Analog Science Fiction And Fact - May 2014

by Penny Publications

  The observation spot size at ten light-years of a 10-m telescope at the Nd:YAG laser wavelength is about 12 million kilometers. In order to be sure of observing the transmitting laser (when it is transmitting toward us) for a few thousand pulses of the ping signal without knowing where they are, we will have to scan a slow spiral around each star in our neighborhood. It would probably be sufficient to only scan the life zone; that is, the region in which the energy flux from the star might allow liquid water to exist on a planetary body. In our own Solar System, the life zone would be estimated as ranging from 0.725 AU to 1.24 AU. Again, let's pretend our trading partner's system is similar to our own. Since we don't know what the relative tilt of the plane of their orbit is to our line-of-sight, we would have to scan from about 70 million km to about 186 million km (the outer edge of the life zone). How long would such a scan take?

  Here, we will have to make some assumptions about the signal they are sending. As we said above, the signal will probably have a very regular top level amplitude pulse structure with more detailed information frequency modulated within the pulses. If we assume the pulses are one thousandth of a second (one millisecond) long, we would want to observe each point within the target system for a few seconds. If they are slower, in order to make them easier to observe with instruments that take their snapshots slowly, we may need much longer observation times. Knowing this, our potential trading partners may have clustered pulse trains to make "super pulses" detectable with slow spectrometers. Thus, the time necessary for a complete scan of an extraterrestrial system will depend on the time constant of our own observing spectrometer. Just to get some idea of scan time, let's assume a one millisecond time constant in our detector allowing detection of ten millisecond pulses. A thousand such pulses take ten seconds. To scan our own Solar System's life zone with a 12-million-kilometer spot that must spend ten seconds moving over each angular point would take about forty minutes. A larger telescope producing a smaller spot size is not necessary and, in fact, would cause a large increase in scan times. To scan all 117 stars would take three days, but again, some may be behind the Sun.

  We also have to account for Doppler shift in the laser wavelength. We know the relative velocity between us and the system we are observing, and we know the Earth's velocity in her orbit (between ± 30 km/sec), but we don't know their orbital velocity with respect to us. It could be zero (if the plane of their ecliptic is perpendicular to our line of sight) or they could be coming at us for half of their year and away from us for the other half. Fortunately, Keck has an instrument called the Adaptive Optics/Near Infrared Spectrometer that can collect at multiple wavelengths simultaneously. Unfortunately, it is very slow. Modifications to the instrument may be necessary in order to collect data with sufficient temporal resolution, and may, in fact, be the most expensive and difficult part of this effort.

  How soon would we become aware of the IITC? For any one extraterrestrial civilization, we assume that they ping the hundred or so stars around them whenever they are visible. Our observing time is also limited by time of year and time of day. A best case example is possibly Alpha Centauri, a star similar to our own, approximately 4.3 light-years away in a direction about 60 degrees south of the plane of our ecliptic. If their plane is similarly oriented with respect to us, we could scan them once per day, they could ping us all of the time, and we could detect them in a single day. A worst-case example might be Barnard's Star which we can only see for a portion of the year. If their limitations on viewing are similar to and out of phase with ours, it could be years before we could detect their ping. If there are multiple IITC civilizations nearby, the time necessary to detect at least one of them would tend toward the lower estimate. Give it a year!

  Our final question was: once we learn of the existence of an Interstellar Information Trading Community in our neighborhood, what would we need to do in order to join that community?

  The answer to this is simple: quickly assemble the Nd:YAG system that we have already defined, with the best improvements that we can afford, and start beaming information directly out to the civilizations that we have detected. They will have told us their orbital parameters in their initial transmissions, so that no spiral scanning will be necessary and we can use the narrower beam widths afforded by the 85-m interferometric array described above. We will also be able to filter very narrowly, since we can calculate Doppler shift.

  In a decade or two after that, we will enter a new age of enlightenment almost beyond imagining.

  References:

  • Kaplan, S. A., (1971). Extraterrestrial Civilizations: Problems of Interstellar Communication. 1st ed. Jerusalem, Israel: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

  • Skolnik, M. I., (2008). Radar Handbook. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

  Martin J., (1978). Communications Satellite Systems. 1st ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

  • Drake, F. D., & Sobel, D., (1994). Is Anyone out There?: The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. 1st ed. New York, NY: Delta Book/Dell Pub.

  • Stanford Research Institute; United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (1973). Project Cyclops:A Design Study of a System for Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligent-Life. 1st ed. U.S.A: Moffett Field, Calif.: NASA/Ames Research Center

  • Kare, J. T., (1989). Laser Propulsion and Possible Missions to Mars. American Astronomical Society Science and Technology Series. 75.

  • John Wallace (2010). "100 kW U.S. Army Laser Moves to White Sands for Testing ." http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2010/02/100-kw-u-s-army-laser.html.

