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Fiction Science Club

How de-extinction could change our destiny

Illustration: Woolly mammoth and calf
A woolly mammoth and her calf are shown trudging through frozen steppes in a promotional video from Colossal Biosciences.

It may sound cool to bring back the woolly mammoth after thousands of years of extinction — but Douglas Preston, the author of a novel that features the revival of the mammoths, has his doubts.

“If you take this and game it out to its logical end, you’re going to end up with something really terrifying,” Preston says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

That realization led him to write “Extinction,” a fictional tale that wraps the genetic resurrection of woolly mammoths and other extinct species from the Pleistocene Era into a murder mystery.

“‘Extinction’ does not have any science fiction in it,” the 67-year-old author insists. “This really is actual science that’s being done right now. It is here, and the ability to resurrect these extinct animals is here. … Maybe in my lifetime, we are going to see a de-extincted woolly mammoth, or a creature that looks a lot like a woolly mammoth.”

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Fiction Science Club

The search for alien civilizations gets a reality check

Zine Tseng at control console of radio telescope
Zine Tseng plays a Chinese radio astronomer in "3 Body Problem." (Credit: Ed Miller / Netflix © 2024)

Fortunately, the real-world search for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations doesn’t have to deal with an alien armada like the one that’s on its way to Earth in “3 Body Problem,” the Netflix streaming series based on Chinese sci-fi author Cixin Liu’s award-winning novels. But the trajectory of the search can have almost as many twists and turns as a curvature-drive trip from the fictional San-Ti star system.

Take the Breakthrough Initiatives, for example: Back in 2016, the effort’s billionaire founder, Yuri Milner, teamed up with physicist Stephen Hawking to announce a $100 million project to send a swarm of nanoprobes through the Alpha Centauri star system, powered by light sails. The concept, dubbed Breakthrough Starshot, was similar to the space-sail swarm envisioned in Liu’s books — but with the propulsion provided by powerful lasers rather than nuclear bombs.

Today, the Breakthrough Initiatives is focusing on projects closer to home. In addition to the millions of dollars it’s spending to support the search for radio or optical signals from distant planetary systems, it’s working with partners on a miniaturized space telescope to identify planets around Alpha Centauri, a radio telescope that could someday be built on the far side of the moon, and a low-cost mission to look for traces of life within the clouds of Venus.

Breakthrough Starshot, however, is on hold. “This looks to be quite feasible. However, it seems to be something that is still pretty, pretty expensive, and probably wouldn’t be feasible until later in the century,” says Pete Worden, executive director of the Breakthrough Initiatives. “So, we’ve put that on hold for a period of time to try to look at, are there near-term applications of this technology, which there may be.”

Worden provides a status report on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — and sorts out science fact from science fiction — on the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

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How startups could blaze a trail for cities on Mars

Illustration: 3D-printed Mars habitats
An artist's conception shows 3D-printed habitats in a Mars settlement. (Credit: Team SEArch+/Apis Cor via NASA)

If future explorers manage to set up communities on Mars, how will they pay their way? What’s likely to be the Red Planet’s primary export? Will it be Martian deuterium, sent back to Earth for fusion fuel? Raw materials harvested by Mars-based asteroid miners, as depicted in the “For All Mankind” TV series? Or will future Martians be totally dependent on earthly subsidies?

In a new book titled “The New World on Mars,” Robert Zubrin — the president of the Mars Society and a tireless advocate for space settlement — says Mars’ most valuable product will be inventions.

“We’re talking about creating a new and potentially extremely inventive branch of human civilization, which will benefit humanity as a whole enormously,” he says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “But moreover, we’ll play from that strength to make money.”

Zubrin isn’t waiting until humans step foot on Mars to get started.

“We are in the process of drawing up business plans for two major initiatives — one in the artificial intelligence area and the other in the synthetic food production area,” he says. “And the idea is, fairly soon we’re going to be presenting these business plans to investors, with the idea of starting companies devoted to these two different technological ideas that we have put together.”

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Why scientists are mesmerized by the multiverse

Illustration: Visualization of our universe in the multiverse
An artist's conception shows our cosmos amid other universes in the multiverse. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt (IPAC)

The multiverse may be a cool (and convenient) concept for comic books and superhero movies, but why do scientists take it seriously?

