Analog SFF, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Marv recalled his earlier impression of a focused purpose within Vanessa. Apparently that reflected something deeper than duty to her employer.

  "Well, Ms. Kortright-Kingston, I'm sorry to be sending you back empty-handed."

  She leaned forward. “Are you sure you haven't picked up any savant skills? They might have crept up on you quite gradually, so you wouldn't notice at first. You've had more exposure to savants, for more years, than anybody else we could locate."

  Marv sighed. “Look at this dump, kid. If I had the powers of your super-agent, don't you think that by now I'd have moved to Atlantic City and made myself good and rich?"

  She studied him for a long moment. Finally, she nodded. She stood.

  "I'm sorry,” she said, “for misleading you. Really."

  He started to wave off her concern—even if the Depression was officially over, he still wasn't in the habit of judging people for how they earned their living—but then he noticed the hangdog look with which she awaited his response. So he said, simply, “Thanks."

  She took a step toward the door, then paused.

  "Mr. Pennybacker? I meant it, earlier, about coming back for more piano lessons. Could I? On my own time?"

  "I don't know, kid,” said Marv. “I'm going to have to think about that one. Tell you what—come by tomorrow afternoon and we'll talk about it."

  "You don't work on Wednesdays,” said Vanessa.

  "Thursday, then. Whenever."

  She gave a small nod and started to turn away. Then she asked, “You're really sure—even if I worked with Roz every day, I'd never catch her knack? Not even a little bit?"

  Marv sighed. “Don't get your hopes up, kid."

  Still, after Vanessa had waved good-bye to the Talents in the day room and left, her idea wouldn't leave his head. Imagine that ordinary people could gain talents. What would that world be like?

  Students wouldn't need to waste time on rote memorization. Read a book or hear a lecture once, then move on to advanced material.

  Researchers could know all the work in their field, and in lots of other fields, and see connections nobody expected.

  Every kind of music and painting and sculpture would be fascinating to you, something you could understand and do yourself.

  You'd be able to fix your own car. Or invent a better engine.

  You'd never forget a phone number.

  Marv smiled at his fantasy. But something was bothering him. It had been nagging him a while; dealing with Vanessa had kept him too busy to figure out what it was. His chair squeaked a bad harmony to the piano notes coming from the day room as he thought back over the afternoon.

  And then he knew. It was that number Oliver had offered Vanessa. 86,028,307. There was something wrong with it. Like it would fall apart if you gave it a tug.

  Marv pulled out his little notebook. He flipped to the appropriate page.

  Oliver's number wasn't there.

  He tossed the notebook onto his desk and shook his head.

  That Oliver, thought Marv. What a kidder.

  Copyright © 2010 David W. Goldman

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  Department: BIOLOG: DAVID W. GOLDMAN by Richard A. Lovett

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  * * * *

  David W. Goldman likes to describe his academic credentials as four years at a “well-known Boston trade school.” The school? Harvard. Harvard Medical School, to be precise. “I don't usually mention that because I'd rather not be seen as a doctor,” he says.

  Not that his fiction has much in common with medical potboilers. His first Analog story involved a space-faring otter in a hot tub. His second was inspired by the short stories of Raymond Chandler.

  Born in Buffalo, New York, Goldman showed a common Analog-writer trait that has nothing to do with medicine: he was fascinated by computers long before they were fashionable.

  "I read about computers in second grade,” he says, “and this would have been about 1962.” In college, he took a job with his undergraduate university's computer center, not so much for the money as for an unlimited-use computer account. At Harvard, he found himself writing medical software. By the time he was a West Coast doctor, he had a full-fledged non-medical software business going on the side.

  Eventually, he was forced to pick one or the other. “I was a ‘part time’ family doctor—that's sixty hours a week—and a software entrepreneur—that's another sixty hours a week."

  He chose computers, but the industry shifted toward ever-larger firms, “[and] I didn't have the interest in hiring lots of employees.” So he shut down his personal business and took a job at a larger software firm. “Suddenly, I had evenings."

