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...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"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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Educational Videos for Science Fiction Writers and Critical Fans
April 2nd, 2013
What’s wrong with giant bugs? Or human bodies exploding in the vacuum of space? Or the answers to any of a bunch of other questions science fiction writers need to know to craft their story?
I’ve written blog posts about some of these in the past, but started noticing videos with similar explanations and thought it would be fun and useful to compile some of these. Enjoy and learn.
Space exposure:
Giant Bugs:
Fall into a black hole:
What’s the temperature of space (not simply answered — depends if you’re in the inner solar system or deep space, and what you’re measuring). Two videos:
This one is really cool. The physics of space battles and artificial gravity. (And this poster, BTW, seems to have a lot of great videos about the science of science fiction scenarios e.g. cloaking devices, phasers, etc.. I’ve subscribed.)
Let me stop there for today. The discovery of this last series of videos is going to take me a while to go through, and I’m interested in watching most of them. I know most of this stuff, but I always learn something new, if only about better ways of presenting it.
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Can’t say that i’d ever want to see an eight foot millipede.
MT @LaunchPadAstro: @ProfBrotherton: Educational Vids for SF Writers and Fans: What’s wrong with giant bugs? … http://t.co/jeXXCeximo”
In the name of community support, please refer to the creators of the videos you embed by name (or pseudonym) instead of “this poster” and please provide direct links to the videos within YouTube (and channels if you are feeling especially nice). Embedding the video by itself is a dead end for mobile users who might want to find out more about the video’s author.
I don’t view my blog, or surf blogs, with my mobile phone very often. I’ll experiment with how I link/embed videos as time permits. As I look more into this particular topic, I’m finding a lot of great stuff and would like to create an organized map for my own reference, if not for others, so I do expect to revisit these.
Educational Videos for Science Fiction Writers and Critical Fans http://t.co/1aQwuQSxnd
As for the rate of Sheridan´s fall…
Gravity on Earth pulls ANYTHING towards its centers, because gravity is a distortion at spacetime itself. Thats why “orbits” are possible, even though a ship is not connected physically to the planet, its still inside the space-time distortion caused by the planet.
On a spaceship however, you will only feel the centrigue force IF you are connected to the rotating section.
after all, its not the rotating section that pulls you and makes you feel gravity. Its the movement of your OWN BODY, every atom in it pulling outward and against the ship´s floor, that makes you feel gravity.
If a rotating ship has no air inside, if you are floating inside it, you will NEVER be pulled towards the walls.
At Babylon 5, there is also no force pulling you towards the floor. Except maybe some complex atmosphere motion?
I mean… IF you are already walking on the inner surface of a rotating spaceship, the centrifugue force (which is no more than inertia) is pulling you “out”. That force pulling you out creates friction and that friction keeps you against the floor of the spaceship, thus connecting you to the rotating force and creating the outward inertia in your own body.
But comming from the center of the rotating ship, you are not subject to any of outward pulling force. You can literally be floating a few centimeters from Babylon´s 5 inner surface, while the station is rotating with everything attached to it. To people in the inner surface (connected to it by friction caused by centrifugue force), it would look like you are flying like superman…
Unless AIR plays a vital role. But I somehow doubt this (the wind may be strong enough to pull you to the floor, but hardly strong enough to give you speed to die from the fall impact.
There are a few things I’m uncomfortable about in the last video (0/0 is not always equal to 0!), but the Babylon 5 scene is not one of them. Yes, he jumps out and has some only a small velocity relative to the spinning “ground” — but the 60 mph is relevant. It’s like jumping out of a car on the highway. Maybe he wouldn’t be killed unless he hit a tree or something, but injury is likely.
Mike, I am not saying anything is wrong with Sheridan´s scene, specially because I didnt see the episode and my english is bad enough that sometimes I miss one or two things spoken on TV. I didn´t notice they said he WAS NOT accelerating towards the ground and that in fact he would die because of the ROTATION speed of the station (like a building or tree hitting him on the side).
If that was the case, then I guess my text was right anyway? You will float and feel weightless until you have some sort of atrict with the ground, and are able to gain speed WITH it?
Since YOU are the physics professor here
1 – has anyone ever done a computer simulation of atmosphere movement inside big rotating enviroments like Babylon 5?
2 – This is probably 8th grade physics, so sorry for such a foolish question but: gravity, as a space time distortion, affects any object with mass equally (same acceleration). In a rotating space habitat, the centrifugue force is caused by your inertia. (mass tries to follow a straight path but is forced to circle, in a space station case, by the walls of the space station that dont let the “body” follow its natural straight path. Are objects of different mass affected differently (because with more or less mass, they have different inertia).
Probably a simple equation has the answer, but its a long time I dont do any high-school physics equations.
Intuition says no, after all, its probably the same inertia that makes us be pulled by gravity, and it pulls us all the same
Rogerio, yes, you’re right. If we had a spinning chamber with no air, you could float in the middle of it fine, even just inches above it. If you get spun up with the chamber, you’ll feel gravity in effect.
I don’t know that I’ve seen serious analysis of the air in a big open chamber, bit it, too, should get spun up and someone in the air would feel a wind that would tend to push them along in the direction of the spin. The physics of this could be worked out. In any event, someone jumping off the central axis with some small velocity would wind up hitting, certainly, but again the real problem would be things on the “ground” heading toward you at high speed.
Mass doesn’t matter as far as the acceleration goes. Indeed the equivalence of intertial mass and gravitational mass is pretty cool.