biology? The aliens are called "prawns" because they have arthropod-like exoskeletons, just like Earthly insects and crustaceans like lobsters. The aliens are thought to look like the Parktown prawn, a South African cricket pest. And like ants or bees the "prawns" are mostly drone workers. The disease that affected the alien ship apparently killed off the higher castes, presumably including their queen.

When the bureaucrat overseeing the eviction and resettlement process is infected with alien goo and starts slowly transforming into an alien himself, he is forced to find help among the District 9 inhabitants. That forces him to become more sympathetic to their plight, so as he becomes less human himself he can better appreciate the "humanity" of the stranded alien population.


But truly the science depicted in the movie doesn't make a lot of sense. At it's heart District 9 is a violent action flick, with an unusual setting (at least for a Hollywood flick). If that's what you are mood for, check it out on either YouTube or Crackle.

If you would rather watch a high quality version, District 9 is also available for instant download at Amazon.com for a price, of course (affiliate link).

Image: Libanasidus vittatus or Parktown prawn. Image by Paul venter from Wikimedia Commons, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.

Science & SF Tidbits: Oct. 31: Happy Halloween!

A few more spooky biology links for Halloween:

• Plants are Cool, Too! Halloween Special (YouTube)

Even plants can be scary - especially when they live on the flesh of innocent bugs. Biology professor Chris Martine gives a tour of some of the less animal friendly plants out there. Feed me Seymour!

• Bad Moon Rising: The Science of Werewolves >> Cocktail Party Physics

Hypertrichosis or excessive hair growth, plus a psychiatric condition known as lycanthropa, may have inspired werewolf folk tales.  I wonder how many disturbed or very hairy people were persecuted for their conditions.

• 13 Horrifying Ways to Die (Arthropod Edition) >> Compound Eye

Some fantastic photos of the terrible ways insects die, from being hunted by packs of determined ants to zombie fungus infecting your brain. Not a nice way to go amongst them.

Image: 1648 portrait of Petrus Gonsalvus, the first documented case of hypertrichosis. Three of his children also had this condition. (Public Domain)

Science and SF Tidbits: Oct. 30, 2012: Spooky Science

Some spooky science for Halloween:

• Science Friday »
The radio program Science Friday rounds up their scariest stories, from Chupacabras to Zombies to Vampires.

• Bone-Chilling Science: The Scariest Experiments Ever »
My favorite "sounds like fiction" scary science project: training bats to bomb the Japanese during WWII. Apparently the project was abandoned before the bats were put into action.

And one for the physics lovers out there:

• Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn >> The Titanium Physicists Podcast

Theoretical physicist and mathematician Ben Tippett has written a paper explaining how general relativity and gravitational lensing could have caused the weird events in Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu. From the abstract:

In 1928, the late Francis Wayland Thurston published a scandalous manuscript in purport of warning the world of a global conspiracy of occultists. Among the documents he gathered to support his thesis was the personal account of a sailor by the name of Gustaf Johansen, describing an encounter with an extraordinary island. Johansen’s descriptions of his adventures upon the island are fantastic, and are often considered the most enigmatic (and therefore the highlight) of Thurston’s collection of documents. 

We contend that all of the credible phenomena which Johansen described may be explained as being the observable consequences of a localized bubble of spacetime curvature. [. . .] it seems to us improbable that Johansen should have unwittingly given such a precise description of the consequences of spacetime curvature, if the details of this story were merely the dregs of some half remembered fever dream.

It all could be real............

Image: Lovecraftian monster by Futurilla on Flickr. Shared under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

Science and SF Tidbits: Oct. 24, 2012: Alien Moons, Zombies, and Living Longer

Today's links are about aliens, zombies and how to get to be an old person:


• Prions: The Real Zombie-Makers (YouTube)
Prions: spread through brain eating, but not really zombie making - symptoms of prion-based diseases do include cognitive, memory and balance and movement problems, but infected people don't usually seek fresh brains to eat.

Are you prepared for a zombie attack? Be sure to check out the CDC's zombie apocalypse preparedness tips so that you are ready!

• Never Mind Life on Distant Planets. What About Distant Moons? »
Is it more likely that the (hypothetical) moons around planets in distant solar systems may be more likely to harbor life than the planets themselves? Perhaps. Seems like science fiction has this option covered, with (fictional) life teeming on moons as close as Jupiter's Europa, and as far away as Pandora and the moons of Endor.