  As an undergraduate, he'd taken seminars in creative writing and won an award from the Academy of American Poets. And he'd been reading science fiction since first grade. So, in 2000, he decided to take a course at Portland State University, under Ursula K. Le Guin. Five years later, he was in Writers of the Future. Within a year after that, Analog bought his space otter.

  Although there are many types of stories, growing up he most appreciated those where the author “touched me and made me think differently, or, more importantly, made me feel differently.” Now, he wants to do the same. “Basically, I want to write something that's going to give some readers some sort of emotional impact, or at least some sort of intellectual impact."

  "That applies to any [form of] fiction,” he adds. But happily, he chose to express it via science fiction.

  Copyright © 2010 Richard A. Lovett

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  Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: THE ICE MAN COMETH: THE ICY RESERVOIRS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM by John G. Cramer

  Our sun is a giant campfire in the center of the Solar System. Some planets (Mercury, Venus) are too close to the campfire and are overheated. Some planets (Earth and perhaps Mars) are at the “just right” distance from the campfire and receive enough solar radiation to give them an average temperature compatible with self-sustaining life. But the bulk of the System's extra-solar mass is located farther out in the frozen outer region where the average temperature is well below the freezing point of water. This situation is not entirely bad. In the outer Solar System the water has not evaporated away. There are comets and proto-comets in three distinct regions that contain vast quantities of water, a reservoir that could, in principle, be tapped as a major source of water for planet-scale engineering products.

  In the inner Solar System, water and ice are fairly rare and valuable commodities. As an example, the recent discovery of ice deposits at the south pole of the Moon means that a future lunar colony should not need to import water from Earth for life support. Mars is very dry, and its atmosphere is very thin. A substantial reservoir of water, ice, and gases would need to be found if Mars were to be terraformed to give it Earth-like oceans and a more substantial atmosphere. It is therefore interesting that there are reservoirs of water ice in the Solar System. A hypothetical “Ice Man” terraformer need only do some rearranging to bring needed water to the dry regions of the inner Solar System. This is particularly relevant to recent works of science fiction describing the “belters” who have colonized the asteroid belt, or works describing the terraforming of Mars and other bodies by bombarding them with icy objects from the outer Solar System.

  This column draws much of its information from a report presented at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in 2009 by Professor David Jewitt of UCLA, in which he reviewed the interesting picture of the outer Solar System that is emerging from recent astronomical observations.

  The study of comets is steadily increasing our knowledge about the reservoirs of ice in the outer Solar System. Comets are of interest because they are easily observed, and they are objects that have been dislodged by some random gravitational encounter from a quasi-stable orbit in their reservoir region and caused to dive inward toward the Sun. Observations of their orbital motion and out-gassing reveal their c
omposition and give clues to the environment in their region of origin.

  Three regions of the Solar System that are sources of comets need to be considered separately: the Oort cloud, the Kuiper belt, and the outer asteroid belt. To discuss these, it's convenient to characterize them with a number called “the Tisserand parameter.” The Tisserand parameter TJ, for Jupiter-dominated orbits, is defined as TJ = R + 2 sqrt[(1- e2)/R] cos uC, where R = aJ/aC, aJ and aC are the semi-major orbital axes of Jupiter and the comet of interest, e is the eccentricity of the comet's orbit, and uC is its inclination with respect to the plane of the ecliptic of the Solar System.

  In simple three-body gravitational interactions, the Tisserand parameter does not change. Therefore, even if the comet is “knocked around” by gravitational pushes from the planets and the Sun, the Tisserand parameter stays relatively constant, and can be used as a characterization of any cometary orbit. For the orbit of Jupiter TJ = 3 exactly. Comets from the Oort cloud have TJ (less than) 2, comets from the Kuiper belt have 2 (less than or equal to) TJ (less than or equal to) 3, and comets from the outer asteroid belt have TJ (greater than) 3. The web site sajri.astronomy.cz/asteroidgroups/groups.htm has some very interesting plots of Solar System objects grouped by their Tisserand parameter and other criteria. It shows the major grouping of known objects and a few nonconformist “outliers” that do not fit with the others.