In a new book titled “The Allure of the Multiverse,” physicist Paul Halpern traces why many theorists have come to believe that longstanding scientific puzzles can be solved only if they allow for the existence of other universes outside our own — even if they have no firm evidence for such realms.

It’s easy to confuse the hypotheses with the hype, but Halpern says there’s a huge difference between the multiverse that physicists propose and the mystical realm that’s portrayed in movies like “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”

“Some people accuse scientists of trying to delve into science fiction if they even mention the multiverse,” Halpern says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “But the type of science that people are doing when they talk about the multiverse is real science. It’s far-reaching science, but it’s real science. Scientists are not saying, ‘Hey, maybe we can meet another Spider-Man and attack Kingpin that way.'”

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Fiction Science Club

How rowing has changed since ‘The Boys in the Boat’

Scene from "The Boys in the Boat" showing rowers in racing shell
"The Boys in the Boats" recounts the saga of the University of Washington's rowing crew in 1936. (Image Copyright © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

Thanks to tectonic shifts in technology and training, Olympic-level rowing has come a long way since the University of Washington’s eight-man crew pulled off the ultimate underdog win at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany — the achievement celebrated in the brand-new movie adaptation of “The Boys in the Boat.”

On paper, the performance of the rowers at the center of the movie — and at the center of the bestselling book on which the movie is based — pales in comparison with current Olympic and world records. Today, the world’s fastest time for a 2,000-meter course is just under 5 minutes and 20 seconds, which is more than a minute faster than the time that won the gold medal for the Boys in the Boat in Berlin.

One of the big reasons for that speedup can be found at Everett, Wash.-based Pocock Racing Shells. The company’s founder, George Pocock, built the Husky Clipper — the boat in which the Boys won their Olympic gold. In the movie, Pocock (as portrayed by Peter Guinness) plays a role similar to Yoda in the Star Wars saga, performing wizardry with wood and dispensing wisdom at just the right moment.

Today, wood just doesn’t cut it for championship-level racing shells. “The boats have no wood,” says John Tytus, the current president of Pocock Racing Shells. “These boats are all built out of advanced composites, mainly carbon fiber — which, for its weight, is the strongest material available.”

Lightweight materials are just part of the equation. Hydrodynamics and computer modeling have helped Tytus and other boatbuilders tweak their designs to an extent that would impress even George Pocock.

Science has also transformed how today’s rowing men and women are being trained to outperform the Boys in the Boat. “As stark as the difference between wood and carbon fiber might be, the training volume that the crews do now, compared to what the Boys did in ’36 — that’s actually a bigger quantum leap,” Tytus says.

In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Tytus explains how innovations have taken athletic performance far beyond what moviegoers see when they watch “The Boys in the Boat.”

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Get a reality check on plans to build cities in space

A scene from "For All Mankind" shows a fictional Martian city from above. (Credit: Sony Pictures / Apple TV+)

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos may harbor multibillion-dollar dreams of sending millions of people to live on Mars, on the moon and inside free-flying space habitats — but a newly published book provides a prudent piece of advice: Don’t go too boldly.

It’s advice that Kelly and Zach Weinersmith didn’t expect they’d be giving when they began to work on their book, titled “A City on Mars.” They thought they’d be writing a guide to the golden age of space settlement that Musk and Bezos were promising.

“We ended up doing a ton of research on space settlements from just every angle you can imagine,” Zach Weinersmith says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “This was a four-year research project. And about two and a half years in, we went from being fairly optimistic about it as a desirable, near-term likely possibility [to] probably unlikely in the near term, and possibly undesirable in the near term. So it was quite a change. Slightly traumatic, I would say.”

The Weinersmiths found that there was precious little research into the potential long-term health effects of living on the moon or Mars — and zero research into the potential effects on human reproduction and development. Moreover, the legal uncertainties surrounding property rights in space seemed likely to lead to disputes that would tie diplomats and military planners in knots.

“In our effort to create Mars settlements to make a Plan B, to make ourselves safer as a species, are we actually lowering existential risk?” Zach says. “I think it’s absolutely unclear — and there’s a good argument that we might even increase it.”

