Science In My Fiction

Part II (Part I is here)

Continuing the question: will it breathe fire?

I threw out the idea of fire-breathing being a mating display, as there isn’t any biological need for a creature to breathe fire. Let’s put aside the question of why and look at how.

Hydrogen

One commenter brought up hydrogen gas, which has the double advantage of being both flammable and lighter than air — it can be used to lighten your dragon for easier flying, whether by storing it on hollow bones or a gasbag (like a bullfrog’s throat pouch, or perhaps by going all the way to designing a zeppelin-like dragon).

However, hydrogen gas isn’t as common in nature as one might hope. Generating it by splitting water is simple — if you have electricity. Electricity-generating organs do exist in nature, of course, but most of them generate only mild fields. A small, specialized organ generating enough current to split water into component gasses could work, given a ready supply of water and enough metabolic energy to generate enough gas.

Hydrogen can be produced by some forms of algae (there has been some research on that in the bio-fuels field) but those require sunlight and the inside of a dragon is notoriously dark (or can you fix that?) Some sort of symbiotic microbe in the dragon’s gut, generating hydrogen from yesterday’s lunch, may be your best bet — your dragon gets his gas with minimal effort.

One more side note: no need for your dragon to eat rocks. Hydrogen is everywhere. It’s just a matter of separating it out.

Methane

Far less sexy than hydrogen, admittedly, but methane has the advantage of being easy to generate using existing microbes. It’s generated in the gut by bacteria which require neither light nor air, and could be accumulated in a specialized organ for siphoning back toward the head for ignition.

Or, you could be really brave and let the methane continue on its way to be expelled in the usual manner with a less-than-usual ignition organ under the tail… so that both ends of your dragon are equally dangerous… hey, it could still be a heck of a mating display.

And a non-flammable option

Acid

Hydrochloric acid, as produced in the stomachs of meat-eating animals, is quite able to burn exposed skin and eat through fabrics. More potent acids like sulfuric or nitric acid aren’t produced biologically but if one can invent a tough enough organ to store the stuff, I think it could be made quite plausible.

Unlike fire being a mating display, acid spraying makes more sense as a defensive mechanism along the lines of secreting surface poisons or explosive defecation. An acid-spraying dragon may well be short on the fangs and claws and other armaments, eat things that don’t need intensive hunting and killing, and be subject to predation by bigger, scarier monsters.

Which could be just as interesting as your standard-issue dragon, of course.

[Ed: I'm very pleased to be inaugurating Science in My Fiction's new irregular series of guest posts by noted scientists and authors today. Our first guest is Tobias Buckell, who blogs regularly about science and writing. Buckell's novel Arctic Rising, about the effects of global climate change on the Arctic, came out yesterday. I asked him to write about climate change and science fiction for us, and he was kind enough to oblige.]

Several years ago I was lamenting the fact that few science fiction writers seemed to be writing stories about climate change with Karl Schroeder, one of my favorite writers. He was also a bit gobsmacked. We were, after all, science fiction writers. Here was this vast area. We’d each admitted to holding off writing stories playing with any ideas there because we expected some of the field’s greats to be rushing in on it… any day. And after a year or two passed by, we decided to co-write a short story called Mitigation that explored the polar north after the ice had melted.

The idea wouldn’t let me go, though, even after finishing a story. I wrote a few more stories set in the near future, and enjoyed the debates and reactions they created. So somewhere in and around early 2008 I began sketching out the ideas for a novel called Arctic Rising.

I also picked up another friend who was doing just what Karl and I were hoping to see more of. Paolo Bacigalupi blew my mind every time I met him with more fascinating stuff that was going on. While Karl was a bit more of a techno-optimist than I am and Paolo a bit more worried about the negatives of what was around the corner, I began to think about my novel threading the difference between the two.

Basically because I find climate change fascinatingly complex. You get more access to oil after the ice goes away. Temperature rises, but as a result of melted ice caps, dumps more snow in areas. It looks like there’ll be more arable land in Canada and Siberia. These things will rearrange global power, patterns, focuses, and create land and resource rushes and booms.

And conflict. Which is of course something a writer enjoys. Conflict powers plot. So all that stuff makes for interesting stories. As I pulled all the pieces of research together from the US Navy, climate change reports, and basic newspaper and science articles that I’d been clipping for three or more years, the broad elements of Arctic Rising locked into place pretty easily.

School, like most of everyday life, is at times boring and occasionally a waste of time. We can place blame for that squarely upon the education system and teachers, or share it with parents if we’d like to keep diplomacy in the PTA. But although it’s true that the adults who shape and deliver education as we know it are largely responsible for what we learn and how well we learn it while we are children, we have nobody but ourselves to blame for allowing ignorance to persist after we grow up.