  * * * *

  The existence of the Oort cloud (composed of objects with TJ (greater than) 2) was first deduced by J. H. Oort in 1950, based on a rather narrow peak in the distribution of binding energies of long-period comets. The Oort cloud is a spherical “cloud” rather than a disk-like “belt” because evidence indicates that comets originating there are randomly oriented and uncorrelated with the plane of the ecliptic. Oort interpreted the narrowness of the binding energy peak as indicating that the majority of comets originating in the Oort cloud were “first-arrivals” that had not made many previous passes through the Solar System. Recent estimates of the cometary bodies in the Oort cloud place the number at between 10 to the 11th power and 10 to the 12th power such objects and a total mass in the range of 0.1 to 1.0 Earth-masses.

  The Kuiper belt (composed of objects with 2 (less than or equal to) TJ (less than or equal to) 3) was only discovered in 1992. It lies in the region beyond Neptune in which a very large number of small objects have recently been discovered. The total mass of these objects is estimated to be around 0.1 Earth-masses. It is believed that in the early Solar System there were 100 to 1000 times more such objects, but that some dramatic planetary rearrangement (see “The Nice Way to Make a Solar System,” March 2010, my column on the Nice model) caused most of them to be ejected, perhaps at the time of the Late Heavy Bombardment of the inner Solar System.

  Objects in the Kuiper belt fall into several classes: the classical objects with small orbital eccentricities, the resonance objects (the most famous of which is Pluto) which may safely cross the orbit of Neptune because they are in resonant phase with the planet, and the scattered objects having large orbital eccentricities and rather unstable orbits, presumably due to past gravitational scatterings. The centaur objects, with orbits between Neptune and Jupiter and interacting strongly with both, are not part of the Kuiper belt but are thought to be recent escapees from it.

  The outer asteroid belt (composed of objects with TJ (greater than) 3) is a source of a few comets that look a lot like ordinary asteroids, but with the comae and tails of comets. It's rather surprising that objects that have resided for billions of years in the rather warm asteroid belt, with temperatures of around 150 K at 3 Earth-orbit radii (AU), have retained enough ice to produce cometary behavior. Some chondrite meteorites from this region show evidence of the action of liquid water, including brine pockets with gas bubbles and millimeter-scale salt (NaCl) crystals.

  * * * *

  So how could some potential planetary engineers gain access to all of this ice and water? Briefly, by arranging for a comet to impact a body of interest (the Moon, Mars, etc.). This could be done by identifying candidate comets in the three reservoir regions with orbits that could be modified with minimum expenditure of energy to deliver their water to the receiving body. In cases where there was a pre-existing colony on that body, the choreography of this operation could be interesting and demanding. If the receiving body had some atmosphere (e. g., Mars), it might be possible to put the comet into a braking orbit that after many passes delivered the water to the ground without much impact. But with a receiving body like the Moon that had no atmosphere at all, a direct collision would be needed, and the impact site would have to be carefully placed well away from the sites of colonization and infrastructure.

  Is such terraforming as simple as arranging a visit from “the Ice Man” in the form of a comet impact? Probably not. The icy mass of a comet contains many condensables besides water. The most abundant cometary chemicals aside from water are likely to be simple hydrogen-carbon-nitrogen combinations like ammonia (NH3), methane (CH4), and hydrogen cyanide (HCN). The latter may create the most problems for the terraforming engineer. Somehow, the cyanide in the comet water, if it is sufficiently abundant, will have to be neutralized to protect astronauts and colonists. One can imagine bio-engineered organisms that are released after a comet strike to accomplish the conversion of ammonia and hydrogen cyanide to free nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water.