• How to Live to 100 (With or Without Biotechnology) | Think Tank | Big Think »
Want to live to be 100? Don't go to college! Of course that's a bit silly: the infographic in the article illustrates out one of the foibles of statistics. A correlation between two things - attending college and shorter lifespan - doesn't necessarily mean the one causes the other, especially considering that 100-year-olds today would have attended college in the 1930s. On the other hand, eating nuts is correlated with longer life - it certainly doesn't hurt to do that and it's tasty!

If you want real science fictional thinking, the article also quotes Ray Kurzweil as saying that if you can keep yourself alive for the next 15-20 years, you will have lived long enough for biotechnology to reprogram your genes away from disease and aging. Considering that we haven't yet developed a reliable method for editing human genes, let alone determined whether "longer life" genes in humans exist or how they function, I figure this is less plausible than my college education shortening my life span.

Image: "Get a Kit, Make a Plan, Be Prepared". Spread the word about the CDC's Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse program

Science & SF Tidbits: Oct. 22, 2012: Fictional Exoplanets, Scientific Goals, Resurrecting T.rex

Interesting links:

• Science Fiction in the Age of Exoplanet Discovery »

SF Author and astronomer Mike Brotherton provides some guidelines for science fiction writers who want to don't want their story set on a distant planet to seem scientifically out of date in light of recent astronomical discoveries.

• Why Mars Died, and Earth Lived (YouTube)

This visually striking video takes a look at why Mars and Venus may have been stripped of their atmospheres while Earth was spared. What saved us? Magnetic fields and the moisture in the atmosphere contributed.

I wonder what this means for possible plans to terraform Mars: is it risking failure because the planet cannot hold an atmosphere? or could we get around that problem continuously replenish the air?

• How should we update Boyle's list of problems for scientists?

In the 1660s chemist Robert Boyle wrote a list of 24 problems for scientists to solve. While some of his goals - like the art of flying and methods of determining longitude - have been solved, Boyle thought big, including some goals that scientists are still working towards 300 years later. We've made progress towards "recovery of youth", "prolongation of life" and "curing wounds at a distance" since Boyle's day, but research in those fields is still ongoing. But Matthew Baggott wanted to know what great visionary goals could be set for today's scientists and so started a discussion at Quora: check it out!

You can see a scan Boyle's original list on the Boyle Project's collection.

• How a T.Rex named Bob is brining about a revolution in paelontology.

Koan de Paus explains how there may be hope yet for Jurassic Park-style cloning of dinosaurs. A key finding: a fossil from a pregnant T.rex nicknamed Bob that contained a fragment of soft tissue. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but it's fun to think about.

Image: Portrait of chemist and visionary Robert Boyle by Johann Kerseboom c. 1689. 

Science & SF Tidbits: Oct 21, 2012: Sequencing Martian DNA, Animal Language, Anthropology SF

More bioscience and science fiction bits from around the web:

• Genome Hunters Go after Martian DNA - Technology Review »

It's a race: two biotech companies - J Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics and Jonathan Rothberg's Ion Torrent - want to send a DNA sequencing machine (made by their company, of course) to Mars. Both companies are adapting their hardware for Martian conditions, and are testing them in Mars-like Earthly sites like the Mojave Desert.

The advantage to sequencing the DNA of Martian microbes while on the planet, rather than sending the sample back to Earth - is that it makes contamination from Earthly life less likely. The experiment would have an incredibly high payoff, if any DNA were found to be sequenced.

Undaunted by the lack of any evidence that Mars currently hosts microbial life, Venter is already talking about reconstructing Martian organisms from their DNA sequence in a super-secure laboratory on Earth.

"People are worried about the Andromeda strain," says Venter. "We can rebuild the Martians in a P-4 spacesuit lab instead of having them land in the ocean."

I'm pretty sure this is a publicity stunt, but it's a fun one to think about the possible results if it were actually successful.

• Is language unique to humans? » BBC Future

Parrots, bonobos, dolphins and even dogs can learn to understand human words and sentences. But is that language? Maybe not, if you think of language as a method of computation rather than a means of communication.

"What makes human language unique is not that it allows us to communicate with each other, but that it allows us to do so with infinite variety. A monkey can scream to warn its troopmates of an approaching predator, or alert them to a cache of tasty food, but it can't communicate something like "doesn't that hawk have a funny looking beak?" or "with a little salt, this fig would taste divine"."