No matter how dreadful your education experience was as a child, if you reached adulthood literate enough to use the internet, then you should find developing a passing acquaintance with basic science concepts both convenient and entertaining. The idea that learning should be fun and easy is so compelling that YouTube is positively swarming with video bloggers enthusiastically sharing knowledge.

Because I am a science enthusiast and a lifetime devotee of independent study, I’ve compiled a video playlist of some of my recent favorites in that genre. To eliminate some common misconceptions, the playlist opens with the definition of science. From there, it builds from some interesting basics about water and carbon, covers some of the science frequently botched by Hollywood and in other fiction, and demonstrates that girls plus math equals win. Then follows a musical interlude, but it’s all science, so it’s all good. The last few are a sampler of videos posted by universities and science publishers for viewers who prefer productions with bigger budgets.

Now all you have to do is watch and learn.

Last spring, I put out a call on my public journal for topic suggestions. A friend of mine and traumatic brain injury [Wikipedia] (TBI) survivor suggested I explore what TBI [Mayo Clinic] has taught us.

Like many of the topics I’ve written about here, I had much to learn before I could begin. Once I researched TBI [Neurologic Rehabilitation Institute at Brookhaven Hospital], I had difficulty breaking the vast topic [Open Directory] back down into a streamlined piece. I have my former editor, Kay Holt, to thank for some of the links I will be including and also for the flow of the piece. As usual, the links will take you to articles that explore the main and related topics more thoroughly. Please have a look beneath the surface.

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Science in My Fiction is looking for writers, people interested in sharing neat science topics with the science fiction community. The ideal topic is of interest to both readers and writers in our genre, and presented at a not-too-technical level. While many of our writers have formal scientific training, that is not at all necessary.

We are not interested in reviews or non-science topics, nor are we currently soliciting fiction.

To apply, please email sarah.goslee at gmail dot com with a brief description of your qualifications and why you’re interested in SiMF, and either a link to relevant online articles you’ve written or a sample of your work that would be appropriate for SiMF.

After hitting the snooze button a few times, the sun has finally woken from its slumber, yawning and stretching its way into the biggest space storm in more than six years.  (The graphic below shows a similar solar eruption from 2001, taken with the SOHO spacecraft, which blocks out the sun’s light so that only the corona can be seen.) Such storms have potential for destruction, such as power outages or damage to communications satellites worth $200 million a pop. If the perfect storm were to hit our unprepared electrical system, some argue we risk entering another dark ages unless we become better prepared.  This storm was relatively mild, limiting its power to some colorful aurorae, but it is the first of many, stronger storms to come over the next few years.

A 2001 coronal mass ejection imaged by the SOHO spacecraft

The sun goes through cycles of activity, typically peaking every 11 years, but during this past cycle, though, the “solar minimum” was 15 months longer than usual.  Space meteorologists are still arguing over the cause, though one plausible theory is gaining ground.  The sun is due to peak in activity again in May 2013, but whether the prolonged quiet will make this peak more or less active remains to be seen.  Bronson Messer, computational astrophysicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, keeps a healthy respect for what the sun can do.  ”The sun is a gravitationally confined fusion reactor that holds 99.8 percent of mass in the solar system,” Messer told the Tennessee Journalist. “That is a formidable object that should be respected accordingly.”

Still, in the grand scheme of things, pretty night lights and a lost satellite or two are small (ok, very expensive) collateral compared to the enormous power unleashed in such coronal mass ejections, equivalent to the energy released from 200 million nuclear warheads.  And our sun is a wimp compared to its smaller cousins, K and M stars.  The smaller the star, the larger the convective zone – dwarf stars are entirely made of gas rising and sinking like bubbling water on the stove.  The boiling motion of the gas creates a strong, unpredictable magnetic field several thousand times that of our sun.

The smallest dwarf stars, M stars, are less than half the size of the sun.  These shrimps are the most common stars in our galaxy, and they sizzle with magnetic energy.  At times, gigantic starspots smother the stars’ surface, dimming the light by up to 40%.  The same star might also emit flares that double its brightness across the spectrum (including deadly X-rays) within minutes.  These characteristics, along with the stars’ small size and faint light, would make life around a dwarf star difficult, and certainly different (like plants with long, sturdy, black leaves).  But maybe not impossible.

A solar prominence as seen by the Solar Dynamic Observatory

 

 

Part I (Part II is here)

Everybody loves dragons. And while wingless ones built along the lines of Komodo dragons or alligators can be a viable part of your fantasy ecosystem, let’s admit it. We want them up in the air and breathing fire or electricity or something fun.