  But anyhow, it appears that there is a vast reservoir of water in the Solar System that could be used for making the Moon and Mars more habitable, or even Earth-like. As we physicists say, there are no fundamental problems. It's just a matter of solving a few engineering problems. n

  Copyright © 2010 John G. Cramer

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  AV Columns Online: Electronic reprints of over 150 “The Alternate View” columns by John G. Cramer, previously published in Analog, are available online at: www.npl.washington.edu/av.

  * * * *

  The Nice Model:

  David Jewitt, “Icy Bodies in the New Solar System", arXiv preprint 0912.2070v1 [astro-ph.EP].

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  Probability Zero: QUARK SOUP by Bond Elam

  Quiet!” Senator Malachi Jones commanded. Glaring out at the audience, he pounded his gavel on the podium. “Quiet down now, or I'll have the hearing room cleared!"

  As the commotion died away, he turned his attention back to the witness. “Professor Hawkins, did I understand you to just say that the scientific community now accepts the existence of an Intelligent Designer?"

  Professor Hawkins leaned back in his chair, smiling up at the senators seated on the semicircular dais in front of him. “Yep. That's what I said."

  Senator Malachi hunched forward, his eyes narrowing beneath his bushy brows. “Then why, professor, do you still refuse to support this committee's Intelligent Design Initiative? Don't you think the school children of this great nation deserve to hear both sides of the Darwinian controversy?"

  Hawkins scratched his beard thoughtfully. “I guess you'd say it has to do with pi, Senator."

  "Pie! What kind of pie?"

  "The number kind. You know, the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter. It's what we call an irrational number. It's supposed to go on forever without repeating itself."

  "Supposed to?” the senator said, warily.

  Hawkins nodded. “Last month we were using it to test our new quantum computer, and it turns out that pi now comes to an end after only ten thousand places."

  The senator pulled back, his gaze hardening. “And that's the reason you don't want to give our children a balanced education—because of some computer glitch?"

  "Hmm . . . not exactly. You see, pi is a lot like that strand of yarn someone might find hanging from the back of his favorite sweater. He gives it a little tug, and the next thing he knows, the whole sweater unravels. Well, we gave pi a little tug, and the next thing we knew, our whole understanding of the universe unraveled."

  The s
enator scowled. “Unraveled, how?"

  Hawkins pursed his lips, thinking. “Well, sir, for a long time, we thought the universe was matter and energy. You know, all those little atoms you learned about back in science class—back when they taught science in science class. Only now we think it's more like a big computer."

  "Come now, professor. You're not telling us the Intelligent Designer is one of your computer nerds."

  Hawkins shrugged. “Why not? Storage wouldn't be a problem. According to the Holographic Principle, He could fit all the data on the surface of a sphere roughly a tenth of a light-year in diameter, assuming he shrank it down to the Plank scale."

  "The Plank scale...?"

  "Right. The real problem is processing speed—recalculating the speed and position of every subatomic particle in the universe, every ten to the minus forty-four seconds. That's way too much processing, even for Him."

  "The Intelligent Designer, you mean."

  "Exactly. The way we figure it, He can't actually calculate the speed and position of every particle, so what He calculates is the probability that each particle will be at such-and-such a position, moving at such-and-such a speed. That way He doesn't have to calculate the numbers all the way out to the last decimal place unless someone actually looks at a particle and forces its probability wave to collapse. Heisenberg explained the whole thing in his Uncertainty Principle."

  "Ah-ha!” the senator interrupted. “You said it yourself: ‘Unless someone looks.’ That's why He created us, professor. He wanted someone to look at His work, to appreciate the magnificence of His creation."

  "Hmm . . . we don't think so. The way we see it, we weren't part of His plan. In fact, we were the last thing He expected. I mean, really, who would've predicted that those first bright stars, burning all that pure hydrogen, were going to explode into heavier elements that would organize themselves into self-replicating molecules, which would ultimately evolve into us? It's just not the kind of thing you'd anticipate."