Space News - is Planet X a black hole? And those Russian rocket explosions... and more...

Planetary Radio gives you an hour-long podcast on solar system news! Especially glimpses of the weird and wonderful projects we’re funding at NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC). Plus a tribute to Alexei Leonov. Matt Kaplan is a terrific and engaging host…. and the projects truly are worth your tax dollars! (Well, most of them ;-)

Separately, at the recent Starship Conference in San Diego, Matt Kaplan, the Voice of the Planetary Society, interviewed me for Planetary Radio.  

Need more Brin-blather about what might be going on out there? Let’s move out from the mere solar system. “Should we be revealing ourselves to the cosmos? What if the first aliens to discover us do so thanks to our own transmissions, and, more disturbingly, what if those aliens are less than benevolent?” On StarTalk All-Stars, astrobiologist and host David Grinspoon also tackles METI, or “Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” With co-host Chuck Nice, Dr. FunkySpoon invited David Brin, the Hugo award-winning science fiction author, scientist and NASA consultant who was on the committee that drew up the protocols for what to do if we do make contact with aliens. 

You’ll learn why the “barn door excuse” – that we’ve already sent out radio and television transmissions that may have sealed our fate – is scientifically incorrect, but why new plans to send planetary radar focused beams into space would pump up the volume exponentially. We discuss whether the general public has the right to determine whether we broadcast our presence to the universe, or whether a “scientific elite” gets to decide humanity’s fate. 

One proposed theory explaining the "Fermi Paradox" is that civilizations reach a "competence limit," especially if they do what elites always do in feudal-oligarchic-despotic societies -- crush the corrective light of criticism.  Want a daunting example? Here's an interesting dissection of the kinds of "nuclear rocket that Russians may have been testing in Archangelsk, before that recent, horrific explosion. And yes, such desperation plus incompetence combinations are really scary.

Note also it was one of three disasters just that month! Watch this amazing footage from the munitions dump going off in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. And then ponder how that gangster mafia is on the verge of ruling the world.

== Planet "X"?  Or a hole? ==

A new paper suggests the gravitational pull that we’ve long associated with a missing Planet X could come from a primordial black hole – a type of small singularity that scientists have theorised formed during the Big Bang. "We advocate that rather than just looking for it in visible light, maybe look for it in gamma rays. Or cosmic rays."  Or else maybe the distortion of background stars? Or Hawking Radiation? 

On average, the mysterious body is calculated to orbit the Sun 20 times farther than Neptune, every 10,000 to 20,000 years, versus Pluto's 248 years. Far-out!

Another possibility…. A wormhole gateway? For alien lurkers? Or waiting for us, as in the Expanse

More mundane (slightly.) Scientists have discovered what could be the largest neutron star on record.  Starting at  around 1.4 solar masses, more recent measurements have revealed increasingly huge examples.  This one is estimated at 2.14x solar mass and 20 km across. Once a star reaches 2.17 times the mass of the sun, that star is doomed to collapse into a black hole. This suggests that J0740+6620 is "really pushing that" limit, providing an amazing laboratory for gravity radiation and stellar evolution, plus the possibility of something dramatic.

  

The second verified interstellar visitor object is more active than ‘Oumuamua. It’s cometary activity will be visible for months, allowing analysis of many elemental/chemical traits. Astronomers will attempt to compare C/2019 Q4's shape to the (arguably) cigar-like structure (or even odder) of 'Oumuamua, which looked different from anything we've yet seen in our solar system. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, expected to come online next year, should be able to spot large numbers of interstellar objects as they fly through our solar system.

Another spectacular new ‘eye’ (among many) is , the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Mayall Telescope in Arizona, is a huge leap in our ability to measure galaxy distances – enabling a new era of mapping the structures in the Universe. See the amazing new map of the filamentary nature of our universe.

Dust from a huge asteroid collision out there might have obscured enough sunlight to trigger the Kirschvink or Iceball epochs on Earth, about 466 million years ago.

== A few curiosities ==

The mass of the proposed superheavy gravitino lies in the region of the Planck mass—that is, around a hundred millionth of a kilogram. That’s immense. In comparison, protons and neutrons—the building blocks of the atomic nucleus—are around ten quintillion (ten million trillion) times lighter. Their large mass means that these particles could only occur in very dilute form in the universe – “one actually wouldn't need very many of them to explain the dark matter content in the universe and in our galaxy—one particle per 10,000 cubic kilometres would be sufficient.”  This has another effect. It means these particles needn’t be invisible to EM interactions… they could interact with light and matter relatively normally and still not have been detected till now.

If so, interplanetary space contains them sparsely but everywhere. Might 4.6 billion years of collisions with Earth left ‘tracks’ in old rocks? (Much as my gravity laser beans do, in Earth?) Might these present obstacles to fast ships, and hence help to explain the Fermi Paradox?

And finally... Though almost desperately fluffy, the “In Search of” shows can be amusing and occasionally interesting. Here’s one about aliens where I go along… 

Heh!  NIAC has even funded some Mach Effect studies.  I think just to keep a reputation for openmindedness that keeps the better minds hanging around. 