A quick survey of existing flying creatures: the flying fox can get as large as 2.5 to 3 pounds and a wingspan of nearly four feet. The harpy eagle‘s wingspan can be 6 to 6.5 feet and they top out at 20 pounds or so.

Mind you, I would not want to meet a 20-pound dragon with a 6.5-foot wingspan, or be on the wrong side of its talons. And a hero would look really bad-ass when his pet swooped down to land on his (steel-reinforced) falconing glove.

In green, the Quetzalcoatlus northropi, with a human for comparison. Modified from a diagram featured in Witton and Naish (2008).

Let’s aim higher.

Quetzalcoatlus is the largest flying dinosaur discovered so far. Estimates vary, but it seems safe to assume a wingspan of 30 to 35 feet (9-10.5 m). Weight estimates have varied from as light as 150 to over a thousand pounds (68-453+ kg) (in a 2010 estimate generated mathematically). The first question is, of course, can this creature get into the air? Ostriches are the only current birds of similar weight — and they top out at 300 pounds.

Will it fly?

The issue was addressed by Witton and Habib in a 2010 paper on giant pterosaur flight dynamics. Their analysis of existing fossils and reconstructions of musculature led to some interesting possibilities. For their analysis, they settled on a Quetzalcoatlus of 32-36 foot (10-11 m) wingspan and 400-550 pound (180-250 kg) weight. Witton and Habib assert that these giant pterosaurs had sufficient bone strength and muscle for flying — with some mild caveats.

• Assisted launching. The pterosaurs may have launched themselves with a strong jump followed by vigorous flapping. You can find a wide variety of birds using this strategy, especially larger ones like eagles. Others have suggested that pterosaurs may have used the running-start approach to launch or jumped off cliffs to get that initial burst of speed. Witton and Habib lean toward the jumping method, though.

• Soaring. Rather than flapping constantly, pterosaurs may have done most of their flying by finding thermals and winds to soar on. Albatrosses and vultures do this a lot — it saves a great deal of energy, and when you’re big you need to save energy.

• Moving on land. Pterosaurs were not built for it. But the authors theorize that they may have been able to get about by hopping/jumping (saltation, as sparrows do) and possibly bipedal walking (many birds do this — ducks, robins, hawks…).

What does it eat?

Witton and Naish wrote a 2008 paper on morphology, in which they addressed some of the questions of the morphology and ecology of giant pterosaurs, including Quetzalcoatlus. It’s good reference material, but chances are you aren’t building a dragon with a stork-like beak and a neck that’s long like a stork but less flexible — like a lizard. They lay out some reasonable options for such creatures, but a traditional dragon with a shorter muzzle, teeth, and greater neck flexibility will have more predatory options.

Bearing in mind the three rules of predators as formulated by me (and only me): 1. Don’t get hurt. 2. Don’t work too hard. 3. If it gets you food, do it. Also bear in mind that while an earth-bound predator can gorge on a kill and then slink away to digest, a flying predator can’t eat so much at once that he can’t fly away if threatened. Many small meals throughout the day are probably the best strategy.

• Fishing. This is a perfectly good way to acquire a relatively large amount of calories with a reasonable amount of work. Given the general structure of a Quetzalcoatlus-based dragon, I would think that divebomb-style fishing (as done by ospreys and eagles) could work.

• Carrion. It’s not glamorous, but it fulfills rules 2 and 3.

• Traditional airborne hunting. This could be hunting birds, other dragons, or earth-bound prey, as falcons and hawks do. But bear in mind the stipulation about over-eating and the fact that it’s easier for a rabbit to hide in a forest than for a fish to hide in a lake. Hunting animals that congregate in large groups in meadows (or other open terrain) will make hunting easier… but also remember that we’re talking about a 30-foot wingspan dragon blotting out the sun. It’s difficult to miss that flying overhead, one would think. Or can you find a work-around for that?

Will it breathe fire?

Scientifically, the problem with breathing fire has always been the question why does it need to? Anne McCaffrey came up with one of the best answers (we bred them to do it) but in strict ecological terms, teeth and talons are quite sufficient for all your hunting needs. And if a feature isn’t useful to a creature’s survival, it isn’t done. Right?

Well, except for things that the opposite sex finds attractive. Such as peacock tails, silly dances, and the ability to compose sonnets.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: imagine fire-breathing (or lightning bolts, what-have-you) as a mating display. We will get back to this in Part 2.

In December 2010, NASA announced a momentous discovery: bacteria that could use arsenic instead of phosphorus in its genetic material, a direct substitution in the DNA. This would be a huge deal if true, rewriting much of what we know about basic biology. People were hoping for alien life forms, but this would be nearly as important, if much less glitzy.