• How to Read Like a Science Nerd » New York Times Magazine

Science writer Maggie Koerth-Baker shares her book recommendations with The New York Times and recommends a science fiction classic:

“Lilith’s Brood,” by Octavia Butler, is the best book about an alien invasion that I have ever read. It’s smart, and it’s deeply human, and (as a former anthropology major) I think it should be on the required-reading list for anyone interested in cultural anthropology.

I agree with her recommendation. Butler's Lilith's Brood (also known as the Xenogenesis Triology) should be required reading for all SF fans, not just anthropology enthusiasts. It asks the uncomfortable question of whether alien takeover might actually be for our own good.

Image: Parrot Culture by Marendo Müller. Public Domain.

Free Friday Flick: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

This week's recommended free movie shouldn't really need an introduction. The 1977 Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a classic story of contact with aliens who have been abducting humans for purposes unknown.
 

From Crackle: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The classification system for encounters with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) was devised by astronomer and US Air Force consulting UFO analyst J. Allen Hynek. Later he founded the Center for UFO Studies.

Hynek divided UFO sightings into two categories: relatively distant sightings, like lights in the night sky or flying discs in the distance, and relatively close sightings. Close sightings could be of three different kinds:

• A close encounter of the first kind is the simple observation of a UFO nearby
• A close encounter of the second kind is the observation of the interaction of a UFO with the environment, such as burn marks on the ground or physical effects on animals
• A close encounter of the third kind is observation of occupants of the UFO

In the movie, Richard Dreyfuss plays a regular-seeming guy who stumbles into what will be the first official meeting between humans and extraterrestrials. I think that's what makes the movie so compelling; since the characters don't really know what is going on, we viewers are taken on the journey of discovery with them.

Of course the movie also has strange encounters with flying objects, escapes from government agents and the best alien music scene ever to keep it entertaining. And, unlike so many movie aliens, when we humans finally meet them, they don't blow up our buildings or steal our natural resources, although they do kidnap folks for unknown purposes.  Perhaps aliens really can come in peace.

Hynek consulted on the movie, and even makes a cameo appearance during the close encounter scene, giving it a bit of scientific (or at least scientific-seeming) authenticity.

Maybe my perception is skewed because I was only ten in 1977, but I think that was one of the best years ever for science fiction flicks, what with both Close Encounters and Star Wars (Episode IV) in theaters.   I think both movies have stood the test of time, but it's the first deep notes booming out from the alien ship in Close Encounters that gives me shivers..

Watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind for free at Crackle.com.

Upper Image: Ovni.png from Wikimedia Commons by user Crobard (public domain)
Lower Image: Purchase the Close Encounters of the Third Kind Special Edition at Amazon.com (affiliate link)

Friday Flick: They're Made out of Meat

I'm meat, you're meat, all of us humans are sentient meat, as two aliens are surprised to discover in this short film:


"They're Made Out of Meat" is an adaptation of Terry Bisson's 1991 Nebula-award nominated short story of the same name.  Directed by Balcony TV founder Stephen O'Regan and starring actor and director Tom Noonan and comedian Ben Bailey, the movie was the winner of the 2006 Science Fiction Short Film Festival in Seattle.

I think the movie captures what's great about humanity: we may be merely carbon-based life forms, but we play music, laugh, play games, flirt and kiss.  And we make machines that reach out to the rest of the universe, looking for other intelligent life to talk to. I just hope that if there is intelligent life out there, we're not dismissed on the basis of our meatiness.

 You can also read "They're Made out of Meat" for free on Terry Bisson's web site. Check it out!

At Science in My Fiction: Metamorphosis, Transformation and Evolution

In the huge, crisp cocoon, extraordinary processes began. 

The caterpillar's swathed flesh began to break down. Legs and eyes and bristles and body-segments lost their integrity. The tubular body became fluid. The thing drew on the stored energy it had drawn from the dreamshit and powered its transformation. It self-organized. Its mutating form bubbled and welled up into strange dimensional rifts oozing like oily sludge over the brim of the world into other planes and back again. It folded in on itself, shaping itself out of the protean sludge of its own base matter. 

It was unstable. It was alive, and then there was a time between forms when it was neither alive nor dead, but saturated with power. And then it was alive again. But different. 

~ Perdido Street Station, China Miéville

I have a new post up at Science in My Fiction that looks a bit at the metamorphosis of caterpillars into moths or butterflies and asks how that might have evolved.