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Fiction Science Club

Supervillain tale takes aim at today’s tech titans

Blended image of Dr. Evil from "Austin Powers" movie and cover art from "Starter Villain"
"Starter Villain" blends Dr. Evil-like characters with intelligent cats. Credits: New Line Cinema (left); Tristan Elwell for Tor Books (right)

There’s nary a mention of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates in “Starter Villain,” but science-fiction author John Scalzi’s wickedly funny novel finds ways to skewer the tech billionaires who rule our world without dropping names.

Scalzi lays out a scenario in which supervillains are basically the CEOs of companies that do dastardly deeds as a service.

“The point of the supervillainy is not to hide, but to offer products and services that offer value to your clients, who just happen to be, you know, the United States or China, or some major corporation — so that the supervillainy that you do is not seen as outside the pale of standard business practices,” he explains.

If that sounds like today’s billionaire tech disrupters, so be it.

“I will say that the bad behavior of billionaires in 2023 makes this book far more timely than it might otherwise have been,” Scalzi admits in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “I wrote this about 18 months ago, so we had no idea that several of the world’s biggest billionaires would just be like, ‘Mask off, I’m actually a terrible person!'”

https://radiopublic.com/fiction-science-GAxyzK/s1!2c5ec

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How we’ll find the first evidence of extraterrestrial life

Illustration: A variety of planets
Astronomers have detected thousands of planets, including dozens that are potentially habitable. (NASA Illustration)

When will we find evidence for life beyond Earth? And where will that evidence be found? University of Arizona astronomer Chris Impey, the author of a book called “Worlds Without End,” is betting that the first evidence will come to light within the next decade or so.

But don’t expect to see little green men or pointy-eared Vulcans. And don’t expect to get radio signals from a far-off planetary system, as depicted in the 1992 movie “Contact.”

Instead, Impey expects that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope — or one of the giant Earth-based telescopes that’s gearing up for observations — will detect the spectroscopic signature of biological activity in the atmosphere of a planet that’s light-years away from us.

“Spectroscopic data is not as appealing to the general public,” Impey admits in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “People like pictures, and so spectroscopy never gets its fair due in the general talk about astronomy or science, because it’s slightly more esoteric. But it is the tool of choice here.”

https://radiopublic.com/fiction-science-GAxyzK/s1!1a44a

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Chasing SpaceX: The new space race gets a reality check

Astra / Firefly / Rocket Lab / Planet space hardware
Astra, Firefly Aerospace and Rocket Lab build rockets, while Planet Labs builds satellites. (Credits: Astra / Firefly / Rocket Lab / NASA)

Can anyone keep up with SpaceX in the commercial space race?

It might be one of the four companies profiled in “When the Heavens Went on Sale” — a new book written by Ashlee Vance, the tech journalist who chronicled SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s feats and foibles eight years ago.

Or it might be one of the dozens of other space ventures that have risen up to seek their fortune on the final frontier. Or maybe no one.

The space race’s ultimate prizes may still be up for grabs, but in Vance’s view, one thing is clear: There wouldn’t be a race if it weren’t for Musk and SpaceX.

“Elon sort of set this whole thing in motion,” Vance says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “My book is more or less a story of people who want to be the next Elon Musk.”

https://radiopublic.com/fiction-science-GAxyzK/s1!b6d86

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‘Observer’ blends way-out quantum science and fiction

Illustration: Person holding virtual sphere in hand
The novel "Observer" plays off the idea that acts of observation give rise to the reality we observe. (Adobe Stock / Thapana Studio)

Do we each create our own reality? Could different observers create measurably different realities? It’s a fantastical line of thought that has sparked scientific inquiries as well — and now the science and the fiction has come together in a new novel titled “Observer.”

“The observer is actually the basis of the universe, so basically the novel and the scientific ideas are really a rethink of everything we know about time, space and indeed the universe itself,” stem-cell researcher Robert Lanza says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

Lanza’s co-author, Seattle science-fiction writer Nancy Kress, agrees that the novel takes aim at one of life’s greatest mysteries. “The novel is about how we understand reality, and nothing could be more important about that, because everything else is based on it,” she told me.

https://radiopublic.com/fiction-science-GAxyzK/s1!c3502

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