The Science of Battlestar Galactica

by Di Justo, Patrick

  In that quote you can practically see the rough beast of a resurrected Galactica slouching toward Ron Moore’s forebrain to be born.

  Keep in mind that Galactica is just barely science fiction, at least as too many teenagers and television executives define the term. There are no alien civilizations, no dwarfs, no elves, no wizards, no sentient trees, no magic rings, no magic wands, no magic spells, no magic cloaks, no cloaking devices, no lasers, no phasers, no photon torpedoes, no time travel. Instead, there is blood and sweat and spit and heart-ache and anger, guns that shoot lead instead of light, and the pervasive fear each character carries that their slightest mistake could literally mean the end of their species.

  Galactica is science fiction in the greatest sense of the term, in that Galactica is a show about ideas. It is based, in part, around the ultimate science fiction question: What does it mean to be human? By being science fiction, Galactica allows its producers and writers to discuss issues that would rarely be allowed on American commercial television. What is each person’s relation to God? What is the individual’s responsibility to the government, and vice versa? When, if ever, is it acceptable to torture? When, if ever, is it acceptable to curtail basic human rights? Yet while it is true that BSG is not a technophile’s dream, the science that does exist in the show serves to illuminate the use of science and technology in our own lives. The debate over whether to use Cylon blood to cure human cancer is essentially an argument about the pros and cons of stem cell therapy; the development of “The Farm” by the Cylons lays out the pro and con arguments for abortion, choice, and parental responsibility. Like all good science fiction, Battlestar Galactica takes us millions of miles away from Earth for the sole purpose of letting us turn around to see ourselves from a different perspective.

  The Science of Battlestar Galactica is affected by what might be called Moore’s Law. Taken from his thoughts as presented in his Cinescape interview, and reiterated in his blog entry of February 1, 2006, the law can be stated thusly: “We always tried to make drama work with science on BSG, but when push comes to shove, drama wins.”

  Moore popularized the word “technobabble”—the meaningless sciencey-sounding words a writer puts into an SF script to “explain” a scientific plot problem and to keep the geeks happy—when he was working on Star Trek: The Next Generation. To keep the technobabble mafia from muscling in on Galactica, Moore simply decided not to explain how anything worked. It allowed him the freedom to invent Cylons who are indistinguishable from humans, at least to the level of standard medical tests, yet who can also control a Colonial computer by mainlining a fiber optic cable. Great for storytelling. Drives us geeks crazy if not explained.

  For that reason, we’ve found it necessary to establish the three laws of The Science of Battlestar Galactica.

  The First Law of The Science of Battlestar Galactica takes care of the lack of scientific explanation, the unresolved plot issues, and the Fleet’s endless supply of whiskey: “If you’re wondering how they eat and breathe, and other science facts, just repeat to yourself, ‘It’s just a show, I should really just relax. ’”1

  The Second Law of The Science of Battlestar Galactica is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Space is mostly empty. That’s why it’s called ‘space.’”

  The Third Law of The Science of Battlestar Galactica is: “All this has happened before and will happen again.” Don’t lose sight of this.

  Through the course of this book, we will assume you’ve seen all eighty-four hours of BSG, so don’t look for warnings: all plotlines will be spoiled, all secrets will be examined. Our own technobabble will be limited to a few terms. “Earth,” in these pages, always refers to the planet on which this book was written. “Dead Earth” always refers to the radioactive planet the Colonial Fleet found at the end of season four. “Earth II” always refers to the preindustrialized planet the Fleet found in the finale. And the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies serves as the dividing line between eras in the BSG universe: we’ll be calling them BF (Before the Fall) and AF (After the Fall). For example, the Cylons rebelled against the Twelve Colonies about 50 BF, the Fleet found Earth about 3AF, and so on.

  You’ve bought the ticket; prepare to enjoy the ride!

  PART ONE

  LIFE HERE BEGAN OUT THERE

  CHAPTER 1

  Are You Alive?

  The original 1978 Battlestar Galactica began with the narrated words “There are those who believe that life began out there.” In the 2003 miniseries, Commander William Adama cites the opening lines of the sacred scrolls of the Colonial civilization, which reiterate the idea. Here on Earth, many religions and more than a few scientists also suggest that life was brought to a lifeless Earth from elsewhere in the universe.

  What is life? How did it begin? What is the story of the origin of life?

  Life has always been a tricky concept to define. Many people and cultures have tried as soon as they were able to ask the question.

  Number Six: Are you alive?

  Military Liaison: Yes.

  Number Six: Prove it.

  —Miniseries, Part I

  Because life seemed to be something magical, something that could not be explained by ordinary means, many of them looked to spiritual or extra- or paranormal ways to explain life. Life, for many cultures, had a certain divine spark to it, a spark that could not be understood by ordinary humans.

  Gradually, as reason came to replace mysticism, life developed a different definition. The mystical aspects of life were lost and scientists viewed life as a continuing process—or rather, several processes: ingestion, excretion, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, and death.