There are many examples of wonderful - or horrifying - metamorphoses in speculative fiction, but they tend to be featured more often at the fantasy end of the SF spectrum.  For example, China Miéville's Perdido Street Station (quoted above) features the transformation of a ravenous multicolored caterpillar into a giant dream-sucking butterfly-like creature. And folk tales of werewolves and vampires tell of humans transforming into animals and back again.

So that leads to my question: what SF aliens go through a scientifically plausible metamorphosis?

The example that immediately comes to mind is the alien Pequeninos (or "piggies") in Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. The piggies go through a metamorphosis from an intelligent pig-like animal into an intelligent tree. While it works in the story as a life cycle sure to take the settlers of their planet by surprise, it never seemed very biologically probable to me.

So are there more scientifically plausible examples in science fiction?

Read the post "Metamorphosis, Transformation and Evolution" and join the conversation.

Photo: Manduca (either tobacco horn worm or tomato horn worm) preparing for metamorphosis by devouring my tomato plant. Photo by me, all rights reserved.

What do "humans" look like?

Last year, Racebending took a look at Hollywood's tendency to use white actors to depict "human appearing" aliens. While that's not true in every movie - for example Mos Def played Ford Prefect in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - non-white aliens are the exception, rather than the rule. As the article concludes:

The overall fact remains that a balanced representation is hard to spot in “human alien” films, because when aliens are written to look like us, it’s the kind of “us” that racially dominates Hollywood and controls its creative processes. Despite the use of sci-fi premises that supposedly spur the imagination to the furthest reaches of space, the narrow focus of “white by default” is still pervasive enough to ground out-of-this-world concepts with business-as-usual biases.

But it's not just aliens who are "whitewashed". When science fiction stories are turned into movies, even characters originally depicted as non-white get portrayed by white actors. Some of the more egregious examples are the SciFi Channel's adaptation of Usula LeGuin's Earthsea novels and the live action movie version of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

So why does it matter? I think the representation of what is to be considered "normal" in popular entertainment can influence what we consider to be the norm in real life.

I think the recent tempest about the casting of the Hunger Games movie helps show why it's important to include human characters of different races. In the Hunger Games novels, the characters Rue and Thresh are described as having "dark brown skin and eyes". Given that description, it's not at all surprising that black actors (Amandla Stenberg and Dayo Okeniyi) were cast in the movie versoin those roles.

But it turns out a number of fans of the Hunger Games novels imagined the characters Rue and Thresh as white, despite their description. And those fans aren't just disappointed. They have been vocal on Twitter that depicting the characters as having dark skin made them less sympathetic and even ruined the movie for them.

And going beyond the explicit racism of many those tweets, some fans who had no problem with the casting in the movie originally imagined the characters as white, presumably because they unconsciously assume that the default human is white. That assumption is reinforced by the majority of movies and television shows.

To my mind, it only makes sense to imagine a future North America where the inhabitants have a range of skin colors and racial and ethnic backgrounds, simply because that is the case in present-day North America. Unless there is some action to eliminate or segregate humans by the color of their skin (such as the way black people were rounded up and resettled in the Handmaid's Tale), it makes no sense to depict an all white future.

And now that we have a black President, will Hollywood step up and show aliens looking who look like our leader when they say "take me to your leader!"?

(link to the Racebending post via My Sci Fi Online ; link to Hunger Games Tweets via Jezebel)

Could the Solar System be Rife with Life?

Big Picture Science is a radio program produced by the SETI Institute's radio studio in Mountain View, California. SETI stand for earch for extra-terrestrial intelligence, but the Institute also is interested in the original and nature of life in the universe in general.

This week's radio show "Rife with Life" explored whether there could be life in our solar system somewhere other than Earth.

The discussion panel included planetary scientists Cynthia Phillips, Alexander Hayes, Rachel Mastrapa, Robert Lillis, who discuss the environmental conditions on the various bodies in our solar system that might support extraterrestrial life.

Joining them was science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer, who talked about the appearance of aliens from around our solar system in fiction.

The tour of the solar system begins, naturally, on Mars.  It all started with HG Wells' War of the Worlds, in which a dying civilization on Mars invades Earth.  But Sawyer points out that it's not until Stanley Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" that we get science fictional Martians who seem well adapted to the dry desert-like surface conditions on Mars.

