3.18.21 - Thought Experiment #2

3/18/21

Watched a YouTube video in VR about exoplanets. Only regret is I did not find it sooner. Trappiste-1e, standing on the surface, looking at rocky stalactites that curve up out of the planet’s surface like teeth. Above, an emerald borealis, reaches up to the true depths of space. A red star, larger and closer than the moon, filled the valley with a ruby-hint of light. Other bright, colorful orbs passed around, like marbles swirling down a slow cosmic drain.

Forty light years away.

But, when describing how exoplanets are theoretically formed, one of them said something odd. “We aren’t really sure what determines whether or not two large asteroids, stick together or not when they collide.”

There was a graphic of a star casting a golden hue over a wide, glistening asteroid belt. Some larger rocks cast shadows on others, like skaters dancing across a spinning disc of ice. I thought about it. What if it is not random, but just the odds of certain conditions?

Two asteroids must be on a certain path, to collide right before they pass under the shadow of something else, like a more inner planet. Depending on the difference in temperature under the shadow, the asteroids might warm up under starlight, enough for their core materials to get ‘sticky,’ and then they collide under the shadow once they start to refreeze. Just the right time, and gentle enough difference in speed, they fuse together. Happens enough times you get ten kilometers wide rock, which I read was the minimum size required to create a gravity well. They pull in more rocks; over time it snowballs. Boom, protoplanet.

But I confess, my knowledge is limited. I just like looking at the stars. I will have to research further. God, why does that sound like fun?

If we could chart the debris path of some asteroids passing in the shadow of something, I wonder if it could be proven? Or at least predicted.

The plan, or part of it, this summer, is to spend the days reading, writing, and working out. Get back to my core. Reading list below looks good.

The VR video is below.

Take a Virtual Reality tour of six REAL exoplanets (4K, 360° VR experience) | We The Curious

3.15.21 - Thought Experiment #1

I’ve been thinking about outer space my whole life. This worked for Einstein, so I figured I’d at least write it down.

To create interstellar warp drive, the kind used in Star Trek and rationalized by Alcubierre, you have got to create a pulling force. Like the cartoon about dangling a treat on a stick, tying it to the dog’s collar, and watching the cute pup run as far as its legs can carry, but it feels like falling down a black hole.  

Think about it, a black hole bends space and time, the same as bed flat at every edge stretches and bows under the weight of a bowling ball. Near-infinite mass at the center of the hole has a pull so strong that light cannot escape, and time slows down.  

Time slows down because the fabric of space-time stretches around an object that has so much mass, its own field powerful enough to slow down pure energy. Gravity creates waves, invisible ripples that can be felt billions of light-years away, moments where our reality elongates momentarily, distorting like a glance in a funhouse mirror.   

What happens if we try the opposite?  

So, what else can create a pull, like mass? Energy can. Electromagnetic fields do, on a much smaller scale that still powers technology like laptops. 

Electrons are responsible for this. Impossibly (for us to fathom) negative charges that race between objects, pushed on by the electron behind (like charges repel), and pushing the electron in front.  

Electrons also have a pull, infinitesimally small, on other particles, the cores responsible for mass, protons, and neutrons. Move enough electrons, and those Higgs-Boson particles that give us mass, trapped in the nucleus of atoms, start following. There is strength in numbers, especially exponents.  

We can collect electrons easily enough, at the cost of pulling them from atoms of other things. There is only so many of them in the universe. Conservation of Mass and Energy are intertwined Laws, after all.  

If you imagine the Higgs field as an invisible river, a ‘fabric’ of space-time that surrounds us and flows through us so much like pebbles in a cold current. The friction between water and rock is felt by both. The water’s path changes, and fraction of its energy is absorbed by the rock, traded for a few atoms. Erosion, entropy, time, all the same, all decay. The Higgs Field moves like the ocean, with gentle peaks, valleys, undercurrent, and energy.  

So, take that field and stretch it, never mind how, not yet. If you stretch the Higgs Field like taffy, you affect how quickly time passes. Faster at the ends where it’s denser, and time slows down in the stretched-out middle, where the ‘stuff’ is less dense and frailer.  

What about distance? That is affected too. Best guess is the same way, distance get closer at the ends, further in the stretched-out middle. 

How would this appear to us? We would not notice. We are too big, wrapped up in our own small reality to feel the subtle songs of the fabric of the universe. 

But then again, there is the whole exponential power thing. See, with enough energy, you can make big stuff move too.  

Build a ship that can disrupt the flow of the fabric, the same as current around a rock. Make a bubble of energy around the ship, that allows the field to flow past and the ship crosses distances in the mere wink of an eye.  