  The idea that “life is what it does” was incomplete; a skilled debater could always find exceptions. What if, for instance, a living creature existed on a much slower (or much faster) time scale than ours? Pick up a rock. Look at its various layers, or embedded crystals. Now ask yourself why you know that this rock is not alive. The rock in your hand might very well be ingesting, excreting, growing, reproducing, reacting, and dying—but on a scale of millions of years. At that rate, you’d never detect any of its activity. The rock would seem to be dead.

  Or take the case of mayflies. They live their entire lives from birth to death in one day, just long enough for us to understand what they’re up to. But would we be able to recognize creatures that lived their entire lives in one hour? One minute? One second? A fraction of a second? To us, their entire existence would appear like a flash of faraway lightning, so brief we wouldn’t be sure it was there at all. To them, we would be like rocks, unmoving and unchangeable, the stable backdrop against which they go about their lives.g

  Since we’re dealing with a science fiction show that takes place in space, we should perhaps use a definition of life developed by people looking for life in outer space. In the early 1990s, a NASA astrobiology panel defined “life” as a self-sustaining chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution. h It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.

  The best scientific explanation available to the Colonials is that life would have begun on Kobol sometime around 3.8 billion years ago, when the planet had finally solidified, and water vapor in the atmosphere precipitated out to form liquid water on the surface. The water acted as a solvent for other chemicals, and the constant intermixing created a bouillabaisse of various chemicals and molecules just waiting to be put into the right order.

  Gaius Baltar and Six hold human/Cylon hybrid Hera, in a vision.

  Caprica Six and Baltar on Caprica, before the attack.

  According to our current understanding, somehow—we still don’t know the details—the raw chemicals of life (usually nothing more elaborate than hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen) came together in various configurations in millions of places in the oceans over millions of years. In all this turmoil, eventually one configuration became able to produce crude copies of itself. This particular molecule, by the virtue of copying itself, eventually came to domi
nate the early environment. By continually mutating and adapting, some copies became more and more efficient at copying themselves, and others became less efficient. The ones that were less efficient at copying themselves were by definition unfit, and they quickly died out. The ones that survived also developed ways to find sources of energy in the immediate vicinity. By acquiring energy from the environment, the process became self-sustaining, and met NASA’s definition for life.

  As Kobol formed from smaller asteroids and comets, the last pieces of comet ice to arrive became the water and gases that made Kobol’s oceans and atmosphere. These comets were essentially small chemistry sets. In addition to water, comets are reliably thought to have seeded the newborn planet with methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), phosphate () radicals, carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and carbon monoxide (CO). With those chemicals you can build a kingdom of life.

  It is very likely that Kobol’s first atmosphere was primarily made of five gases: nitrogen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ammonia vapor, and methane. There was no oxygen in this atmosphere, hence no ozone layer.i With no ozone layer there would be almost no filter for ultraviolet radiation from the sun, so almost all of it would reach the surface. To anyone who is already alive, this would be a bad thing, but on a sterile Kobol before the creation of life, it could be just what was needed.

  The discovery of lightning in the clouds of Venus and Jupiter (whose atmosphere is quite similar to that of early Kobol) means that it is very likely that Kobol’s early atmosphere was also rent by the occasional lightning bolt. Both ultraviolet radiation and lightning are mechanisms that could have put enormous amounts of energy into Kobol’s oceans and atmosphere. Chemical reactions need some sort of energy to get going, and Kobol had that in abundance. When you have millions of years to work with, nearly any type of energy is enough to make some form of organic compound out of those ingredients.

  This isn’t just speculation. In 1953, two scientists at the University of Chicago, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, created complex organic molecules out of simple elements. Miller and Urey built a small planetary ecosystem in their laboratory. They started with a flask filled with liquid water and the appropriate salts and chemicals (CH4, NH3, H2) dissolved in it to represent Earth’s early ocean. They connected that flask to a series of glass tubes and reservoirs that contained the gaseous mixture that represented Earth’s early atmosphere. In the glass reservoir that held the “atmosphere,” they placed two electrodes, positioned just so to create a spark gap. A condenser at the bottom of the “atmosphere” precipitated the water vapor and closed the loop by sending it back into the “ocean.” Miller and Urey gently warmed their ocean to evaporate some of the water into the atmosphere, and then ran a simple electric spark through the resulting gas to simulate the action of lightning.

  They ran the experiment for a week and watched as the water in their ocean turned pink and then brown. After a week they analyzed the ocean fluid and discovered that it was full of complex organic molecules, the most exciting of which were the simple amino acids glycine and alanine, two of the building blocks of protein. Amino acids1 are not life per se, but without amino acids there would be no proteins or enzymes, and without proteins or enzymes there would be no life as we know it. Subsequent similar experiments by Miller and Urey and by other scientists had even more interesting results. By adding ammonium cyanide to the mixture, it is possible to synthesize adenine, a nucleic acid and one of the building blocks of DNA! Think about that—one of the pieces of the control mechanism that makes you the unique being that you are can be made on practically any planet that has a similar atmosphere, similar ocean, similar energy sources.

