I've got several treatments written for a series, which is way ambitious I realize. I just need to sit down and write the scripts. I've only actually completed one full script, and that was for a sitcom in a writing class.Originally Posted by wmatanner
I wouldn't worry too much about the stasis tech, unless you want to talk about it here just to have some background. We've had threads on ideas and new developments. One new idea published recently used magnetic fields to keep ice crystals from forming until the subject was supercooled enough that the sudden removal of the magnetic field allowed it to solidify instantly (vitrification) with virtually no ice crystalization and related cell damage. There's the idea that radiation damage means that cryopreservation can only last for about 1000 years, so perhaps the colonists need to be awakened a few times, so maybe they get status reports about the planet's automated ecopoiesis/terraforming.I've focused primarily on the ~3000 years the moon has been colonized, but I had been trying to think of some way that perhaps the moon is terraformed for several millennia before the colonizers get there. I toyed with time dilation effects, but the only thought I have is that we are able to develop near light speed travel (say .99c or greater), and we send the ships in deliberately timed waves at *different* velocities. (I ignore acceleration/deceleration in the following calcs, and assume all ships leave at the same time.) Let's say the moon is 3000 LY from Earth. Thus the first wave of ships are huge generators that automatically land at power sources and begin the terraforming process, landing at (from 0) year 3030. These ships also carry microorganisms to seed the planet. Then a wave at say .9c carrying plant life, landing Y3333, when the atmosphere is sufficiently prepared. Ships with animals at .7c = Y4286, and finally human ships at .5c arrive Y6000. Apparently, we must've invented some really incredible stasis technology--I realize that's a problem. But anyway, assuming everything worked out as planned, colonists step onto a planet with an ecosystem already well underway; if not, they find a desert world and perish.
Go ahead and start a separate thread for that. We've had some discussions of ecopoiesis and terraforming previously you might look up too.This is based on terraforming ideas I've read about before where life is staged in steps. I might consider creating another thread to see if people have some thoughts on this side of it. I hadn't thought of the imported bacterial life interacting with this organism, however. I think that's a fantastic idea. They could borrow genetic information from the newly established biosphere first to help them adjust to the atmosphere, then to adapt to our physiology.
Something else to consider: there's been a recent advance in creating life from scratch in a lab that might be useful. It's not about creating new life, but about constructing life from existing designs. The next step well be to create custom designs. So, it's plausible that the genome for the native microbes might be recorded and sent to the ship with the humans and then synthesized to see how it and the human immune system will react to one another (did they use something similar to this in Avatar?). You can take it from there in a way that accident or intentional introduction allows humans and microbes more time to adjust to each other beyond the time of active colonization with human presence on the moon. Might also explain the difference between that atmospheric strains and the one in humans. Of course, the additional timeframe for the duration of flight might not be that much longer if you account for time dilation effects.
I had mentioned something like a neural net, but the communities of microbes might form logic gates like a computer chip. They will need to be physically connected in at least small groups to make loops in order to use the magnetic sail idea, so together they might make either a single gate, or a circuit of multiple gates. I'm not sure how much computation an individual microbe could perform, although if you're using magnetosomes as the root of computation then some magnetotactic bacteria have been discovered to have a wide array of shapes and sizes of particles and a wide range of numbers and arrangements of particles. So maybe that could work.I have been thinking that. I've been fascinated for a long time by the idea of a diffuse organism, like a brain but with all its cells scattered and self-sufficient. Rather than thinking of them as little neurons with axons and such, though, I was thinking of them as more like biological computers. Perhaps their bioluminescence allows their bodies to act like binary code. They might also use magnetism in some of the ways you suggest. I like the idea of preference for temperatures allowing for different magnetic properties. I do indeed want them to be "intelligent," but basically in a way that is unrecognizable to humans. I am endlessly annoyed by the preponderance of anthropomorphic aliens in sci-fi, as if life on Earth were the blueprint for the galaxy (though perhaps the smartest example of this would be Larry Niven's Ringworld). I think it's very unlikely we'll ever find life that resembles humans very much at all, and sci-fi seems to show a lack of imagination by continuing over these old ruts. I like to try to think of how life and intelligence, if there are even things out there we might be able to recognize as life and intelligence, might look nothing like what we have on Earth. I've been toying with the idea of a single-celled version like this since high school.
Still, I think it would need to approximate a neural net because even a computer chip can only do so much on it's own as it's wired to do. And though the microbes could change their connections with each other to form different logic circuits, I'm not sure if there's a way for them to run "software" like we do with silicon chips, but maybe there's a way.
Oh, I gotcha now. The microbes may simply run on stored energy at night, like bacteria. Or it may rarely get dark enough to not be able to use photosynthesis, except during eclipse.I just meant that as the moon turned around the planet, the organism might find it necessary to follow the light side around in order to maintain a constant source of energy. Or perhaps they go dormant at night. Or maybe they can even store enough energy to power themselves through the night like little solar cells.
No problem, I understand. If you do want to collaborate on stuff beyond the plausible science and tech, just lemme know.You're quite right, actually. I won't go into that side of it, though.
Yeah, I'm half Irish too and a doc half scared me to death and made me think I was going to be dead in ten years when he thought I had HH. Depending on your plot, it might be useful to have a variation of people in whom the microbes might find it easier to be symbiotic vs. pathologic, or how susceptibility can be either cyclical or environmental.Sorry, typo corrected. Yes, I meant anemia. I'm imagining a soil considerably more saturated with iron than ours, which would be absorbed into the plant life, so that might help. But yes, their bodies might also be inclined to make up for the iron deficiency by desiring iron-rich foods, good idea. I didn't know about Hemochromatosis...That is rather serendipitous, as my colonists all happen to be descendants of the British, and so the fact that 10% of Celtic people are carriers is rather awesome (I guess I shouldn't be so excited about a disease, especially being almost half Irish myself...). The environment could definitely end up selecting for these people and causing the gene to express more, especially in the smaller gene pool. As for women, I considered the fact that they would be more prone, but as humans adjust to the environment, especially with these other considerations you've brought up, this should level out.
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