  • Goude, P. (2002). "Keck Telescope and Facility Instrument Guide ." http://www2. keck.hawaii.edu/observing/kecktelgde/kteli nstupdate.pdf.

  • Dr. Alex Kraus (2011). "Radio Telescope Effelsberg ." http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/8964/effelsberg.

  • Richard Powell (2006). "Stars Within 20 Light-Years ." http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/20lys.html.

  * * *

  DISCOVERY MISSION

  256 words

  We go down into the sun-starved pit,

  Leaving our landing lights behind,

  Leaving our extra oxygen, leaving

  Our battery backup. It is only

  Us now: us and our suits

  And our compression packs, and we go

  Down. A tunnel this dark and regular

  Had to be made by something calculating.

  I have forty solar credits

  On a bet that it is intelligently mined,

  And another ten on the miners

  Being here still. Down.

  The sides of the shaft spit back

  What little light we brought with us,

  Walls as polished as a girl's vanity mirror.

  We watch our displays for the bottom's

  Topography, listen for any disturbance

  Our personal rockets make. Above us

  The Mission Commander is recording heart rate

  And respiration, as well as every noise

  That slams our suit receptors:

  Temperature outside and in,

  How forcefully loose ambient molecules

  Taste our magnetic biospheres.

  I could have been a milkman,

  Humping other men's wives between deliveries,

  With a known schedule and my ways around the obvious.

  I am told the bottom is only six meters away

  And the crewman on my right

  Has located the probe we sent in

  One sleep cycle ago. From the wear

  It looks like I am going to be

  Fifty solar credits richer

  On the trip out than on the trip in.

  My heart is a boy's with his first

  Hole in one at sex and my blood

  Not unpleasantly seems to be

  Caucusing at the tips of my fingers and toes.

  There is a radiant spot of uncalculated moisture

  Dancing a native strip tease on the o
utside

  Of my visor; and the best of me

  Believes, as my thoughtfully distending

  Genes reveal, that this unexpected show is my own.

  Don't talk to me now, Commander,

  I am about to touch unraveling down.

  —Ken Poyner

  * * *

  EDITORIAL

  I, EDITOR Trevor Quachri | 1327 words

  At LoneStarCon 3 (the 71st WorldCon) in San Antonio this past September, something special happened, thanks in part to the readers of this magazine: former Analog editor Stanley Schmidt won a Hugo award for Best Editor, Short Form, as well as a Chairman's Special Award (presented by astronaut Cady Coleman), recognizing his long and distinguished career.

  Stan has been nominated for the Hugo frequently, but never recognized to the degree that I've felt he should be, so while it's our professional pleasure to congratulate him, of course, it's also a matter of great personal satisfaction for me to see him win.

  (If you happened to watch the broadcast of the awards ceremony, I'm the guy sitting next to Stan in the audience, who spikes his award program and pumps his fist when they announce the results—hey, I'm only human.)

  None of that is to diminish the accomplishments of the other nominees and winners over the years. We in science fiction are blessed with a plethora of excellent editors, many of whom I have worked with or otherwise know personally, and they all live and breathe their jobs, single-handedly doing the work of a team of people just to put out good science fiction.

  But I've often wondered why Stan wasn't awarded sooner.

  It might partly be that Stan, should you ever have the pleasure of meeting him, is a kind and self-effacing fellow, happy to tell interesting stories, but not given to the sort of visibility that keeps one in the voter's eye come award time.

  It may also be that, as I've said before ("On the Shoulders of Giants," April 2013), Stan is the type of polymath you wouldn't find believable as a fictional character, as if Heinlein's Lazarus Long had him in mind when he said "Specialization is for insects," so it can be tough to fully appreciate his work unless you have at least some sense of the scope of what he's doing, and good luck with that, mere mortal.

  Mostly, though, I think it's because unless they're at least somewhat familiar with publishing as a field, what a professional science fiction editor actually does is likely to be something of a mystery to most people.1

  That's something I'd like to try to illuminate a bit.

  First off, quite a lot of it is no more interesting than any other office job (with, perhaps, the potential for a bit more name-dropping among certain circles). There are lots of budgets, memos, emails, and assorted forms of paperwork to be done.

  The rest of it, though, is a bit more specific. To borrow a framing device from the Good Doctor, allow me to suggest The Three Laws of Editorship.

  The First Law: An editor must select the best possible material they have available for their market, both in terms of quality of individual pieces and as an aggregate, thereby determining the direction or tone of said market, be it a magazine, anthology, book imprint, or anything else.

  This is an editor's "curatorial" role, and it often involves a lot of reading. Here at Analog (and at our sister publication, Asimov's ) it's particularly intense. We use few, if any, "slush readers" (people who read and broadly screen incoming submissions before the editor looks at them), though many other magazines (understandably) do. Stan read all of the submissions himself; it can be tough to really feel like the magazine reflects one's vision or tastes if one isn't actually looking at the majority of stories that come in.