But over the years it has become apparent that it's unlikely that there is any life (currently) on Mars, and so it has become less popular as a setting for alien cultures.  Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, for example, assumes that Mars is essentially sterile when humans settle there and begin the terraforming process.

Sawyer predicts that there is going to be a renaissance of Mars-based science fiction in the near future. Not coincidentally, he's currently working on his own novel set on Mars, tentatively titled The Great Martian Fossil Rush.

After leaving Mars, the tour moves on to Jupiter and its moon Europa, Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, and even the Sun.   All of them have been used as the home of fictional aliens except Enceladus, so that's something to keep in mind if you are looking for an unusual setting for your next novel.

I recommend listening to the whole Big Picture Science episode "Rife with Life" for an interesting discussion of both the science and science fiction of possible extraterrestrial life in our solar system. Maybe we'll find life out there yet.

All of the stories discussed in the show are listed on the Big Picture Science blog. If you'd like to get a copy, you can find them here (links to Amazon.com are affiliate links):

• War of the Worlds by HG Wells: (free) Project Gutenberg, Kindle eBook,
• A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: (free)Project Gutenberg,Kindle eBook,
• "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley B. Weinbaum: (free) Project Gutenberg, Kindle eBook
• Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson: Amazon.com, Kindle eBook
• 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke: Amazon.com
• The Puppet Masters by Robert A Heinlein: Amazon.com, 
• Sundiver by David Brin: Amazon.com, Kindle eBook

Photo: Mars, showing the Valles Marineris (NASA)

B Movie Night: Embryo and the science of artificial wombs

The movie you are about to see is not all science fiction. It is based upon medical technology which currently exists for fetal growth outside the womb. 

It could be a possibility tomorrow ... or today.

~ Charles R. Brinkman III, MD

Thus begins the 1976 science fiction horror movie Embryo. Sounds sciency!

The movie is an update of the Frankenstein story, where a scientist (played by Rock Hudson) develops a process where an embryo can be grown from fetus to beautiful adult woman (played by Barbara Carrera) in just over a month. Supporting roles are played by Dianne Ladd, Roddy McDowell and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

I don't think it's to much of a spoiler to mention that eventually everything goes horribly wrong.

But what about the promised science? The quoted Charles R. Brinkman III, MD turns out to have been an actual authority on pregnancy, rather than a mere figment of the filmmakers' imagination.  At the time the movie was released, he was a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UCLA (and is now an Emeritus Professor), with an extensive list of scientific publications.  But despite his expertise, he seems to have exaggerated the state of medical technology.

Here we are, 35 years after Embryo was released and artificial wombs are still more science fiction than science fact.  There has been progress: Nick Otway and his team of fisheries biologists in Australia recently developed an artificial uterus for growing grey nurse shark embryos.

But despite continuing research, growing even small mammals like rats and mice outside the womb has not yet been fully successful. Even if artificial wombs for non-human mammals are developed, ethical and political concerns make it unlikely the research will be extended to human embryos. That's not to say it won't eventually be possible to grow a human baby in vitro, but it isn't going to happen any time soon.

And, of course, there isn't any sort of scientific basis for the movie's acceleration of development and aging to allow human embryos to reach adulthood in a month.   That is likely to remain science fiction.

So not too surprisingly, Embryo doesn't have a solid scientific basis. But it does have Rock Hudson and a pretty girl monster. That's not too bad for a cheesy B movie.

You can watch Embryo for free at the Internet Archive (also embedded below). Note that the uploaded film was "sourced from a 30 year old Betamax tape", so the picture quality isn't very good.



Or for a version with better quality visuals, you can watch Embryo through Amazon Instant Video or add it to your Netflix queue.

Twittering with Aliens @ SIMF

I have a new post up at Science in My Fiction about learning the language of aliens right here on Earth. he photo on the right is a hint about the sort of creature involved.

Go check it out!

Image credit: Body parts I - What are you looking at? by Sami__, on Flickr

The Kirk Effect or why aliens won't be sexy

Hi folks. I'm slowly getting back to blogging here after a break, so I have more substantial posts in the pipeline. But while I'm working on those, I thought I'd point you to an interesting talk given by P.Z. Myers at The Amazing Meeting (TAM) this week.

The talk was "A Skeptical Look At Aliens" and takes a look at what scientifically plausible extraterrestrial evolution might look like. He points out that even here on earth we see a number of different body plans that are solutions to evolutionary "problems" like hunting prey in an aquatic environment. And that intelligence is rare and comes in different forms as well.