How do we make that bubble? Alcubierre field, create a specialized electromagnetic field that repels electrons and atoms out of the way the same way a rock dropped in still water pushes it out, or a diver forms an arrow to pierce the water. Make it a bubble, the electrons will move all around it, out of the way, carrying other atoms with them.  

The ship inside the bubble moves forward, towards the open space free of matter, a vacuum in front of it, that pulls it forward. Same as a vacuum cleaner pulls forward, ever so slightly, while cleaning up the mess from a mud-covered dog, panting from a run in the backyard, and happy with itself because it figured out how to break that treat free from the stick. 

3.30.20 - #corona2020 V

Is there anyone sleeping well anymore?
Either the brain is rolling a thousand miles
An hour, in the haunted still of night
Or the walls are too tight and we’re desperate for daylight
I don’t remember the last time I laid my head down
And felt rested the next morning, renewed
We’re sitting on our hands, trying to pass the time
Reflecting on all our mistakes, all the lies

---

It’s been hard to be productive. I’ve gotten the job done, now thankful that I have a steady income when one out of five has filed for unemployment, including J. Trying to do yoga in the sunroom followed by elliptical bands and the recumbent bike lying in the garage, just to move a little during the week. Hoping I can find a bit of drive to really edit GR and work on the Robyn story. Need something to do, to feel useful.

J seems to have gotten L to a place where she’s a little more stable. We’re still a long way from out of the woods yet, but every day is a won day. Even when the world outside is falling into a recession unlike anything ever seen in modern history, due to a viral pandemic and a political narrative out of a Michael Chrichton novel. D is coughing less, thankfully we don’t think anyone has COVID but since there’s still not a real chance of us getting tested in our current condition, we’re just riding out the storm.

Thankful for little moments, like D winning at Cards Against Humanity. Chasing Janeway in the backyard. Playing Diablo with J at three in the morning, dancing in the living room during dinner.

3.15.20 - #corona2020

Maybe we’re all going a little mad at the idea
Plucked straight out an eighties sci-fi novel
Empty shelved truths are stranger fictions
When a virus can spread at the worst of times
Bringing people to whimpers of shared terror
When nightmares awaken our lesser demons

---

Funny, today was my most productive day writing, in a while. Meanwhile, outside our little quarantine zone, seems like the hubcaps are coming off, if not the wheels. The shelves were emptied at the bigger stores. Toilet paper has become a meme in our ironic pessimistic chuckle towards self-destruction. None of us can go to work tomorrow, so we’re all stuck here another week. Two with doctors notes for self-quarantine (even though neither got tested because there were no kits), and two because their schools closed for a week. We’re trying to keep each other sane, co-existing and being bored. For me, it’s easy. For the girls, who are dealing with the traumas of their past head-on while the world seems to be imploding outside, it’s been rough.

I don’t know what I can say sometimes that’ll make them feel better, what’ll help. I’ve learned that if I just sit there and say I’ll listen, sometimes that helps. Maybe it just helps us all, to not be miserable alone, in the dark. Just to know that someone else is sitting there, next to you.

Now I’m gonna go set next to my spouse and let her cry on my shoulder. Love those around you, y’all.

2.15.20 - Query Letter

Rising from an impoverished Earth, “Crash” Downs achieved a dream: admission into the famous interstellar Ranger program. Billions will watch him and a group of underdog soldiers endure training and competition against genetically perfect opponents on the Challenge, a televised spectacle that makes celebrities out of soldiers. Yet, Crash’s fight is only a deadly distraction in a galactic game of cat and mouse between the oppressive United Corporate Federation and the star systems they subjugate. 

Behind the scenes, a savant hacker named Glitch stumbles across a devious plot by megacorporate titans to inconceivably destroy Earth completely. In a society drowning in hopelessness and fear, somehow he must convince a tenacious syndicate spy hunting him, the galaxy’s first telepath, and a gene-enhanced pilot whose dreams tell the future, to enter a fight against overwhelming odds, setting the table for the war to end all wars. The fate of humanity hangs in the balance. No matter who wins, the ultimate threat to life in the Milky Way is out in cold, unexplored space, and the waves of our gravity bomb will reach out to draw them in.

Beta Reader feedback has been overwhelmingly positive to this galaxy-crossing story told from the perspective of three imperfect souls in just under 112,000 words, Gravity’s Reach is the first of a planned science fiction saga drawing inspiration from titles like Starship Troopers, Mass Effect, and Ender’s Game.