We already knew that bacteria could use arsenic in their metabolism; the ability to use it in their DNA would mean that they didn’t need phosphorus at all. The most abundant elements in living organisms are: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. All are believed to be essential for life. Substituting arsenic for phosphorus would alter that basic principle.

Scientists were immediately skeptical of the claims of Dr. Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues. Many insightful critiques were published online, but the authors of the original paper stated that they would only answer peer-reviewed rebuttals. Our own Dr. Athena Andreatis discussed the arsenic findings on her blog, and for Science in My Fiction.

Such a tremendous claim requires immaculate science and immaculate reporting, and neither were apparent.

In June 2011, the original paper finally saw print in Science (it had been available online since December). The reason for the delay: eight additional peer-reviewed technical comments on the original paper, and a response to those comments by the original authors.

I read all of them carefully with the intent of writing a summary to accompany my earlier essays about the arsenic bacteria, but never did. The short version of what I would have said: The eight comments pointed out several errors in methods and analysis. Some of the most major problems were described by several of the comments. I’m not the right kind of biologist to appreciate the nuances of molecular technique, but these descriptions of failings in the research were convincing.

Dr. Wolfe-Simon’s response boiled down to, “We did so do it right.” There wasn’t a substantive response to any of the problems raised.

The story isn’t over, but perhaps close. Dr. Rosie Redfield, one of the most outspoken critics of the original study and author of one of the Science comments, has tried to replicate the arsenic study with stricter methods and failed. Dr. Redfield and her colleagues found no arsenic in any of the bacterial DNA.

The original study appears to be a case of how not to do science. Based on interviews, Dr. Wolfe-Simon and her collaborators set out to demonstrate that this particular bacterium could substitute arsenic for phosphorus, and did not consider alternative scenarios or design methods that might clearly disprove their hypothesis. Their results were rushed into public without adequate peer review, but with much fanfare from NASA.

But since then, science has proceeded exactly as it should. Other scientists have raised issues in clear, technical fashion, and have tried to replicate these controversial results with more appropriate methods.

Although the key bits are or will be peer reviewed, much of the discussion has occurred openly on the internet, at least among the critics. None of the authors on the original paper have spoken up publicly, to the best of my knowledge, and have only responded to the comments that appeared in Science.

This has been a fascinating story to follow, but for the way the research was presented and followed up on than for the findings themselves. I try to end these articles with some consideration of story ideas. Here, I think the story comes from the people involved, rather than the science itself. (As, arguably, all the best science fiction does.) The discovery could have been anything, but the misinterpretation, critique and defense are what make it so interesting.

Edit (1 Feb. 2012): Dr. Redfield has now posted her mansucript on Arxiv for public comment. I have not read it yet, but wanted to let you know.

I find that there are few things that are more comforting than a tasty home-cooked meal. But cooking can take a fair amount of my time and energy, and requires that all the necessary ingredients on hand. Sometimes when I’m busy or tired or just feeling lazy, I wish there was a box of “people chow” in my cupboard that would make well-balanced and tasty meal, or perhaps a pill that could substitute for a satisfying dinner.

It’s not surprising that in the late 19th and early 20th century, when food preparation was much more labor intensive and time consuming than it is today, that writers who imagined scientifically advanced utopian societies of the future frequently described “instant” food that required no cooking.

The idea was common enough for writer Anna Bowman Dodd to satirize it in her 1887 novella The Republic of the Future, or, Socialism a reality:

The food is sent to us by electricity through the culinary conduits. Every thing is blown to us in a few minutes’ time, if it be necessary, if the food is to be eaten hot. If the food be cereals or condensed meats, it is sent by pneumatic express, done up in bottles or in pellets. All such food is carried about in one’s pocket. We take our food as we drink water, wherever we may happen to be, when it’s handy and when we need it.

Thus women were freed from the drudgery of the kitchen. Or as Dodd put it:

The perfecting of the woman movement was retarded for hundreds of years, as you know, doubtless, by the slavish desire of women to please their husbands by dressing and cooking to suit them. When the last pie was was made into the first pellet, woman’s true freedom began.

Dodd made it sound as if this would be a bad thing. But many thought that scientifically developed food substitutes would a positive development. At least in the first half of the 20th century, there were regular articles in the popular press about the “dream” of creating a meal in pill form.

And, of course, the pulp science fiction writers incorporated the idea into their stories.