Questions I am frequently asked about… Writing and Science Fiction

I’ve been working with Cheryl and Beverly to thoroughly revise my web site. If you haven’t browsed davidbrin.com in a while, have a look! It’s now fleshed out and filled with even more fabulousness! 

As part of this, we’ve thrown together a FAQ of sorts -- a compilation of questions that I’m asked most often by interviewers. We’ll post them here by category, starting with… 

== ON WRITING == 

-- Being an author wasn’t your first career choice; you earned a Ph.D. in astrophysics.  How did your multi-track career evolve? 

I came from a family of writers and always figured that storytelling would be my artistic side-line… most scientists have one. I knew science would be harder that storytelling and I respected it more, drawn to the Enlightenment’s greatest project. After all, every culture has had storytellers, but only one ever invested heavily in training a myriad brave investigators to find out what’s actually true, despite our preconceptions.

And indeed, I managed to contribute a few new bits of knowledge…. while maintaining passion for my art. (And I incorporate my science into my art, as in Heart of the Comet.)

Ah, but sometimes life takes a turn. Your pastime can take over and become the central profession. I was a pretty good scientist and I still keep my hand in the game. But civilization seems more eager for my art, for tales that shed a different kind of light on the transformations we’re all going through. And who am I to argue with civilization? 

-- What is special about writing? What drew you from seeking scientific facts to literary truths?

Literature was the first truly verifiable, repeatable and effective form of magic. Picture how it must have impressed ancient people to look at marks – on papyrus or clay – and know they conveyed the words of scribes and kings long dead. Knowledge, wisdom and art could finally accumulate. Death was robbed some of its sting. 

Writing still is magical. To create strings of black squiggles that millions of others skillfully de-code with just their eyes – into emotions and thoughts, or the struggles of believable characters – or spectacle beyond Hollywood’s wildest dreams. 

Still, despite all of that, science and the honesty that it engenders have been our true accomplishments. I believe in a literature that explores this revolution, that presents alternatives and hard choices and that might help us to be wise about the onrushing process of change. One that helps to remind science and progress that it needs a heart. I reject the dichotomy, the notion that these things oppose each other. 

When a chance came along to combine the two? Who wouldn’t grab the opportunity? 

--Was Science Fiction always your chosen genre? 

Though SF offers me the freedom I need to explore a world undergoing drama and change, I often tell writing students that their first work of fiction should be a murder mystery. 

Oh, it can be an sci fi mystery, like my first novel, Sundiver. Or you might give it romance or set it in the wild west, or ancient Rome. What matters is that it should follow the plot patterns and revelatory structure of a mystery yarn. 

Why? Because only mysteries demand total story-telling discipline. No distractions or arty styling or array of gimmicks can mask or make up for bad plotting. This all becomes apparent when the reader finds out who-dunnit in a mystery. In the end, the reader knows whether or not you cheated.  And once you’ve had that lesson, you will never neglect it again. 

--Do you develop the world of a novel fully in your mind before beginning to write? 

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring. 

Oh, I sometimes plot an outline in advance.  That works well.  Still, not too much detail! I like to be surprised. 

--Do you have any advice for up and coming writers? 

Write. Love writing. Love stories. Love the sound of language, the vividness of description and ironies of the heart. The marvelous web of misunderstanding that is conversation. The astonishing, non-linear gyrations of cause and effect and surprise. 

Ray Bradbury said that – deep in the heart of the writer’s relationship with story and reader, there has to be love! Love the words. Love the tension that propels your plot and characters like a steam boiler. Love a civilization that gives you plenty to read and the food and shelter and safety to do it in comfort. Love to poke hard at that civilization’s flaws. Love the fact that you have enough conceit to think others might like to read your drivel! 

Only then, amid that love... be competitive! Aim to do it better than anybody else.  Have patience to refine your craft… but never stop burning. Burn like a flame. An inferno. 

Art is like any other exercise in skill: a combination of talent, hard work and learning from criticism. And luck. Any three of those things can make up for a deficit in the fourth one. But those three had better be really strong. 

The core point? CITOKATE: Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote To Error! 

Seek and relish criticism, because that is how to get even better. If you put your work out there and look upon criticism as your friend -- (not easy, but worthwhile) -- you will improve. And having that attitude will gain you real advantages, leveraging your talent, however great or small it may be. 

Good luck. There are lots of ideas out there waiting to be mined. It's not an endangered resource. 

That's only a very small summary of a long list. There's lots more. After typing countless answers to requests for advice from would-be writers, I finally put it all together in a handy place. It's available on my website: A Long, Lonely Road: Advice to New Writers, as well as a YouTube presentation: How do you succeed at writing fiction?

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Continue to 

Part II: Questions I'm Frequently Asked: About Science Fiction and Fantasy

Part III: Questions about Brin books, Uplift and The Postman

Part IV: Questions about...Prediction and the Future

Part V: Questions about...Transparency, Privacy and the Information Age

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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