  This is also where matters of layout fall— working with other departments and making decisions on the look of the magazine, by assigning art, choosing covers, tweaking fonts and so on.

  The Second Law: An editor must improve the material he or she works on to the best of his or her ability, both on the macro level (fixing inconsistent characterization, or improving an ending) and the micro (fact-checking, cleaning up grammar), in material that is already strong enough to be considered under the First Law.

  This is the "mechanical" aspect of an editor's job, not because it's rote (far from it), but because it involves smaller, detail work.

  The Third Law: When material doesn't meet the editor's criteria and is otherwise beyond what can immediately be shaped into something he or she can use, but the writer displays the potential to write material that does so in the future, it is the editor's role to work with that writer so that the editor can apply the Second Law, for the furtherance of the First Law, to work down the line.

  The editor's "mentoring" role is about encouraging authors who aren't currently writing material you can use to do so, and helping authors who are almost there, but not quite.

  It's one of the main purposes of the various professional social events; things like lunches with authors are invaluable for talking over stories face to face, going back and forth about what works and what doesn't, and brainstorming solutions to problems, as well as just maintaining a professional relationship, which can otherwise be difficult when your primary method of interaction is via email for months or years on end.

  A "Zeroth Law" might involve the editor's role as the public face of their outlet when applicable, at things like a book festival or WorldCon, both to readers and authors.

  Writing editorials is one of the more visible examples of this. They're a great way for readers to get a sense of an editor's personality, and therefore the market's tone, but not every editor chooses to interact with the readers in that particular way, so it's not a defining part of the job. It's more of a perk, perhaps, for the more opinionated among us, but ultimately secondary to work on the material.

  Even the parts of the job that seem relatively visible have ice-berg-like large portions beneath the surface of what can be easily seen by readers. You might read a published story, but what did that story look like before the editor worked on it? What does the pool of stories the editor is selecting from look like? (Even trying to gauge someone's editorial persona based on the material in a magazine isn't a sure thing—humorously, our sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, got complaints that it just wasn't the same after Hitchcock died. Of course, he never had an editorial connection to the publication; he just lent it his name.)

  The fact that Stan Schmidt managed to convey so much of his vision and personality in his thirty-four-plus years at an otherwise less-than-visible job speaks to his excellence at it. From years of watching Stan, I learned that good work should speak for itself, and accolades aren't what determine quality. While awards can offer tremendous validation and are certainly something to be proud of, they're far from an infallible record.

  But if I can help make the hard work of some people in the field more visible, if I can give readers a clearer narrative of just what editors are doing for them and for authors— that there are a great many number of things that go into being a good editor; that there are a great many number of ways to be a good editor—it might help the deserving see recognition that much sooner in the future.

  Because in one form or another, improving narratives is what editors do.

  Footnotes:

  1 When I talk about what "an editor" does, I'm specifically talking about magazine editors for the most part. There are as many kinds of editors as there are people in the position, and while there are usually similarities, there are also often great differences between, say, this role—essentially an Editor-in-Chief—and what Managing or Copy Editors do. And that's to say nothing of the various types of book editors—Acquisitions, who buy manuscripts; Developmental, who help usher a manuscript through its various drafts; the Copy Editor, who checks facts, consistency, and often spelling, grammar, and punctuation (which also frequently falls to a proofreader), and so on. At the magazines, we wear many hats and do a bit of it all.

  There are also major differences between fiction and non-fiction editing, though we do
both at Analog.

  * * *

  IN TIMES TO COME

  210 words

  Next month, we have a blend of stories both serious and less than so, in honor of April's silliest day—Tax Day, of course; what, you thought I meant something else?

  An ecologist has to use his training to unravel a complex and dangerous mystery in Jordan Jeffers' "A Fierce, Calming Presence"; tongue planted firmly in cheek, Lavie Tidhar tells a story that science fiction fans might find a bit... familiar in "Whaliens"; "The Oracle of Boca Raton" by Eric Bayliss suggests that artificial intelligences may not have any more patience for stupidity than the rest of us; Ian Randal Strock's "It's Not 'The Lady or the Tiger,' It's 'Which Tiger?'" is a tale of unintended lessons learned via time travel; and more, with stories from writers like Don Webb and Diane Turnshek.

  Our fact article is the next in Edward M. Lerner's series looking at the science behind various SF tropes, this one titled "Alien Dimensions: The Universe Next Door."

  Finally, we have the white-knuckled conclusion to Karl Schroeder's Lockstep. Toby has decided to face his pursuers head on, but when he confronts them, will family ties prove stronger than the bonds of friendship? No matter who wins, the Lockstep Empire will never be the same.