By the way, have you folks eaten?”
“Not in a week,” said Karl.
“Von Sternberger’s food tablets,” informed the girl.
Carruthers nodded. His deep-set eyes regarded them appraisingly. “Any ill effects?”
“None whatever,” spoke Danzig. “Neither of us have the slightest craving for food.”
~ “Prisoners on the Electron” by Robert H. Leitfred (1930)

Sounds convenient, right? But here we are in the first part of the 21st century and most of us eat food that isn’t too far different from what people were eating a century ago.

So why don’t we have the equivalent of “Von Sternberger’s food tablets”? It turns out there are a number of reasons.

For one, we humans normally eat a wide variety of foods – a much wider variety than most other primates. A number of studies have shown that the diversity of foods we eat reflects the quality of our diet. Of course, that association is likely due at least in part to the link between poverty and a less diverse diet. Perhaps the lack of variety wouldn’t be a problem if scientists developed a food that met all human dietary requirements. It turns out not to be that simple.

We don’t actually yet know all the components that would make up an ideal human diet. For example, there are many compounds produced by plants – phytochemicals – that are thought to have anti-oxidant and other physiological properties. We are still learning what these compounds are and how they affect the human body, despite the bold claims of the dietary supplement sellers.

Another problem is humans have trouble eating the same food for every meal. Just imagine: there are 9 calories in one gram of fat, the most calorie-dense nutrient. That means you would need to eat a half pound of pure fat to get the 2000 calories burned daily by the average adult woman.  That’s a bare minimum, since balanced diets need to include less calorie-dense  components like proteins, carbohydrates and fiber.  While it’s not at all difficult to eat a pound (or more) of a tasty variety of foods per day, it’s harder to imagine happily swallowing a half pound of pills or eating a couple of pounds of not-particularly-tasty food pellets on a daily basis.

It’s not like people haven’t tried. A Canadian fellow named Adam Scott tried eating “monkey chow” for a week. At least in theory that diet should serve the nutritional requirements of most primates, including humans. The result? Scott lost weight, was tired and had serious cravings. While a diet of nutritious pellets might work as an alternative to Weight Watchers, it wouldn’t a very good replacement for human food. More seriously, even people who are malnourished have trouble eating enough food when the prescribed therapeutic diet is too monotonous.

And even if there is variety in our diet, food needs to taste good for humans to be healthy in both mind and body. For example, NASA has found that the “psychological well being” of astronauts depends at least in part on providing food that is tasty and has a “pleasant mouthfeel” . Because of that, NASA has moved away from the unappetizing food pastes and powders used to sustain astronauts on the Mercury missions, and worked on developing foods that the astronauts actually enjoy eating.

Naturally, science fiction has reflected many of those limitations.  In more recent SF stories, it’s more likely for mass-produced rations to be provided starving masses on resource-depleted and overpopulated Earth than to be eaten by the scientific or social elites.

All the TV shows have morale-builder commercials telling us how important our work is, how the whole world depends on us for food. It’s all true. They don’t have to keep reminding us. If we didn’t do what we do there would be hunger in Texas and kwashiorkor among the babies in Oregon. We all know that. We contribute five trillion calories a day to the world’s diet, half the protein ration for about a fifth of the global population. It all comes out of the yeasts and bacteria we grow off the Wyoming shale oil, along with parts of Utah and Colorado. The world needs that food.
~ Gateway by Frederik Pohl (1977)

Living on such food produced for basic sustenance, rather than for optimal health or pleasure, is a pretty bleak vision of the future.

Of course not all science fictional food is so unappetizing. In the resource-rich Star Trek universe, almost everyone can dine well on delicious synthetic food produced by replicators if they don’t want to cook for themselves.

Having access to a variety of food that tastes good, is nutritious and is available at the push of a button – that’s the future I’m hoping for.

Further reading:

• Paleo-Future’s “Meal in a pill” archives.

• Future Food section of David Szondy’s Tales of Future Past.

• NASA’s Space Food Fact Sheets and their Space Food and Nutrition site for students and educators.

• Cooper et al. “Developing the NASA Food System for Long-Duration Missions” J. Food Sci. 76(2):R40-R48 (2011) doi: 10.1111/j.1750-3841.2010.01982.x

Photo by epSos.de on Flickr

So, practically everyone knows thanks to Albert Einstein that on a starship traveling close to the speed of light time will pass more slowly than in the rest of the universe, though it does seem that not everyone understands how that works.  For example, I recall reading a passage in The Andalite Chronicles where the narrator explained that they were traveling to earth at a sub-light speed that would take them about three days because if they went at maximum burn they might make it in a few hours but that would be years on earth.  That’s just wrong, relativity slows down time onboard the ship, it doesn’t speed up time outside or anything.
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