  Even further experiments along the Miller-Urey line discovered that with a slightly different concentration of starter materials, one could create fatty acids or lipids. Because of the nature of fats, they naturally tend to collect themselves into spherical globules, which is nearly perfect for encapsulating and concentrating various types of material—such as the material that makes up a living cell. Every living cell is essentially a bubble of fat with sweetened protein-water gunk inside it, and every piece of that cell could have come from a few simple chemicals and a spark.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Cylons: Man or Machine?

  According to Daniel Graystone, CEO of Graystone Industries and inventor of the first Colonial Cylon, “Cylon” is a backronym for Cybernetic Lifeform Node.j Cylons come in at least three distinct versions—so distinct we’d do well to give each group a discrete name so that there’s no confusion as to what we mean when we talk about them.

  Humanoid Cylons

  Humanoid Cylons: There were thirteen different models in this class, divided into two groups: the Final Five (who should really be called the First Five) and the Significant Seven. For the rest of this book we’ll be referring to the known twelve humanoid models as just Cylons,k unless we need to specify one or the other.

  Gaius Baltar with Cyclons Tory Foster and Six.

  Final Five Cyclons Ellen and Saul Tigh

  Eight and Six with four of the Final Five: Galen Tyrol, Tory Foster, Saul Tigh, and Sam Anders.

  Cylons are sentient synthetic biological creatures, possessing all the attributes of life except evolution by natural selection. They have been designed to be so biochemically similar to the people of the Twelve Colonies that they can pass pretty stringent standardized medical tests without being detected. They have—or they have been programmed to behave as if they have—all the emotions, intelligence, and weaknesses of the people they were based on (something that pisses off the Cylon known as Brother John Cavil to no end).

  The Final Five Cylons, the ones we know as Tory Foster, Ellen Tigh, Colonel Saul Tigh, Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol, and Ensign Samuel Anders, are the only survivors of the first generation of humanoid Cylons created by the inhabitants of the planet Kobol more than four thousand years before the destruction of the Twelve Colonies. These humanoid Cylons were able to breed, and eventually formed themselves into a thirteenth tribe called, appropriately enough, Cylon. This tribe of Cylons was on moderately good terms with their creators, but at some point in their history they found it advantageous to leave Kobol and seek their own planet, which they called Earth. They were destroyed two thousand years later in an all-out nuclear attack by the sentient Centurion-type robots they themselves had created. The Final Five, forewarned of the upcoming cataclysm by the same “angels” who later appeared to Dr. Gaius Baltar, Caprica Six, Captain Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, and perhaps others,l managed to survive the attack and used a relativistic spacecraft to find their way to the Twelve Colonies, though this revelation comes from a rambling Sam Anders with a bullet in his brain, and could be considered of questionable veracity.

  There, they found a situation similar to the one that had befallen their home planet: mechanical Cylon Centurions in the Twelve Colonies had turned on their creators and started a war against them. More importantly, these Centurions had begun to experiment with creating their own synthetic biological creatures. According to Ellen Tigh, she and the other Four agreed to help the Centurions to make humanoid Cylons if they would end the war against the Colonies. The result was the group of Cylons we call the Significant Seven.

  All humanoid Cylons look, feel, sound, smell, and taste the same way we do, as evidenced by the number of Colonials who have had sex with Cylonsm without even realizing it. At least one model of Cylon, the one we know as Saul Tigh, can age. And probably most important for the overall arc of the show, Cylons can breed with Colonials.

  And oh, how the Cylons are obsessed with sex! Sex infuses almost all of their interpersonal relationships, and Cylons spend their days as horny as a roomful of science fiction fans at a Galactica convention. The Cylons (at least the female ones) display some form of luminescence along their spine at the moment of orgasm, which must have made Baltar’s threesomes with D’Anna and Six look like a laser light show.

  Significant Seven Cylons seem to h
ave problems reproducing biologically with each other. Number Six explained to Baltar their belief that this apparent infertility is due to the inability to feel real human love between the partners. We have evidence that at least one model of Cylon, Number Eight, can be fertilized by Colonial males, and another model, Number Six, can be fertilized by Saul Tigh, a member of the Final Five. Tigh was using his own Cylon projection system to imagine that he was making love with his beloved wife Ellen instead of Six, so maybe there was real love in the act.

  Not to be too cynical, but with most species lack of love is usually not enough to prevent conception. Why do Cylons have such trouble impregnating other Cylons? It may be that the Cylon gene pool is so small, and Cylons are so genetically alike, that fetuses spontaneously abort. Maybe Cylon eggs and sperm are too fragile to survive with each other. Think of Cylon gametes as if they were half-dead batteries, and Colonial gametes as fresh batteries. If you power a gadget with one half-dead battery and one fresh battery, the gadget will most likely work. If you use two half-dead batteries, the gadget will most likely not work. Maybe Ellen and the others just fraked up the reproductive system of the Significants, whether deliberately or accidentally.