Myer' sums of what must be considered when thinking about the evolution of aliens as follows:

Evolution doesn't just make finely tuned functional organisms, but is also built on a foundation of chance, so it spawns endless diversity. Every advance carries along the baggage of its ancestry, so we see echoes of our past in every feature. And the more specific and complex a feature is, and intelligence is both of those, the less likely it is to emerge in the same form in different lineages.

If we do find a planet with intelligent life, it is unlikely to be a humanoid or at all shaped like us. And we are unlikely to be able to easily find a way to communicate.

Myers has posted the slides from his talk with commentary on his blog. None of this is really surprising if you have a decent understanding of evolutionary biology, but I recommend reading his post. The slides have pictures with examples from earthly evolution, and are both pretty and nicely illustrate his points.

Myers apparently didn't have time to include everything he prepared, so he's followed up with a post about "the Lost Slides" of his TAM talk that take a look at sex with aliens - or likely lack thereof.

If you watch science fiction TV, you will already be familiar with what he calls "the Kirk effect": which is "to boldly go and explore strange new worlds, and to hump all the women on them."

The Star Trek franchise is of course one of the best examples of this phenomenon, since every week the Enterprise's multi-species crew interacts with each other and with the inhabitants of the planet they are visiting. Inevitably there are romantic entanglements and one night stands. It's not just Captain Kirk that found love with other species.

An unlikely inter-species romance: Kirk x Spock by ~Edithy on DeviantArt.

And sexy-in-human-terms aliens are the rule, rather than the exception in the movies, from the 1966 B-movie Mars Needs Women to the more recent blockbuster Avatar. As director James Cameron has been famously quoted as saying the female Na'vi had "got to have tits".

But as Myers points out, it's not just that non-mammalian female aliens are unlikely to have boobs and male aliens are unlikely to have tight buns.

It's deep and subtle changes to the shape of the face, the eyes, the whole of the body -- cues that we all unconsciously recognize. You don't even need to see a person face-on to recognize sex.

If you want to see an example of "sexiness" that you aren't likely to find arousing at all if your human, check out his example.

I think some people find it easy to dismiss this as over-thinking the details of what is meant to be light entertainment. But I would argue that our assumptions about how the universe works are influenced by what we see on TV and in the movies, even knowing that it's purely fiction.

And while I'd expect that most people who have thought seriously about aliens wouldn't think that alien romance is likely, I do suspect that many harbor the hope that there are indeed extraterrestrials with whom we would be able to communicate,  form trading partnerships with and maybe even explore the galaxy together with us.

But we humans rely heavily on non-verbal communication. Sexual attraction is just one aspect of this. We decide whether another individual is trustworthy or kind or intelligent not only by what they say, but by their facial expressions, posture, gestures and tone of voice.

Considering that misinterpretation of such cues can lead to miscommunication even between different human cultures, it's hard to imagine how we might overcome the hurdle with communicating with aliens who neither share our shape, nor any of our evolutionary or cultural history. I don't think an alien would have to have the demonic form of Clarke's Overlords to inspire mistrust and cause confusion  - it would just have to be different enough that we humans would not be able to read their body language properly.

A very unlikely alien
(source: Project Gutenburg)

It also makes me think of Lisa Tuttle's short story "Wives". It's about a planet taken over by humans - all male - where the native inhabitants have chosen to reshape themselves into "ideal" human females in both form and behavior so that they can be perfect "wives" to their conquerors. I've always understood the story to be an allegory for the way women are expected to perform femininity and not upset the status quo to be accepted in our patriarchal society.

But I think the story can also read on a more literal level too, as an example of human folly in assuming that aliens (and other "foreigners") will mold themselves to meet our cultural expectations and an example of ability to fool ourselves about how well we actually understand Others. In "Wives", the alien called "Susie" rebels and is destroyed by her sisters for trying to destroy their tenuous peace by ending her charade. She is replaced by another and the men apparently never notice the change. I've always imagined that the men have chosen to not  to try to understand the true nature of the situation, and that along that path potentially lies great danger.

If humanity someday does meet intelligent aliens would we truly be able to understand their desires and point of view, or would we simply assume that they think like us and their behavior can be understood in human terms? I hope not, since that could be a disaster too great for even inter-species romance to repair.