Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
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To Be a Scientist: You Need a Little Love
December 19th, 2007
Recently I blogged about the five qualities required to be a scientist. I realized I left one out, thinking the categories of dedication and curiosity covered it in some fashion, but they don’t quite do it. The sixth quality is love of science.
Love of science and your particular chosen field are what leads to the dedication. Moreover love of your field is what drives the curiosity. It’s possible to love astronomy, for instance, but lack the personal curiosity and satisfy yourself by looking through telescopes at well understood objects, or by reading a Stephen Hawking book without a notion of how to ask the next big question. It’s possible to have intellectual curiosity about how a particular measurement is made, but the science lovers are the ones who will lay awake at night or get that thought in the shower about how to improve it enough to make new advances.
I find some students have a desire to be a “scientist” without really understanding what science is about or how it is practiced on a day-to-day basis. It’s similar to how a lot of people want to be “writers” but can’t/don’t/won’t sit down and write. You’ve got to love data and their quirks, and love how to apply the right equation in the right case or derive a new one, or make a pretty good estimate for a number you’ve got to have to put a limit on the nature of the universe. You’ve got to love your project enough that you put up with traveling halfway around the world to sit in an obscure observatory under the clouds for a week before going home, knowing you’ll have to do it again a year later.
You need the love for when you realize academia is full of politics and small-minded people just like the rest of human endeavor (although a little less, I like to think, foolish optimist I am).
It’s a tough thing for a student to realize that while they love the idea of something, being a scientist, a writer, a fireman, a dancer, whatever, that they may not love the reality of the career. That’s okay. Keep up with it as a hobby, and continue the search in another field. And do it sooner rather than later. There’s nothing like an embittered grad student or post-doc who doesn’t really like what they’re doing and doesn’t realize they have other options.
To be a scientist, you really have to love the job.
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Can’t you be a scientist outside academia? Amateur astronomers don’t count?
You can be, but it is rare these days. Amateurs are building better and more expensive personal observatories and contributing professional quality data, so it is possible. It’s still rare for amateurs to contribute as much as professionals, given time considerations as much as anything else. Often the professional is needed to collaborate with amateurs in order to get the data in order for publication. Most of the time, amateur astronomy is a hobby, and as such it’s difficult to do at a professional level, but there’s no rule against it. Have enough love and professionalism, welcome!
Actually, I’ve found through my career that the quality of science done by amateurs in astronomy (I call them semi-pros) has increased dramatically. Astronomy might be the one remaining science field where amateurs can make significant contributions. For a current example, several exoplanet transits have been first observed by semi-pros, who’ve obtained data every bit as good as their pro colleagues.
It’s often the case that the semi-pros level of expertise in relevant fields (electronics, optics, data analysis, etc) even EXCEEDS that of some of the pros they work with. For example, I’ve found that many, if not most, of the past few generations of observational astronomers (where a generation is about 6 years) have little understanding of the equipment they’re using, it’s simply a black box to them. This makes it hard for some of them to understand when something has gone wrong and when the data they’ve obtained is, well, crap. Many semi-pros have a much more intimate relationship with their instruments (as they may have built them) and thus the resulting data.
Just the observations of someone who has worked with “amateur” astronomers and their data for over 20 years.
h.
Hey Harold! You’re totally right about the amateurs getting more and more impressive equipment and good quality data, and some of them really knowing their hardware. Still, there’s a lot that’s hard to learn on your own, like the theory, literature, error analysis, and how to write/submit results for publication. That learning curve is really steep, and why it takes most astronomers 5-7 years of grad school to become somewhat proficient. Amateurs tend to focus on the bit of astronomy they like, but there are a lot of detailed skills, some of which aren’t all that fun. Just taking good data isn’t being a scientist, although it’s a big step in that direction and one that some pros stumble over from time to time (or more often in a few cases I know).
Hi Mike: well, pros usually tend to focus on the bit of astronomy they like too, sometimes with embarassing results. A few essential things to keep in mind: semi-pros (those people who do and publish astronomy but aren’t paid for it) are usually, not always, pros in their own fields. These fields may be just as intellectually rigorous as astronomy (I’ll omit the usual “or more so” here….). And they may well publish in their own fields, write proposals, etc. etc. Or do BETTER error analysis than most astronomers (most good statisticians I’ve run across sorta laugh at the efforts of many astronomers (and don’t get me started on writing and de-bugging software….). It was after all, only a decade or two ago when essentially all those we now call radio astronomers were educated as electrical engineers. I strongly suspect that our prospectives are somewhat different because I work in fields where semi-pros can and do make significant contributions (and I’ve met and worked with a number of them), while it’s very hard for a semi-pro to make any kind of a contribution in extra-galactic work. But that’s simply a large telescope bias……:)
have a great New Year,
Harold